What is a traditional Christmas dinner? I am a very literary person, so when I think of Christmas dinners, I think of the geese that Mr. Scrooge bought for his pals at the end of A Christmas Carol. However, goose is hardly a common item on the poultry shelves of America. Growing up, we never really had any set menus for Christmas dinner, so Winne and I had to scour Wikipedia for ideas on what to prepare. I would have been perfectly happy eating Chinese food as usual, since our  homemade Chinese food is so much better than anything you can find in Pittsburgh, but Winne insisted on having American food, because she eats Chinese food all the time at home and never gets to eat American! Just wait 'til she gets to college. Then she will be singing a different tune!

Here is the menu that Winne and I concocted:

Appetizers - Italian bread, Caesar salad, and clam chowder
Side dishes - three potato medley, vegetable casserole
Main dish - roast turkey
Dessert - apple pie
Drinks - apple cider

We started out with this:


(yes our Christmas tree is in the kitchen - it disturbs the birds' sleep otherwise)

And we ended up with this:


Italian bread - we simply bought a freshly baked loaf from Shoprite. We toasted the slices in a toaster oven, and we poured everyone a saucer of olive oil and balsamic vinegar for dipping.

Caesar salad - We chopped up organic Romaine hearts. We had crispy croutons and shredded Parmesan cheese. Where did we go wrong? The dressing! The only Caesar dressing that Shoprite had was fat free and calorie free - it was awful! My mother liked it, although she did claim that it tasted nothing like "real" Caesar salad.

Clam chowder - I used this recipe. It tasted pretty good, but it was really thick. Also, I didn't have any leftover mashed potatoes (which the recipe called for) so I had to make some real quick. I think the reason it was so thick was because the recipe called for 9 "new" potatoes. I had no idea what that meant, so I used three Yukon gold potatoes from Costco, which were maaassive.

Three potato medley - Winne prepared this dish, so I don't know what recipe she used. It was basically baked potato with a lot of oil, butter, and rosemary. We used Yukon gold, red, and fingerling potatoes. It tasted kind of bland. It looked great, though.



Vegetable casserole - I had no idea what "casserole" was before today. If I had known that the dish contained a lot of cheese, I would have vetoed it. Winne decided to make this. I remember looking at the recipe she was using, and it was titled "Crowd-pleasing vegetable casserole." What a joke! We barely touched the casserole. Cheese and Chinese people do not go well together.


(the dreaded cheese!)

Roast turkey - Winne prepared this one too. We chose a small turkey on purpose because 1) our family does not each much and 2) it's less likely that the meat will be all dry and gross afterward. Winne and I have the art of roasting a perfect turkey down. The trick is to keep basting it over and over. Winne also likes to use a ton of herbs and meat tenderizer. We were originally going to have a Christmas ham, but our aunt specifically requested this because of our previous success with the dish. Too bad she didn't show... Anyway, the turkey tasted great, although the surface turned out really salty for some reason. The gravy was also incredibly salty, but it went well with the flesh on the inside.




Mashed potatoes - at the end of cooking, we had leftover potatoes and heavy cream, so we made some real quick. Winne was too impatient and kept taking out the potatoes before they were ready to mash, so we boiled them like three times, haha.

Apple pie - I prepped this one. I bought a 12" pie tin with bottom crust already in. I used Mike's sister's recipe. We had tried to make a pie with it back in Pittsburgh, but we had failed miserably. We ended up throwing the pie, but I was not willing to give up - I was determined to perfect it. Last time, we had made a lattice crust, which ended up drying out the apples inside, and the crust was also really hard. We couldn't even cut through it. This time, I prepped the pie crust dough way in advance so that it could chill in the fridge for a long time. I used this recipe to make a flaky crust, and it came out so perfect. It was actually better than the bottom crust, which melted and came apart when we tried to serve the pie. The pie was too sweet for my taste, but everyone else loved it. We served it with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream. Probably the most successful dish of the evening.




Apple cider - store-bought and delicious.

All in all, the food looks pretty good, right? Why was our dinner almost a fiasco? It turns out that my mom and Winne and I had different ideas of when Christmas dinner is supposed to be. We had thought that Christmas dinner was supposed to be on Christmas Eve, which is December 24. My mom thought that it was supposed to be on Christmas Day, December 25. She invited our relatives over for dinner tomorrow... and we did not know this until an hour before dinner was supposed to start. My mom called home to ask how everything was going and to tell us when she was going to arrive home from work, and I responded, "We are busy cooking!" My mom replied, "Really? Why?" "Christmas dinner, of course! When are uncle and aunty getting here?" "WAIT! DINNER IS TODAY?!?" I imagine her commute back to NJ was filled with frantic phone calls.

Our aunt did not show up because she lives in New York and would not have gotten here until way late, and our uncle almost did not show up because he had already prepared dinner for himself. In the end, my mom wheedled a short visit from him. Our cousin Paul came over, though, even though I think he lives in New York too. Maybe he just happened to be in the state tonight.

We ended up eating a pathetic amount of the food on the table - the mashed potatoes, potato medley, casserole, salad, and soup were only tasted, and only 1/3 of the turkey was eaten. I'm sure a bunch of the turkey went into the stomachs of Honey and the turtles instead of the humans. We finished off most of the bread and half of the pie. The food was probably too heavy for the older people's tastes. A lot of it was either really starchy or really fatty, or both. I think I would have preferred having good old Chinese food, but prepping all that food was a fun experience.

If anything, I learned this:

My turtles like turkey meat! They're fighting over a piece in the picture. What cuties.

_{P.S. I still don't know when Christmas dinner is supposed to be, by the way. I asked Chris and he said it was on the eve of Christmas Day, which he called Christmas evening, and which he said was different from Christmas Eve. I asked Mike and he said it was on Christmas Eve. Clarification please?!}

Wow, I was so busy this semester that I barely updated. Well, time to play catch up!

Mike and I went to Niagara Falls and Buffalo to celebrate our anniversary. We actually celebrated ex post facto. On our actual anniversary we were (or at least, I was) too tired to do anything other than sleep.

It is about a four hour drive from Pittsburgh to the national border. On an early Saturday morning, we set off after a hearty breakfast at Pamela's. Our plan was to stop in Buffalo for lunch and try out some authentic buffalo wings. Alas, the Pamela's breakfast proved too hearty, and we were not hungry at all when we were passing through Buffalo. So, we continued on to the border. We got a little lost right after crossing the border, so we stopped at a little park area for a while to stretch our legs and re-orient ourselves.



After that, we made it to our motel in Niagara Falls, Canada side! We had been on the road for a long time, but there was no time to waste, because the attractions we wanted to go to closed at 5.

By the way, Niagara Falls is such a tourist town. Every building on every street was either some weird museum/attraction, a club/bar, or a place that sold Cuban cigars, since they're not allowed to be sold on the U.S. side of the border.



First, the iconic Maid of the Mists journey. The combination of the rain and the falls made me very glad that they handed out free ponchos. We kept them afterwards - they're still in Mike's car. If we're ever caught in the rain while we're out we have a backup solution!





I took this picture through the poncho. You can see a seagull!


Our legs and shoes were soaked after the ride, and our cameras were pretty wet too. The falls looked great, although when you're really close up you can't really see anything except for fine white mist. There were seagulls and what I think were cormorants flying around.

(By the way, coincidentally, the week after that was the episode of the Office where Pam and Jim get married. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but I thought it was so sweet! If you've seen it you'll know why I mention it. And if you haven't, and you don't care about being spoiled, click here.)

After that was the Niagara Falls Aviary! How could I go to a city with an aviary in it and not go? We got there around 4, so we had to rush through, but it was still really enjoyable. First impressions were not great - the first room we went through had a kingfisher with a damaged beak, a bored trainer with two parrots, and some bird skulls. After that was a hallway with a bunch of conures sitting in the dark. After that, though, it got better.



We went through a "small birds" room. The title would be accurate if there weren't one random moorhen in there.





Then we went through the nocturnal exhibit. Aside from owls, they also had bats, scorpions, spiders, insects, geckos, and poison dart frogs.



And finally, the crowning glory of the Niagara Falls Aviary - the largest free-flight room in the world!







BARF yum.

This baby ibis was really annoying. It kept bobbing up and down, screeching, and poking its mom begging for food. Poor mom! She looks irritated. But it was still cute.





Inside a random cafe were these strange canary things. What a cool 'do.



After the Aviary, we were exhausted. We took a nap in our motel room, and then we looked through all our coupon books to check out where we should eat.

Ultimately, we decided on The Keg, a restaurant on the top floor of a fancy hotel with a great view. Unfortunately, due to the name of the place, we thought it would be informal attire. How wrong we were. We decided to walk along the edge of the Falls. It was still raining, and we were walking into the rain, so we were basically soaked through. We got to the restaurant, exhausted and chilly, and were told that there would be a one hour wait. We were too tired to go anywhere else, so we loitered in a Japanese gift shop checking out the stereotypical Japanese and Canadian trinkets (lots of Hello Kitty and maple syrup snacks). We finally got seated. We were lucky to be near a window, although due to the mist and other people in the way, we couldn't really see much. We both ordered delicious steaks. Our waiter saw that I was wearing a CMU sweater and asked if we were from Pittsburgh. Turns out he travels down there a lot. We guessed it was for the hockey. GO PENGUINS! We must have looked quite the pair in that fancy restaurant, soaking wet in jeans and sweaters, lugging around a bunch of camera gear, with our shoes off under the table trying to warm up our feet by playing footsies. Everyone else was in evening wear.

After dinner, we walked past the falls again. They light up the falls at night with different colors, so we stopped to take pictures. Or, more accurately, Mike took pictures while I shivered and held an umbrella over the both of us. We only had one tripod, so I let him use it, since he takes better pictures than me anyway.

On the way back, we went on the Sky Wheel, this huge Ferris wheel close to our motel. It probably would have been nice if we weren't on it so late that a lot of the lights were already off. The falls weren't lit up anymore and the rain blocked the view too.

We were utterly spent when we got back to the motel. We laid out our clothes to dry, and we promptly fell asleep.

Looking back now, objectively, it should have been a horrible experience. We were so tired from staying up late the night before planning out the trip, and we tired ourselves out even more by walking everywhere because there was no parking. We were soaked to the bone by blowing rain and cold clammy mists, and the picture opportunities weren't great because there was so little sun. I don't mean to be mushy, but we were just so happy to share the experience with each other and to celebrate one year together, that the physical discomfort did not matter at all.

The next morning, we got up bright and early to go to Buffalo. We had leftovers from Pamela's yesterday, so we ate that. My pants weren't dry yet, so I had to borrow Mike's sweatpants. Our sneakers were also still soaking wet, so we wore flip flops. I'm not sure why we brought them, but good thing we did.

Then we set off for Buffalo Zoo!

At first, the zoo is disappointing in its quality of exhibits. Near the entrance, the exhibits are plain, the animals look scraggly, and some of the fencing is hard to see through.

This poor spectacle bear was in really bad condition.


The polar bears were pretty scruffy too.


However, as we progressed, the exhibits got better and better. The indoor exhibits were especially good. There were a lot of exhibits with different species cohabiting the same area, which was really nifty.

Cottontail rabbits... live with...


TORTOISES!


This tamarind lives with some agouti.


They had a serval! I've never seen one of these live before.


Reptile house. Mwahahaaaa.








Golden tabby tiger! The tiger's stripes look like they are faded; they are born that way. This gene only manifests in captivity.



They had this cool rainforest house thing. This was the most impressive part of the zoo!

Yellow-banded poison dart frog


Spider monkey


Dwarf crocodiles are SO CUTE!


Sunbittern


Keel-billed toucan


Capybara family


Pamela's portions are so epic that we were full the whole day again, even though they were only leftovers. We skipped lunch and stayed in the zoo til closing time. By that time, we were pretty hungry. There were two places that we were considering hitting up for their buffalo wings - Anchor Bar and Duff's. We ended up at Anchor Bar because it is the home of the original buffalo wing. The place looks slightly like a T.G.I.F-type restaurant. The inside is decorated with rare motorcycles and road signs. The lighting is dim and yellow, and the tables and chairs are the cheap kind. After a long wait, we had a big plate of wings in front of us at last!

The original buffalo wings were kind of disappointing. Since they were served on a big open plate, they got cold fast, and they didn't start out piping hot to begin with. Also, even though we ordered "hot," they were not very spicy. And it turned out, the wings were none too filling either. When we finished the plate, we decided we were still hungry, and we were feeling adventurous enough to go and find Duff's on the other side of town.

After a long and slightly confusing drive, we arrived at Duff's. It is a tiny bar/restaurant in the middle of nowhere. We only knew about it because it got the best reviews on Yelp for authentic buffalo wings. We walked in and immediately knew we were in for An Experience. The place was homey and the servers wore t-shirts and jeans, yet almost every table was filled. We were seated quickly and we mulled over the menu, which advertised the buffalo wings as mild, medium, hot, very hot, and very very hot. At the bottom of the page was a note telling us, "Caution, hot wings are VERY HOT!" We decided to go with hot, and oh my goodness those wings were spicy. I'm pretty sure I burned my tongue eating the buffalo wings. They were served in a bucket, so they did not lose their heat the way the Anchor Bar wings did. They were also drenched in sauce. The Anchor Bar wings were pretty dry. Afterwards, we went to wash our hands in the bathroom. There was a sign over the mirror that said, "Caution, hot water is VERY HOT!" I laughed it off as a funny imitation of the note on their menu. Ouch! The sign did not lie. The hot water was indeed extremely hot.

We were lucky enough to have time and stomach real estate to try both the original buffalo wings and the best buffalo wings in Buffalo. After dinner, we headed on the long drive back. Thus ended our very long, very tiring, very belated anniversary weekend.

It's been an endless pile of homework ever since school started. Four out of five of my classes assign one or two really long readings for every class. All of my classes are at least 1 and a half hours long too. One of my classes has an essay due every week. My schedule isn't the greatest. I have one class in the morning, and then three hours later I have my only other class of the day. So I have three hours in which to bum around campus. I usually spend it in a cluster studying for the next class.

The classes (other than the heavy reading load) are not bad, except for my Chinese class, Popular Culture in China. We have a reading for every class, and we also have a quiz in every class. Except, on the first day, the professor told us that we would have a POP quiz ONCE a week. Also, the first reading was not on the syllabus, and it didn't come with a vocab list. Therefore, everyone failed the first quiz. She just brushed it off, saying, "Oh you can drop your two lowest quiz scores." That does not help when we can't make up missed quizzes! I almost missed one because I had an INTERVIEW. Usually professors are understanding when you're really sick or have a career opportunity to pursue, but she just laughs it off, always repeating, "You can drop two scores." That also does not help when you misinform the class about the frequency of quizzes. I kept not studying for the second quiz of the week because I kept thinking, "We're only supposed to have one a week," only to be surprised by a quiz the moment we arrived in class. The one time I DID study for the second quiz of the week, it was called off because we were watching a movie. The readings are getting really hard too. The one we had for today had 60 vocab words (the last few averaged out around 30), and besides the given vocab words, the rest of the words were really difficult too. The quiz policy is really unfair. Grading for other things seems harsh too. We gave a presentation last week, and the professor did nothing but compliment us on how well we did. We got our grades back, and all our scores averaged around 91. What did she take off for?! She said something about our accents, but come on. One member of our group is not majoring in Chinese and just taking it for fun, and the other two of us speak Cantonese as a first language, so it's hard for us to grasp tones. And a white guy in our class also got a 91, and his accent is really much worse than ours.

Other than that class, I'm doing fine. I'm wondering if I might have hypersomnia, because I can't stay awake in class no matter how much sleep I get the night before or how interested I am in the course content.

I'm taking a figure drawing course this semester. We get to stare at a different naked person for two hours every week.

Outside of school, I'm the graphic designer/de facto graphic designer for FOUR different organizations, which is a little hectic. I have two posters due next week, aaahh! Good thing David bought me Adobe Design Suite CS4 (for only $120!)! It feels really good to have legal Adobe software, and it doesn't crash anymore! And of course CS4 is just so cool looking.

On Fridays, I tutor Mandarin at a high school in Squirrel Hill called Taylor Allderdice High School. It's really fun and I enjoy helping the kids out. Okay, I've only been there once so far, but I like it so far! The only problem is the high school schedule - their day starts at 7 something! The Chinese periods are 1, 3, and 4, but I asked my advisor to let me just teach during 3 and 4 so I could at least wake up at the still-indecent-but-not-outrageously-so hour of 7:30 (as compared to 6... ugh!).

We got a pet bird! We had a bunch of different name suggestions for him, the most memorable being Hobart shortened to Hobo, but in the end Mike suggested the name Buckbeak, and it stuck. I got him addicted to the Harry Potter universe, haha.



It's a fitting name, is it not? He totally looks like he could tear Malfoy's arm wide open. We've had him for a month now, and the only thing we've gotten him to do so far is sit still for a really long time in one place, and sit on a finger when prompted (sometimes). My biggest issue with him right now is getting him to eat fresh produce in the form of veggies or fruits. He only eats seeds, which is not the healthiest diet. He likes when I sing. He seems really paranoid and/or timid a lot of the time, which is problematic.

So, right now in Pittsburgh, the G-20 is going on. In case you haven't heard, this is when leaders of the 20 richest countries in the world get together and chill out and discuss global issues. There are a ton of protesters in the area right now, though I'm not sure what they are protesting. I've heard that some of them don't even care about the world leaders, they're just here because they know they'll get publicity from being here with pickets and banners. Some of them are protesting big business. Some of them are protesting that these 20 countries control 90-something percent of the world's wealth. Whatever they're protesting, it's really annoying because there are 2000 police stationed in Pittsburgh right now. They've come from all over the place to help out for G-20. It's really intimidating seeing a gaggle of police officers wherever you go in Oakland. It's also been quite dangerous. Some of my friends went to the protests just to observe, and apparently a lot of people were standing around doing nothing when they suddenly got tear-gassed for "refusal to disperse." What's wrong with standing around doing nothing? Some of the blog comments I've read say that some riot police dress up as protesters and start a riot in an otherwise calm crowd just so the regular police have an excuse to start beating up on people. I can't swallow that one, but admittedly, it's pretty weird that the police were beating up random bystanders.

It's also irritating to hear sirens so often. I thought I moved away from that already. This summer I lived down the street from the biggest hospital in the area and had to deal with tons of ambulances zooming by at all hours. Now I live in a Squirrel Hill neighborhood and we have been hearing firetrucks and police go by all the time.

Oh well, the one plus out of all of this is that all my Thursday classes were cancelled, because it was too much of a pain for the professors to travel to and from campus (and find parking) due to all the temporary traffic regulations, road shut-downs, and taking over of parking spaces.

In other news, I finally gave in and I have started playing Guitar Hero/Rock Band. Before this month, the only times I've played were one time at Chris's house, and a handful of times at Best Buy. I was initially too snobby to pick up a pretend instrument, then too shy to pick up a video game controller. It's fun! Our housemate Alyssa worked at EA this summer, so she can probably get us a heavily discounted Beatles Rock Band. How exciting!

Aaand one last thing. We've been using a 25" monitor for a TV, but last week Mike saw this really good deal on craigslist for a 46" plasma for only $500 or something like that. He bought that TV and didn't know what to do with the 25" monitor. I said I would like to use it, so he helped me set it up in our room and... Oh my god eyegasm. It's so big and beautiful and clear! My old monitor is (of course) smaller, and it was also darker, and my laptop screen is absolutely deplorable when it comes to graphic display. Ever since we've set up the new monitor, I have barely left the room.


Yeah, it's wider than my keyboard, bitches. Originally we wanted to dual monitor it, but we actually didn't have room on my desk... hahaha. Right now my laptop is under the keyboard, and it is a little uncomfortable for my wrists. It would be nice to have a little shelf to put the laptop in to make setup and removal easier, but for now this will have to do.

One more plus of this is that the monitor, since it doubles as a TV, has speakers, so I don't have to deal with shitty laptop speakers anymore either!

So beautiful... I can't wait to start drawing again.

Life is so good with (legal!) Adobe Creative Suite CS4. David is NUMBER ONE!