Random Acts of Whimsy

Around 4:00 today, it was absolutely down-pouring. Thunder and lightening off in the distance, close enough to make an impact; absolute summer thunderstorm, the kind I loved watching from the porch as a kid. I was at the office, not-working. I'd been working earlier, of course, but had hit that afternoon slump where your brain doesn't really feel like functioning anymore, so you either need to do something mindlessly productive, get coffee, or give up. I looked out the window, and watched the rain for a while, laughed with officemates about this and that, and idly wondered how bad it really was outside.

I work on the 13th floor on a 14 floor building. The astronomy and physics building. We have a dome on the roof and multiple telescopes - all the grad students know where the keys are for the roof, and are free to get them at anytime in case they fancy a bout of star-gazing. So I thought... I could check this out. I could just stick my head out, see what it's like out there. So I got up, went upstairs, and grabbed the keys. Went to the roof. Took off my sandals, rolled up my jean legs a bit, and walked outside. It was POURING. I could tell immediately if I stood outside too long, I'd be absolutely drenched, and I'd be dripping over the office. Or....

I rushed back to my office, packed up my things, and ran home through the pouring rain to drop off my computer, my bag, and everything except my keys.

Two blocks away from where I live is Morningside Park - a lovely place for a run, full of pathways through and around big boulders, trees, and stretches of grass and plants. And there I went, tromping through the rain, laughing and yelling out at the thunder and counting the seconds between lightning and thunder. No one was around - the rain was hard enough that anyone who wasn't already out was staying in, I think. As the rain died down and the storm moved further away, I climbed onto one of the large granite boulders which are scattered around the park, and just sat there/lay on my back for a while. I got some strange looks when people did start walking through the park again, when the rain had stopped, but I was quite content on my boulder - I've always loved mucking about with rocks. I used to have a rock collection, even. Technically, I still do, since it's still sitting in my bedroom in my parents house in Baltimore - I never got rid of it, packrat that I am.

Sitting in the rain is something I haven't done in ages. Not counting 'getting caught in the rain' here - though even including that its been a while for that type of downpour. The last time I specifically remember deliberately going out in the pouring rain... might actually be on my gap year, five years ago. I'm sure - I hope - I've done it since then, just no specific instances springing to mind at this moment, as I write. When I graduated from undergrad, I knew (had known since high school, in fact) I was taking a full year off to travel, to work, to volunteer, and, most importantly, to HIKE. I spent three months hiking on the Appalachian Trail (a 2000+ mile trail spanning Georgia to Maine) - I hiked from Georgia to the half-way point in Pennsylvania, stopping there in preparation for my trip to Japan in July. It was a wonderful trip, and a wonderful year in general, and I'll have to expand on it in another blog entry at some point. But it was an extremely RAINY spring the year I went - when I went through later, I figured out that I saw rain approximately one third of the days I was hiking. Some of those days, just a sprinkle, of course. But other days I was absolutely drenched. Hopefully usually only ME - I kept my gear drier than I was, generally, and my REAL criteria for being drenched was getting my socks soaked through - which only happened three times (yes I counted) throughout those three months. 

The worst rain I remember hit one afternoon in... early June? Late May? I'd have to look it up, I kept a journal almost obsessively on a day to day basis. Late afternoon. I was hiking with Hellbender (a friend on the trail, everyone had trail names) that day, and it just CAME DOWN, a three mile hike from the shelter we'd been intending to stay. After a while I stopped, told him to go on to the shelter, I was just going to camp where I was and catch up tomorrow, since it was getting late. I'd camped on my own before, that wasn't a worry. But it Just. Kept. Raining. And the place I had chosen didn't exactly have a camp site available, and despite the numerous vegetation, was actually a lot more rocky than it appeared. I couldn't get my tent up. My tarp was doing nothing against the rain, my tent stakes wouldn't stay in the ground (my tent wasn't entirely freestanding, for all that it was light and for all that I loved it). And I was getting more and more wet by the minute, until I finally gave up, threw everything back together and buckled it to the outside of my pack (too wet to go back inside without getting the REST of my gear wet) and grimly set back onto the trail towards the shelter. It was dark by the time I got there, the shelter itself was packed, and most people were in their bags, sleeping. But Hellbender had saved me a spot and waited up for me, as he realized that the rain was not letting up. I met a lot of good people that year, and made good friends. When I got off the trail after three months, most other people kept hiking on to do a complete thru-hike. So the last time I remember deliberately going out in the pouring rain was about a month after I got off trail - I went outside and stood there for a while and missed the trail and my 'fellowship.' I should do things like that more often.. randomly going outside in the rain, or dancing around my apartment singing to my favorite album, or even just going downtown someplace and trying a new restaurant on my own, for fun. Life is better with a bit of whimsy.

Summer Plans Confirmed!

So this is just a quick blog post in which I'm REALLY excited for my summer plans, which just came together over the weekend, in chronologically reversed order. So I wanted to gush about that for a little bit!

Benson is going to two conferences this summer, in July: one in Warsaw, Poland, and the other near Barcelona, Spain. I had originally been planning on flying out to California for his graduation in mid-June, but when he invited me to go around Europe with him for a couple weeks, I decided that Europa took priority over Cali. This weekend, we spent a large chunk of Saturday discussing our plans and booking flights. Since travel within Europe itself is relatively inexpensive, and we knew we wanted to take 2 weeks to travel, the whole continent was pretty much our oyster. Which turned out to be a little problematic, since we both love to travel and want to go EVERYWHERE, eventually.

Our planning went in reverse: We knew we wanted to end in Warsaw, of course, since that is where the first conference is and therefore where I must end my trip. I'm going to actually be there for the first few days of the conference, probably looking around Warsaw on my own while Benson does conference-y things. I've never been to Poland before, and Warsaw should be really interesting. Just prior to the conference, we'll be in Italy: a friend of Benson has family near Rome, and invited us to stay for the week before the conference. I've been to Rome before - when I was in undergrad, my family took a summer and spent 5 weeks in Europe, two of which were traveling around Italy and the other three in France. Rome was one of the stops we went to, so I don't feel the need to do ALL THE THINGS in Rome or nearby... it will be nice to explore smaller towns and take a more relaxed trip, and with people who know the area - not to mentioned home cooked Italian meals!

Prague was the last place we settled on - as I said, since travel is cheap within Europa, we could have gone pretty much anywhere before heading to Italy and then Poland. [An amusing side note: when Benson was describing this trip to his parents, they were apparently under the misapprehension that the conference was in PORTLAND instead of POLAND. A slight difference there...] Anyway, Prague was actually one of the places we had been thinking about before we got the Italy invitation, since it was within reasonable distance to Warsaw by train. So after about an hour discussion of all the awesome places to go in Europe, we kind of defaulted back to Prague on the basis that while there were many we want to go, most of them we'd want to spend more time than available (Istanbul, Greece, and Norway were dismissed for these reasons, for example, since although those are all trips we've been wanting to do for a while, none of them could be done justice in only 5-6 days). My parents have been to Prague, and they highly recommended it: they thought it was fantastic, like a fairy tale city with great music and culture.

So once Europe was worked out, we just had to figure out if we were doing anything prior. In order to see friends, not to mention so that we can take the same trans-continental flight, Benson is going to be in NYC for a few days prior to this vacation. Now, Benson very recently defended his dissertation and received his PhD in Physics at UC Santa Barbara. He'll be going to Cambridge, England, for a three year post doc starting next October. This, of course, is cause for great celebration.

Now, I did get Benson a present for graduating when I was out there over spring break: whiskey! Benson is a big fan of whiskey in general - he has been since undergrad. In fact, he was given a list of quality scotches by one of the professors at Brandeis, which he's been studiously(?) working through, trying all varieties. This is known as "Craig's List", after said professor. Education is a wonderful thing. [Indeed, once during a lab class with said professor, Benson was talking to him about scotch, and I had to interrupt, said I, "with a non-whiskey related question."   "You have to get your priorities straight" responded my professor.] We both like whiskey a lot, is the point, though Benson is more into it than I am - I appreciate it, but don't think I'm a connoisseur or anything. Before my 25th birthday we made a point to go out and drink scotch older than we were (25 year old Bowmore) at Angel's Share in NYC (a most excellent speak-easy, with great cocktails and liquor selection). Since then, we've actually managed to replicate this feat with two additional whiskeys, despite our own aging: my dad has a friend who collects whiskeys, and I've received a couple of very small (as in several ounces) bottles of whiskey since, as presents; so we've also tried 27 year old and 29 year old scotches as well, now. Since I wanted a nice, interesting gift for Benson's PhD, something he'd not gotten before, my dad's friend recommended several bottles of scotch that he thought would be good for such an occasion, from which I chose Aberlour A'Bunadh. Which is very nice indeed.

Now, after that somehow lengthy aside on whiskey (not a waste): Although I gave Benson a present for receiving the PhD, we wanted to go to a nice restaurant to celebrate his graduation, as well. I've mentioned before that we're both foodies to a certain extent, and I'm living in New York City. This means we have access to some of the finest restaurants world wide. This is not an exaggeration. Therefore this morning, exactly one month to the day prior to when we wanted our meal (and the first day possible for booking), at 10am sharp (when the booking line opens) I called Per Se. Per Se is a three-Michelin star restaurant. Last year it was number 6 on the worlds Best 100 Restaurants (which was top spot in the USA). You may recall that in February I was able go go to the restaurant on the number 61 spot, in Cape Town. This year Per Se was number 11 (second best in USA, the top being Eleven Madison Park, also in New York, which is the place I plan on going for MY graduation!). It is run by Thomas Keller, who happens to own TWO three-Michelin star restaurants, the other one being The French Laundry, in California. And as regular readers may recall, my most prized cookbooks is The French Laundry, which I have several different recipes chronologued in this blog. Yes, this is Thomas Keller's OTHER three-Michelin star restaurant. Repeat: I called right when the line opened, at 10am sharp, the earliest possible time. I then proceeded to wait on hold for 25 minutes, and, when I got through, there were only three time slots left. So Benson and I are now proudly possess a reservation at what will be the most expensive, exclusive, and hopefully amazing restaurant that we have ever eaten at to date. Benson is literally booking his flight around this restaurant reservation. To say this place is popular is an understatement. To say I'm excited is an understatement. And of course, finally, to say my summer is going to be awesome is hopefully also an understatement!