Crazylegs and Easter with the Greeks!

What a weekend! I participated in my first ever Crazylegs Classic which was so much fun! It is an annual race that started in 1982 and includes an 8K run or a 2 mile walk. The run and walk both started at the capital square at 10am Saturday morning. The whole square was packed with runners in outfits ranging from serious spandex running gear to one guy in a ballerina skirt, I wish I could have brought my camera for pictures!

I met up with some friends around 9:30am, the Farmers Market was going full swing and music from the Badger Marching Band was playing in the background. Bucky the Badger was also there to cheer on the racers. We chowed down on some famous spicy cheese bread and went to our different starting locations.

The run started opposite the State Capital Building and ended at the 50 yard line in Camp Randall Stadium where there was free beer and fruit for all the racers. Only in Wisconsin would a morning run end in free unlimited beer! Once you are done with the race you try to find your friends amongst the chaos (as everyone else is also finding their friends) and stand in the bleachers of Camp Randall watching the rest of the runners stream in. I think runners were still coming in 2 hours after the start of the race. After the beer ran dry we continued our celebration by touring some of Madison's local bars and establishments. By the end of the day I was exhausted.

On Sunday I went to my friend Zoe's parents house, my second family, to celebrate Greek Easter. Zoe currently lives in Athens but her sisters were both home for the event along with a crowd of other family friends. I don't know the names of all the food we had but it was DELICIOUS and I was stuffed. We had lamb, Spanakopia (a spinach and feta dish), shrimp and feta, potatoes, pitas, homemade humus, traditional Greek bread, more feta, more spinach, veggies, salad, wine and a spread of Greek desserts. There is one dessert that I just cannot stomach. They are called "spoon sweets" and basically are different jellies with chunks of whatever the flavor is. The flavors included Walnut, Bitter Orange, Rose Leaves, Quince, and EGGPLANT...yes Eggplant. I tried one bite of Bitter Orange and my willingness to try new things abandoned me. Zoe called from Greece during dinner and is doing really well. I hope I can visit her sometime!

After dinner we played a game where everyone takes a hardboiled egg that has been dyed red, shouts out "Happy Easter" in Greek ("Christos Anesti!"), and then tries to break another person's egg with your own. My eggshells broke right away as I am not as experienced in the game but some people lasted a few rounds. In the end there is always someone with a wooden egg who wins!

Update

Well not much has been going on but I know my dedicated readers are dying for an update so here is whats new:

1. There was an earthquake in Illinois last Friday at 4:40am and could be felt in Madison. Sadly I slept straight through, it would have been scary but cool.

2. The farmers market is back at the Capital Square which is next to where I live. I went on Saturday with my friend Julia and it was so fun to get up early, walk around the square in the sun, buy scones, sample cheese curds and people watch. Winter is finally over!!! Vegetables and fruits are still scarce but soon there will be all kinds of good stuff!

3. My mom is back in the United States, at least for a month.

4. I have an improv show on Sunday May 4th! I'm really excited but nervous.

5. My friend Mali promised to teach me to paddle on rivers when we take weekend trips with the paddle crew, we are also going to learn to Kayak on the lake this summer!

6. I have to miss my cousin's graduation from NYU in May because I have a final that day :( No free trip to New York.

7. I just bought my plane ticket to go home to Chapel Hill for a visit in early June! Yay!

Jeopardy!

It has been a whole week since watching the filming of Jeopardy and I finally have some pictures. It was really fun watching the tapings (we saw three shows) but in between rounds was the best because Alex Trebek was hilarious!!

He did question-answer with the audience and kept taking questions from "the young man/woman in red" (this is the University of Wisconsin so EVERYONE was in red), told us about his passion for drinking a lot and when asked "boxers or briefs?" replied "thongs".

There was also a special Brett Favre tribute:
Clue: God
Answer (in question form): Who is Brett Favre?

We stepped out of line to take this picture and of course the line finally started to move, it didn't matter as we were in the very back anyway.
Kelly was excited to see Alex, sadly she didn't get this close in person.

Our excellent view of the set!

After the show I checked out the improv show of the group I'm taking an improv class through and then met up with some friends to do some Madison barhopping (meaning going from bar to bar hoping to find one where we could actually stand comfortably). My tooth hurt from a recent cavity filling and I wasn't enjoying beer because it was too cold. Thankfully I was told by a non doctor or dentist friend that the best remedy would be to drink whiskey neat. The pain defintely went away!

Better than Knut!!!

Knut has been overthrown as the most adorable baby polar bear in Germany! (or the world)


click on this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7353178.stm

Adventures with Julie (coolest mom ever)

My mom has been in Jakarta, Indonesia for over a month now for work. After finishing season's 2 and 3 of Lost on DVD she realized she had no more excuses not to venture out and see the sights.

Since being over there she has visited Bali and Penang and has emailed me pictures periodically. As she is having way cooler adventures than I am, and most of the people who read this blog know her, have met her or are related to her, I thought it would be fun to put them up!

Also Jeopardy was awesome but I'm going to hold off on writing about it until I have some pictures to post...it'll be well worth the wait!

Guesthouse in Bali where she stayed for 3 days. Fortunately there was no drug smuggling done. The consequence in Bali (and Indonesia in general) is death and people are guilty until proven innocent. When I was studying abroad in Australia this happened to an Australian girl who went to Bali for a 2 week vacation. It was the biggest news story at the time and we watched the trial on TV. The story was that marijuana was put in her bag at the airport in Melbourne (there is a known drug ring that works the airports so you always should lock your checked baggage) and was supposed to be taken out while the bag was being transferred from one plane to another during a layover in Sydney. For some reason this didn't happen and the bag made it all the way to Bali. She got off "easy" and was sentenced to 20 years in a Bali prison. As far as I know she is still there, there was nothing the Australian government could do and she was lucky she didn't get the death sentence.

Bali rice paddies...maybe now my mom will finally appreciate where her rice comes from...

Mom with giant puppets...not creepy!

Token shot of adorable school children.

Raining sunshine! Probably trying to cut in line because she is an American.

Mom was locked up but she bribed the guards with promises of her beautiful daughter's hand in marriage and was let out. Oh on a totally different note she bought me a ticket to visit Indonesia next month!!! She won't be there anymore but I guess wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any school.

After a stressful day in jail she went to the local fish market in Penang to pick up some dinner.

At a mosque in Penang, trying not being suspicious.

Riding in a tuk tuk, a common form of transportation. Mom always travels in style.

Relaxing by the water after a long day of strolling, snapping pictures, tasting local cuisine and buying her daughter amazing and expensive one-of-a-kind gifts (???)

It's April 11th and there might be snow...

Looks like winter isn't over yet....they are predicting SNOW for tomorrow! It will be worse up north and in MN but Madison might get some of it. I am SO SICK of winter! But I do admit that I would prefer a light snow to the crazy rain and wind that caused my umbrella to break yesterday. I can't wait for spring to get here, but who knows, maybe we will skip spring this year and go straight to summer.

On a happier note I'm leaving work early to see Jeopardy being filmed at the Kohl Center this afternoon (thanks to Kelly)! Should be very entertaining.

Fame can be tough.

So I am really great friends with a famous comedian....at least famous in the Madison, WI circle... and was invited along with a select few VIPs to attend his show at the Comedy Club on State Street (Madison's famous and most happenin' street)...OK actually we made reservations online and then paid a dollar to get in because it was student night...but Sean was still hosting which is cool.

Sean performing.

Also our friends Dave and Sarah came to visit which was SOOO exciting because I haven't seen either of them since our days in Northfield, MN where we attended the prestigous schools of St. Olaf (Dave and I) and Carleton (Sarah), but actually we all know each other and Sean from Camp Manito-wish. After an awkward dinner at a Thai-ish restaurant Sean, Dave, Mali, Sarah and I (yes I was a fifth wheel, my date was probably stuck in traffic after a late night at the office and couldn't call because the reception was bad...) headed the "the club", as we like to call it, got drinks and settled in.

Dave SO excited to finally see me again!

Signing autographs for adoring fans!

Sarah and Mali

The show was great. Afterwards I got hit by a taxi (but don't worry I am fine) while walking to a local bar called Paul's club which is famous among celeb magazines for the tree it has INSIDE THE BAR!

The (in)famous Paul's Club Tree.

Everyone was dying to talk to me all night long! I had to beat them off with sticks!!

After a few more drinks we realized it was only Thursday night and most of us had to work in the morning....oh and I had a presentation to give, so we called it a night. I'm pretty sure Sean was late the next morning but I guess that is the price you must pay for life in the fast lane.

"Thursday?? Whatever!"

Flashback to good times

So as I have a lack of super exciting things going on to blog about I decided to take a trip back in time to Christmas with my family in Texas.

While home in Chapel Hill for Thanksgiving break I came across THE PERFECT gift for my cousin, Lauren. It was being sold at Eckerd Drug stores for a very fair price so I knew I had to get it for her.

Here is a photo diary of the event:

Me and Lauren before she recieved the best present of her entire life...she has NO idea.

My mom was in on the secret! She had to mail it to Texas for me as it was too big to get on the plane and far too precious to check through.

Finally time to open presents!!! What is it?
BEST PRESENT EVER! A life sized walking doll named Emily!

I am now her favorite person in the world, look how happy she is.

In our brand new World Wildlife Fund T-shirts from my Aunt (Emily did not get one)

What a great Christmas! :)

April Fooled

So I used gmail for all of my non-school and non-work emails and yesterday when I logged on I saw this new thing that they had called G-Mail Custom Time. It allows you to send emails back in time which would be useful if you forget someone's birthday or forgot to send something important by a deadline. You could mark it as read or unread and supposedly it would show up in the person's inbox appearing like it had been sent at the time you want it to (you can go back up to April 2004 when Gmail first started up). That way if a friends says " you forgot my birthday last week!" you could send the email back a week and just say "check your inbox!" The friend would then see that they had somehow missed your birthday greeting.

Had I actually read the website closer I would have sensed the sarcasm with lines such as this explanation for why each gmail user only gets to use custom time 10 times per year: "Our researchers have concluded that allowing each person more than ten pre-dated emails per year would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless."

Anyway as one of the most gullible people on this planet I fell for it, thought it sounded like a horrible thing to be able to do. I was finally alerted to my stupidity at lunch yesterday with some grad student friends who had all realized the April Fool's day joke immediatly.

Happy April everyone! I still was wearing my down jacket this morning so I hope I get to see some Spring soon....