Carolina Tiger Rescue

While my friend was visiting this weekend we decided to go to the Carolina Tiger Rescue for a tour. This is a pretty interesting place. It is basically a cat shelter for big cats. Apparently, sort of dumb people get tigers or other large cats as pets. I think they think said cats will curl up and sleep at the foot of their bed. This does not happen, they are wild animals and sort of violent (see this story about a crazy tiger owner).

Anyway for $12 we got a tour around the grounds and got to meet the cats. It was pretty awesome.

Caracol

The Caracol can jump 10 feet (or something like that). They attack and kill animals bigger than them, they tend to go for the face. Great pet!

Tiger

There were lots of tigers, they were the most common animal. They feed the tigers one whole chicken a day, bones and all. We got to watch it chew the chicken and the bones sounded incredibly creepy.

Hot Tiger

It was warm in the afternoon and tigers like water, unlike my kitten.

Kinkajou

The kinkajou is not actually a cat, note prehensile tail. This guy likes bananas, which is why he is visiting.

Serval

The Serval eats rats. That is all I remember.

Ocelot

This ocelot loves Calvin Klein perfume and it smelled like cat pee. Ocelots live in the rain forest and they love climbing.

News!

Hello blog readers (do I have any blog reader? Mom?)! I have good news! My long period of office time is coming to an end. I am going somewhere. Now I can write about something interesting. Well, cooking is interesting too, but even I get bored of talking about our latest conquests in the kitchen. I want to go somewhere, get dirty, meet new people, try new things, etc.

I am going to.... drum roll please... upstate New York! More to come on this later...

Today is about delicious (and football)

This afternoon I am watching a football game with my dear friend Sara. She went to the University of Arkansas and today they are playing Alabama. I did not know this until the day before yesterday when Sara informed me that it would be physically impossible for her to miss the game.

Originally, we thought we would go to a sports bar and watch the game. It turns out that the University of North Carolina was playing at the same time. In Chapel Hill, if UNC is playing, no other football game exists. Therefore, we are sitting in my living room watching the game.

As soon as we found out we were staying home to watch the game, I started to think about football food. A quick internet search confirmed something I had already suspected, I am missing out on an entire culinary tradition by not watching football. A delicious tradition.

I love dip. I love cheese. We made cheesy dip.

Photo by Sara (not me)

Chorizo Queso Dip

2 tablespoons diced onion

1/4 pound chorizo

1 jalapeno pepper, diced (and seeded, optional)

2 tablespoons flour

about 1/2 cup beer (just pick something delicious)

1/4 pound muenster cheese, grated

1/4 pound sharp cheddar cheese, grated

1 big handful chopped cilantro

1. Brown onions with chorizo in a frying pan. When the chorizo is mostly cooked add the jalapeno. After the chorizo starts to brown add the flour and stir it in well.

2. Stir in the beer. Let it make friends with the delicious pan.

3. Add the cheese a little bit at a time, stirring constantly.

4. After the cheese is incorporated, stir in the cilantro. It will be super thick.

5. Now, transfer this into a small oven safe casserole dish. I think the one we used was an 8x8 inch. But this under the broiler on high until the cheese gets bubbly and a little brown.

6. Now eat this with chips, bread, or a spoon. Must be consumed with beer.

It took us about 10 minutes for three people to finish this. I might double the recipe for larger groups.

If this is what football tastes like, I like football.

How to make your GPS stop smelling like armpit

First a little background. My very first "real" job was a summer seasonal job as a cartographic aide at Chaco Canyon. I do not have the energy or time to explain Chaco here, but if you really must know more go here or here. The short story is that this place is a sort of Mecca for archaeologists (and a lot of other sometimes slightly crazy new age people). I ended up working at Chaco for a total of three summers and I loved it there. It is a truly beautiful amazing place, full of wonderful people. I could talk forever about the archaeology (and I might in some later post) but here I am going talk about what I actually did in the canyon.

Although my Masters degree is in archaeology and I got an undergraduate degree in anthropology (which I working on at the time). I double majored in geography and in Chaco Canyon, the archaeological mecca, I worked for the natural resources division as a cartographer. So, in the shadows of these great sites, I made maps and collected GPS data (like this picture only I had a park service uniform on, which on me looked sexy).

Now this is a skill that has come in extremely useful as an archaeologist, so at work on Friday I decided to finally update the software on our GPS units. Just like the park service (and pretty much every other geographically inclined professional), we use Trimble units, which are really tough, pretty accurate little yellow GPS units.

I opened up the cases the units are stored in and I quickly remembered the last project we used the units at (a survey in 100 degree plus heat in Tennessee). I also remembered why archaeology is NOT a glamourous profession. The unit smelled like fermented armpit sweat. Worse than Derek's hockey bag, worse than the time I left a slice of pizza in the work truck for a week. I almost lost my breakfast. It was not subtle either, you did not have to get up close to smell it.

Being the charming person I am, I made everyone in the office smell the Trimble. Then we puzzled about how to make the smell go away. One coworker voted for not even trying because, "it will just get stinky again." I tried cleaning off the surface with disinfectant. But, clearly the mold had crept into the crevices. Then another suggested using those little anti-moisture packets that come with your shoes (or your sushi seaweed wraps, I am such a yuppie). Can you tell I work with all men from these comments?

In the end, we ended up putting the unit in a bag with some rice (due to a lack of those little moisture absorbing packets). It seemed to work. So there you go. That is how to make your very expensive little computer stop stinking. Oh, I love my job.

A Cannon Ball Landed Here

During our Delaware Beach vacation we all rode our bikes to the town of Lewes. This was mostly just a cute town now, but it has a sort of awesome history.

The town was the first in the state of Delaware dating to 1631. It was settled by the Dutch, although they did not make it long. Now there is a replica of a Dutch town hall in Lewes, but it was built in 1931.

That is not what I found particularly amusing about Lewes. There is one house near the harbor with a cannon ball in its foundation. Not near its foundation, no this cannon ball is embedded in the foundation. This cannon ball is from the War of 1812.

It sort of blows my mind that after the War of 1812, then the Civil War, industrial revolution, Vietnam, and everything else that this cannon ball has been commemorated so faithfully. It has been cemented into place so it will forever mark the place where the house was struck by the damn Brits. Thank you Lewes. I really appreciate these quirky American historical sites. I know they are everywhere, but they never get old.

Labor Day

On Thursday afternoon Derek and I decided to head up north to visit Derek's aunt and uncle at their house on Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. They spent the weekend completely spoiling us.

The only "dark" cloud on the weekend was that I had to work on Friday. It is a nasty business this work thing, no one tells you that when you are done slaving away on college degrees you are expected to work 40 (!?!?) hours a week. This upsets me until I get a paycheck. Oh, that is why this is better than being a carefree student!

Anyway, I digress. We went up to the beach and, despite the dire hurricane warnings (Ha Earl!), the weather was great. Amazing actually. I had not been outside without feeling like I was sweating gallons of water since May. I do think the nice people on the weather channel were a bit disappointed in Earl's poor performance. I could see it in their faces.

We went to the beach and the salt marsh. We walked along the boardwalk. Apparently I was deprived as a child because I did not know that all of these fabulous junk foods existed on the board walk. We ate freshly cut french fries, frozen custard, and carmel corn. That was just a sampling of the offerings. I opted out of funnel cake and salt water taffy.

There were also games to play on the board walk. Wonderful, old-fashioned carnival games. It made me feel like I was living in the 1950's.

To work off all of these calories we went on bike rides. Then we came back and ate more.

After this exhausting daily routine went to bed and slept like the dead and woke up to do it again the next day.

Then we had to go home. Sad. But the cat was happy to see us and we were happy to see him.