Memorial Day Weekend

CDW and Charles enjoy homemade potato chips at the SoWeBo Arts Festival.
We went for a hike at Sugarloaf Mountain. It was hot. Really hot. We rewarded ourselves afterwards with a trip to a winery. Score.

That is one beautiful girl doggie.

It was really hot this Memorial Day Weekend. I mean crazy hot. We had fun anyway!

Homemade Ice Cream

The ingredients.
The tools.
The gooey goodness.
The finished product. I'm not sure which I will like better - the little popsicles from the ice cube trays, or the dixie cups. I'll get back to you on that.

As most of you are aware, we will be making some changes in our house while I am not working. We'll be trimming the fat anywhere we can expense-wise. One fatty piece is ready-made doggie ice cream. I will not mention a brand name, but for many years I have purchased a certain brand of ready-made dog ice cream in the freezer section at my grocery store. It is the perfect treat for Fido after a long hot walk, a tramp in the woods (right, Aunt Joan?), or a play date. But these bad boys will set you back. No more of that for a little while!! Ingenious Aunt Sarah found this recipe online, and today I decided to give it a try. I give it an "A" in these categories: ease, preparation time, availability of ingredients, doggie interest in taste-testing.

Ingredients:

32 oz. plain yogurt

1 mashed banana

2 Tbsp. peanut butter

2 Tbsp. honey

Directions: Mix all ingredients in your blender. Pour into ice cube trays or dixie cups. Freeze. Let your mutt enjoy.

This Week's Achievement

So far my biggest achievement this week is getting Abbi a haircut. Why didn't I think of this before? It's been a long time since I had a dog that needed haircuts (Bessie), but someone else I know was talking about their dog's haircut, and it came to me. Abbi has always had a rather shaggy look which was cute, but her hair tended to get little tangles, which I had to comb out to prevent matting. She was covered in matts when we found her. In any case, brushing is not her favorite. It is actually the opposite of her favorite. So I packed up a bundle of treats and took her to the groomer. I held her and fed her treats while the groomer shaved and trimmed as much as she could. The result has been an adorable Abbi, and I swear that she feels very cute and very cool (both temperature, and otherwise).

Graduation Day

I did not actually get my diploma on Friday. Contained in this envelope was a very cool drawing of a turtle.
The four MPH grads from our department - Talya, Megan, JAS, and Ranwa. I've had a lot of classes with these very smart ladies!
SKN and JAS.
JAS and CDW.
Talya, Anne, and Jody. I worked for Anne at my assistantship. Boy will I miss having her as a boss. She is the coolest.
Uncle Bill, JAS, and Aunt Joan.
The whole fam! Aunt Joan, Gloria, CDW, JAS, Sue, Uncle Bill, and SKN.
JAS and SKN, pre-party.

Last Friday I graduated. I am now a Master of Public Health (MPH). Truth be told, the graduate school experience has been quite humbling, and leads me to feel like a master of nothing . . . but I will take the degree anyway.

We were fortunate to have lots of loved ones make their way to Charm City to celebrate with us. My mom, Chris's mom, Aunt Joan and Uncle Bill, and my oldest and dearest friend Sarah. What a contingency! The joke of the weekend was that our house was like a clown car. If people were standing outside and watching us they must have been thinking "How did they fit all of those people?? . . ."

In addition to the actual graduation our visit included a wonderful Indian dinner, a fabulous lunch on the deck at Little Havana, and a rockin' graduation party. Again, we had no idea what the maximum capacity of our home was before this weekend! Aunt Joan and Uncle Bill weren't able to stay for the party, but Sarah and the Mom Squared team were the best party help ever. If not for them everyone might have arrived only to munch on frozen pizza bites or something. Instead, these ladies helped me assemble an overly ambitious menu of homemade hors d'oeuvres, and did an amazing job of clean-up. I'll bet they were happy to get home, and away from all of the work here in Baltimore!

So what am I doing now? Well, I'm unemployed. I'm torn because the idea of a summer off really does appeal to me, but the idea of not having a paycheck does not appeal to me. So, this week I will start the job search. I will keep you posted.

Get Your Preak On

Get your Black-Eyed Susan right here.
CDW and Melissa.
CDW, JAS, Melissa, Chris, ??
Kate and JAS.
CDW and JAS.
CDW kicking off the BES action.
Reporter interviewing the Chrises about their fashion decisions for the day. You can't see it in this photo, but Chris has on very buffy pants. They are green with little crabs on them. He also has on a bow tie.

Yesterday was the 135th running of the Preakness Stakes, and we were there. For all of you non-horse people (really I'm included in that group - I only know this because now I am a Baltimorean), the Preakness is the second race in the Triple Crown series. The Kentucky Derby is race 1, Preakness, then the Belmont Stakes up in New York. A Triple Crown Winner is a horse that wins all three races. The last one was Affirmed in 1978. Interesting to also note is that the Triple Crown Winner in 1935 was a horse called Omaha. This year there will not be a Triple Crown Winner. There was a lot of hype about the Derby winner, Super Saver, but yesterday Lookin at Lucky won the Preakness. Too bad for the Belmont Stakes, right? At least at the Preakness we have the hope of the possibility of a Triple Crown.

For the Preakness Baltimore does it's best to be hoity-toity for the day, but we're still a pretty gritty city, so this looks nothing like Foxfield or the Derby. The official drink of the Preakness is the Black-Eyed Susan. Ingredients are something like Whiskey, Vodka, sours mix . . . and I don't know what.

Jody is going to graduate

We went to an O's Yankees game last week. The Yankees fans outnumbered us. Bummer. The tickets were pretty expensive. Double bummer. We lost. Triple bummer. Score one for Grandpa Fred the Yankees fan.
Abbi giving us a smile. You can kind of make-out her "snaggletoof."

I have been quite busy in recent weeks. I finished up my MPH project, and then defended the final product. This means that I will graduate in May - woo hoo! Now time to find a job.

February Update

We are staying really busy these days. Christopher's job always keeps him hopping - he's finally getting a little bit of reprieve after the excitement of the snow and lots of extra hours of shoveling and plowing at his sites.

I successfully defended my MPH project proposal last week, and am in the process of finishing the IRB application. The IRB (Institutional Research Board) at UMD is tasked with making sure that research of any kind done by anyone affiliated with UMD is done ethically and responsibly.

They take their responsibility very seriously (as they should) - and that means that the application process is pretty intense. My project deals mostly with data analysis and mapping, so I shouldn't have any trouble getting approval from the IRB. That is what I am hoping anyway.

Yesterday Jackson had a bit of a stomach ache. He consoled himself by laying on our bed, which had been stripped so that I could wash the sheets. Enjoy this pic of our big baby.