11-21-09

We had breakfast at The Tavern with our dear friends this morning. Jes introduced "Red" and "Purple" to each other while she was in college, and they got married six months later! "Purple" and "Orange" and I have been friends for over 20 years, raising our children together who were all about the same age.

We visited with more friends for lunch, and more friends for afternoon tea- then headed home to Kentucky. I got silly and tried to capture a photo of the amazing cresent moon setting in the west, but got a piece of artwork instead. Got home around 10- made good time.

11-20-09 part 3

Dan picked me up around 2ish and we went for a walk along our beloved
river. Aza called while we were there saying she and T were driving
through town. We met them for tea/coffee and I should have taken a
picture! We are visiting some friends in the morning then heading back
to Old Kentucky.

11-20-09 part 2

Took the trolly from the hospital downtown and ate lunch at my
favorite pizza place ever. From there walked to my old school and the
teachers I knew were out on a field trip. Walked from there to MJ
hospital for my last appointment of the day.

11-20-09 part 1

Woke at 6:15 for my day of exams. Watched the sunrise over
Monticello. It all went OK except for the way my neck was positioned
in the 45 minute MRI. Still hurts. Managed to slather my hands in
numbing Emla cream an hour before the IV poke. No results yet but I
think someone would have called my oncologist if something was awry.
No worries whatsoever.

11-19-09

After working all morning on 1)student evaluations, 2)the NSF grant
proposal, 3)reviewing applications for our faculty opening and 4)
meeting with the STEM Ed team, we headed east toward Virginia over the
rainy foggy misty mountains. I got a kick out of this scene below.
Settled in for the night with our friends.

11-18-09

Which color? Thanks to Sherwin Williams I was able to virtually paint all sorts of colors on the wall. We have our favorite picked out. What's yours?

Leaving tomorrow for C'ville to get my annual cancer screening Friday. Coming up on 5 years as a survivor! Oh but I hate the IV and the needles. Yuck. An entire day of poking and prodding... I'm looking forward to getting it over with then coming home to paint the studio!

11-17-09

Does this remind you of anything? Perhaps this day?
This evening went like this...

7:00pm
Dan: When should we lay the cork flooring?
Chrissy: Half before this weekened and the other half after before Thanksgiving.
Dan: That will never work. {{Sigh}}
Chrissy: Maybe we should do it all at once.
Dan: Good idea. Let's start tonight.
...Lug...Haul...Heave...Ho...
Dan: Well, now that it's empty perhaps we should paint after all.
Chrissy: Good idea. What color????????
10:00 pm

11-16-09

It's getting dark so early, by the time I get home it's scary dark out. These two pictures were taken on my walk home today. The first is the College of Design, which houses the School of Architecture (hint hint, LS). A lovely building with chandeliers inside!

As I got closer to home I could see the traffic piling up, and I loved the silouette of the tree against the setting sun and beautiful clouds. So nice to walk and not be sitting in a car in traffic.

11-14-09

There is a story behind this cake. A co-worker's husband made it and brought it over for dinner this evening. Needless to say we couldn't finish it. Probably because it was 3 feet tall, none of us were name Carol, and even though I feel 65 some days, I'm not. Yet. We had a nice dinner though, and plenty of dessert!

PS We ate home-grown sprouts in our salad. Yumm!

11-14-09: day 6 sprouts

Sprouts look ready to munch on. We'll see how they taste in a salad at dinnertime!

11-13-09

Friday the 13th. Writing group meeting minus one math educator at my house for breakfast and discussion about research articles. I set the camera on the kitchen table and set the timer. Oh, what a day. A visit to a middle school, a meeting with a student, leftovers for dinner then a great movie, "Atonement."

11-12-09

This is where I had breakfast today- at the President's house. Very very nice. Walked there in the morning with Dan, who then carried my sneakers back home. He's so sweet.

Step down for lunch. Hmmmm.... not so nice. Got a migraine afterwards. The apple smelled like Expo Marker. Maybe it was the grape jelly? I dunno... but Dan had to pick me up 'cause I was in too much pain to even take the bus, and came home and went to bed for a few hours. He's so sweet.
Reviewed apps for the math ed position and watched Grays' Anatomy. Rough ending to a good morning.

11-11-09 day 3: little roots

Hey, why does this picture of my sprout-growing system look so much better today??? hu???


Because I got my camera back!
It's like my right arm has re-grown.
It works great.

See me in the reflection of the glass as I take a cool picture of Frisbee at the front door?
So glad to have my camera back. That was quick.

Today I had a couple students over for tea after school. Also got some stuff lined up and some stuff written and some stuff read. Tomorrow I'm having breakfast with the President of the University! Seriously. I was one of a few dozen invited to his home for breakfast and conversation. I hope to get a minute with him at least. I'll see what I can do about sneaking a real photo....

11-10-09 day 2: the draining

Drained water and washed seeds.

Attended faculty meeting today after walking to Chevy Chase for lunch
with friend at French cafe. Wrote a summer grant proposal today.
Productive.

11-9-09 Day 1: the soak

Growing sprouts in my French Press. The first batch was sooo gooood
that it's gonna be a regular happening around here. Took about 4 days,
got a whole French Press full of delicious alfalfa. Did I ever mention
I used to be a sprout farmer? Yep. Ran a sprout operation on Opelika
Road. Dayspring Sprouts. Alfalfa, mung, garbanzo, radish, lentil....
So I'm gonna grow my own again. Nothing like the taste of fresh sprouts.

11-8-09

This is our fig tree all wrapped up in burlap ready to be surrounded by raked leaves, bedded down for the winter. Check back in 2010 to see if the fig tree made it through!
I wrote today until 3pm when Dan convinced me to go on a hike. We headed down to Raven's Run and found that the trails were closing at 4:30pm. So we went on a 45 minute hike. Once again, iPhone camera-quality photos.
This is the Kentucky River, I think. Pretty sure. Had leftover gumbo for dinner. Mmmmm.....

11-7-09

You may think this looks like a normal pumpkin pie, but it's not. Because the photo was taken with an iPhone camera, the color is not true. The pie is a freaking GREEN. It went in the oven orange and came out GREEN. Hey, but it tasted good, and I'm having leftovers tonight. We had green pie and gumbo tonight. Very good stuff with some new friends over to share it with us. At least I had WHITE whipped cream.

11-6-09

Got a call today about my camera. First the guy said it would cost $200 to fix. I talked him down to $160. Still. That's a lot of money. At least it will be fixed soon, and I'll have it back for Thanksgiving.

Today was a doozy. Faculty meeting, teleconference with faculty at Virginia Tech, working on my new idea: Save the Bats (see above), dinner with Izzy's Mom and grocery shopping at night- tired, headachy, etc.

Looking for peace....

11-5-09

Fig tree before bedding down for the winter. After taking this picture I used a rope to bend the branches and form as tight a circle as I could without breaking them. Tomorrow I will wrap the tree in burlap, circumscribe the tree with wire fencing, and fill the gap with leaves for insulation. Hopefully it will once again bear fruit next summer as it did this.

When we first saw this house, it was early spring and the tree was treated in this manner. Knowing that artists lived here, I took it to be a sculpture. An odd sculpture, but none the less. When we moved in and I saw the sculpture gone- and a fig tree in its place, I was quite surprised. Here. I'll post a picture of that "sculpture" as I first saw it. See the branches poking out from the burlap?

4-11-2009

'Twas a good day. I wrote today. And baked pumpkin cookies.
* Note 11/8/09 about those pumpkin cookies. Chrissy realized a couple days later why the cookies tasted remarkably like ginger snaps. She left out the pumpkin. She made ginger cookies. Doh...

11-4-09

I spent time with an old friend today- my Canon PowerShot G1. Found it in the attic, hadn't been touched since 2006 when I let Aza's friend borrow it for the year he spent working in a soup kitchen in DC. Got to see all his soup kitchen photos on it after I charged it up. Well, it's so old it took forever to find a driver for it. Once found and installed, it still took for-evvver to get this photo on my computer. See? I hung the second curtain this evening. No blood, no sweat, no tears.

Had a good day. The best part about the day: finding a photo on Facebook of Squirt and Bosnian Kaos from 2006. I didn't even recognize the kid. Here it is. It's as precious as can be! Which long haired Metallica fan is my then-15-year-old son?


Oh, and to be fair... here they are two years later with slightly shorter hair. Oh how I miss those boys. One is in England, one in Texas, one in Virginia and the Squirt is in Colorado. They grew up in our basement...



Rented "The Pianist" and we will watch it tonight.

11-3-09

Woke up at 6:15 this morning. It was nice to have some time before heading off to school. Here's Frisbee sad to see me go. Worked all day. Mailed a couple packages (one being my camera sent off to Atlanta for repair) and went to the store. After a dinner of BLATs and salad with toasted pumpkin seeds, feta, avodado and tomato, I started on the home improvement project of the day- putting up copper curtain rods in the study.

Sliced my finger on the copper tube cutter, couldn't drill the holes in the wall, cut the other pipe (other window) too short, and had to relocate the fitting due to a metal plate in the wall. Nothing is ever easy.

11-2-09

Happy Birthday Papa. I miss you so much...

2008

11-1-09

How to Replace an Old Light Fixture in Hallway

Step 1: Go to Home Depot and buy a new light fixture.
Step 2: Come home and rip out old light fixture. Make sure switch is off.
Step 3: Saw metal bracket so it fits in existing hole. Drill an extra hole you won't use. Use 6 drill bits. Almost start a fire in the garage.
Step 4: Mount metal bracket with wrong screws. Laugh at silliness and re-mount with correct ones.

Step 5: Strip insulation off wires and use wire nuts to connect white, black and ground wires.
Step 6: Put all wiring carefully into hole in ceiling and then secure the new light fixture thingy to the ceiling. Feel proud of yourself.

Step 7: Try and put round thing around light fixture thing and realize it had to go on first. Undo and then repeat steps 5 and 6.

Step 8: Start shaking and feeling faint as you hold light fixture in one hand and try to re-attach the wire nuts to the black, white and ground wires with the other hand while standing on kitchen chair. Make lots of noises as you feel yourself blacking out.

Step 9: Call your husband to finish the job while you sit with your head between your knees and then collapse on bed.

Ta da!