Valentine's Day 2016

Last year, Dave and I spent Valentine's Day on a cruise with my family. This year, we are not on a boat – but that's no reason not to spend it with my family! Usually Grace or I makes family dinner; for this special occasion, Dave and Stephen took over. Here are the chefs at work:

The results: a feast of homemade paella and roasted asparagus! Dave has been trying variations on his paella for a long time now. He has discovered that the cast iron skillet gives the best results: you'll want to stir the rice some as it cooks, so that it cooks evenly; but towards the end, refrain from stirring so that a nice saccarat forms on the bottom. We all agreed that this was his best version yet!

To make it extra romantic, we broke out our wedding china and candlesticks! A and M were not particularly impressed, I don't think. Haha.

I'd been tempted all week by the recipes for chocolate desserts that I'd seen posted online. When I saw a recipe for Intense Chocolate Mousse Cake, I knew what I wanted for Valentine's dessert! Unfortunately, Dave does not know how to make a cake. Solution: I'd just have to make it myself! It was my first time baking a dessert in a water bath.

The dessert looks like a flourless chocolate cake (it is indeed flourless), but is not as dense in texture. I do like to make a classic chocolate mousse, but this cake recipe is nice because the top crackly crust gives it a contrasting texture to the inside.

I would definitely make it again! And the water bath was not as messy/intimidating as I thought it would be. I recommend.

Finally: Dave also bought me gifts! He comparison shopped at the local grocery stores, and found the best deal on flowers...that's my guy! Plus a sweet treat. I couldn't ask for more.

San Francisco

The weeks are flying by, especially now that the semester has started. We're in deep freeze this weekend in NY, but I don't want to forget the lovely and mild weekend Dave and I spent together in San Francisco last month. I was out there for a conference, and Dave flew out to join me afterwards. It seems like a pretty great city! But I don't think I'd be tempted to move there from New York. I felt very hip and tech-y, though – we booked our first Airbnb stay and took Uber cabs everywhere! The future is here.

Dave's cousin and his wife took us on a tour that included a walk in beautiful Muir Woods.

So majestic! I always feel short, but I felt especially diminutive here.

Then we went for a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge:

It was too long, so we only went across part of it! Haha. It's the return journey that always gets ya!

The next day, we took the ferry to Alcatraz. Funny how things change...the most notorious criminals for their time tended to have committed crimes like bank robbery, organized crime, post-Prohibition-type stuff, less violent crime than I would have expected. I find it hard to believe that there was a time when the most fearsome lawbreaker was a bank robber. Now you can rob a bank with a hoodie and a toy gun! Not that you'll get very far...

We ate some delicious dim sum:

And on our final morning, went for a peaceful walk around Golden Gate Park.

Next time, we want to stay longer in California so that we can visit other nearby places, too. 'Til then!

M turns 2!

We had a family birthday party for little M a few weeks ago. Can you believe that he's already 2?? I was still living with Stephen and Grace when he was born! He has blossomed into a little bundle of personality, conversation, and laughs in the past few months. Grace planned a great party, based on a "Little Blue Truck" theme (M's favorite book).

My dad demonstrates for the kids how to "pin the birthday hat on the Little Blue Truck."

 

No blindfolds for the kids! Unfair advantage!

 

M really knew how to rip open the presents this year...

And he received a rocking moose from his California grandparents (so cute!):




















Dave had the genius idea to give M a set of Mondo Bloxx, those extremely sturdy brick-like cardboard blocks that are perfect for building and destroying! M and A both seem to enjoy. Timber!

















Giggly with the grandparents:





















And finally, blowing out the candles on his favorite dessert, a fruit tart:

Mein Doktorvater

I had a very meaningful interaction at the conference last weekend with my college senior thesis advisor, Prof. F.! I've always adored him, and I had a really good (if challenging) experience writing my senior thesis under his supervision. I wrote my second junior paper with him, in which he forced me to articulate my own theory of the proper method of interpreting a Greek tragedy; it was very painful, and the final product was not very good, to put it mildly. I then asked him to advise my senior thesis, which I wanted to write on Euripides' Bacchae. He told me no, he did not want to read a senior thesis on the Bacchae. Hahaha! I look forward to the day when I can say that sort of thing to my own hapless students. After some wandering in the desert, I ended up working on the Christus Patiens, the Byzantine passion play and cento written out of modified lines of Euripides. I cried many tears in my thesis carrel, and somehow wrote 120 pages in the final month. And lo, now I'm an academic.

Sadly, I also always felt like Prof. F. never really remembered me and didn't really care about what happened to me after I left for graduate school. We'd see each other briefly at conferences, but he never stopped to chat or ask me about my progress, etc. It's possible that he simply didn't recognize me (though I am constantly told that I look exactly the same as I did x years ago, which may or may not be a compliment).

Now that I have a job in the field, though, he stops to talk to me! And this year, at a reception, he told me, "I've never liked the term Doktorvater [the German term for a male doctoral supervisor; mine, though, is a Doktormutter]. It's too patriarchal, patronizing, and all of that. But I feel differently when I think about your thesis. See, at minimum, a supervisor is supposed to read an entire thesis and make sure there are no glaring errors. That's the minimum. At the maximum, the supervisor adopts the same quellen ["sources"] and treats the problem as a joint problem between professor and student. And that's what I feel like we did with the Christus Patiens. We were digging through the language, which I'd never read, digging through these French articles, wondering what it all meant...that was fun."

I was so moved! I still remember this college experience so vividly – hitting the library when I woke up, breaking for meals, packing up at 11:45 pm; wading through my own mental mush and the frustration of not seeing how the ideas would add up; finally turning in something that I thought might have accomplished something. In some ways, I still think that my senior thesis was the most original work I've ever done (mostly because no one else bothers to write on that text). I'd like to turn it into an article someday – and I'll remember to thank Prof. F. in the first footnote.

It's a Small World

I was in San Francisco last weekend for my professional organization's annual meeting. I was fortunate to have a pretty relaxed meeting: no paper to give, no job interviews...just dealing with administrative responsibilities related to my summer program, meeting up with friends, visiting with former professors, etc.

Dave flew out to SF at the conclusion of the conference so that we could take a mini-vacation together! Our first stop was the De Young Museum, which I had long heard about but never visited. The art there is mainly focused on the Americas/Africa/Oceania, which is far outside my realm of knowledge. Maybe it's because I really only know about Classical art, but I enjoyed seeing several objects at the De Young that reminded me of popular motifs in ancient Mediterranean art.

The museum holds amazing murals from Teotihuacan, Mexico (600-800 AD). Here's an image of two bristly coyotes attacking a deer:

The deer attack is a pretty common motif in archaic Greek art, and here we have a lion attacking a bull (similar motif) on the walls at Persepolis!

We also saw these neat Inuit or Eskimo boat models:

...which are quite similar to the kind of ancient Egyptian boat models that are fairly common grave goods:

And my favorite comparandum is this Inuit storage box, with a polar bear lid:

And the type of Greek pyxis from the Geometric period that has a horse handle:

Anyway, nothing profound or scholarly to say about any of this – I'm no art historian, and surely any kind of generalization about this sort of thing would be wrong. But it's pretty neat-o!

Happy New Year!

I'm spending New Year's with my family in PA. My grandparents are down from Ottawa, and we are enjoying a relaxing time together. Today, we made dumplings from scratch! And my mom even made the dough for it – no pre-made wrappers for us. We had four generations of Lu women working on this project:

My mom showing me the ropes: dumpling wrappers must be thicker in the center (to prevent holes from forming) and thinner on the edges (to facilitate the crimping). A and I rolled the dough, while my mom and grandma filled them.

Looking forward to the delicious results! (Look at A concentrating on her dough :) )

2015 has been a good year: Dave and I have finally settled into our lives on LI together, and while lots of uncertainties in the future remain, I'm glad we have some things figured out. I'm looking forward to 2016 and all the changes it will bring!

Christmas Tree 2015

We're a bit later than usual this year, but we finally have our tree up! It's another winner from the Lowe's parking lot, and I decorated this evening. Nice and slender, quite dense at the bottom this year.

And here are our new additions to the ornament collection this year! First, from Taiwan, the famous Jade Cabbage in the National Museum:

Our second addition is a quetzal made from felt from Costa Rica. We were so excited that we glimpsed the majestic bird in the Cloud Rainforest that we got this cute bird in the gift shop. This is a compromise between Dave and me: he loves souvenir shopping, and I am opposed to accumulating useless knickknacks. But Christmas ornaments, on the other hand, have a real purpose! So we try to get souvenirs we can hang on the tree.

I always love decorating the Christmas tree; less so, taking down the ornaments after New Year's (thanks for doing that for the past 35 years, Dad...). This year, I feel especially grateful for the opportunities we had to travel this year. I still can't believe I got to go to Taiwan and meet Dave's family, and our time in Costa Rica was quite magical. I'm sure there will be times ahead when we won't be able to go so far afield in search of new experiences, so I want to appreciate these moments now!