Israeli food

last night we had leftovers Shakshouka. it's basically some onions tomatos and sausage, topped with leftover meatballs in tomatoes that we had a couple of nights ago, a few eggs, and some cheese. not to forget the hot pepper and tabasco.

which reminds me, that sometime next month, i'm hosting the monthly dinner as a part of our dinner club (we call it gastro-ph, if you don't understand the nerdy joke, you're probably not an astronomer).
at first i thought of cooking japanese (i mean, sushi). but later on i was convinced that israeli dinner would be a good idea.

and then comes the problem - besides Hummus, bamba, shkedey marak, and fresh salad - everything israeli that i think of is actually 'importd' to israel by someone's grandma from irak, morocco, poland, germany, turkey... see the problem?

so i'm using this platform for a short survey:

what is israeli food for you?

birthday

i had a nice birthday. even though i hate the thought of getting old.. that's why i decided to be 29 this year (making it my 2nd 29th birthday, cause i celebrated being 30 and 31 the last 2 years).
anyway,
we started the day with breakfast sandwich (eggs, bacon & melted cheese on an english muffin)(we don't need to worry about cholesterol for another few years), and then went over to the lakefront to see if the lake is indeed frozen like it seems to be from home.
a relatively normal day at work
and a birthday sushi dinner at the place down the street from us, accompanied by a bottle of red wine, and not having to drive. oh, and they gave us free dessert :D
i also got a couple of presents from israel -- DVDs from the young sharonim, and flowers&yellowbear from the less young sharonim!! hurray!!
thanks everybody. and thanks ben for loving me even though i'm old :)

Holey land

Chicago is full of holes. POTHOLES to be more exact. the combination of low maintenance and frequent freeze-thaw cycles makes the roads feel like you're driving off road.

we don't have our own pictures of this yet, so i borrowed this one from Chicago Sun-Times. something like this can easily make you pull off the road with a flat tire.
we both keep our eyes on the road looking out for them and hope to dodge them in time and not get into other drivers' lane in the process. today we almost missed a perfect parking spot because of concentrating on the potholes!

Grand Canyon

here are some pictures from our airborne trip to Grand Canyon.
well, over it anyway...

the line on this image is the area we flew over, of which i took pictures (the rest of the flight wasn't as exciting).
i labeled most of the images, and some of them have coordinates, if you want to go through them with google earth (and you should, it's so much fun, that i spent a few hours tonight doing that!)
[go to picasa album]

Berkeley

We're visiting Berkeley, where we both have friends and collaborators. it's a nice escape from the Chicago cold weather (the temps dropped 50 degrees over one night a day after we left town!), although i don't appreciate the rain that much.
we did had a couple of nice days, and got a chance to enjoy the view from the hill.

[picture of SF and the bay area to come here]

i was mostly amused by the fact that people know of me over here.. i guess the couple of papers that have my names on them were noticed over here, since both at Berkeley and LBL there are large supernova groups... anyways, it was a nice feeling.

another great thing is meeting Dovi, Hila and their kids - i didn't realize how much i missed working in the same room with dovi...

tomorrow we're taking the day off and go site seeing in San Fransisco. so more on that later!


p.s. - don't ever go to Kimchi Garden on Durant street. even if you're really really hungry and it's 11pm and nothing else is open.

Shinobu

The new sushi place <2 blocks from us is SO good. really. i'm not just saying that to help their business. but if it helps their business at all, please, go there and have dinner (they are only open for dinner), and help us keep them around! here are some reviews, address and phones:

is it Jan 24th already?

i haven't posted in so long...
some important updates:

1. starting with the very good news: i was offered (and accepted) an awesome postdoc job for 3 years, to start as soon as i graduate, at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the university of chicago. that means that we will have 2 salaries (hurray!) and i get to do whatever i want with mine. i mean, work on whatever i want :)
ooh, and i'll have an office with a window!!

2. the last 2-3 weeks my friends and i have been monitoring the 'Astrophysics Job Rumor' page, to see who got offered what in the job market this year. had some happy days (and celebrations) when my friends got good offers. seems like things are settling down now when all the big fellowships are out (hubble, spitzer, chandra, big names :))

3. i had a bad cold for a few days, and ben took good care of me. i hate being sick, but i love being taken care of :)

4. the middle eastern restaurant on our street closed a few months ago, and this month a japanese restaurant opened instead. we went there last week, and we intend to go there frequently just so that they stay in business. a reasonably priced sushi that tastes good on your street is an important resource, so we'll do whatever we can to support them.

5. the scroogim developed an annoying habit of standing in the doorway and barking at the door (they say 'miau', of course, but they're really barking). at first i thought they were missing ben (it started when he was away) but now we don't know why they do it.

6. i started going to pottery class - tonight will be my 2nd time. they teach us how to make clay into bowels and other round things on those spiny wheel thingies. it's fun, and messy, and i like it so far. expect to get bowels for presents next christmas ;)

ok, it seems like traffic is moving better on lakeshore now, so we can start thinking about driving to work.