Grasshopper Food , Fun and Farewells

On July 4th, I spent the afternoon working on minutes from the previous Durham FM Association meeting and made some earrings. It was nice to have a day off.

For dinner, I conducted an experiment that turned out well. I toasted about a third of a bag of coconut in a pan, in the oven. It was set to 360 degrees and I stirred it every few minutes. In the frying pan, I sauteed a few tablespoons of minced garlic. Eventually, I added a few handfuls of pine nuts. I served it with basmati rice, so when the rice was close to ready, I added the juice of one lime, some dried orange peel, thyme, black pepper and thawed cooked shrimp. It wasn't quite enough liquid, so I added a quarter cup of water. When the liquid came to a boil again, I dumped all the toasted coconut with a quarter cup of fresh coarsely chopped mint leaves. My parents, as guinea pigs, seemed to really like it.


The rest of the week I furiously tried to get everything done that I could in preparation for being on vacation for two weeks. Amazingly enough, I did manage to leave in time to go to guitar practice that Friday night. There I suggested that we try playing Blownin' in The Wind and Puff the Magic Dragon, two of my favorites. One of the chords I needed to play for Blowin' in the Wind was an F#minor, which is a barre chord and at that point I couldn't play barre chords. HB joined us and we headed for Grasshopper.

Grasshopper, one of Bakatsias's restaurants, is extremely hard to get into on a Friday night, so we were lucky. It's even harder to get a decent parking space there, but we managed, after some negotiating. JA and I ordered summer rolls. JJ and I ordered calamari, which was excellent. For my entree, I ordered mussles and the pork ribs appetizer.














Both were wonderful, but it was way too much food for me. Well, at little too much, at least. The windchimes were right above and behind my head.


That Saturday, July 8th, I spent most of the day wrapping presents and washing dishes. It was AE's birthday, so I had to wrap the earrings I made for her the previous weekend. I also wrapped a remote control dalek that I was planning to give GM as a going-away/very early birthday present. I wrapped the dalek in equations wrapping paper that I got from Think Geek. Of course, I got the dalek from Think Geek, too.

I picked up AE and KD and we went to the barbecue in JB and EG's neighbor, JA's, back yard. It was JA's birthday, too.
The weather was fantastic. We played four Gamewright card games, Loot, Wig Out, Moose in the House and Sleeping Queens. The last one was the most creative and complicated. All these are games have such great and elaborate illustrations. EG's friend from highschool, L, played cards with us. As you can see, we also had fun with bubble soap. JB was eager to be featured in another blog post and GL, the owner of Shade Tree Coffee, is standing behind him. As we were leaving, GM and I said our farewells, since I was leaving that Tuesday and he was moving to Charleston on Wednesday. Finally, after all that, we decided to all have lunch the next day.

The next day, I met GM and AE at Madhatter's Bake Shop for lunch. GM had played the oboe at his church that morning and the congregation has been going to Madhatter's and other local restaurants for a while. I had eggs benedict, which was good, but the yolks were overcooked. My cappuchino was very good. Afterwards, we went to Southpointe and saw Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest. It was good and entertaining, but not nearly as good as the original.

GM and I said our farewells for the second and last time and then I headed home so I could go to Nantucket Cafe and Grill for dinner, with my parents. I had fish and chips and it was good.

5 Years Later

I have to take to take a break from recounting meal after meal to reflect on the 5th anniversary of a day that few of us will forget. I will always remember sitting in my van, listening to my cell phone as my mom told me the news. I will always remember going back out to my van with JJ to listen to NPR, because there was no other way to get information. I remember feeling angry, but not at terrorists. At the time, I felt that the people who had done such a thing had been provoked. If I thought that then, you can imagine what I think now. I couldn't fathom how a bunch of madmen could do so much damage to so many lives, our government and our country as a whole. I certainly couldn't imagine how they could be elected for a second term.

I remember the sadness of watching the families searching hopelessly for their loved ones. As I've mentioned on this blog before, people rarely comment on how close to as many people have died as a result of the military action in comparison to 9/11. Just as we saw the families searching for some of the 2997 who died that day, there are families mourning the loss of 2761 service men and women. Dare I ask for what? Their families shouldn't have had to ask. The families of the the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis shouldn't have had to either.

Let's just hope that the families that are left wake up before it's too late.

Before the Fourth

On July 2nd, my Dad and I tried out the BR-3 OBDII cable that he'd ordered for my van. I'd been having trouble with my Service Engine Soon light coming on and we weren't entirely sure what the problem was. When he took my van in to be serviced, they just cleared the code and didn't seem to think it was worth worrying about. It's nice to have one's own equipment to read and clear the code, instead of paying $40-$60 each time, especially when it comes on every few days. This one hooks right up to my laptop, which is pretty nifty. We'd thought that the code it might be the oxygen sensor, but it was the mass air sensor. Over a couple of months, my van started running more and more roughly and wasn't very peppy. My dad read later that you can actually clean the extremely tiny sensor, which he did last weekend. That seems to have done the trick. It's running very smoothly and it likes merging into high speed traffic again. The trouble light hasn't come on again since he cleaned it either.

After playing with the van that day, I organized more elderly photos and made some earrings for AE, for her birthday. They turned out rather nicely. My parents and I went to ACME Food & Beverage Co. for dinner. I had a "small plate" of fried oysters followed by superb caramel and cinnamon bread pudding with cherry compote sauce and whipped cream. It was so good.

When we got home, we watched my second Netflix movie, Walk the Line. It was about the lives of Johnny Cash and June Carter and I thought it was quite good.

That Monday, several of us struggled to find a place to eat lunch, since it was so close to the holiday. The Refectory was only serving coffee. Twinnie's was closed. We went to the Loop, but due to Bryan Center Walkway construction, the only way to get in was through the Great Hall and through seemingly thousands of TIP kids and campers. We did make it, though, and I had a bean burger that was pretty good.



I met AE for dinner and we'd planned to go to Chai's, but it and everything in the complex were closed. We went to Shanghai and shared a serving of Orange Shrimp, which was excellent. A guy stopped by my table, G, who I'd known from the Duke Crafts Center metalsmithing class that I took twelve years ago. That was cool. Afterwards, AE and I went to Kroger and I bought a few things, including a pint of Cherry Garcia Frozen Yogurt, which I have yet to open. I'm just not one to snack in between meals and I need to remember that when I go shopping. I need to invite over hungry people to help me clean out my freezer. Any volunteers? I promise to *try* not feed anyone anything over a year old. I guess I better eat that turkey before November.

More Thai Cafe Baskets, Please!

On June 26th, after a delightful meal of Kurama take-out sushi, my parents and I watched our first Netflix movie, March of the Penguins. It was good and I learned a great deal about penguins. I know my dear readers are shocked. Afterwards, I booked the last hotel for our trip to Arkansas.

The next (very rainy) day I had lunch at the Refectory with NP and KS joined us. I had a wonderful serving of vegetarian quiche. I really like quiche. NP and I had a fun time trying to get back to Perkins without drowning. That was probably one of the best times I've had while getting soaked in the rain that I can remember. I was also able to water my plants with the contents of my sandals when I got back to my office.

After work, my dad and I met RG and JG at the Bennett Pointe Grille. I had my usual fried oyster salad, but I didn't come close to finishing it, because I'd eaten half of a Guglhupf cherry cheese danish around 3pm. We went to the Durham FM Association board meeting afterwards.

That Wednesday, I was over at the American Tobacco Campus for our regular Blackboard Tech Team meeting, which only lasted 20 minutes. I had lunch with AE at Tyler's. I had a blackened crabcake sandwich, which was ok. AE had a salad that looked very good and I'll have to remember to try one the next time I go there. That night, I went over to my parents' house where my mom served chicken and mozzarella ravioli with caramelized onions and warm tomatoes. That was quite good and it was nice to see FIFO.

On Thursday, I met my dad for lunch at the LSRC cafeteria. I had spanakopita, which is what I used to eat more than anything else when I ate there as a student. RP ate with us and PA joined us later on. After work, I met PS, GA, EB, CL and JL at Champa. I had my usual Pad Thai with shrimp. I still prefer their version to any other Thai restaurant that I've been to. CL and JL told us all about their recent trip to Greece and Italy while RS told us about her trip to Romania.

That Friday, LA and I went to the Refectory for lunch and I had a puffed pastry with chicken and a cheese at least similar to feta. It was good, but I've liked most of their other dishes better.
After work, I met AE at Nosh, for dinner. I had a delicious cup of gazpacho and we shared a brownie for dessert.

On Saturday (July 1st, if you're keeping track), I went over to my parents' house and I visited with FIFO and blogged while my mom made three skirts for me. We then went to Thai Cafe for dinner. Almost every time I go there for dinner, I see people I know. That night I saw KP and met her husband, I saw SG and met his wife and I saw NS and her husband in the parking lot, from a distance. You would think there were a lot fewer restaurants in Durham at that rate. For dinner we shared an order of potstickers in a wonderful curry sauce, Thai Cafe baskets, and fresh basil rolls. In the photo, you can see the baskets and the potstickers behind them. Thai Cafe baskets are fantastic puffed pastry cups filled with shrimp, chicken and corn. They are served with a sweet and tangy sauce. My mom ordered pad thai with shrimp and my dad and I shared an order of shrimp massaman. Below a picture of the shrimp from a previous meal, which I'd forgotten to post. For dessert we shared a slice of coconut cake and an order of creme brulee. I liked the creme brulee the best of the two, but I'd really rather skip dessert and eat more Thai Cafe baskets.

Field Day and the Domesticated Moose

On June 24th, I got up, cleaned frantically and made a batch a macaroons. AE and GM arrived and we watched the movie, Gates of Heaven, which was made by the same guy as Fast, Cheap and Out of Control. It was a weird, but interesting, documentary about pet cemeteries. JH arrived and watched the last few minutes with us. We played Moose in the House, which is a simple, but fun, card game by Gamewright. The cards are extremely well illustrated and are rather cute, particularly if you are fond of moose.

Finally, we all went to the annual ham radio Field Day. It was interesting exposing three new people to the annual ham radio Field Day and my friends in the Orange County Radio Amateurs club. As usual, my mom procured the food and my dad grilled it. I had a Boca burger with a slice of swiss cheese and a little ketchup. Not bad. I saw on the radar on my phone that a squall line was coming. We all headed back to my house. I was going to wait it out and then go back to operate the radios, but the rain was extremely heavy. I heard reports that the field was quite soggy, so I didn't go back. Last year I wrote a fairly good description of what Field Day is all about.

NC and I did some Blackboard testing at a little after 6am and then around 9am, I drove back over to the Field Day site, Blackwood Farm in Orange County. Dad grilled our traditional pancakes and sausage, which was served with real maple syrup. Eventually, I went down the hill and worked the 20 meter band with RN and TH. You can see in the photo where I was operating TH's radio while RN was logging. I made four or five contacts, which was fun. Then Dad stopped by let us know that another storm was on the way. That weekend all the storms were coming from the southeast, which was weird, because the normal prevailing winds come from the west. So, I went home. Here's a beautiful photo I took of the farm, next to the field where we were operating. There are plans to turn the whole property into a park.


That evening, I went over to JJ and JA's to practice guitar with JJ and EB. Strangely enough, I had a hard time getting in sync on Brown Eyed Girl, but everything else was fine. When HB arrived, we played Country Roads and that sounded the best that we'd ever played it.

For dinner, we went to Federal. I had a grilled cheese sandwich with avocado, lettuce and tomatoes on focaccia bread, for all of $6.50. That's hard to beat for dinner. Before heading over to JJ and JA's I made reservations at ACME Food & Beverage Co. for my parents, who were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. I asked the manager if I could go ahead and pay for it with my credit card as a surprise. That was fun. They served them some wine and gave them a free dessert, too!

Predictable Gustatory Goodness

June 17th was my Dad's birthday and I got him three more 184 piece Geomag sets and packages of each of the shapes of the panel pieces. The panels are pretty cool and I particularly like the clear ones. The triangle shaped ones are purely decorative, though. I spent the rest of the day making brownies for AC's party, which I went to that evening.

The following day was Father's Day and, as has become tradition, we went to ACME Food & Beverage Co. I, as always, had eggs benedict. I spent the afternoon at my parents' house visiting FIFO and prepping for TestFest.

On Monday, TestFest actually arrived. We all camped out in the CIT lab and tested our intended version of Blackboard. My mom delivered a bunch of food from CostCo, so I think most of us actually had a good time and accomplished a lot. That night, I watched the final game of the Stanley Cup Finals. It seemed pretty unbelievable and cool that the Hurricanes actually won. I never thought we'd have any sort of professional sports team win anything around here.

Tuesday was the final day of TestFest and it continued to go well. We finally celebrated my dad's birthday at Taverna Nikos that night. I ordered yet another village salad, which was just perfect. We shared a key lime pie and a kahlua and chocolate pie for dessert. When I got home, I signed up for Netflix!

Wednesday, NC and I went to the Mellow Mushroom after our meeting. We shared a spinach, bacon and garlic pizza, since it was so good when we'd ordered it before. That evening, I worked more on organizing old photos and found several really neat ones.

Thursday, about the only thing that happened that was noteworthy was that my first Netflix movie, March of the Penguins, arrived in the mail. Friday was more exciting. I had lunch with NP and I met AE and GM for dinner at Shanghai. I had sesame tofu, which was good. AE decided to go home and GM and I went on to JB and EG's house. We'd had a lot of rain, they have ten steps in front and there was a thunderstorm going on when we arrived, so we decided to meet at Madhatter's instead. That was a quite relief and we had a very good time talking, drinking decaf coffee and eating sweets. JB told us all about being a 6th grade teacher and going to gaming conventions.

It's fixed!

Those of you who are regular readers will know that I've had this annoying chunk of whitespace before my posts and will remember all the times you've had to scroll down past my archives. I fixed it! I finally took the time to thoroughly go over the template and discovered that it needed another closing div tag below the blogger tag. Other than the my blogger template, I basically have had no experience with css, so it was very exciting to figure it out. Actually, if someone else had figured it out, it would have been quite exciting too, because all that whitespace was really annoying.

Flooding, Flowers and Fans

On June 14th, Tropical Storm/Depression Alberto came through central North Carolina. There was flooding all over the place, in the usual places, such as Crabtree Creek, and in some areas less prone to flooding. Some places had 6 inches of rain. In Hillsborough, we probably had about one and a half inches. A road in Apex washed away. I ate lunch in my cube that day. Imagine that.

Around then, I played a great deal with Netvibes, but I couldn't determine that it was really any better than the Google Personalized Homepage. I created two almost identical pages in each aggregated just to make sure, but while Netvibes looked prettier, I thought the Google Personalized Homepage looked easier to read and I like embedding the Google Reader. Google also announced Picasa Web Albums, but I wasn't as excited about that as I had hoped. The maximum image resolution is 1600 x 1045 and, even if you pay $25 a year, the maximum storage space is 6 GB. It really is convenient to have uploading built right into Picasa, though.

While I was watching the end of Game Five of the Stanley Cup Finals, a raccoon got up on the window sill above my television. That was the first and only raccoon I've seen on my deck or anywhere around my house. There are tons of them around my parents' place. I grabbed my camera and got a nice shot as he was peeking in the door to the deck. Raccoons are so adorable.

The next evening, my parents and I met our neighbors, TD and CD at Kurama, for dinner. That was particularly cool, because I'd never met CD before. You can see how the building where I work, Bostock (part of Perkins Library) looked that day. with liatris and rudbeckia below. Here's also shot of the stokesia that was blooming next to the ramp up to the library buildings.



I spent much of the following day prepping for the Blackboard Test Fest. I ate lunch with NC at the Armadillo Grill and continued to be amazed at the crowds that gathered around the televisions. All the young kids on campus for various camps and TIP programs were completely captivated by the World Cup. I had no idea that it had become that popular, but I had to realize that most of these kids grew up playing soccer. The infamous soccer moms had soccer children and all those children were glued to any TV they could find, particularly flat panel displays.

That night, I went to guitar practice and Indigo Girls' "Gone Again" was actually starting to sound good, even when I played along. We went to the Thai Cafe afterwards and I had Shrimp Massaman again. JJ and I ordered potstickers, which were excellent and served with a curry sauce.

The Great Iguana Distribution and Meeting Dr. Bob

On June 10th, I had to get up at 4:15 am to do a sanity check on the Blackboard system and then I went back to sleep. Twelve hours later, I picked up AE, GM and met JH and AB at Southpoint. We saw the movie, Cars. It did have a plot and the computer graphics had improved even more since the last Pixar movie I saw. Overall, I found it entertaining. We ate at Champps afterwards, which was extremely noisy. They were showing game three of the Stanley Cup Finals. We had the Great Iguana Distribution in the parking lot afterwards. Several months prior to that night, we had eaten at Chai's and decided that we wanted to submit a group order of iguana manikins from the Dick Blick catalog. They were out of stock of the small size for a while, so it took a while for me to order them. They were just as cool as we had imagined.

Two days later I observed that I suddenly had spiders in my house that were slowly dropping from the ceiling. Ick.

The next day, I met KS, MS and Dr. Bob the Dog on the main quad. This was my first opportunity to meet Dr. Bob, who lives in Richmond She was adorable, soft, sweet and very friendly. We went to Twinnie's to pick up sandwiches and then ate our lunch on the library patio. I got to show KS my cube, too.

That night, SE gave an excellent talk on the Duke iPod Project at the Durham FM Association meeting. I had worried about how a talk would work at Shoney's since the room we had was pretty cramped. It worked out fine, because SE didn't use a projector. Shoney's has since closed, so we won't have to worry about that anymore. It sounds as if we're going to be meeting at the Mayflower seafood restaurant, in September, at least.

Flickr, Flowers and Food

I know I'm probably the last person in the blogosphere to say this, but I really love flickr. I first started really liking it when I added a flickr feed of photos tagged "weimaraner" to my Google personalized homepage, inspired by the default feed on Netvibes. There are so many zany photos and seeing one of them, particularly this one, really brightens my day. I've finally started adding my own photos to my flickr site. I still think smugmug is cool and technically lets you upload more, but I like the interface and community on flickr more.

In early June, most of CIT went to the Refectory for lunch to celebrate the arrival of two new employees, AN and HC. I had quiche lorraine and a side salad. It was delicious. They had the gorgeous flower arrangement above, displayed near the entrance, which I just had to photograph.

Later that week, almost all of CIT went to lunch at George's Garage for a farewell party for MG. As you can see in the photos on flickr, we showered him with some excellent parting gifts, including a pound of butter. MG believed that butter could be eaten as a main course and we teased him about this on a regular basis.

That Friday, I went over to JJ and JA's for guitar practice and afterwards we went to El Corral. I tried their pork carnitas, which were flavorful and moist. I had sopa pillas for dessert and they were better than what I tried at Casa Ibarra many years ago. Their corn flake based Mexican fried ice cream is probably a better choice, though.

Here are a couple of other photos that I took in my garden that week.

Wild Salmon Couldn't Drag Me Away

At the end of May and beginning of June, I had a pretty bad sore throat. I actually took a few sick hours from work. At that point in time, a huge percentage of people had come down with it or something similar. I put up my bio-hazard sign up on my cube to warn people. It was the sickest I'd been in about four years. That said, it really wasn't an awful cold, as colds go.

Around then, I started playing Wild Horses, by the Rolling Stones, on my guitar. It's rather fun to play, although I still find shifting to a B flat difficult. It's really my first attempt at a barre chord. It's such a great song, though.

The Duke University Library Staff Association hosted a luau out on the CI quad. They had a dunking booth and I unsuccessfully attempted to dunk one of our sysadmins, EL. It was a fun event, with lots of food and lots of people.

The next day, I went with AE, GM and we met KL at a euphonium recital, performed by a friend of theirs in the Durham Community Concert Band. It was in a Presbyterian church on 54, close to 751. The altar had these tall arched windows and the peak of the vaulted ceiling had several skylights and each skylight had two pieces of glass at 90 degree angles from each other. I liked the effect. We went to Southpoint afterwards and called JH, because we figured he might be there, too. He wasn't, but he and AJ met us at Firebirds Rocky Mountain Grille. Beforehand, we went to Barnes and Noble and I bought the metallic blue and leather blank book that I'd been coveting since Christmas.

At Firebirds, I made the mistake of ordering my sesame crusted salmon "rare". As regular readers will know, I like salmon sushi. This salmon, however, did not seem as if it were meant to be sushi, but it was certainly raw. I microwaved it for 2 minutes as soon as I got home, before I put it in the fridge.

Skating Scallops

I know many of you are anxious to hear all about my road trips to Arkansas and to the Blackboard Developer's Conference in D.C. You will have to wait. I need to write about the end of May and all of June first. Patience is a rare virtue.

On Memorial Day weekend, I baked 48 brownies and 56 coconut macaroons for the annual Durham FM Association hamfest, to raise money for the club. The hamfest was a success and I had fun selling tickets most of the day. That Sunday, I went to LA's 30th birthday party. That was a tremendous amount of fun. She had a roller skating party at Skate Ranch, which is located on the other side Raleigh. NP and I ate at Yamazushi beforehand and it was quite good, although I was surprised at how little rice they provided with each nigiri piece.

The party was supposed to have an 80s theme, but the DJ only played hip-hop. That was ok, because everyone else at the rink really knew what they were doing when they were skating to hip-hop. Their fancy dance moves were highly impressive and entertaining. I really enjoyed photographing the event and fortunately there weren't any injuries. We ate pizza and cake that AT made and smores (courtesy of AT's smores kit). There has to be some good, easy and cheap way to get still jpegs from an avi file. I'm just not seeing it in the software I have on hand, so you will have to be content with a picture of the cake. It was memorable.

The day of the party, May 28th, was also the second anniversary of the day I moved into my own house.

The following night I went to guitar practice and played Long Black Veil while singing for the first time. I've always been reluctant to sing in public, so the fact that DS and AP were also there made it an even bigger deal for me. JJ and EB picked it up very quickly, even though they'd never heard it before. Afterwards, we had a wonderful dinner with grilled bison burgers, grilled eggplant and scallops. I did kid JJ and JA about the possibility of my contracting Mad Bison disease. JJ grilled the best scallops I've ever eaten, because I've never liked scallops and these were absolutely delicious.

Guacamole, Glass and Goat Cheese

Over a month ago, I started going to the Armadillo Grill on campus. The original location is in Carrboro. It's a very easy way to eat cheaply and wear your lunch all day afterwards. I experimented with the differences in a bean and cheese soft taco with guacamole and tomatoes and a guacamole soft taco with beans, cheese and tomatoes. The latter is considerably messier and more soup-like than the former and I may never order either one again. I later discovered that their bean burritos are far easier to eat and taste better, too.

One night, I made the mistake of ordering wings at Vinny's. I knew when they were served in a pool of grease that it was a bad sign. It's best to stick fo the four cheese ravioli, which is excellent.

Another night, I played with pandora.com, which was linked off of Friendster. It's kind of neat in that you can create "radio stations" based on your favorite artists and songs. I have since discovered that last.fm is much nicer for this. You download an app that runs locally on your desktop and it determines what music to play based on what you play on your machine. Alternatively, you can have it play selections based on specified artists, simlar to pandora. Somehow, I thought that the comparisons last.fm made were far better than pandora's. I tend to play in this mode more often than not and have it play music similar to Jim Croce or Joan Baez. I like being able to avoid making decisions about what to play and get the opportunity to hear new stuff while being able to skip tracks I don't like.


At the end of May (yes I'm behind), all of CIT went to the new Nasher Museum of Art for lunch, to celebrate the arrival of two new employees. I'd been wanting to go there ever since they opened, last October, because the pictures I'd seen of the interior were quite impressive. Those of us who like the idea of living in a greenhouse will understand why I thought this was so cool.


I had a BLT salad, which contained the obvious ingredients as well as goat cheese, squash, cucumbers and a light vinaigrette. There was Dijon dressing on the side, but it wasn't necessary. I really enjoyed the salad. For dessert, I had a large bowl of fresh strawberries with a generous glop of whipped cream. I didn't see any of the exhibits, but I'm looking forward to seeing them in the future. One of the nicest things about the outing was that YB, her husband and new baby daughter were able to join us.

Two Very Different Baby Pictures

I've really been diving into organizing my photos recently, or more accurately, the entire family's photos. I've been scanning some of the old ones, with my new HP 7410.
I think this was taken when I was about four years old. It's not the highest resolution scanner, but I'm pretty happy with it.

The evening after my first scanning adventure, my parents and I went to ACME Food & Beverage Co. The owner, Kevin Callaghan, sends out e-mail to their mailing list about every week or so. That week, he said that the first soft shell crabs were in. We had to go. Below is actually a picture that was close to the way that they served them, but a few weeks later. I eagerly started my first serving before remembering that I wanted to take a photograph. As you can see, it came with a roasted red pepper sauce, rice and greens. The first version had delicious sugar snap peas.
For dessert my dad and I shared a strawberry rhubarb tart, which was excellent.

The next morning, after a traditionally traumatic, but lovely, haircut, I played Long Black Veil on the guitar for my mom. ...while singing. Scary.

A little before noon that day, I took a very nice shot of some of the trees in my yard.


I tried out the copying functionality on my HP 7410 and I was very happy with that, too.

The next day was the free lunch for Duke Staff Appreciation Week. We ate our barbecue, coleslaw and fried chicken at the teak furniture on the patio near the library. I thought the food was pretty good. People swarmed towards the quad from all directions. The coleslaw was pretty good and similar to Bullock's, although somewhat hotter. I believe I overheard that the catering was done by Abrams.

That afternoon I cut the cord on NT's baby spider plants. Office plant propagation is way too much fun, especially without windows. Thank goodness for the full spectrum lighting! Here's one of the babies.

Just Ducky

Here's an example of the hail damage from all the storms we had. Note that this is a rather large Paulownia leaf.

One evening, AE, GM and I ate at Nosh, which is in the same complex as Chai's and Shade Tree Coffee. I had an egg salad sandwich, which was good, but it was a little over stuffed to eat in any sort of normal way. I also tried an Izze grapefruit soda for the first time. It was very good. They have a pear, too, but I like the grapefruit so much that it might be a while before I get one of those.


I had taken this last quad duck picture that afternoon.


I ordered, received and started using an HP 7410 all-in-one printer, because I'd been wanting a scanner and a printer after not having either for almost two years. The real advantage of this particular model is that it's wireless. My dad bought one about 6 months ago and my parents have been really happy with it, so I thought it was a safe bet.

At the end of that week, I went to JK's farewell party at the Sitar India Palace near South Square. He wanted to work closer to home, but it was sad to see him go. I had a good time and there was a good crowd of people there. I had a lot of fun meeting and talking with DS, who graduated from Duke three years before I did. It's often fun talking to alums about friends and professors that we may or may not have had in common. The food was good, too.

That night, I had dinner with AE and AE's mom at Chai's. I ordered Pad Thai with tofu, but they gave me Yakisoba Noodles with tofu instead. At least they didn't give me beef. I'd never tried that dish before and it was actually pretty good, so I kind of liked the surprise. GM joined us and we all had very interesting conversations and a good time. Afterwards, GM and I went to his apartment and we made cookies while watching a new Doctor Who episode. We made molasses spice cookies from the Baking Illustrated cookbook, which I gave him for Christmas. They were delicious and I now have all the ingredients, so I can make them, too.

Here's one of many hypericum blossoms blooming outside the CIEMAS building.

Catching Up at a Turtle's Pace

Unlike previous instances of blog negligence, I've been jotting down things in a notebook. Unfortunately, this means that I haven't been anxious about forgetting things, which may have decreased my need for posting. It's really no excuse, though and I will try to keep you all updated more regularly.

Almost a month ago, I went to various graduation events and talked to various people. Free food. At the East Campus lawn reception, I mostly ate spanakopita and fruit. The food used to be so good at that reception. While I always enjoy good spanakopita, I still miss the little ham biscuits, decent kool aid based punch and the royal blue petit fours. My parents still reminisce about the bacon wrapped shrimp at my mom's graduation. That Sunday, I also went to the computer science reception and got to talk to several of my old professors. Fares Hanna, owner of Twinnie's and Blue Express, on campus, did the catering and while it was all good, I particularly liked their three bean salad.

We had a lot of storms that weekend, including a tornado warning for Hillsborough. The power was out in our neighborhood for 45 minutes and my new generator kicked in automatically, exactly as planned. We also had hail twice that Sunday, including marble sized chunks. It took several hours for it to all melt. I also made my pasta with shrimp, bacon, garlic and wine dish for my mom, for Mother's Day.

The next week, HC started working at CIT, so that was exciting. I also checked out my first book from the library. That was surprisingly exciting to me. It was Getting to Yes by Fisher and Ury, recommended by my boss for improving my negotiation skills. That night, my parents and I saw the HBR Motorsport team at Casa Ibarra. They are Austrians who do formula BMW racing.

That Tuesday, we celebrated HC's and SA's arrival at the Loop. NC and I both had milkshakes, but I made the mistake of also getting fries. The fries were fine, but it was just a little much.


That evening we had the most important arrival, Hook! Hook is the fourth brother of the three yellow bellied sliders that we released in my parents' pond almost two years ago. We released him as soon as we got back to the pond, unlike his brothers, who spent the night in my garage.
Note that the house pictured in the distance above is the one between my house and my parents'.

Syrup, Surveys and Persistence

Let's see.. a couple of weeks ago, a bunch of us learned and played Texas Hold-em at Shade Tree Coffee. That was fun. After I polished off a decaf mocha frappe, I ordered a frosty mint and caramel Italian soda. That was a good combination, but plain cinnamon is probably better. I was trying to replicate the sensation of eating a mint leaf soaked in the caramel syrup left over from a serving of creme caramel. I really need to learn to make that now that Pyewacket is no more. They had the best and smoothest of any I've eaten.

Guitar practice that weekend went well and we went to El Corral afterwards. Sitting on the Dock of Bay was still hard and I probably played it worse than the week before.

At some point I wrote a survey for the Durham FM Association using surveymonkey.com. That was very easy to do and I recommend it if you're thinking of writing a free on-line survey with fewer than 100 expected submissions. We also had a Durham FM Association meeting at our new location, at Shoney's. It was crowded and the food was greasy, but I think almost everyone had a really good time.

My mom bought me some acid free photo albums from CostCo that hold 4" x 6" photos and have areas for writing next to each picture. At first I was skeptical, because I've been researching what I want for a while, but they seem pretty cool. Now I've spent quite a bit of time going through old pictures and trying to put them in some sort of chronological order or at least clumps of pictures that are in order within each clump.

Yes, my woodpecker still visits me daily. He doesn't peck the glass every moment of every waking hour (anymore), but I don't believe a day has gone by when I haven't heard him in the morning (he gives new meaning to the phrase "crack of dawn") or seen him attempt to defeat the window when I get home from work. He does appear to be slowly losing interest. Very slowly. Again, the telescoping duster does make him fly away, so he can't drive me crazy like he did the first weekend.

Duck Egg

If the video does not display properly
click here to upgrade to Flash 8
As I've mentioned in earlier posts, mallard ducks visit Duke's campus every spring now and LA brought in some stale bread a week or so ago, so we could feed them.

This provided me with an opportunity to try out videoegg.com for the first time.

Not Exactly Narcissus

This week has had the most consistently nice weather that I can remember. It's been cool during the night and just glorious during the day, with a nice (sometimes very strong) breeze. I've been eating outside at lunchtime at the new teak tables that they've placed on the patio close to the library. It's so peaceful there.

It just hasn't been peaceful at home.

That is because a lunatic woodpecker has been banging his head against my windows for at least five days. Solid. I woke up on Saturday morning and wondered if someone in the neighborhood were doing some heavy construction. BAM! BAM! bambam! I looked around outside, through the windows, and finally saw that Doofus, here, was ramming into the garage window. I'm sure he sees his reflection as a male red bellied woodpecker in the window and sees it as a threat. He did it all weekend long and by Monday I was really happy to go to work. I wake up every morning to the noise of his impacts and he's still at it when I come home at night. He mostly picks on the great room windows in the upper right hand corners. According to what I've read on the web, he would just move to another window if I put something up there (assuming I could reach), but he didn't seem to like my telescoping duster.

Last week was fun. We had out 6th Annual CIT Showcase, for faculty to show off how they incorporated technology into their teaching. We gave away all the doorprizes that I collected and the lunch bags with the CIT logo on them that we ordered. It was all very exciting had we had a record turn out. We hauled stuff to and from the Bryan Center in my van and it was nice to be able to help out in that way. It was pouring rain all day, the day of the Showcase, so I naturally got soaked at one or more points, when I had to go back to the library. Mallard ducks have invaded the campus and I almost had a semi-head on collision with a security guard on a bicycle, because we were both trying to avoid running into the same duck. The photo of the one pictured here was taken a few days earlier.

One very unexpected and cool thing was that SW presented at the Showcase and got to visit my house. We also had dinner with GM at Margaret's Cantina that Friday night. Despite some delicious sounding specials, I found I was craving a shrimp quesadilla with shrimp and guacamole. Afterwards GM and I both had chocolate bread pudding with Mexican chocolate chunk ice cream. It wasn't quite as good as the chocolate whiskey rum sauce that they used to have, but it was good.

Absolutely gorgeous flowers have been blooming on campus. The irises below and above were blooming in the vicinity of Duke Chapel.


Earlier in April, I took this picture of JB and AE while they admired my chicken walnut roll at Chai's. I actually ate there again tonight, with AE, but my udon noodle soup wasn't beautiful enough for the blog or food envy.

In the past month, we've had a lot of thunderstorms. One of them even included some hail. One to two miles away, there were larger than golf ball sized hail stones, which is pretty scary. On my deck, it ranged from pea to marble sized hail. My parents, only 600 feet away, just had pea sized and there was less of it.

Zombies, Cannibals, and a Chinchilla

This past weekend I saw a movie, with GM and AE, Shaun of the Dead. It was basically a spoof on zombie movies. The amazing thing is that it was absolutely hilarious while at the same time being fairly gross and actually scary. Now, I'm not one to watch scary movies, so the avid horror aficionado might not find it that scary at all, but I was happy to be watching it on a 19" television with several people around. If you like very funny movies that are pretty intense and don't mind very crude language, disgusting gore or zombies, then this is probably the movie for you.

In other news, I did my taxes. There weren't any snags there, thankfully.

I attended a baby shower on Monday. I believe that was my first.

Guitar practice has been going well. In addition to Brown Eyed Girl and Country Roads, I've been working on Cannibals, by Mark Knopfler, and Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, by Otis Redding. It's been getting more and more fun playing my guitar with JJ and EB, as I get better. Playing with a group is such a different experience from playing solo, because you put so much more energy into listening while you're playing. At least, that's what I've observed so far.

On Saturday night, I went over to JB and EG's house, with AE, and we played Loaded Questions. I've been a long time since I've played that, but it's truly an excellent game. It's so much more about self discovery and getting to know other people than it is about winning or losing, which makes it very cool. They have a new chinchilla, PB, which is adorable.

Tonight I used a nifty free tool, HTTrack, to backup my entire blog onto disk. I've been meaning to do that for a while and it was very simple.

I don't usually like to predict the future in my blog, but I've taken a lot of other good photos lately and I hope to show them off soon.

Belated Tale of an Alarming Day

I should really just post what I'm thinking at the time rather composing full chapters or volumes.For example, I wrote this about ten days ago and then saved the draft. I should have just posted it.

I took this cool photo of the moon over Duke Chapel just before I went inside to work one morning.



I was vanless for almost two weeks while my van was in the body shop. This was fairly traumatic for me. I had to remember what I used to do before I could drive. I had to get rides to and from places. The horror. That is way more complicated.

It was way more complicated when NC and I were going to take my dad's car from the library over to the the American Tobaco Campus for a meeting. It was particularly complicated when we discovered that his car had a car alarm. Let me state, for the record, that it does. Neither of my parents nor I knew that the car has an alarm. It's very loud. My dad ran over from his building and figured out how to shut it off for us. We tried to recreate the problem in my garage that night and it seems as if you repeat the convoluted steps that we did that it goes off about 25% of the time. Note that it seems a lot louder in an enclosed space. In any case, that was a fairly hilarious (but loud) portion of the day.

A Beautiful March

A few weeks ago, at work, we had our annual/semi-annual retreat at the Dave Thomas Center. It was a lot of fun and I believe it was productive, too. The food at the Thomas Center was delicious. They had three kinds of quiche and fried cauliflower. Several people said beforehand that they had Ben & Jerry's bars, but they didn't this year, because it was a different type of room. This is actually a good thing, because they wouldn't have fit.

That week was spring break at Duke, so there were many fewer students around and fewer lunch options. Fortunately, Twinnie's was open and this provided many excellent views of the gorgeous daffodils that have been planted in the perennial garden at CIEMAS. The weather was lovely and very windy, too. You can see Bostock, the new part of Perkins Library, where I work, in that picture.

It was March, so that meant that it was time to set up a yahoo group and fill out my NCAA tournament bracket. I got 5 other people to participate in a group at work, so that's been fun. Unfortunately, the first game was very late, so I only ended up watching the first half.

Friday, I met AE, KD and JH at Chai's and then we went to Shade Tree Coffee. We played hearts for most of the evening. AE hadn't ever played before and JH did an excellent job of explaining it. Hearts is one of my favorite card games. Note that I am not saying that I am extraordinarily good at it, but I really enjoy it. JH introduced a new twist by getting us to play in teams. That adds an entirely new element and it' s fun.

Saturday, AE, JH and my dad came over to watch the 2nd round Duke basketball tournament game. I made macaroons and we played hearts again. I was going to go to JJ's and practice guitar, but the battery in my van was dead.

Sunday, we went to ACME, where I had lobster linguini and a strawberry shortcake. They donated a really generous gift certificate for the CIT Showcase, too.

Almost Forgotten Highlights

I would like to think that very little exciting happened last week, because I don't really remember it.

I did get to have lunch with NP at the Refectory and that was probably the highlight of the weekdays. We didn't get to eat outside on an exceedingly warm day for March, but it was still fun.

I'm also chair of the sponsors and door prizes committee for the annual CIT Showcase, so I've been collecting door prizes and I got my first gift certificate, which was donated by Taverna Nikos. That was extremely exciting. Maybe that was the highlight.

I also went to the Visualization Forum on Friday and saw an interesting presentation by Michael Nitsche, from Georgia Tech. The idea was to enhance educational content putting it the 3D world of a game. I would be interested to know whether or not it truly engages students and whether it is more or less effective than traditional methods. In any case, it certainly looks cool. That, too, was a highlight.

My weekend was certainly busy. Friday night, I had dinner with AE and GM at Chai's, followed by yet another pleasant evening at Shade Tree Coffee. They were incredibly busy, which was great. It was a little hard to hear, but I'm very happy that they are doing well. We talked about toilet paper and neutrinos. ..among other things, of course.

Saturday, I went to visit FIFO.


That night, AE and GM came over to watch Duke vs UNC game. It's the process that's important. It was sad that Duke lost, but I enjoyed watching it, at least most of it. I was playing my guitar during part of it and trying to provide a soundtrack. I need to learn more 7 chords to convey angst. I made tuna salad for dinner and that turned out well.

Sunday, I headed over to GM's to watch live-action Tick episodes and a Pink Panther episode with GM and AE. JH came over and we went to Cracker Barrel. JH told us about TiddlyWiki, which I think has enormous potential. It's a wiki contained within a file, which uses things like javascript to provide the functionality. It was apparently written up in Make. I need to see if I can borrow that magazine from my dad occasionally.

Some of you may be wondering about the welfare of my injured van. Well, I took it in for an estimate last week, but it can't be worked on until the end of this month. Meanwhile, my dad's temporary fix using epoxy and coathangers seems to be doing the trick.

Ok, so maybe I do remember last week.