Iz Famous!

I recently traveled to Philly for the ACRL conference where I presented with a colleague about a Wikipedia project we piloted last Fall. Check out this sweet write up in Inside Higher Ed. Professional Nicci is so famous!

Look how professional I look in this photo by Emily DeWan!

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A Culinary Tour of Places Nicci Thinks are Too Cold

I just returned to sunny Houston from a two-conference marathon of a trip. I went to VRA/ARLIS in Minneapolis and ACRL in Philly. Both places had snow. Both places also had food--some of it quite good!

The highlight of Minneapolis was Hell's Kitchen, where they make their own everything. They gave me a free jar of homemade peanut butter with my order and they made their own ketchup for their handmade sweet potato fries for heaven's sake. So yummy. I didn't get too many photos, because I was a little entranced with the live music scene there.

At the Mall of America, I had some yummy gelato:

And a delicious beet salad at Crave where everything was locally sourced.

Then it was off to Philly for Reading Terminal Market:

and the beloved Continental.

Best lobster mac ever. Mmm.

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Philadelphia

After visiting Toronto, we cruised on over to Philly for my brother's graduation:

It was great fun! Philly is known for its awesome markets, which provided us with sustenance for breakfast and lunch every day and had a lot of other cool stuff besides. I would love to live by one of these markets:

We took in a lot of Philly's sights, including the Liberty Bell and a statue of Rocky outside the Philly art museum (the steps he runs up in the movie are the front of this museum):

Gene and Matt are trying to be funny, but I'm not interested -- it was freaking hot!

We also did a lot of walking around:

and my dad took a crap ton of pictures (surprise, surprise):

So, yeah, what could be more fun than walking around in the heat seeing "sights" while my dad took a million pictures?

No, seriously, we had a great time. The best part, however, was definitely the food. Each night we had at least 11 people at dinner; it was a crazy party! At least, I had a good time:

There was even dancing:

So hey, Philly, we salute you! And congrats again to Gene... I mean, finish your thesis!

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