Act 30: A Work Conference

A couple of weeks ago, I got the opportunity to go to a conference for work.  It was pretty exciting because I haven't attended one before, but somewhat less so considering the circumstances.  I was a last minute replacement for a coworker who had a heart attack a few days before the conference started.  Luckily, he's doing well now.

The conference was put on by the Midwest SAS Users Group.  SAS is the primary programming language I use at work right now.  It's pretty versatile and easy to learn; I've been using it for 2.5 years.  The conference went from Sunday night to Tuesday afternoon and was held at the Hilton in Milwaukee, WI.  I went with my friend/coworker Aimee and overall it was a very worthwhile.  Lots of good sessions on Monday and Tuesday where we learned a lot and took 1.5 small pads of paper worth of notes.  The food was good and all meals were provided and the hotel was nice.

But the best part by far was the Monday night dinner event held at the Harley-Davidson museum.  It was a blast!  We had about an hour to go through the museum and see all the old bike styles.  There was a lot of Evel Knievel memorabilia too.  I knew all about the motorcycle daredevil stuff, but I didn't realize he was so ingrained in Harley history.  He was all over the place in there.

The coolest thing in the museum was touch screens that allow you to build your own motorcycle.  You big one of 8 or so models to start with and then you can change basically everything: fenders, gas tank, handlebars, forks, seats, paint color, designs, tires, etc.  It was a blast!  Aimee and I both made pretty sweet bikes.  They show your bike up on the big TV screens on the wall in the museum, email you a picture, and for $0.53 you can get your custom bike printed on a sticker.  Of course I got the sticker... why wouldn't I?  My bike was awesome.  I'm planning to put the sticker on magnet and display it proudly on my fridge!

Act 29: Apples Galore

Last weekend I went to visit my sister, who's living in Freeport, IL.  We decided to dedicate Saturday to apple picking and cooking.  I've been to orchards before but never did the pick-your-own thing.  Just bought apples and cider in the store there.  This time we had plans to try a couple different applesauce recipes so we needed plenty of apples.  We bought a 1/2 bushel bag and filled up it.  Final count: 49 apples!

We got them home, got out the recipes, and got to work.  Have you ever peeled and chopped up 49 apples?  It's pretty much exhausting!  We took turns at the different jobs but it was a lot of work. 

We made three different applesauce recipes.  The first was good but way too sweet.  The second was the same recipe but my sister wanted to try using Splenda instead of real sugar.  We also cut the sugar a little because the first one was so sweet.  I though the Splenda gave it a bitter aftertaste.  Not a fan.  Then again, my experiences with Splenda have not been great in the past.  The last recipe we made was my favorite.  It was more cinnamon-y and had just the right about of sweetness.  The only downfall of that one was that the recipe said to let the cooked apples cool before mashing them which made it a lot harder.  I'm going to ignore that instruction next time.  I did learn after I got the stuff home that mixing the too sweet applesauce with the cinnamon-y one evens it out pretty well.  A good way not to let any of it go to waste.

We had plenty of apples left so we also made apple-pecan bars (mildly successful) and an apple cheesecake-type thing.  That one was pretty good.

After all was said and done, we had 9 apples left for just eating.  And they were Northern Spy apples. I hadn't heard of this variety before, but they are incredibly tasty!  So after 5 hours of baking, this was what we ended up with.

Looks tasty, huh? :-)

Act 28: Maine Event

My parents, in their infinite wisdom, decided that my sisters and I needed some extra bonding time with them.  During our college years we each got two one-week long vacations: one with just mom and one with just dad.  My junior year, 2004, I had a fantastic vacation with my dad in New Orleans.  We listened to live music, drank hurricanes, learned about voodoo, and wrestled gators (kind of).

My mom and I planned an equally fantastic trip to Boston for that summer but unfortunately health problems (hers, not mine) prevented us from going.  After that I graduated college, real life got in the way for both of us, and we never made the trip.  Finally, 6 years later, we made the trip.  This past August we went to Maine.

The plan when we went was to rent a car and drive up the coast.  We flew into Portland (Maine, not Oregon.  I got asked about that a lot) and stayed there the first couple of nights.  We took a double decker bus tour of the city, a boat tour of the bay area, and saw the Portland Head Light which is apparently the most photographed lighthouse in the world though I don't know how they prove that.

After we left Portland we drove up the coast about 4.5 hours to Bar Harbor, which is on a peninsula with several other harbors and Acadia National Park.  We went up into the hills for some great views and went whale watching, though it was too foggy that day to see anything.

After a couple of days there we headed back towards Portland, making a few stops along the way.  One stop was in Port Clyde, Maine which is the home of the Marshall Point Lighthouse (which we saw along with 4 other lighthouses in the area).  Recognize it?

I didn't either, but when Forrest Gump is running across the country he runs down to this lighthouse and decides it's time to turn around.  So there you go! 

Another of our stops was Rockford, ME which is known for being the home of L.L.Bean.  They had about 5 different stores in town... an outlet, a regular store, a Bike, Hike, & Ski store, etc.  Their presence made the whole place a shopping destination though.  The main street in town looked like a smaller town main street but instead of your typical small town stores they had a Nike, Bass, Coach, GAP, and about 50 others.  It was a fun day of shopping spent there and all I bought was one pair of shoes.  Not bad!

When we finally made it back to Portland we celebrated with a spa day before we had to leave.  That was fantastic!  I had a salt scrub/body polish followed by a 30 minute massage.  I had no idea what to expect but the scrub was pretty nice.  I was all kinds of soft, exfoliated, and relaxed afterwards.

The rest of the trip mostly consisted of eating a TON of lobster (literally, lobster rolls for almost every meal!), going to see a couple of movies, and lots of good talks with my Mom.  I'm glad we finally got to spend this time together.  I think the trip was even more special now that I live farther from my parents and get to see them less.  And Maine was beautiful!