A hurricane and lots of treats

Within the last week, Brent and I experienced our first hurricane and our first earthquake.  Well, we pretty much missed the earthquake because our apartment complex is under construction so there is a constant rumble. 
Luckily, we survived Hurricane Irene with minimal damage.  Princeton experienced quite a bit of flooding and lots of trees down.

 In the week leading up to the expected landfall on Sunday morning, Brent and I watched as everyone around us scrambled to stock up on water, food, and apparently everything and anything from Trader Joe's.  Having never been threatened by a hurricane, we were fairly ignorant about how to prepare.  After the large branch pictured above fell in front of our porch Saturday night, we put some cardboard over the windows above our bed and filled the bathtub with water.... That's about all we did.

Well, that and lots of baking!

Over the course of the weekend, I made four different goodies.

Mocha Meringues (Really, really not-vegan)

Lemon Curd (Very not-vegan)

Mexican Hot Chocolate Snickerdoodle Cookies (Vegan)

Green tea cupcakes (vegan)

 I'm 2 days away from my Hebrew final, which is kind of all consuming at the moment.  But, I will be posting these recipes shortly :)

Turtle! Turtle! (aka Brent and I go for a walk and meet loads of turtles)

I have now completed 5 weeks of summer Hebrew.  We got thrown a curveball this past week by getting a new professor.  Our first professor, Dr. Jeremy Hutton, has departed for UW Madison.  How weird is that?
Our new professor is the polar opposite of Prof. Hutton, which isn't bad, just another thing to get used to.  It's not like I ever know what's going on in lecture anyway.  Okay, there is one bad thing.  The new professor will be our preceptor once a week or so since our preceptors are now going to be leading lecture once a week.  Precept is more of a group therapy session most days than a classroom (though we do learn a lot).  So, taking our "therapist" away once a week and letting a new one grade our quizzes is just not cool- especially when the new one is our professor so we can't complain at all and are slightly intimidated (or a lot intimidated). 

Needless to say, by Friday, I was losing it.  I almost skipped lecture because I was so frusterated after precept (mainly with myself).  First we got the quizzes back that the professor graded (a 14 out of 20 for me), then I completely blanked on the new quiz and was so frazzled I just gave up and turned it in with several blanks.  It doesn't help that I picked last week to quit coffee cold turkey after waking up with a caffeine headache over the weekend.  Also, I was wearing my new glasses, which made me feel woozy the whole day.

New glasses. (and junk...we are still unpacking).

I was in a terrible mood.  Then, lecture ended up being fine, especially since our neighbor was leading it and before I knew it I was free!!

Brent and I really made the most of this weekend.  Friday after class we took the campus connector downtown, checked out a record shop, a coffee shop, and some other neat stores.

On Saturday, we slept in, went for a walk (more on that in a minute) and finally, FINALLY, saw the last Harry Potter.

Our walk down by the canal ended up being the highlight of the weekend.  Why?
Because we saw a ridiculous amount of turtles.  Apparently that is all it takes to entertain me!  They were all in one small area, which made it even more strange, like all of them decided to have a sunbathing party.

We watched them for quite awhile.  Okay, Brent watched and I took loads of photos.

Some were about a foot long, others were babies!

There was also this cool monument.

The D & R Canal was to one side and this nature reserve was on the other.

Turtle-y cool.  Eh?

Weekend Whirlwind to Wisconsin

AKA The trip from Hell.

All I wanted to do was get home for a couple of days to see my husband for the first time in several weeks and to help my grandpa celebrate his 90th birthday.  Silly me.  It hadn't rained in New Jersey since I moved here, so of course the weather was dreadful the day I flew out.  Make that the day I was supposed to fly out, because even though I boarded a plane, we never left the ground.  Multiple delays, lots of tears, a cancellation, an awful sketchy shuttle ride through NYC, another airport, a hotel room for 4 hours... Finally I got to Wisconsin, only to face the same ridiculousness on the way home.  Never flying American Airlines again.  While I understand they have no control over the weather, they should have control over their customer service, which was worse than bad.  On the way home, my flight was first delayed over a broken seat that had not been written up properly.  So much incompetence!  Plus, nothing makes you feel safer than a plane that is literally falling to pieces on the inside. 
And you know that new law about stranding passengers on the tarmac and how they have to let you off after 3 hours?  Well, they don't have to let you back on.  What is the point?

Anyway, here are some highlights from my brief and harrowing trip home:

After a 1.5 hour (not exaggerating) nap from 1:30 AM to 3:00 AM and a shower at the hotel in Queens I never planned on staying at, I thought I should at least glimpse out the window to see my view of the city.  Ahahaha.  Gravestones as far as I could see (which wasn't exceptionally far, given the hour).  No wonder this was the only room available around La Guardia. 

This is the cabin we stayed at in Bailey's Harbor.  1/2 the price of the hotel in Queens and much more to my liking.  Brent and I could live in a place like this someday with a few changes.  I think we'd need a full size refrigerator :) 

Chels, Neen, Amber, Me

We closed out the AC Tap on Saturday night.  It was a bad idea considering none of us have gotten much sleep lately.  Between Chelsea and Dan moving, Brent packing up our place, and my airport nightmare, we had all pulled (near) all nighters within the last week.  It was worth it though!  I got to hang out with some of my favorite people.

Amber and Josh strummed out some tunes.  At least some of us Alleys are continuing the family tradition...

This made me miss WI.  Can you guess why?

Despite everything I went through to get there, if you asked me Sunday, I would have said it was worth it.  Then there was the deja vu nightmare on Monday and the mental breakdown before Hebrew this morning...
I'd like to say it was worth it still, but honestly, I'm not sure.  I was crazy stressed before the trip and looking forward to it so much that I was a total basket case when it began to unravel.  It left me more frazzled than I ever thought I could be and unable to remember any of the studying I did at the airport.  I have a midterm on Friday and I'm in bad shape.  It was nice to see Brent and some family, but I think I've learned several lessons.
1. Listen to people when they tell you Newark cancels flights at the drop of a hat.
2. Never fly American Airlines, even if they have the cheapest flights.  Once you add up the unnecessary cab fare, hotel, time wasted, and nerves fried, you could have flown first class.
3. Moving away means missing out on things and it sucks.  Deal with it.
4. Next time you find yourself at the airport bar waiting out a delay, have at least 2 more drinks :)  You'll thank yourself once you are stranded on the tarmac with no air conditioning and no beverage service.
5.  Never think to yourself, "This can't get any worse..."

Thank-you to everyone who helped me deal.  I am truly appreciative.  All the calls, texts and Facebook notes really helped me feel not quite so alone.  Now off to study for 3 quizzes and a midterm :)