TV fix

Can't believe it has been two months since I posted! Such failure on my part but I have a few updates of things that have happened in these last two months.

A few weeks ago (conveniently during the Olympics -- which I have an unhealthy obsession with), our TV stopped turning on correctly. It would blink the green button as if it was trying to turn on, and then not end up turning on. We could trick it by pressing the on button for a long time (like 5 minutes) and then quickly toggle on/off until it finally turned on. So, we did that for a few times, until it just didn't turn on at all. So, after messing with the power cord, we got one more turn on in, and then proceeded to leave the TV on for about 3 days because I NEEDED to watch the end of the Olympics (there was ladies figure skating and I wasn't about to miss that!).

As this was going on, we googled a bit and found out that the problem was most likely busted capacitors in the power supply. After some searching, we found that we could buy a kit off of Amazon that had the replacement capacitors for our specific TV. We figured if the TV was actually done-zo, spending $16 now wouldn't make a dent in the price of a new TV so it was worth a try. Here, I have to mention that this TV is at least 10 years old, if not older. It's also a nice 40'', which now is not anything amazing, but 10 years ago, was pretty darn cool. So, while it's totally understandable that it would be dying, we figured it was worth fixing it if we could.

The kit arrived and looked just like a bunch of capacitors:

The kit came with instructions on how to take the TV apart so we followed everything and made it to the power supply. Unfortunately, since we were (or rather, I was) so excited, there are no pictures of this process. Pretty much it involved lots of unscrewing and taking apart. The hardest part was getting the 16-pin cables out of the power supply board -- but after some wedging here and there, we got them unstuck (and then I promptly labeled them to make sure we didn't mess anything up upon reassembly). The power supply board did have at least three busted capacitors, circled in the next two pictures (you can see they are busted because they're bulging up): 

The next part was done by Nate because his soldering skills are much more up-to-date than mine, and he didn't want me getting close to any kind of lead. He took the power supply board to lab and took out all of the old capacitors and put in all of the new ones. The new ones looked shiny and new and, mostly importantly, flat: 

Then we reinstalled the board into the TV (you can see my cable labeled "right" and "left" in the left picture below): 

With all the cables back, we started to put the TV back together (we had a baggy of about 20-30 screws to screw back in): 

Finally, with the back and stand back on, we put the TV back up and plugged everything in. We turned it on and it worked!! This is my face below upon seeing that it was working perfectly. Nate said that this is what makes the project complete. 

It has worked without a hitch for the last month or so. In the end, we spent $16 to fix an originally $1500 TV. Today, this type of TV sells for closer to $500-800ish, but either way, we saved tons of money on this. And we have a sense of accomplishment for getting it fixed ourselves. Yay! 

Jacket Improvements

I guess this is a combination of an improvement project and a craft. I love my Eddie Bauer jacket and I've worn it for the last few winters. However, it stopped fitting me around the new year, so I needed to improvise for the rest of this winter. At first, I was very into these expanders, but I thought the price was way too high. Then, I spent some time looking up zippers on Amazon so I could make one myself, but zippers are complicated and it seemed way too much trouble. From the first year or two of grad school, I had a jacket that was WAY too big for me. I bought it thinking I would be wearing a bunch of sweaters underneath it, but even with a sweater, there is so much space that wind just goes inside it. However, at the moment, the large size actually works well. The issue with the jacket now is the ripped pockets and the badly attached hood. So, I decided in order to use this jacket for the rest of this (freezing cold) winter, I needed to fix these things.

I started off with the pockets. I don't quite understand why they ripped out, but somehow one side of each pocket was completely ripped. I decided to remove both pockets completely so I could make new ones to put in there. The pockets were also ridiculously small. Since I hate wearing a purse in the winter (really this is not limited to the winter, but it's particularly annoying to have bag on top of a huge bulky coat), I wanted the pockets to be more functional. Ideally, I wanted to have my wallet, cell phone, and keys in my pockets with enough room for my hands, too. I feel like guys don't have these problems, but women's pockets are so tiny and non-functional! Anyway, I decided to make better, larger, non-ripped pockets. I drew a rough pattern around the old pockets I cut out.

Then, I pinned the pattern on to the jacket to make sure the size was right.

Looks good! I actually ended up making the pockets a bit deeper (~1.5 inches) than the pattern. 

I cut them out of the fabric I had left-over from my Halloween skirt. I really like this fabric because it is slightly velvety on one side and pretty darn thick. I used my sewing machine to sew the pockets together. I was scared of using my sewing machine because last time I used it, it got badly gunked up from the stick-on-velcro in the Halloween costume. However, I took everything apart and let the pieces soak in nail polish remover for about five minutes and that nicely did the trick. It worked perfectly after that... well almost.

It's hard to see, but these are sewn everywhere but the opening. Also, as you can see, I failed to iron these. I really should have but I was feeling too lazy so they have a few creases. Oh well. No one is going to see the inside and/or know. 

After the pockets were done, I pinned them into the jacket. I maneuvered the jacket (this thing is huge and heavy, btw) and the pinned pocket under the machine. I think I went two stitches and the needle broke!! So much for a working machine. Oh well. The fabric of the jacket is super thick so I'm not too surprised. However, I decide this was my cue to hand sew in the pockets. I have to say, it wasn't super easy because the fabric was quite thick but hand sewing let me have a bit more control over where I was going and therefore, making my stitches neater in the end. I think the pockets turned out well, and they are HUGE! I made it so the velvety side was inside, so my hands could touch that.

Top: The outside looks exactly the same.

Bottom: Looking inside, into the velvety-ness. You can see a few (neat) stitches, but in general, they look pretty good. 

Right: If I flip the pockets inside out, you can see how HUGE they are! So exciting!

The other issue with the jacket was that the hood was attached by five small elastics that fit around five small buttons. Unfortunately, the elastic had broken (maybe from the cold? I don't know) so they were way too stretched out, and one of the buttons had fallen off. Not only that, but this attachment made it so that there was a lot of space (for wind and cold) between the collar and the hood. I really wanted the hood attached permanently and closely to the collar, so I decided to take off the elastics and buttons and just sew it on.

I pinned everything and then maneuvered it under the machine again (with a new needle). This time, I sewed about a quarter of the hood onto the collar before the needle broke. However, due to the thickness, the stitches looked TERRIBLE. So, I decided to take it out and hand sew it. At this point, I kind of regretted even working on the hood because hand sewing was HARD.  I bent a needle quite badly while hand sewing, so I know it wasn't just me. This took me two days, because it was so frustrating and painful (my nails and fingers hurt for days!). Finally, I finished sewing on the hood and I decided to sew a button on either end of the collar to make sure it had a very strong connection on the two ends. In the end, I am so glad I persevered and did this. The hood feels so much more secure and warmer! I am so excited about this more functional jacket. I wish the weather would warm up a bit, though, because at this point it's way too cold to go comfortably outside, even with the best jacket!

Left: From the outside, the hood (to the left) is tightly sewn on. 

Right: On the inside of the hood, it is sewn on to the collar along the seam that is vertical in this picture. The button marks one side where it is more tightly attached. 

2013 in Review

This year was full of traveling. Just for fun, here is all the places I went to starting a year ago:

December 23rd - December 30th: Costa Rica - Christmas break
December 30th - January 3rd: Omaha, NE - New Year's
January 3rd - January 6th: Des Moines, IA - Jenna's wedding
January 6th - January 8th: Omaha, NE - few days before going back
January 13th - January 20th: Houston, TX - Lab collaboration
March 24th - March 25th: NY, NY - Picking up my passport
March 27th - April 1st: San Diego, CA - Hanging out with my parents & spring break
April 14th - April 17th: Houston, TX - Lab collaboration
April 25th - April 29th: Jamaica - Seeing Anton & Lyuba
June 6th - June 13th: Estes Park, CO - Hanging out with Nate's family
July 6th: Martha's Vineyard, MA - Biking with Olga
July 7th - July 12th: Dover, VT - Conference
July 12th - July 14th: St. Louis, MO - Rachelle's wedding
July 29th - August 4th: Houston, TX - Lab collaboration
August 25th - September 1st - Ukraine - Hanging out with my grandparents
September 1st - September 9th - Italy - Anton & Lyuba's wedding
September 9th - September 15th - Russia - Hanging out with my parents
October 31st - November 10th - Mexico - Conference
November 15th - November 20th - San Diego, CA - Conference
November 26th - December 2nd - Omaha, NE - Thanksgiving
December 7th - December 14th - Switzerland - Post-doc interviews
December 22nd - December 27th - Miami & Mexico - Christmas break cruise

So of the 369 days shown here, I have been out of town for 124 of them. That means almost exactly a third. Crazy! This amount of traveling also means 45 flights (15 international, 30 domestic), 7 road-trips of more than 3 hours, and a bazillion frequent flyer miles. The frequent flyer miles are way too hard to calculate because there were a few tickets bought on miles or credit card reward points, and I have 3 frequent flyer numbers that I use interchangeably. I flew enough to circle the earth at least once. Seeing as I have been pregnant since July, this fetus has traveled more than most normal people and he doesn't even know it! Actually, Nate has only been to two more countries than Chase, and it was only one more country until this past week when Nate went to Mexico for the first time and extended his lead (since Chase had technically been to Mexico in November).

In terms of the apartment, this year, we replaced our microwave and our windows. We also had many, many house guests -- both short-term and long-term. We had two students for Bio department recruitment (two weekends), two students over the summer (3 weeks and 1 week), and one friend-of-a-friend (8 weeks), along with Sakina, Olga, and Liz all visiting. I may have forgotten some people, but suffice it to say that our apartment has seen lots of different visitors!

On the craft front, my sewing machine has had quite the workout: a blouse, a bright skirt, cropped cardigans, baby jacket, and candy crush costume. I also did other crafts such as crocheted bears, paint nite, and For the Makers, and some paper crafts.

Other than all the fun crafts I have planned in 2014, we will be putting the apartment up for rent this year as we move to Switzerland, so that will be all chronicled on here (hopefully in a more timely fashion than the last few months). Happy new year and here is to 2014!

Mexico Trip

Another intense trip I took this Fall was to Mexico. Specifically, I went to Mexico City and to a town 4 hours north-west of Mexico City called Guanajuato. The best part is that we traveled there on Halloween, so we were there just in time for Dia de los Muertos. In general, growing up in San Diego, I was very weary of Mexico City, thinking it was very dangerous and dirty. In actuality, it is just as dangerous as any big city in the US (aka much, much safer than I imagined), but it is beautiful and full of culture! It is also HUGE and full of traffic; it's hard to wrap your mind around how large it really is!

We started off looking at the center of Mexico City and went through the Templo Mayor and the archeological museum. It was so interesting! So many things to learn about. Then, we walked through the Mexico City Cathedral, which was very beautiful.

Since it was around Dia de los Muertos, many public places had offerings set up. These varied from place to place and were really interesting to look at. The Cathedral even had one! We went to many different museums (including the museums of Frida Kahlo and Dolores Olmedo) that had offerings set up to different themes or artists. 

Something really cool that we got to see right outside Mexico City was Teotihuacan. This is a ruin site that consists of two main pyramids -- both climbable. We climbed on top of the higher one, the sun pyramid, from which we could see a nice view of the smaller one, the moon pyramid. The view was amazing!

You can see the moon pyramid to right and behind me in the right hand picture. 

Guanajuato was a really cool town, also. We were there for a conference, but we got to look around a little bit. We went to the Diego Rivera museum there and on a Callejoneada, which is like a singing walk around the town lead by a small band. 

On our way back to Mexico City, we stopped by a town called San Miguel de Allende. There was a beautiful cathedral there, and some more beautiful streets and architecture. It was a nice town to visit!

In all, I had a wonderful time in Mexico. I was able to see it from a completely different angle and really experience the culture and art, especially during Dia de los Muertos. These pictures also don't include the wonderful and delicious food we ate! All in all, it was so much fun and I can't wait to go back again!

Candy Crush Halloween Costume

This year for Halloween, I decided to make a Candy Crush costume. Candy Crush is a highly addicting game for iPhone (and technically Facebook) which I have been playing for quite a while and have made it to the "end" a few times (before each level update -- I think I'm on level 485 at the moment). I got the idea for this costume from this youtube video, but I changed it up a bit.

I first made patterns for all six pieces and stapled them to the appropriate colored felt. I decided on felt because it is so cheap and on stapling because I didn't have enough pins! For the blue pieces, since they have a band down the middle, I put in the band with an extra small piece of felt. After sewing all the pieces (which surprisingly went incredibly quickly), I removed all of the staples and patterns (this part took quite a while)! Here are all of the pieces stapled and cut out, a close-up of the blue pieces, and all of the pieces of paper removed after sewing:

After removing all of the staples and patterns, I turned the pieces inside out (also very time consuming!). I made 6 of each color with one of those being stripe-y, and three of the brown ones with multi-colored dots. Here they are all laid out along with detailed shots of a few of them: 

Next, I stuffed and closed up all the pieces. I also thought this would be time consuming, but it was relatively quick. Here are all of the cute pieces: 

I went ahead and put stick-on velcro on the back of all the pieces. I also made a very simple skirt (out of some black material I had) with a elastic waistband.

On the skirt, I put the other side of the stick-on velcro. I decided to do 4 rows of 5 pieces on the front and the same thing on the back. Then I started putting the pieces on: 

All done (I thought)! I took a few pictures of me wearing the skirt and found out that the velcro -- especially the side stuck onto the skirt -- was not too secure (you can see how one piece is missing off of the back view!). On the pieces, I used a glue gun to attach the velcro more securely. On the skirt, I sewed over the velcro. The sewing over velcro turned out to be a terrible, terrible idea. The sticky part on the velcro not only gunked up my needle, but also the inside of my sewing machine. I had to clean everything out and it was so icky! I do not recommend sewing over stick-on velcro. Ever. I have definitely learned my lesson. Either way, after I secured the velcro on both sides, the pieces stayed on a lot better. 

I went to a Halloween party wearing my costume (right hand picture, with the cobweb) and people not only got a kick out of the Candy Crush aspect but were also delighted when I told them they could move the pieces around. I had so much fun making this and wearing it! The pieces are really cute!

Ukraine, Italy, and Russia Trip

As I'm in Geneva right now, waiting to fly back to the US early tomorrow, I figured I'd finally update about my Europe trip this past September.

I first arrived in Kiev for a week, where I spent some quality time at the summer house (aka one of my favorite places in the world).

Then, my cousin, uncle, and aunt-to-be flew to Italy where their wedding was to be held. We spent the first night in Genoa, and then settled in our villa in the cute little town of Portofino. Our villa was situated in a picturesque part overlooking the sea and Portofino. However, this meant that to get to it, we had to climb up a hill for 20 minutes. We did have our own swimming access, which was wonderful and scared me really badly due to sketchy-ness of the stairs connecting the dock-part to the steps up to the villa.

Genoa was beautiful port city which had very Italian streets. Nate, my brother, uncle, and cousin posing in the street. 

View from the dock of the villa and the rickety stairs I was really scared of. Nate, my brother and cousin making fun of me at the bottom. 

View of the town of Portofino from a villa (not the one we were staying at) at the top. 

The wedding was in a cute little church, only accessible by boat. The reception was extravagant and went late, late, late into the night.

On the last day, my mom and I traveled to Cinque Terre. Because we got a late start on the day (due to aforementioned reception), we only made it to two of the towns (Monterosso & Riomaggiore), but they were amazing! We heard lots of good things about Vernazza and were meaning to see that on the way back but due to train schedules, it was just impossible. Next time!

Nice map stolen from Wikitravel that shows the five towns. 

The two towns we did make it to. So cute! The second had so many stairs!!

Finally, my parents and I traveled to Moscow, where I spent some more quality time at another summer house. This one was recently remodeled and was just so awesome. It now has a shower that plays the radio! My parents and I also went into the city and once again, I was overwhelmed with how Americanized everything has become in large European cities. We saw lots of American restaurants -- even a Krispy Kreme. Even here in Geneva, there is Starbucks and McDonalds on every corner. I even saw a Pain Quotidien today!

Remodeled summer house -- once built by my great, great, great grandfather. 

Martha's Vineyard

Olga visited for July 4th weekend and on that Friday, we went to Martha's Vineyard for a day.

We woke up early and drove down to Wood's Hole to take the ferry to the Vineyard. We wanted to get some Pie in the Sky before getting on the ferry but underestimated the available parking in Wood's Hole. Turns out we had to drive back about 20 minutes for parking and take a bus back to Wood's Hole (another 25-30 minutes). Therefore, we grabbed a later ferry than anticipated, but still made it to the island before noon.

Once on the ferry, I called a bike shop on the Vineyard that I had googled. We were able to reserve two mountain bikes to bike around the island. We got a great deal: something like $35 for two bikes for the day (helmets and a lock included). We were able to grab some lunch before setting off on our ride.

Here is the route we took:

We started at Oak Bluffs and went to Edgartown (but didn't quite make it) and then came back through Vineyard Haven to Oak Bluffs. We tried to geocache but the only one we ended up getting involved us badly bitten by small bugs, so we decided to cut our loses and stop there.

Here is a view of our bikes at the closest point we got to Edgartown:

Some photos from Vineyard Haven (where we ate some yummy ice cream and checked out a cute book shop) next to the water:

And finally, one last photo of Oak Bluffs on our way back to the ferry:

In the end, we were on the island for about 7 hours total, biked over 15 miles, ate yummy food, saw some beautiful sights, and got a bit sunburnt in the process. A wonderful day trip!