One Life & The Mystery of Edwin Drood

Thursday night I was invited to see the Premiere US screening of One Life, which is a natural history title from BBC Earth.  Despite some technical difficulties and a late start to the movie, it was a fun evening.  The movie was fantastic and afterwards the director did a question and answer session.  It was interesting to hear him talk about how they filmed the animals.  He was pretty funny and clearly very passionate about the project.

Here is the trailer for the movie:



And then Friday night I saw a musical called The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  It's a very silly musical about a bunch of actors performing a musical rendition of the novel by Charles Dickens.  Dickens died before he finished writing it however, so at the end of the show the audience votes for things like who they think the murder is, who the romantic pairing is, etc.  Then, the show has 8 or 10 different endings depending on what the outcome of the audience voting is.  So basically it was a lot of fun and I'm glad I saw it before it closes in early March.

The stage

And of course because I like to include some kind of video usually:

Philly Weekend Getaway!

Last weekend was President's Day Weekend and since it was a three day weekend Seth and I decided to have an adventure and decided it would be fun to go to Philadelphia.  It only takes 2 hours on the bus to get there from NYC.  Surprisingly I've never actually been there and I was excited to do all of the touristy things and see museums and the liberty bell.  I feel like we saw everything I really wanted to see.  I'll try to break it up by day and we'll see how well I do in remembering everything we did.

Saturday
We got to Philly a little bit after 12, found the hotel (which was only like 3 blocks from the bus station).  We couldn't check in yet but we were able to leave our bags and then wander the city for a bit.  We met up with the Iodices (close family friends from Colorado) and they gave us the insider's tour of Philly!  It was so much fun :)  We had Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches (my first one ever!)  They were really tasty, but I don't want to even think about what is on that thing.  Here's a clue...the cheese is called "Whiz" and comes in a can.  After that we basically did a huge driving tour of the city.  We saw the Poe house, we went by the penitentiary, we got pastries at this Italian bakery, we drove by U Penn and Drexel in University City, we stopped at the art museum and ran up the Rocky steps, we drove up Camden, NJ and saw the skyline from the other side of the river, and probably other things I'm not even remembering at the moment.

Pastries!

I liked seeing all of the empty cannoli shells - the fill them fresh to order

At the Penitentiary

Outside of the Poe house

Running up the Rocky Steps 1

Running up the Rocky Steps 2

Running up the Rocky Steps 3!

I thought this sign was really cool!
I never knew this was the start of Girl Scout Cookies!

Sunday
Sunday was our historical day so we started by going to take the tour of Independence Hall and saw the Liberty Bell.  It was really really cold but we still walked around and braved the weather.  We also went to the Constitution Center, they had a prohibition exhibit which was pretty interesting.  And then in the evening we saw the Comcast building which has this really awesome video screen in the lobby that was pretty mesmerizing.  We also went to Macys and saw the big organ they have there.

Outside Independence Hall

This is where they signed the declaration of independence

The Liberty Bell!

This was for the prohibition exhibit

Sitting at the prohibition bar

I thought the hall with all the state flags was pretty nice

The outside of the Comcast Building
It's the tallest building in Philly

The video screen in the Comcast building

There was also these statues in the building

Inside the Macys building

Monday
On Monday we went to the Franklin Institute and saw the Titanic exhibit they had.  It was cool as well.  We also walked around and there was this park with giant game pieces so of course we had to stop and take pictures.

This is my favorite Shakespeare quote

And that, in a nutshell, was my weekend in Philly!!

Caramel S'more Cups

It was yet another baking day at work on Monday so of course Sunday I was slaving away with a new recipe.  I love these baking days because it gives me an excuse to experiment and try random recipes from the internet.  This time the theme was Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I found the recipe on the Betty Crocker Website:  http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/caramel-smore-cups/9916aa44-083c-4507-8db9-49d0a92f62f7

They are basically chocolate chip cookie cups with a rolo in the middle, then marshmallows on top, then drizzled with chocolate.  I was hesitant to make them at first because I don't have the mini-muffin pan that was called for, however, the internet didn't fail me.  After googling "what if I don't have a mini-muffin pan?", the internet found the solution!  It turns out you can make your own mini pans by taking tin foil and molding it from something else (in this case the bottom of a mini paper cup), and they still hold their shape if you set them on a baking tray.  I think they worked pretty well!

Step 1: Make mini cupcake pans out of tin foil

Step 2: Bake cookie dough in the tin pans

Step 3: Stick a rolo in each cup
and mini marshmallows on top of that and bake again

Step 4: After they are cool, pull them out of the tins and drizzle with chocolate

Yaaaay!

Eddie the Second

I saw Eddie Izzard again on Thursday night!  He was just as funny the second time, but slightly less hyper.  I think some of the jokes worked better the first time and some of the jokes worked better the second time.  But all in all it was fun to see it twice :)

Friday night we spent snowed in, but really the snow wasn't all that terrible.  There seems to be a fair amount of it outside, but it didn't stop me from going out today.  Mostly it was annoying to get home last night and I got to leave work early because of it.

Eddie The First

Monday night I saw Eddie Izzard perform!  He's a British comedian that I've liked since high school.  I just think he's hysterical.  He is performing in NYC this weekend, which is one of the reasons why this is such a fun city to live in.  If an performer is going to do only a few shows, they are definitely going to be stopping by.  Our seats were in the third row so I could see extremely well.  It was a lot of fun!

the stage

I'm actually going to see it again on Thursday with a different friend.  We'll see if it changes any!