One of the perks of a thesis-filled semester: the flexibility to take a week for Spring Break according to what fits best with my own schedule, not Mizzou’s.
See you soon, Texas!
travels
(9a) 1,000 Miles
I stupidly left my camera card reader AND memory card in St. Louis when I left yesterday…so I have no pictures for Tuesday, February 23.
Today, while on my way to Nashville, I stopped at a gas station outside of Memphis and bought a disposable camera (heck yes), because I didn’t feel like driving anymore without some sort of way to take photos. This means that I DO have photos for today, the 24th- I just have to get the film developed and the negatives scanned. We will see if any of them actually came out.
I wasn’t supposed to be going to Nashville at all, actually. I drove to Memphis because I was tired of waiting for InterLibrary Loan to send me the microfilm I needed for data collection, and I figured it would be much easier to just go right to the source. And the library at UMemphis had e-mailed me to say that they also had microfilm for the Atlanta Journal-Constituion, which is my other newspaper source. A trip to Tennessee, then, would be killing two birds with one stone.
However, upon getting to Memphis, I discovered that the library did not in fact have the AJC microfilm I needed. I had a minor freakout, then started checking library catalogs for every university within 8 hours of my current location. I was seriously considering trekking all the way up to Urbana, Illinois (which would have been awful) before I checked Vanderbilt’s library collection. This, amazingly, happened to have every volume of the AJC going back to 1899, well before the Journal and the Constitution had even merged. Hooray! I checked out of my hotel a day early, drove east for a few hours, and holed up in the Vandy library for four hours getting the rest of my newspaper images. Then I drove back to St. Louis.
So (for some reason the map loads a little too zoomed in):
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By the time I get back to Columbia at 10:30ish tomorrow, I will have driven about 1,000 miles total (according to all-knowing Google, today’s Memphis-Nashville and Nashville-St Louis drives accounted for 523 of those miles), through five different states, in a 3-day span. AND I have all of my data now! Time well spent, I think, since it takes about a week to get anything processed through ILL.
It’s true that I should have had my act together a long time ago, and requested the microfilm early in January, but as blog readers know, a couple of things happened in January that set me back much more than I ever expected. And, for a carless person like me, the chance to spend three days driving on the open road…is not one to pass up. Carpe diem, mes amis!
Fattest City in America
I never truly realize how much I miss Houston until I get there. I haven’t managed to stay away from the city for more than 9 months since 2004, when I started my freshman year at Rice. I didn’t really have any feelings in particular about Houston when I first got there–it was just ‘that place where Rice was’–but have since decided that it’s a very underrated city. Sad. If nothing else, it should be better known for its food, which I would argue is on par with the cuisine in New York, San Francisco and Chicago–and those places don’t have the Texas barbecue, which I hear is also pretty good (I can only speak from the vegetarian side of things).
I had two mental checklists when I was in Houston over winter break- one of people I wanted to see, and one of places where I wanted to eat. I am pleased to say that I only missed seeing a couple of people (those darn med students)- and that I made it to all of the necessary restaurants.
We start with Taco Cabana:
…which is very good for fueling up before shooting a bowl game. Also, get lots of extra pico de gallo. That’s key.
This wasn’t restaurant food, but my friend Niki makes a mean 8-layer bean dip, and her boyfriend makes a mean Screwdriver:
Killer New Year’s Eve combo.
Niki is also a supremely talented baker:
On the dessert note, I made a special point to go to Swirll, the frozen yogurt place in the Village. They’ve ramped up the selection there in the past year, so it’s way more fancy than it used to be. As far as I’m concerned, though, you can’t go wrong with plain tart yogurt and lots of toppings:
This is about a third of the topping selection.
Now. I have lost track of the number of times I’ve been to Niko Niko’s (for Greek food) and Mai’s (for Vietnamese food). Mai’s was the first restaurant I ate at in Houston, and I made it a point to bring everybody who ever visited me at college to the late-night place of awesome. Niko Niko’s is just plain tasty.
Falafel plate. Dr. Atkins would cry at the sight of the pita + mountain of rice.
Vermicelli bowl (spring rolls in the background). I ate the whole thing. Yup.
Mai’s, unfortunately, doesn’t have bahn mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) on their menu, but that’s really no biggie- the good sammich place is right across the street and down a few blocks.
This picture doesn’t do banh mi justice at all, but I’m including it anyway.There’s also marinated tofu on the sandwich; the bread has been coated in olive oil and baked to a crispy goodness.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures at Patu (otherwise known as The Place With The Best Pad Thai in the Whole World Exclusive of Thailand). I guess I’ll probably have to go back sometime…
Bowling in Texas
Last year, I went to the Texas Bowl in Houston as a spectator, when my alma mater (Rice) played and was victorious against Western Michigan.
This year, I went the Texas Bowl as an official part of the media corps. There’d been a lot of Internet commentary regarding Mizzou getting overlooked in the bowl selection process, and while I do feel this is true to an extent, I’m not upset with the game we were picked to play in…because it gave me a chance to go to Houston again and to actually photograph during a major (okay, mid-major) CFB matchup.
I’ve shot football exactly three times before today–once during a Rice-UHouston game in 2007 (when I was stuck shooting from the stands because my credentials were never processed correctly), once during Mizzou-Nebraska (when I didn’t get any game photos at all because I was focusing on fans), and once just for practice during a Hickman High game (when I was using just a 70-200mm)–and I was, shall we say, less than confident in my abilities to make any good pictures at all. I knew enough about college football and enough about how Mizzou and Navy both play (damn the unphotogenic running game) to not be scared completely out of my mind, but the idea that I would come back empty-handed kept nagging me. I wish it hadn’t.
This is not to imply that I took mind-blowing, paradigm-changing sports photos during the game (I didn’t), but what I took was by no means bad. I was honestly surprised by this, and in retrospect, it would have been nice to have had a little more faith in myself. I went back through the take after the first go-round of editing, and ended up finding a few MORE images that I liked, which, again, was a pleasant turn of events. All in all, at least from my perspective (not so much from Mizzou’s…), the Texas Bowl was a definite success.
In related news, I find it very strange to edit my own stuff for use in publication. I’d much rather have somebody else go through it all first.
Enjoy!
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Saint Louis Zoo
Much like its Houston counterpart, the Saint Louis Zoo is located right in the middle of the city’s major park (Hermann Park in Houston). Unlike its Houston counterpart, the Saint Louis Zoo is free. Considering these two factors, I was pretty surprised to realize that the zoo is actually a very good one. I’m a zoo nerd–I judge the parks I go to all the time on all kinds of random things (creativity of exhibit design, size of exhibits, handicap accessibility (since I tend to go to zoos with my grandfather, who can’t spend too much time walking around), etc etc). I still can’t figure out how St Louis does such a good job despite not charging admission, but it passed way more of my tests than Houston ever did.
A bush dog. I’d never heard of these before, but apparently they live in South America, eat rodents called “pacas,” and have webbed feet. They’re also very cute.
I’d also never seen Bactrian camels (the kind with two humps) in a zoo before. This one’s a baby….awwwww.
For all of its great exhibits, though, the zoo had a weirdly constraining way of feeding the animals. These are the reticulated giraffes, having feeding time in the Antelope House (which looked like it was something out of the 1800s, what with all the steel bars and small spaces).
On the plus side, it was pretty neat to get so close to the giraffes. I flashed this one with the on-camera flash of my little Canon Rebel. Made for an interesting effect.
Vineyard Vacay, part three: Island Time
Some of my favorite- and least favorite (see image four) -things about Martha’s Vineyard. Plus, guest picture taken by my mom! and de-colorized by yours truly…because no island trip is complete without jumping off of Second Bridge (which, incidentally, is the bridge in Jaws that the shark swims under to get into the giant pond. Cue scary music).
Vineyard Vacay, part two: CrAshe Family Homestead
Texe
Charles
Seneca (well, mostly her shoes)
Lorna
Jeffrey
Coals, as shot at 1/2 of a second while handholding. It looks very Mordor-ish, I think.
Vineyard Vacay, part one: WMVY Concert
Haven’t posted in a while…oopsie. I was distracted by the end of Staff Photo (I still have to put up the photos from my Crazy Photo Saturday, during which I had five assignments), moving to a new apartment, and heading home to New England for a week and a half.
I’m back in classes now, starting my last fall semester ever–which is weird–and am going to try very hard to post everything else from this summer before Friday.
To start, here are a few photos from a concert I went to last Thursday- it was a benefit for a radio station on Martha’s Vineyard featuring kahoots and Willy Mason, both homegrown Vineyard acts, although Willy Mason is a little more well-known outside of the island. I couldn’t use my flash, so this turned out to be an epic exercise in handholding.
Disclaimer: I was being very lazy that night and didn’t feel like giving up my nice prime seating to manuever through a crowd to get different POVs…next time I’ll work the angles a bit more.
Down by the Bay: Fourth of July Parade
I wish I had this girl’s socks.
Down by the Bay: Baseball + Fireworks
I’m procrastinating writing a paper for Qualitative, and figured now was as good a time as any to post the penultimate entry from my San Francisco trip.
On Friday, July 3, I went with my family and my friend Seth to see the San Francisco Giants play the Houston Astros. I wouldn’t call myself a hardcore Astros fan, but I did go to school in Houston for four years, so I’d probably err on their side when picking an NL team to root for. However, the Astros of 2009 are nothing like the Astros of a few years ago–the team that went to the World Series and had the power trio (the Killer Bs) of Berkman, Biggio and Bagwell. They ended up losing 9-0. Ouch. To be fair, San Francisco’s pitcher was absolutely brilliant- and it was only his second start!
There was also a fireworks show after the game, which rocked. I’m already excited for the fireworks in Oak Bluffs next month, but that’s partially because I’m really excited about going back to the East Coast for a couple weeks.
