There is this

It has been a long fall. I have emails (personal, not work) in the queue I haven't responded to (sorry, sis), I've run some, I've has some student who I wish were not dealing with what they are dealing with, I'm still dating (maybe more on this word choice later), I have made great friends and close close aquaintences here, I am going to see Dar Williams this weekend (Woohoo!), and I have six weeks with no classes starting very soon (to be clear, this does NOT mean six weeks off). There is still this though:

Bill: When do you want to go see the movie 'the interview'?
Jenski: Don't you mean 'the theory of everything'?
Bill: Double feature!
Jenski: That would be quite the funny date night.
Bill:It'll be an upper and a downer.
Jenski: But if we go to that theater where we go, we can sneak in a bottle of wine!
Bill: I'll wear baggy pants.
Jenski: That's what winter coats are for.
Bill: True. Cold weather is smuggling weather.
Jenski: I wonder why we don't hear more about those Canadians {Sorry, Spark} smuggling drugs, alcohol, people, and exotic pets into the country?
Bill: Because they sail down Lake Michigan which is full of scoundrels.
Jenski: Corrupt Wisconsinites!
Bill: Exactly! They love cheese and crime.
Jenski: We're funny.
Bill: Haha. Yup.

The count-down

I am lucky. I still have another week before classes start. I have been relatively productive during break, but could have done more planning and prep before now if I had cared to. At the same time, I am definitely not going into the semester exhausted, which is a good thing.

I am not sure if I have mentioned it, but I am teaching a lecture/lab course plus one intro lab this semester. In the sciences we figure out staffing by contact hours, so I will be in the classroom teaching for 9 hours a week. The intro lab is no big deal - there is a person who preps the labs - but I will also be sitting in on the lecture so I know what the students are learning and also sitting in on a lab before mine so I know what to teach - that will add another 6 hours to my in-class time each week. The other class I am teaching I have decided to do from scratch even though I have my predecessor's materials, so it will be fairly time consuming to generate the course material. My knowledge is different from my predecessors, so it was either learn what she had taught and teach it, or draw on what I know and make up new labs. So I went with the latter.

Unfortunately I will not have my research set up before the start of classes, so I am not sure if I will be able to use my research in my teaching lab this year, but will down the road!

I realized last week that I actually have to be putting together lectures for the semester. Tomorrow, I start my one-lecture-prep-a-day plan. Over the course of the week, I need to outline the first few labs too. I am excited about the course, as it is upper level, and am trying to hold the self-doubt at bay. I know I can do it, I just need to do it.

In other news, I painted this. It will be fired and ready to pick up this week. I picked it as a pet dish, but we will see if she gets to use it or not. I painted the flower on the inside figuring it could be a water dish, and then I could still see my handy work. A few of us went for a ladies' night at one of those paint-your-own studios, and we all did completely different designs. It will be fun to see how they look after being glazed and fired!

In other-other news, I spent a fun couple of days in Philadelphia this weekend.

 The stairs Rocky runs on.

 The Liberty Bell, which I learned was cracked from day 1.

 Independence hall.

 The room in which the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed. George Washington sat in the chair in the front!

 Random alley...

I have also managed to run 3- 4 times per week, thanks to some friendly motivation. For some reason I don't feel like I am getting any faster or that it is getting any easier. I think I need to try running without music, as boring as that sounds, to figure out what my natural pace is. It is on my To Do list for tomorrow.

My motivation to keep on top of my work this semester is going to be more short trips like this. 7 days to the new semester and counting...

No joke

I stopped by church this evening because I had the time to help set up for a big rummage sale this weekend. It is also youth group night, so my two favorite men were there. In moving all of the goods from the room in which they were stored to where the rummage sale will be, RM was wondering what one of the large tools was. So with he, myself, and two teenage boys in the room, he says, "It's a concrete vibrator."

This is what a concrete vibrator looks like.

I am pretty sure the rest of the conversation was lost on the teenagers, as they were trying to figure out what to carry. I just kept kinda laughing, and RM and I were going back and forth wondering what you use a concrete vibrator for. I finally left saying, "It's all yours."

If you would like a description on what these are for, this is a great one.  It sounds like the critical things to consider when choosing a concrete vibrator are shaft size and vibrations per minute.

You can't make this stuff up.

Out and around

Groundhogs at the zoo. They are adorable.

Butterfly garden at the zoo.

A Great Blue Heron chillin' and reflectin' in the lake.

Can you see the heron's prints going across this picture? Its prints were huge!

My nephew put on a cooking show, complete with accent, on my porch when they visited. My niece assisted in making a pesto with various leaves and flowers from my garden. We even ate some.

 Found a bug emerging in my garden.

Out on a walk, I came across this fence.

Holiday-crafty

I debated about inviting people over in December to decorate cookies. After seeing this post of homemade ornaments, though,  I am thinking that would be fun and involve less monotonous cooking. (I would clearly still bake, because I like to, but just not bake a whole bunch of the same shaped cookies.)

Maybe a good compromise for CF and I to do a tree together is to not use any ornaments from either of our stashes, but to make them all! This could seriously end up being a problem because his tree is always white lights and red and/or silver ornaments. Mine is not.

As an aside, if anyone has a good way to convince another person that light colored curtains and light colored walls and light colored wood and pale flooring and white lights on a tree with no color other than red can get BORING, do let me know.

Fun times

I am ready for some regular old weeks and weekends after having toooo much fun the past month?! With only a couple of weeks between my vacation and a mini-vaca this past weekend, there's been lots going on!

We were heading out to Portland, OR for my brother's wedding. He and his former girlfriend-turned-fiancee-turned-wife really are married now too. It is FB-official.

Even though our weekend was cut short, it was still a lot of fun. It was as great of a wedding as they get! I loved meeting all the other wonderful people in my new sister-in-law's life. She and my brother have surrounded themselves with funny, loving, nice, fun people. They had a ceremony that was perfect for them.

I will start at the beginning though. This is how CF and I started our trip. For the record, it was 11:30 a.m. our time, which is basically lunch time for me. We were at the airport bar during our layover, and really I took the picture because of the glass of dum-dums in the back. The oatmeal stout I had on the left was pretty darn good too.

We met up with a grad school friend, her hubby, and their almost-2-year-old at the zoo and then headed to the Rose Gardens in PDX. I have been to the rose garden before, so I did not take many photos. You cannot not take a photo though, so here is one from this trip.

At the wedding, we had home-made flowers for our dresses.

Succulents for the bouquets.

CF and I then met up with the grad school friend and her family for a hike and picnic at Mt. Hood and Mirror Lake. I think I have posted photos of Mt. Hood before too, but you can never have too many.

You could also see Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Jefferson from where we were, but my photos are only good enough to document that fact and not necessarily to share.

Oh. CF and I went to see these guys a while back too. They were AWESOME!

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by cloud
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light
See the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colours came out
It was a beautiful day
A beautiful day
Don't let it get away

Today I spent doing laundry, running errands, and reading a manuscript that CF has to send to his advisor. I suppose I should do a bit of my own work before I head to bed!

Whirlwind-ish

The first exciting thing that happened on my vacation, was that after 13 hours of driving to my parents' house, my 2001 Jetta finally hit 100k. I smiled a little to myself because it happened at the top of this big hill that has lots of stop lights and my car is a standard. I remember driving up that hill the one time I got to drive my Dad's Saab and worrying that I would stall and/or roll back and hit the person behind me. Didn't happen in the Saab nor in the Jetta.

The second exciting thing was at my parents' house. They live on a mountain. In the woods. With woodchucks and bear as neighbors. In the winter you can almost make out the next house through the woods. Well, my parents were not home (I knew this, but wanted to break up the drive to RI). I got there after dark and hurriedly brought my bag into the car, shut the house door, and rearmed the alarm. Then I spent a couple of hours telling myself the sound on the windows was bugs. I did sleep in the bedroom closest to my car with my key (and car alarm button!), my cell phone, and the house phone near by. Then there was a BIG old thunderstorm and wind. Normally I do not mind thunderstorms, and this would not have been much different. Except the TV turned on by itself. Twice.

My car had a bunch of leaves all stuck to it from the wind, and I survived. Then I headed off to my college reunion in the morning. I have pictures of people, but we will stick to a couple from around campus.

 

I got to see Danielle after many years at the end of the weekend, and her friend Sea Queen, who did a fair amount of my training when I was a research tech when she was leaving and whose father apparently works in my field.

Then I headed up to the Boston area and went guest-room hopping and eating and pretending to do work occasionally because my PI wants my paper done (and I do too, but not really on vacation).

THEN on Thursday of last week, CF flew into Boston for the Jack and Jill shower for my Bro and his fiancee. My sister made a great cake (mango spice cake with coconut cream frosting and homemade fondant letters) and cookies. Because she can.

I managed to coerce men into playing gift bingo by telling them there were prizes. My niece and my nephew got to work their first keg - I am pretty sure no cup was empty all day. I do not know about my future sis-in-law, but my brother seemed pretty excited about getting home-boiled maple syrup and a fancy shmancy vacuum. And the night was topped off with a fire in the fire pit, complete with weiners and s'mores. Somehow CF and I hit the road in the morning to drive the 13ish hours back here...not until 9:30 a.m. though.

Anyway. I think I got a lot "done" while I was back East. In no particular order, I got to:

• Catch up on the good and not-so-good with friends from many stages in my life - college, research tech years, and grad school
• Put on a fancy dress and test my shoes for my Bro's wedding
• Visit several restaurants from college and grad school that I miss
• See things I have missed - a friend's house, friends' 14 month old pivot (she saved the first steps for just after I left. Jerk.), another friend's six month old (and a grad school guy friend who refused to put said baby down?!)
• See things I got there just in time for: a friend's ultrasound photo of her growing "parasite" that they just started telling people about, an engagement, a new apartment
• Finally get frames for my college and graduate degrees
• Drink too much on three distinct occasions
• Experience about the best weather I think Boston has had in a row in a long time

Not bad, huh?

Crafty

A groupon I bought was for a local paint-your-own ceramics store that also does fused glass projects. I used Valentine's Day as an excuse to make CF go with me. I also did not tell him what exactly we were doing until a couple of hours before hand because I did not want to listen to him make fun of it. I told him that there used to be a show on TV called 'Blind Date', and that what we were doing is an activity that they would have done on that TV show.

Guess who did which one.

When I did tell him what we were doing and he gave me a questioning look and said, "I'm not very creative." I told him he could do something manly like a sports-related project.

When we were finished with out projects and leaving the store, he admitted it was fun.

Then we went to the hardware store where he bought and stocked a toolbox...Even though I already have all the tools he wanted to buy, but that is another post.

Whassup?

I have been doing all sorts of stuff and thinking about all sorts of things to post about thanks to life and NPR. For now, I'll bombard you with what I have been doing that is not all work or thought-provoking. It is Friday and my brain is tired after all.

Earlier in the summer my strawberries came in the thin wood quarts instead of the green papery ones that fall apart. I felt like I should do something with them, so I tried out the paint I bought intending it for furniture and then found useful spots for them.

 

I have been looking for something to put my salt & pepper grinders in so they do not make a mess of the counter.

And all those travel games would be easier to dust around if I could move them en masse.

I like the red color, so I went ahead and tried it on a small piece of furniture. My bedroom furniture is on the list to redo, but a couple of the pieces I decided to stain. I think I will use the red on one of the dressers though. This was some inexpensive small shelf that I use as a nightstand now.

A little primer and paint later...

Lessons I learned from painting this: it is difficult to cover white primer with a dark paint. I will totally tint the primer next time. Definitely use a real brush, not a foam brush, for painting. I learned this early enough for coat two of the paint, but ended up with four coats to evenly-ish cover the white primer.

I have also been making fun stuff in the kitchen. When I was working on my grant, I made some tea with flowers (I think maybe hibiscus) that my friend brought me back YEARS ago from the Peace Corps in Africa.

I made it iced and drank it while working on my grant.

I also made refrigerator pickles. You just mix all the stuff in a jar and let it sit for a couple of weeks in the refrigerator. No need to boil water and seal the jars. I love these jars, and will likely get more at some point for storing kitchen stuff.

For the first time I have eye insurance and it covers a pair of glasses a year. So I finally got some prescription sunglasses. I feel fancy because they are a designer I have heard of. They make such a difference driving in the sun, and I am sure I will be happy to have them come winter with the sun reflecting off the snow.

The Flats

Any of you out there ever had a visit from Flat Stanley? The book was published in 1964, but not until 1995 did a school teacher from Ontario use this book for education purposes. The short explanation is that Stanley is a flat boy who can be put in an envelop and mailed. School kids mail Flat Stanley to someone they know; that someone takes Stanley around and mails him back; the kid talks to his or her class about Stanley's adventures. One of my friends got to take Flat Stanley around New York City. I mean that is pretty exciting!

My nephew sent me Flat Stanley. My nephew's little imagination also created Flat Isabella. On the envelop they came in, it said "her name is flat isabella can you pleas Take care of her Bcuse She is preshis." Adorable. Mostly I just took the Flats to visit where I work and where CF works. I could not think of anything particularly "Midwest" to do. I suppose I could have lied and said Stanley came to a country music concert or the country bar with me, but those are less appropriate for the second grad classroom. ;-) What is more Midwest than these photos?

At night, the Flats would chill on the couch with the cat.

The end.

Happy spring!

Tulips are totally a spring thing, so I got myself some.And this is the setup on my table right now.

On display

I was at Tar-jay when they had their big Deals section and picked up a set of 8 black 4x6 frames for some low price I cannot remember now. I had this great idea to print out some pictures I had taken and hang them somewhere. My bathroom is small, probably about right for 4x6 pictures and needs stuff on the walls. I also like how one of my friends has some brown/green colors going on with her own photos in her bathroom, so I guess I am copying her a bit.Anyway. Here is my bathroom. I picked out the curtain because it is colorful but not super busy. (As an aside, I also really like picking out shower curtains when I move into a place. In my last apartment, it ended up matching my cat when I got her.) How to choose pictures though because I do not think I have many pictures of square-shaped things (though I could check).I actually had printed some pictures before I remembered while writing this that I had thought to hang them in the bathroom. I am not sure they really go with the curtain.

From a grad student apple picking trip last fall.
From my sister's garden at my niece's birthday party.
What I like to think of as a very fortuitous moment in my friend's kitchen. It was New Year's Eve but I still had my wits about me enough to take some photos of this rose fallen into her dishwasher.
A leaf (obviously) when I headed to Niagra Falls this summer and met CF's Mom and sister who were visiting (have I mentioned he is not from the U.S.?)
So those all have some red in them, but the difference in shape between an apple and a maple leaf bothers me. Here are some other contenders I have not actually printed.
Really this is just a post of a lot of pictures I have taken and like with lots not included. I almost wish I did not have a shower curtain already and I would probably go with something red and/or green. I could just stick with roses or leaves I suppose. If you have some brilliant decorating idea inspired by my bathroom and photos, do share. :-)