Off We Go to the Land Down Under

Today's the big day. Sarah and I are headed to Australia after months (or in Sarah's case, years) of planning. And I'll be bringing back a pet koala for everyone. Look for yours in the mail in a few weeks!

Holiday Madness II: Christmas

Hello again. I told you this weekend was busy. Since Sarah and I are leaving for Australia on Friday, December 2nd, we figured we should get out our holiday decorations as quickly as possible so that we could enjoy them for a bit. This year Sarah decided to go full-on Martha Stewart by making sugar cookies that double as Christmas tree ornaments.


Frequent visitors to the blog may recognize these cookies as the same ones we have made in years past, so I suppose they have become somewhat of a holiday tradition. My favorite is the snow globe.


Sarah also made some sort of tinsel-type-thing to go around the tree, which looked pretty cool.


Our tree came out great this year. Hopefully it will still be alive when we come back from Australia on December 18th. I'll try to do a couple of posts while were in the land down under, but if not, I'll be sure to put up plenty of pictures when we get back.

Holiday Madness I: Thanksgiving

Happy belated Thanksgiving, everyone. Sarah and I had a great holiday. Although it was really busy, we were glad to help out Sarah's mom in putting together the Thanksgiving meal. Our duties included the following:

Grandma Peterson's world-famous stuffing

Pumpkin pie with pecan-praline topping

Grandma Crapo's rolls

and sugar cookies

It all came together for a pretty tasty meal. After that, Sarah and I had a pretty good weekend, including a little Black Friday shopping and preparing for Christmas...

Hooray for the iPhone!

Sarah and I finally decided the time had come for us to get some smartphones, and decided on the iPhone 4S. After an incredibly harrowing ordeal, they finally arrived, and we've been enjoying them ever since. This is one of the first pictures I took on the new amazing camera. Perhaps it symbolizes the dawn of the new age in the Peterson household. An age where we can get our iPhone to talk to us and tell us jokes.

Visit from the Folks

Sorry I haven't been able to post for a while. It's been a pretty busy time for the Petersons. But a couple of weeks ago we had a great visit from my parents from Arizona. We had a lot fun together, including going on the Skyline Drive.


It's a nice drive through a stretch of the Shenandoah Valley, and right now is a prime time for looking at fall foliage, which my parents refer to as "leaf-peeping."


My parents were even in town for my birthday! It was great to have them here. Thanks for the visit!

Jack-o-Lanterns! UPDATED!

Hey all, I decided to make a few additions to my Halloween post, since before it was just a picture of our jack-o-lanterns.


Here's a better picture of the pumpkins.


We went to our church Halloween party, and had to throw some costumes together at the last minute. Sarah went as a quite convincing PanAm-era flight attendant.


I thought I was going as some cool detective like Humphrey Bogart from "The Maltese Falcon," but everyone just said I looked like Inspector Gadget. Maybe I just have a goofy face.

Woohoo!

I just found out I passed the Virginia Bar Exam! Now I can sue people!

The Most Sincere Pumpkin Patch in the Whole World

Hey all. I guess Fall has officially arrived with the annual pumpkin selection. Sarah picked out some winners.

Ryan's 2011 Summer Movie Roundup

Hey everyone. It's September, which means it's time for the annual summer movie roundup! I was actually quite impressed with this summer's offerings, unlike last year. And even though there were very few original projects (i.e. not sequels, prequels, remakes, or adaptations), most of the movies I saw exceeded my expectations. Although there were some disappointments (Pixar didn't make the cut this year), there were quite a few I really enjoyed. Onto the countdown.

5. THOR


Summer started off with a bang with a movie that was surprisingly good, considering its source material. With a movie about a god from another world who crash lands on our planet and has to fight something called a "frost giant," you wouldn't think the movie would be too impressive. But the director Kenneth Branagh (i.e. the guy who usually does all the Shakespeare movies) managed to pull in some real talent and make the movie at least somewhat credible. Thor has always been one of my least favorite comic book heroes, but with this movie I couldn't help but respect the god of thunder a little bit.

4. COWBOYS & ALIENS


I'll admit that I am a huge nerd who had been anxiously awaiting this movie all year. I could not pass up the chance to see James Bond and Indiana Jones shoot up some aliens in the Old West. It may be the cheesiest movie on this list, but I probably walked away with the biggest smile after seeing this one.

3. CAPTAIN AMERICA


It's probably a good sign when even Sarah is excited to see a summer movie. Captain America had heart, a brisk pace, a good villain, and lots of Nazis getting punched in the face. That's basically the same formula for Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is another one of my all-time favorites.

2. X-MEN: FIRST CLASS


I probably had the lowest expectations for this particular movie, since I was a little worn out on X-Men films. But since I'm such a huge James Bond fan, they really nabbed me with the 60's Cold War-style feel that permeated the film. Fantastic movie, even if it did sort of mess with the timeline of all the other films. Even Sarah liked it, but that may be just because she liked all the furniture and fashion design.

1. SUPER 8


As you know, I'm a bit of a sucker for original summer fare (as previous roundup winners include such original films as Inception and Up). Although this movie did borrow somewhat from such Spielberg classics as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T." (ever notice how much Spielberg loves aliens), this was an original and incredibly compelling story all its own. The child actors were brilliant, and this may be the only movie on this list that had an actual touching story to tell. Maybe I have a soft spot for this movie because of all the time I spent trying to make movies with my friends as a kid, but I do think it was the best of this summer's offerings.

There you have it. The roundup for 2011. Let me know if I missed any of your favorites.

So lonely...

Hey all! I dropped Sarah off at the airport yesterday, so that she could fly to Central America, which means I'll be all by myself for the next month. Feel free to send me any condolences or gifts as I count down the days to September 30th. Only 25 days until I see Sarah again!

Arlington County Fair

Sarah and I went to the Arlington County Fair last weekend. We had a great time looking at all the weird stuff and eating greasy food that you normally find at fairs. The highlights include:


Riding the scary, rickety ferris wheel run by a couple of Grateful Dead fans;


Playing the carnival games (Sarah played the shooting game and won an awesome stuffed monster thing);


I played the dart game and won a lame tiny whale;


And the highlight of the fair, the piglet races, where they have a bunch of piglets run around a track and we root on the winners. Our pig, Ham Solo, won two of the three races, so we were pretty proud.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Hey all! I've been preparing for the bar exam for the entire summer, and I am starting my new job at a law firm downtown on Monday, which means my summer vacation lasted for approximately three days. It mostly consisted of watching movies about alien invasions (Yay, Cowboys and Aliens! Boo, Transformers 3!) and going to the pool. I also cooked a lot, but here's the highlight, my homemade bacon egg mcmuffin.


First, I cooked an egg in a frying pan inside a biscuit cutter, which worked surprisingly well.


Next, I took a a biscuit I had made earlier in the week, and heated it up.


I added some melted cheddar cheese onto the egg, and plopped it on top of the biscuit.


Then I threw some bacon on top, and had myself an awesome breakfast. So there you have it. That's basically my entire summer vacation. It was brief, but I enjoyed it. Next week I finally join the ranks of the working masses!

I'm Free!!!

I'm finally done with the bar exam! Yay! Too bad I have to start working next week. That is all.

Visit from my sister!

Hey everyone! Sarah and I are staying busy here in DC. I have to take the bar exam at the end of the month, so I am definitely trying to stay focused for that. Fortunately, I was able to take a little bit of a break because my sister Kim came to visit us this weekend! Kim had never been to the East Coast before, so we managed to squeeze in most of the DC sights and a quick trip to New York while she was in town.


The first couple of days we toured all over DC. We saw all the monuments and three museums in one day, since Kim wasn't slow and feeble like our parents.


We also had a blast in New York. We even managed to find some cheap Broadway tickets. We went to see Phantom of the Opera, even though we had all seen it years ago, mostly because pickings were slim at the box office and none of us wanted to see Sister Act.


We had a great time in New York (and in DC), so if anyone wants to come out and visit us, we'll be happy to show them a good time. Just wait until after I pass the bar.

Top Three Terrifying Cinematic Moments From My Childhood

Hey all. Life is good here in Arlington, and Sarah and I are staying pretty busy this summer with work and bar preparation classes. I basically spend 8-9 hours per day preparing for one exam that I don't take until the end of July, so I suspect that this summer might start to feel a little tedious for me by the end of it.

In other news, however, we are in full swing of the summer movie season, which is one of my favorite times of year. So far I've actually been pretty impressed with the offerings, despite the numerous sequels and remakes. But it got me thinking that I haven't done a post about movies in a while, so here goes.

The other day I saw that Jurassic Park was on TV, and I remembered how scary it was the first time I went to see it. However, I was able to get over the initial heebie-jeebies, and I probably ended up seeing that film another ten times in the theaters. And then I got to thinking of some of the other terrifying movie moments I witnessed as a child that have since been seared into my brain. So here’s my list of movies you shouldn’t let your kids watch until they are at least 25.

3. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom


There’s no shortage of creepy scenes from this flick, but when the main bad guy, Mola Ram, shows up halfway through and pulls a guy’s heart out… good night. I didn’t sleep for weeks. Of course, it didn’t help that my sisters memorized the lines from that scene and would chase me around the house yelling, “Ka-li-ma, shut-di-day!” Thanks a lot, Kim and Jaime.

2. Willow


Perhaps a lot of you haven’t seen this movie, and you should definitely see it, but be warned. There’s a scene where this evil witch lady casts a spell and turns a bunch of people into pigs, and, man, is it terrifying. Watching Val Kilmer turn into a pig-man was some creepy stuff for a kid to take in. I don’t know why this movie was ever marketed to children.

1. The Princess Bride


Huh? You may wonder why this makes the list, when there are some genuinely terrifying scenes higher up. In short: ROUSs. When Wesley and Buttercup are climbing through the Fire Swamp discussing whether the Rodents of Unusual Size actually exist, I knew it was time to hide behind the couch, and I wouldn’t come out until they were safe.

GRADUATION!

It's official: I am finally a law school graduate. This weekend we had our commencement on the National Mall, and then I got my diploma in the afternoon. Woohoo! Up next, I'll be studying for the Virginia Bar Exam, which I will be taking in late July, and then I'll start my job with Ermer Law Group, a small federal health care firm in Washington, DC. Sarah and I are so excited to be done, and to have a good job to start out with.

Asian Adventure: Food Edition

Hey everyone. As promised here are a few shots of some of the tasty food we ate while touring through the Orient. Sadly, I didn't take as many pictures as I originally thought, but here goes.


We only had time for one meal in Beijing, but we made the most of it, by getting some shrimp potstickers and a huge serving of double-fried duck breast, served with tiny sesame buns. It may not have been a great idea to have heavy fried food after 20 hours of traveling, since my stomach was a little angry afterward, but it was totally worth it.


One of the first meals we grabbed in Hong Kong was dim sum at a tiny hole in the wall called Tim Ho Wan. Tim Ho Wan is the cheapest restaurant in the world to have earned one Michelin Star, and it's famous for its baked pork buns. It won't win any awards for service (when I asked for something to drink other than tea, they told me to get up and go across the street to 7-11), but it was pretty tasty.


Supposedly the best place to eat with a view in Hong Kong is up on Victoria Peak. We were able to get a reservation right around sunset, and had an amazing view of the city as all the lights started to come on. Plus, the Indian food wasn't too bad either.


When we went to visit the Bid Buddha statue on Lantau Island, we also stopped by the Po Lin monastery, which is famous for its vegetarian restaurant. Not usually my thing, but they had some really tasty food, including deep-fried spring rolls.


We tried to eat every type of food we could find in Hong Kong. That included Peking Duck at one of the best restaurants in the city, high tea at the ancient British establishment The Peninsula Hotel, and spicy Szechuan food on Hong Kong Island. This was a plate of spicy orange beef that we got at the Szechuan restaurant Red Pepper.


And best part of all, it only took me a week and a half, but I finally managed to use chopsticks. Yay!

Asian Adventure: Hong Kong Edition

Hey everyone! Hope you enjoyed the pictures of Beijing. Here are few pics of our week in Hong Kong. Enjoy.


Hong Kong is the busiest, loudest place I have ever visited. Every street is lit up by neon signs and filled with strange sights, smells, and sounds. Our hotel was located in Kowloon near many of the unique markets of Northern Hong Kong. This is part of the bird market, a place that not only sells birds, but also serves as a hangout for local old dudes who want to bring their birds so they can all sing to each other.


This is part of the Ladies' Market, although it sells just about everything you can imagine. I suppose this would be considered a residential neighborhood in Hong Kong, and it is still packed with people.


They also have a fish market, which again sells just about anything imaginable, including tropical fish, cats, rabbits, lizards, insects, etc. Those are fish hanging in the plastic bags behind Sarah.


One of our favorite attractions in Hong Kong (which also happened to be one of the cheapest) was taking the Star Ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island.


It offers amazing views of all of Hong Kong Island, and it only costs about 35 cents.


Hong Kong Island itself is the financial center, and it has some pretty amazing skyscrapers. All of the buildings apparently have to follow the principles of Feng Shui; otherwise they must collapse. We managed to take a picture of some of the skyscrapers in one of the few green spaces in the central district.


One of my favorite things that we did in Hong Kong was travel to Lantau Island to see the Big Buddha. It's the largest, seated, outdoor Buddha in the world, which seems like a lot of qualifiers. To get to the Buddha, you get to take a 15-minute gondola ride which offers some spectacular views. Alternatively, you can hike to the Buddha, and it only takes about six hours! We decided to pass on that.


Here's a picture of the Buddha statue from our gondola ride.


Once you get to the site of the statue, you have to climb about 150 steps to actually see it up close.


I'd like to say that this is some ancient wonder of the world, but I think it was actually built about 30 years ago. Still, it's pretty cool.


The statue is located right next to the Po Lin monastery, which is one of the oldest monasteries in Hong Kong. This picture was taken from the inside of the monastery looking out at the Buddha statue.


Like I said, we loved taking the Star Ferry to and from Hong Kong Island. Here's a shot of the city all lit up at night.


For those of you who know me, you certainly know that I would not pass up the chance to have a suit made while in Hong Kong. Sarah and I finally settled on Mr. Joseph Ma, who made me an awesome three-piece light gray suit. If you're going to Hong Kong anytime soon, I recommend Mr. Ma.


On the Saturday before we left, Sarah and I decided to take the hydrofoil to Macao, another "special autonomous region" of China. It was settled and owned by Portugal up until a few years ago, and many of the people still speak Portuguese today. Although most of the city is covered in casinos, we spent most of our time in the historic city center, which still looks like an old Portuguese village even today.


Here's a picture of the ruins of a Jesuit cathedral built on a hill in the center of Macao. It burned down over 200 years ago, so only the facade remains today.


Sarah and I had an awesome time in Hong Kong. It really was the trip of a lifetime. If I have time later in the week, I'll certainly put up one more post of my favorite topic for any trip: the food.