22. The Perks of Being a Jew on Christmas

To the people who are not busy celebrating the birth of Jesus, Christmas is quite boring. From hearing Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” since before Thanksgiving to the holiday shopping hysteria, Christmas seems like a year’s worth of preparation for a few hours of enjoyment. If you’re not Christian, there’s not much to do besides staying home or subscribing to the Jewish stereotype of a “Chinese food and movies” Christmas. While I did improve my movie literacy by watching “Pretty Woman”, at about two p.m. I decided it was time for an adventure. I ended up taking my siblings for a drive. The roads were empty, so I took the liberty of cruising at the whopping speed of 7 miles per hour (much to the dismay of my brother and sister, who were hoping for a joyride) and parking as horribly as I could in the parking lot of CVS. Even CVS offered diminished fun on Christmas– due to Massachusetts “Blue Laws”, they were only permitted to sell certain classes of items. We ended up buying half a gallon of milk, before taking a circuitous route home.

Happy holidays and have a wonderful new year!

Firsts This Week:

• Watched “Pretty Woman”, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, and started “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
• Tried to have fun while buying milk

19. A Long List of Movies I Haven’t Seen, and a few that I have

Though I generally try to be informed, I am hopelessly behind when it comes to movies. However, I can no longer be blissfully ignorant. After missing one too many Star Wars references in conversation, I realized that it is time to fix my movie literacy. Since my parents were not raised in the US, they never introduced me to films widely regarded as classics in America. As a result, my classic movie knowledge only extends as far as the James Bond movies, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Blazing Saddles, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Wizard of Oz. The list below contains movies that I’ve been meaning to see, including classics and films from the past few years. For the past few months, I’ve added movies to the list as I continue to miss pop culture references and silently berate myself for not having caught up with the times.

Movies I Haven’t Seen

• Inception
• The Dark Knight
• The Notebook
• Mean Girls
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Star Wars
• Lord of the Rings
• The Town
• Citizen Kane
• A Clockwork Orange
• Scarface
• Casablanca
• Rebecca
• The Postman Always Rings Twice
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
• No Strings Attached
• Friends With Benefits
• Black Swan
• The Godfather
• Gone With The Wind
• Jaws
• The Blind Side
• Pulp Fiction
• Transformers

Firsts this week:

• Watched The Philadelphia Story, and was thus introduced to Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and John Stewart.

In the Comments Section:

Tell me, what other classic movies should I add to the list? Do you agree with my choices? Are there any movies that you’ve particularly enjoyed? Do you have a favorite cultural reference that comes from a movie?

14. Ziv Just Applied To College

Dear New England

You’re welcome for the firewood!

Love, Mother Nature

On Thursday, October 27, it snowed. To some, this may seem strange. However, I live in New England, so October snowstorms, while unexpected, are not unheard of. This Saturday night it snowed about 6 inches. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem (last January-February there were 6 feet of snow on the ground at times) but there are still leaves on the trees. The snowstorm did more damage than “Hurricane” Irene and the earthquake this summer combined. The added weight of snow did a lot of damage to trees, power lines, and the spirits of children who can’t go out on Halloween. Halloween has been rescheduled for Thursday November 3. Since my neighborhood doesn’t have power, I am reporting to you from my friend’s basement. The snowstorm came on the weekend before Early Action/ Decision deadlines for college applications, which was a slight inconvenience. Because my friend was fortunate enough not to lose power, I came here to send my college applications. So I sent two college applications from my friend’s house. On the bright side, it beats having to send college applications from Starbucks. And now the post-application fun begins, until everyone realizes that Regular Decision deadlines still exist.

 

Firsts This Week:

• Had a Halloween Party/Snowball Fight
• Sent College Apps
• Blogged from a new location

(Thanks to CH for the title of this post)

13. Nail Polish Pen

With all the craze of nail marbling, newsprint nails, and more, this week I felt inclined to liven up my bare nails. Despite being ambidextrous and a sometimes-painter, I find nail painting to be a difficult task. When I happened upon a nail polish pen at the drugstore, I decided to give it a try.

Unfortunately, even a supposedly no-skill-required “Fast Dry” pen proved to be too much. The concept is simple enough– the pen works like a ballpoint pen, and dispenses nail polish when clicked. However, I apparently have not learned the proper technique for pen clicking, as the pen would ooze color from the top of the brush without prompting. This made it difficult to control the thickness of the coat. The crimson polish ended up streaky, and it took a layer of topcoat to make my nails presentable. Or semi-presentable. To distract from the streakiness I lacquered my nails with gold glitter topcoat.

(Sorry for the washed out webcam image!)

Also, today is post 13 of 52. This means that I’m a quarter of the way to my goal! To those of you who have stuck with me from the beginning and to those of you joining now, thanks for your support!

A summary of what I’ve learned so far:

• Not everything I write will be brilliant. Some days I’m more inspired than others, more comedic, more thoughtful, engaging, etc. Some posts are as dull as watching paint dry. It’s okay not to be perfect, as long as I’m myself. What matters is the exercise of writing for writing’s sake. Over time I’ll get better.
• Blogging takes planning. I can’t expect new things to fall upon me. I have to actively pursue new experiences and explain them in an interesting way. Otherwise, I start falling into a “this is what I did at school” rut (ahem, robotics). Or I resort to a post about as dull as watching paint dry nail polish. This can try the patience of even the most dedicated readers.
• Time Management. Too often I’ve stayed up late agonizing over what to write. I need to remember to allot time for blogging, and recall that I tend to underestimate how long each post takes to write.
• Profound quotes are much more interesting when one happens upon them by chance.

Firsts This Week:

• Used a nail pen
• Read and understood Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy
• Started assembling a robot

12. Built a Light-Controlled Musical Instrument

This week, I am happy to say I built a musical instrument. Or to be more precise, built a circuit using a photoresistor (light sensor) and piezoelectric speaker that altered its pitch based on how much light it received. In this circuit, the photoresistor controlled the frequency of the piezoelectric speaker to be between 1000 and 5000 Hz. As my partner and I cast shadows over the photoresistor, the pitch of the note became higher. Granted, the speaker was basically just making lots of high pitched beeps. And when one is in a room full of Robotics students tinkering with speakers, the result just sounds like noise.

As for this week’s task? We have to figure out how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb”…

Firsts This Week:

• Built an “instrument” out of a photoresistor and piezoelectric speaker circuit

9. Chinese Cabbage Salad and Chocolate Almond Butter Macaroons

Two new recipes! The first is an Chinese Cabbage Salad that has a little crunch to it from adding uncooked Ramen noodles. Feel free to substitute wontons or add chicken or anything else you desire. The second recipe is one that I make for a quick chocolate pick-me-up, with the added bonus of protein from the almond butter. Bon appetit!

Chinese Cabbage Salad

Makes enough for four people

Salad

10 leaves Chinese Cabbage, rinsed and chopped about ¼’’ wide

1 Daikon (or substitute parsnip or carrot), julienned

1 mango, sliced into ¼’’ strips

1 package uncooked Ramen noodles

 

Dressing

Note: Be aware that this may make more dressing than you may actually use.

¼ cup canola oil

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

1/8 cup (or more to taste) agave nectar or honey

3 tablespoons soy sauce (or more to taste)

Salt, to taste

Black pepper, to taste

 

Combine Chinese cabbage, mango, and daikon in a large bowl. Crumble the ramen noodles into the salad. In a separate container, mix the ingredients for the dressing, stirring so that the ingredients blend together. Pour dressing over salad and toss.

 

Chocolate Almond Butter Macaroons

Individual Serving

1 tablespoon almond butter

2 tablespoons dried shredded coconut

1 teaspoon agave nectar or honey

1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa powder

 

Mix ingredients in a small bowl. Consistency is thick, and you should be able to roll the macaroon into a ball (if you so desire; I usually just eat it with a fork). Since quantities are approximate, experiment until you find a balance of ingredients that is palatable to you.

Firsts this week:

• Two new recipes
• Getting hit in the ribs with a badminton birdie (it actually hurts!)

8. DIY Hair Bow

Hello!

This Thursday I was sick, so I took a day off from school. To occupy myself, I read a lot of DIY blogs and was inspired to create this little hair bow from some spare fabric I had around the house:

I used this tutorial, which gave step-by-step sewing instructions. Many thanks to A Beautiful Mess for the idea!

Firsts this week:

• DIY Hair Bow
• Wore three-inch heels to school. After more than 1.5 miles of walking (without getting sore feet!), I can proudly say I am ready for corporate America. Heels and suits here I come!

7. Circuitry for Beginners

Hello! I hope you’ve had a fabulous week. Recently I’ve been especially enthusiastic about school. This is because a) we have not yet had a full week (amidst Labor Day, half days, etc.) and b) I have really interesting classes. So, as the skeptical daughter of two people with degrees in electrical engineering, I was initially nervous about my Intro to Robotics/Engineering class. In all honesty, I was expecting a room full of seasoned programmers who know their way around microcontrollers and coding. And in this nightmare, I would be stuck with a partner silently brooding over my programming ineptitude.

There was no such nightmare to be found. I was already too preoccupied exploring the contents of the orange box I had received, packed with a carrier board (called the “Board of Education”, or BOE), various resistors, lights, and cables to submit to my overactive imagination. After identifying the contents of the orange box, we jumped right into learning the PBASIC programming language to write our first program. On the breadboard part of BOE, we inserted a green LED (light emitting diode) and resistor to their respective parts of the Vdd and Vss (positive and negative parts of the breadboard). We set up our program so that the LED would blink on and off once per second continuously. As simple as it was, running our “Blink!” program gave me immense satisfaction. Never has it been more fun to turn on a light.

Firsts this week:

• Learned resistor code
• Learned the difference between ohm and om: ohm is the unit of resistors; om is a yogic breathing technique
• Learned some PBASIC programming language
• Wrote a program
• Read about Shakespeare authorship controversies
• And for the record, I started listening to Nutcracker music on Sept. 10. Ballet=life

6. Frogs and Green Lemonade

In between baking cupcakes, juicing sour cherries, and starting my senior year, nothing new I did this week was very profound.

I have a confession. This new thing is something I hope not to repeat. Unfortunately, I believe I may have hit my first animal while driving. Yesterday evening I was driving when I thought I saw a leaf in the road. When I was about a yard away from the leaf, it hopped. Unable to stop, I swerved a bit, hoping the frog would go in between the tires. I kept driving, and then another frog hopped in front me. I was about to go into hysterics when my father said a) if I hit a frog,  I wouldn’t be able to feel it pop under the tires and b) I had better get-my-eyes-on-the-road-missy. If I killed either of these creatures, I’m sorry. The moral of the story: small creatures, please look both ways before crossing the street.

Hopefully you’ve reserved your judgment. I assure you, I am nothing like the driver in the clip below, who seems to think hitting toads is a recreational sport.

Skip to 2:38

And now, for those of you who were able to survive this post, some refreshment: Frosty Basil Lemonade, from Whole Food Recipes by Vitamix. My brother made this for me this week, and it was surprisingly good. The basil gives it a fresh green color, and the consistency is similar to that of a slushie.

Frosty Basil Lemonade:

3 cups water

1.5 lemons, peeled, halved, seeded

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup fresh basil leaves

1 cup ice cubes

Directions: Place ingredients in a blender; blend until desired consistency is reached. Sweeten to taste, as this recipe may be too sweet for some (like me) or not sweet enough (for those with a sweet tooth).

Firsts this week:

• May or may not have hit frog(s)
• Drank basil lemonade
• Started my senior year of high school
• Made various recipes with the sour cherries in my yard, including juice and chocolate-cherry sauce, which I enjoyed with family and friends

5. Of Hermit Crabs and Hurricanes

Looking outside on this wonderfully bright Monday afternoon, it is almost impossible to believe that a tropical storm hit us yesterday. We were fortunate enough to be on the outskirts of the storm, and thus suffered minimal damage compared to those who were hit head on by Hurricane Irene. Hurricanes are few and far between in the Northeast, due to cold ocean waters that weaken storms. Though Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm before it reached us, the storm caused many power outages, floods, and other damage in my home state. Thankfully, the only damage at my house consisted of a fallen tree and some broken branches.

Despite the gusting winds and torrential rain, I was still able to engage in my favorite end-of-summer tradition: cherry picking. During the storm, my father, brother, sister, and I, clad in full rain regalia, went outside and picked sour cherries off of the three trees in our yard. In the coming days we will make juice from the harvest.

On Friday, prior to hurricane hysteria, my family and I enjoyed our last day at the beach. While I was catching up on classic literature*, my brother caught a hermit crab. Lugging his purple bucket up to where I sat, my brother showed me a shell that was about six inches in length, and three inches at its widest point. The shell was covered in barnacles and even had a few sea snails hitching a ride. Its inhabitant was no less impressive. After I had been peering eagerly into the bucket for several minutes, the biggest hermit crab I have ever seen poked out of his shell. With its body fully extended out of its shell and antennae flicking about, I was endeared to the creature. It was then that I decided to call it Francisco.

I’ve always had a soft spot for hermit crabs. In preschool, I used to love having Shelley the Hermit Crab crawl on my outstretched palm. Granted, Shelley’s shell was an inch cubed in size, and her smooth white and orange shell was unencumbered by barnacles, unlike the marred shell of her oceanic cousin. Nevertheless, in watching Francisco I was reminded of our old class pet, and my fondness for Shelley transferred to this new hermit crab. Having spent hours watching Shelley trapped in her tank, I pitied Francisco for being confined to our bucket. After a few more minutes of reminiscing, I released Francisco to the ocean where he belongs.

*I hadn’t yet read To Kill a Mockingbird, finally rectified this week.

Firsts this week:

• Hurricane Irene
• Found and released a hermit crab named Francisco
• Finished To Kill a Mockingbird