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Dreamgirls

Yesterday night I went to go see Dreamgirls at the Curran with some friends. I haven't seen the movie, so I didn't know the story beforehand, and I'm not sure if it's exactly the same.

My thoughts:
- I was impressed with the visual effects, the staging, the costumes, and the choreography.
- I enjoyed some of the songs. There were definitely songs that I did not entirely like, but I'm not sure if that was the fault of the performers or just a stylistic issue.
- I liked the performer who sang Deena better than the one who sang Effie. Effie often seemed a little over-the-top and was screaming rather than singing. Again, this may be a matter of genre/style. Also, the way Effie is written, she's not very sympathetic; she's whiny and diva-y.
- The guy who plays Jimmy Early is amazing. He's ridiculously high-energy, dances beautifully, and is totally hilarious. He reminded me a little of Chris Tucker but less annoying. I was telling my friend after the performance, I'm really not sure how they manage to find multiple performers who can fill this role, but I also thought the same about Angel when I first saw Rent.
- I've never been at a musical where the audience "interrupted" so much with intermittent clapping and running commentary. At first it was really distracting but eventually I think I got used to it.

Although I was really tired yesterday even before getting to the show, I was definitely never in danger of falling asleep; the songs were mostly upbeat and the pacing of the musical numbers was on the fast side. Overall it was a fun evening, and although Dreamgirls will not go on my favorite musicals list, it's nice to have seen it.

biscochitos

I'd never heard of biscochitos before today, but I'm kind of tempted to try this recipe, because a cookie recipe that has lard and wine in it can't be bad, right?

hot potato salad

The other day we had some people over for homemade French bread pizzas. I wanted to have some side dishes, so we baked some garlic bread and I made a lettuce, cucumber, and radish salad.

I also had fingerling potatoes from our vegetable box, as well as leftover roast ham, so I made a potato salad as follows:

Hot Potato Salad

1. Boil potatoes (w/ skin) until soft (about fifteen minutes).

2. Dice onions and ham and stir-fry until onions are soft.

3. Chop up potatoes and combine with onions, ham, and chopped dill.

4. Add salt, vinegar and mustard to taste.

I used rice vinegar because that's what I had, and it seemed to work well. There were eight of us (seven meat-eaters), and it was gone well before most of the other food. I'll have to make it again sometime, with more potatoes.

East Coast trip highlights

I was doing my Alaska writeup and realized that I forgot to write about last month's East Coast trip, except to detail our fine dining experiences.

The highlights (mostly food-related)...

I finally got to try a Five Guys burger. It was good, but I still prefer In-N-Out. I would say the burgers are juicier and heartier than In-N-Out, but less flavorful and with a soggier bun. I loved the free peanuts though.

When I visited my brother in Baltimore several years ago, he took us to Obrycki's for Maryland blue crab, and I loved it. I was determined to get more blue crab this trip, but we weren't really near Baltimore, so instead we went to Harris Crab House. I wasn't sure what "soft-shell clams" were so we got those too, in addition to the crab. Both were satisfyingly delicious.


We drove out to Assateague Island off the coast of Maryland. There were nice beaches where we found lots of seashells, and we saw the famous wild ponies. It seemed very un-touristy; we encountered mostly locals who were RV camping.



We spent one day in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. My original motivation was to go to Longwood Gardens and to see the "mushroom capital of the US", but it was a cute town to visit, too:

• I was very impressed with the Half Moon Restaurant & Saloon, which served a wide variety of wild game. D and I had crab nachos, antelope, and wild boar ragout, all of which was yummy. I especially liked the homemade pasta that was served with the ragout.
  
• For dessert we got ice cream from La Michoacana, where we decided against the corn and avocado flavors in favor of nutella and toasted coconut. The nutella was really good; both the chocolate and hazelnut flavors came through clearly. The toasted coconut was yummy as well, and had bits of bittersweet chocolate in it. I soon discovered that they were best swirled together, which was easy to do as the ice cream was very creamy/sticky (not sure what the right word is; easy to pull into long strands, kind of like gelato).
  
• The next day we ate breakfast at the Country Butcher cafe, where they offered a variety of breakfast sandwiches as well as omelets and pancakes.
  
• We spent the rest of the morning at Longwood Gardens. I'd last been there when I was about 6 or 7 months old, so needless to say, I didn't remember a thing. Both D and I were pleasantly surprised by how expansive and how beautifully landscaped everything was. We quickly stopped complaining about the $16 entrance fee.
  
  
  
• Before leaving Kennett Square, we stopped at two little shops downtown. One was a used bookstore in which all the books were donated, and all proceeds benefited the local senior center. The prices were good and we bought several books. We then went to The Mushroom Cap, where I bought "Snack 'N Shrooms" - spicy dried mushrooms which were absolutely delicious. Unfortunately the 3oz bag was horrendously expensive at $8.50, so I only bought one, but I finished it before the end of our road trip. Sigh.
  

We drove through Philadelphia but spent almost no time there at all. We did swing by Cosmi's for some very tasty cheesesteaks and hoagies. The surrounding neighborhood is definitely working class, and Cosmi's itself is a tiny grocery store/deli, but the owner was super friendly. We had a pretty funny conversation with him (copying from Buzz): As we walk in, he says to us, lemme guess, West Coast? Everyone who comes here who's not from Philly's from the West Coast. So I say yes, and he says, is it San Francisco? Again I say yes, and this time he's surprised; he says really? I only guessed that because there were two other people from San Francisco in here earlier, or I might have guessed Seattle instead. I told him, what can I say, Bay Area people know good food and are willing to travel to get it. He was amused.

Despite having lived five years in Boston, neither D nor I had ever been to Nantucket, so we decided to go. We took the ferry from Hyannis Port, which took a couple of hours.

After arriving, we had lunch at Sayle's Seafood which was really more of a takeout counter and bait shop than a restaurant, but their fried clams and lobster roll were very good. Generally speaking though, we were not that impressed with Nantucket. The stores were obscenely expensive, and although it was cute and charming we quickly got bored.

I imagine it would be different had we gone with a large group and stayed in a house for several days, but I don't recommend going as a day trip. We did get some tasty chocolates from Sweet Inspirations but even those were unjustifiably expensive.

In Boston, we had a fabulous dinner with some friends at Oleana. I am quite fond of Middle Eastern food, and Oleana executed most of the dishes impeccably. My friend and I polished off a giant bowl of labne (hot yogurt?) probably before the guys got their fair share, and I also enjoyed the grilled octopus and even the moussaka, despite my aversion to eggplant. It probably helped that the four of us simultaneously drank through two bottles of wine and some after-dinner drinks. Yum.

I'd been back at MIT about three years ago, for campus recruiting, but D hadn't been in six years, so I took him there and showed him all the new buildings. We also spent some time just walking around campus, which was kind of fun and nostalgia-y. There was gorgeous weather that day.


We had several good food experiences in New York.

• First we had brunch with our cousins at Five Points, where I liked my lemon-ricotta pancakes very much. We all enjoyed our pitcher of "morning punch", too.
  
• Next, we went to Momofuku Milk Bar where D and I tried the soft serve sampler. It came with four kinds of soft serve: cereal milk, purple drink, creamed corn, and bbq. There were also three types of toppings: cornflake crunch, potato chip, and chocolate fudge.
  
  The cereal milk and purple drink flavors were pretty good (purple drink was really more like purple soda). The creamed corn flavor was okay, but I've had better corn desserts. The bbq flavor was terrible. It was well-executed in that tasted exactly like bbq sauce, but for me that did not work at all. The toppings were all pretty good, including (surprisingly) the potato chip one.
  
• Finally, we went to Le Pain Quotidien. There's a bit of a story behind this: in July we attended a wedding in DC with a bunch of college friends, and they fell in love with LPQ's praline spread. They bought several jars of it, but it was all confiscated by the TSA on the way home, as it was deemed "gel-like". Since D and I are United Premier this year and can check bags for free, we decided not to bother with cramming our week's worth of stuff into carry-ons. Then, sometime during our drive, I realized that meant we could bring home praline spread for everyone! We ended up buying four or five jars. As an aside, it's really ridiculous that there are no good Belgian bakeries in the Bay Area, while there's one on every other block in New York City.

Alaska: Day 7 (Seward to Anchorage)

On our last day, we decided to bypass the hotel breakfast and eat at the Smoke Shack, a restaurant located inside of a train car next to our hotel:


It had been highly recommended by one of our fellow Denali bus passengers, who lived in Seward, and indeed I was quite happy with my frittata, home fries, and toast.

After eating and checking out, we drove across town to the coastline to try to get a better otter photo. We did see several otters, but as far as photos, this is about as good as I got:


We also drove to "downtown Seward" to take a look. It ended up being about three, maybe four blocks long. Nevertheless, we stopped in a few shops, including Sweet Darlings, where we tried some gelato and bought some surprisingly good ginger saltwater taffy.

It was only a two-hour drive back to Anchorage, so we again stopped to look for Dall sheep and beluga whales. This time we were not so lucky with the sheep, but we hit jackpot with the whales. We had to cross a railroad track to get to a good viewing spot, but it was well worth it.

We were there for about half an hour and we must have seen about ten belugas, five of which were in the area at the same time. Here are two of the better photos:



We spent the rest of the day souvenir shopping in Anchorage. Our first stop was at Costco, where we bought a ridiculous amount of Copper River smoked sockeye salmon. We then stopped across the street at the Copper River Seafoods store itself. It seemed like they weren't getting a lot of traffic anymore, as there was only one guy (who looked about twenty) manning both the storefront and the warehouse. Nevertheless, he was super nice to us, possibly because we were extremely clueless and kept buying stuff from him.

In the end we bought seasoned king salmon chunks, salmon spread, and more smoked sockeye salmon (in non-Costco quantities, for gifts). The guy vacuum-packed and wrapped everything in butcher paper for us so it wouldn't leak, and then threw in a free container of salmon spread "for the road". I would have been much happier about this if I liked smoked salmon at all.

After that we went to the touristy areas and tried to find souvenirs there. We did buy a few things but soon got tired of shopping and went to Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse for an early dinner. I polished off an entire plate of steamer clams, while other people ate more fish. We hung out there for awhile since our flight wasn't until midnight and the place had a fun atmosphere. There was one funny incident when my friend asked the guy in the next booth about his beer. She was really just interested in his opinion on the beer (a very dark ale that she was afraid would be too filling) but I think his wife was not amused. She certainly gave us an unfriendly look.

The rental car return and airport check-in went smoothly, we managed to pack all of our newly acquired items into our already-full bags, and we were soon on our way back to San Francisco. The week had been really fun and eventful, but also quite tiring, so I think by that time we were all happy to head home.

Alaska: Day 6 (Resurrection Bay & Godwin Glacier)

The next day, we continued to explore the Kenai Fjords with an early morning kayaking tour. We got to the Kayak Adventures office a little before our scheduled 8am departure time, and shortly afterwards we were geared up and ready to go.

I was quite amused by the demographics of our group. My friends and I were four (all girls), there were two older (mid-40's?) women who were with us on the half-day tour, and then there were two other girls (probably late 20's) who were going on a full-day tour. Both of the guides were girls, and even the receptionist/van driver was female. Altogether I counted eleven women in the van as we drove to the launch area.

I was also amused by an offhand comment made by one of the guides to the other. I forget exactly what I said but it was something silly, and she remarked, "Listen to that, she's pulling a Sarah Palin on us." I guess I was surprised that Alaskans would make fun of Palin, but then we discovered that of course neither of them were actual Alaskans.

The kayaking itself started out great. The water was crystal clear and calm, and we saw tons of otters and even some porpoises, which our guide said was highly unusual, as usually porpoises are people-shy (unlike dolphins). We also saw some white flashes on the surface of the water, and were amazed to realize they were jumping salmon. Anyway, we made it out pretty far into Resurrection Bay and then stopped for a brief snack.



As we rested, we chatted some with the two older women; they were from Colorado, had already gone to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and were heading to Denali National Park next. Our guide had just graduated from college and was just in Alaska for the summer. She said she might head to New Zealand next, but wasn't sure yet. Sounds like an awesome life. I was slightly disturbed when she explained that the guides got "a week or two of training" and then were let loose on the tourists, but I figured it was the end of summer already so she'd probably had lots of experience by then.

After the snack, we turned around and headed back. About halfway there, the headwinds started to pick up and the water got significantly choppier. We had a bit of a time getting back to shore and my right sleeve was pretty wet by the time we got out, but luckily we'd all come (over-)prepared and were wearing fully synthetic everything, so it dried quickly.

We had a couple hours between the kayaking tour and our next adventure, a helicopter/glacier/dogsled tour, but we were pretty beat, so we just grabbed a quick lunch and hung out at the hotel.

I'd talked to a bunch of people who had visited Alaska by cruise, and several of them agreed that one of the best (but most expensive) excursions was the combination helicopter/glacier/dogsled tour. Normal dogsleds are designed to run on snow, so in the summer, many companies run dog tours that involve wheeled "sleds". However, that experience is totally different and (I hear) not that interesting. The only way to mush on snow in the summer is to take a helicopter out to a snow-covered glacier, and only two companies in Seward do so. One had already stopped running their tours by the time we arrived, so we went with the other (newer) one, Pollux Aviation.

We drove out to the tiny Seward Airport and waited for our pilot Eric to arrive. He soon showed up in his R44 helicopter:


Since there were four of us, he had to make two trips (the helicopter seats only four including the pilot). My friend and I went first, and I soon decided that I liked helicopters. The views were great and it seemed more stable than a small airplane, at least on takeoff and landing:


Godwin Glacier is about 10 miles away from Seward, so we soon arrived at the camp:


I waited there with the dogs and the dogsled driver for the pilot to go back and get the other two, but my friend decided she wanted to joyride and went back with him. Later on she decided that as a mistake as she started to get nauseous from all the altitude changes.

While I was waiting, I got to meet all the dogs. They were surprisingly small; the driver Joe said that in movies they tend to use Huskies because they're pretty, but in reality most dog teams are comprised of smaller dogs. Despite already being clipped in, they were playful and energetic, and definitely had different personalities. Joe had named most of the dogs after Adam Sandler movies, so there was Gilmore, Sonny, Bushay, and the leader was Mr. Deeds. I've forgotten most of the names, but there were a total of twelve dogs pulling the sled and at least three other dogs besides:


After everyone arrived, we were on our way! In addition to Joe, two at a time could fit on the dogsled; one sitting and one standing. I started out standing and soon discovered it was not that easy to stay on while taking photos. That's my excuse for not getting this gorgeous shot (it was taken by my friend who was sitting at the time):


We went about a mile and a half at a speed of about nine miles an hour. It seemed much faster (and colder!) when sitting, and Joe explained that although some of the newer sleds allowed drivers to sit while racing, many still preferred to stand for comfort reasons.

While we waited for our friends to have their turn, we played with the two 4-month-old puppies who had yet to start their formal training. Bea (Joe's mom) explained that although puppies didn't start pulling sleds until they were around 9 months old, there were other things that could be done to start preparing them to race, such as socializing them (with both people and other dogs) and increasing their running endurance. These particular puppies would start their real training in a few months, after returning to their winter home near Fairbanks.


It was only about 4:30pm when we got off the glacier, so we headed back out to Exit Glacier to get a closer look:


It was pretty alarming to see all of the signs marking the edge of the glacier over the years. For instance, in 1950, all of the non-tree areas in this photo were under the glacier:


It took us about an hour to hike to the glacier, take our photos, and hike back, so we decided to get an early dinner on the way out. I'd read online about a "charming" crepe place on Exit Glacier Road, so we went there. It was called Le Barn Appetit and was run by a Belgian couple, Yvon and Janet. They also ran a bed and breakfast next door. Janet was not there when we arrived. Yvon was a little eccentric, but very friendly. He loved to talk, loved to tell us about his life and his kids and his guests. He also liked to make raunchy jokes and talk about his sex life. Yeah.

Anyway, the crepes were delicious, but they were enormous, so the four of us shared two; one savory and one sweet:



Although we were stuffed after eating those crepes, Yvon brought us two eclairs "on the house" so of course we had to eat those too (also yummy).

Later that night we decided to try our luck at seeing the Northern Lights. Although we hadn't actually been rained on much, the night sky had been cloudy or partly cloudy every day since our arrival, until then. I checked the official aurora forecast and it said we might be able to see something low on the northern horizon, so around 10-11pm, after dark, we headed back up the Seward Highway about 12-13 miles until we found an appropriate turnout.

It was pretty cold (mid-40's) so when we realized there was nothing obvious to look at, I decided to stay in the car. Two of my friends did venture outdoors with a tripod to try and capture the slight glow on the northern horizon. Interestingly, although the light appeared blue-green to the naked eye, it showed up as red to the camera:


Unsurprisingly, we soon got bored with trying to coax a decent photo out of our cameras and went home to sleep.

Alaska: Day 5 (Kenai Fjords)

In Seward we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express. It was conveniently located and had an okay free breakfast, plus free wifi in the lobby. The internet access was actually quite useful seeing as how T-Mobile seemed very confused as to whether I could do voice/data roaming for free, despite Alaska clearly being domestic. I figured it was safest to use data as little as possible.

Here's the view from the breakfast room at the HIE; it overlooks Seward's Municipal Boat Harbor:


We'd booked a day cruise with Kenai Fjords Tours which didn't start until 11:30am, so we spent part of the morning walking around Seward. Along the way we spotted this bald eagle:


By 11am, they were boarding our boat:


The cruise was six hours long and the boat was surprisingly fast, so we were able to cover a pretty large area. We went to Aialik rather than Holgate Glacier, and we did not stop at Fox Island, but otherwise this map is pretty accurate:


Early on we were mostly cruising around chasing reports of humpback whales, but there wasn't that much to be seen:


It got significantly colder when we neared Aialik Glacier, and we all put on our hats, gloves, and jackets. As we were standing outside along the railing watching the glacier, we heard a frenzied knocking noise. It turned out there were a bunch of older tourists (mostly Japanese and Eastern European) who were sitting inside the cabin, and apparently they were livid that we were obscuring their view. After a short discussion we decided that we were in the right, and stayed there admiring the falling bits of glacier, despite continued protest:


We were quite amused when about twenty minutes later, the captain came on the intercom with an admonition against knocking on windows, "This is a outdoor wildlife tour and the knocking scares away the wildlife. If you would like to see the wildlife you should join us here outdoors." I hope they actually understood him; their English seemed quite poor.

Shortly after leaving the glacier, we encountered a humpback whale. It came to the surface many times, but we only saw its tail once:


We saw otters throughout the cruise, but they are small and hard to photograph. This is the best I could do:


The sea lions did not impress us as much, since we can see them in the Bay Area. They were certainly plentiful, though.


More exciting were the Alaskan sea birds. We spent quite a bit of time trying to get a photo of a swimming puffin, but in the end my best shots were of the puffins clustered together on land:


The cormorants were also fun to watch; they often stand with their wings extended in order to dry their feathers.



As we finished our cruise and got off the boat, we stumbled across some fisherman hanging up their day's catch. I'm not sure, but I think they were selling the fish.


For dinner we grabbed a bite at Terry's Fish and Chips. We were starting to get tired of fried food, and actually spent some time checking out menus of nearby restaurants, but in the end we decided all of the waterfront places were too expensive, and the waiter at Terry's promised that they could grill our fish and shrimp instead of frying it, so we went with that.

Alaska: Day 4 (Denali to Seward)

On our fourth day in Alaska, our only real agenda was to drive from Denali National Park to Seward, which is two hours south of Anchorage. We'd estimated it as a six-hour drive, but planned to take our time and do some sightseeing along the way, since we'd heard that the Anchorage-to-Seward stretch along Turnagain Arm was famous for beautiful scenery.

The first four hours were uneventful. We stopped once around Mile 153 to try to snap a photo of Denali, but again we were mostly unsuccessful. We originally planned to stop for lunch in Wasilla (aka Sarah Palin-land) but after extensive smartphone research we decided to drive the extra 40-45 minutes so we could eat in Anchorage.

It was a good decision, as we all enjoyed our meal at the Glacier Brewhouse. They had a very interesting beer called the "Imperial Blonde" (aka "Ice Axe Ale") which is sweet and light despite containing 9% alcohol. According to the description on the menu, it's made with half a pound of honey per gallon. Yum. Their seafood chowder was also very tasty.

After lunch, we proceeded down the Seward Highway. Luckily we had done some research so we knew where to stop and look at things. Our first stop was Beluga Point at Mile 110. We stood around for awhile looking for beluga whales, but after not seeing any for several minutes, we got bored and left.

We were luckier at Mile 106, where my friend (the driver) saw two photographers with giant lenses and promptly pulled over at the side of the highway. There, we saw a Dall sheep and her lamb. This is the mother:


From there we drove all the way to Mile 78.9 where we took the Portage turnoff. Here's a random shot of the view along the way. It reminded me a little bit of the Sea-to-Sky Highway between Vancouver and Whistler:


The Portage Glacier used to be visible from the visitor center at the end of Portage Lake, but it has receded significantly and now can only be seen by boat. There are a few other smaller glaciers which are visible from the lake, though:


Nearby there were some vista points from which we could see the Byron Glacier (meh), the Middle Glacier (even more meh), and the Explorer Glacier (better, see below):


As a bonus, there was a bridge from which we could see salmon swimming upstream to spawn. They were silver (coho) salmon, as it was too late in the season to see either the King or sockeye salmon runs. Several of the silver salmon were actually red from lack of oxygen:


Finally, just a few miles outside of Seward, we turned off on a side road to check out the Exit Glacier. We saw that there was a hike that went to the edge of the glacier, but it was a few miles long, so we decided to save that for another day and settled for a short walk that gave us this view:


Back at the Exit Glacier turnoff, we stopped at yet another restaurant called "Salmon Bake". We ordered snow crab, baby back ribs, fried calamari, and of course, the salmon bake:


I liked this Salmon Bake restaurant better than the one in Denali; I felt like the food was less greasy and it was certainly more reasonably priced. Interestingly, we got carded there for the second time that day. In retrospect, I realize we were carded every single time we ordered alcohol during the entire trip (probably five or six times). I wonder if Alaskans are just very strict and card everyone, or if they don't know how to judge the ages of Asian people? I mean, of the four of us, the youngest is twenty-nine...

Alaska: Day 3 (Denali)

Another day, another early bus. We caught the 6:30am hiker shuttle on our second day, too:

Our driver, Ray, was very friendly but not very good at spotting wildlife. We did see a few bears and more Dall sheep but from pretty far off. This is the best sighting from the morning bus ride:


We were somewhat tired from the previous day's hike so we decided to do a shorter hike that day. We got off just before Toklat, at around Mile 51. There, we followed a stream down to the east branch of the Toklat River.


It was pretty, but despite seeing tons of animal scat and pawprints, we didn't see any wildlife.


After an hour or so we decided to head back, so we retraced our path back up to the road. As we were waiting there for the next shuttle bus, we saw a fox!


That fox encounter made us feel a lot better about having stopped to hike in the Toklat area. Also, soon after we got on that bus, we had a pretty good bear sighting:


Despite that, we thought we could find a better bus (the driver was okay but the other passengers were not very social and not that helpful for spotting), so we rode all the way to Eielson again, where we got a slightly better view of Denali (aka Mount McKinley). Unfortunately most of my photos of the mountain itself were oversaturated, so I haven't posted any here.

We asked the dispatcher at Eielson when either Wendy or Tim were scheduled to depart, and he said Wendy had already left and Tim wasn't leaving until nearly 5pm. That was too late for us, so we decided to try our luck with the bus that had left the WAC at 6:45am, but had gone past Eielson all the way to Wonder Lake. We figured that the early bus drivers were likely to be better, since the hikers were probably more hard core about photography.

Well, that was either a good guess, or we were very lucky, because our new bus driver Mike found us several bears that came almost scarily close to the bus:



We also had several caribou encounters which were all pretty good, but right near the end they were all trumped by this sighting of a herd of six caribou foraging through some gorgeous autumn foliage:



One more shot of just the amazing scenery...


Overall, we were quite happy with our two days in Denali National Park. We were lucky with both weather and wildlife; originally the forecast had called for rain on the first day and showers on the second, but we only encountered clouds and fog, and even that let up a bit on day two. We had our fingers crossed that our luck would hold for the next few days!