The Familiy Reunion Begins

The morning after we arrived in Arkansas (Bastille Day), my dad and I had breakfast at the hotel with my dad's cousin, UB, and her husband, RB. The Embassy Suites definitely had the best breakfasts of any of the hotels where we stayed. It was a full complimentary breakfast buffet and you could pretty much get anything you wanted. I fondly remembered some of the Tivoli quarterly company breakfasts that we had at the one in Cary when I first started working for IBM. I hadn't seen UB and RB in 14 years, so it was great to spend time with them that morning and throughout the reunion.

Once my uncle, WR, his wife, BR, and my two cousins, NR and MR, arrived, we all had lunch at the hotel. I actually don't remember what I ate. Imagine that!

My dad's cousin, HR, and his wife, SH, arrived late that afternoon. The hotel had cheap ($1) drinks at the bar every evening, so we all took advantage of that. I got them to make a nice fruit juice and soda water concoction. UB's daughter, BO, and her husband, MS, arrived. Finally, UB's son, CO, his wife, JO, and their kids, ACO and ARO arrived. I'm sure the initials are confusing, but hopefully it will be useful for the next few posts.

Next we had dinner at the hotel. Each meal took several hours, because the service was extremely slow, but we were in no hurry. After days of traveling, it was nice to take a break from driving and chat.

After dinner, almost everyone went up to our suite. We got to show off all the luxury and hang out in our dining room. We all looked at the photocopies of the old photographs that I had been sorting and people marked their initials next photos if they wanted copies. I've been working on scanning them and I need to spend more time on it. HR and SH brought wine, so we all had a grand time.

Take a look at the faucet on the whirlpool. I would imagine that it would take forever to fill a whirlpool tub of the size that was in our suite without a fancy faucet, such as this one, but I still thought it was cool.

Actual Arrival in Arkansas

After we left the National Ornamental Metal Museum, we briefly got lost and then drove over the I-55 bridge and crossed into Arkansas. Yes, you did see that bridge in the pictures taken from the museum. Arkansas was a new state for me, so that was pretty exciting. When we crossed the Mississippi, the land was extremely flat. It was flatter than any land I could recall, but it had been approximately 25 years since I'd been to Indiana so I may have just forgotten how flat that was. It looked as if much of the land was taken over by agribusiness and they were mostly growing a lot of short leafy green things.

As we got closer to Little Rock, the terrain was reminiscent of the Piedmont of North Carolina. By the time we arrived in Hot Springs, we were in the mountains again! It was definitely a remarkable transition in just a few hours.
When we checked into the hotel, the Embassy Suites in Hot Springs, they said that for two nights there was a problem with our room. We would have to stay in the Presidential Suite. Goodness. That was certainly an imposition. We had a huge living room, a kitchen, a dining area and two bathrooms. The gorgeous master bath had both a huge whirlpool tub and a large shower. The room was on the ninth floor and every room had beautiful views. The bedroom even had a telescope. I never did ask about the square footage, but it seemed almost as big as my house. Plus it was decorated with pottery, flower arrangements and candles.

Once we'd settled in a bit, we went downstairs for the first of many meals in the hotel dining room. I had white bean chili and decent bread pudding for dessert. Below is the view of downtown Hot Springs from our hotel rooms.

Déjà Vu Feed

I apologize to those of you who read my blog via the atom feed, because you've been seeing a lot of old posts listed. If you haven't guessed, that's because I am trying to tag all of my old posts. Hopefully that will make it easier when you all want to go back and read things I've said in certain categories. Of course, if you try looking at the posts tagged with "food", then you might as well just read the whole blog.

It's actually been fun reading through my old posts, because my style has really changed. I miss writing about what is actually on my mind while I'm writing, so I may try to do that more. Hopefully I'll actually catch up someday, but I also don't want to leave out any of the gory tales of my adventures.

The National Ornamental Metal Museum

Following the excellent lunch at the Beauty Shop, my dad and I headed back toward the river to see if we could find the National Ornamental Metal Museum. We ended up getting severely lost. If I haven't mentioned this before, I have to convey that the combination of my and dad's attempts to navigate in an unfamiliar area are truly comical. Of course, countless people can tell you that my attempts to navigate in a familiar area are comical as well, but it's usually on a much smaller scale and I don't confuse north and south quite as often as a I did a few years ago.

Eventually, we actually found it. By then, it appeared that we would have a thunderstorm, so Dad went inside to check it out, before I even left the van. The buildings were quite dilapidated and there was even one guy on a ladder fixing the roof. It wasn't really what I expected for a "National Museum", but it was rather cool. When Dad returned with positive news, we headed across the street and inside. The lady at the front desk gave us an umbrella and recommended that we go out again to take a look at their view of the river, before it started raining. We weren't disappointed in the view, in the least, because the view was even better than the one at Tom Lee Park and were very close to the I-55 bridge. We also got to see a boat pushing a huge barge down the river, which I'd never seen before. A barge would get more than a little stuck in the Eno River. I'm betting canoes get stuck sometimes.

Next we went to their blacksmithing forge. That was pretty nifty. We got the impression that they were more artists than people doing production work. They were working on building a sarcophagus for a blacksmithing friend who had recently passed away.

Finally, we went to the actual museum. They had lots of what I would describe as small sculptures made of gold and fine silver. They also had old gates and other decorative, but functional, work. I managed to resist buying earrings in their gift shop. They seemed very proud of their entry gate and I photographed it as we were leaving.

An amateur radio operator had seen my license plate and left a note on my windshield while I was at the museum. It was nice to have a greeting from a fellow ham.

Visiting the Mississppi and the Beauty Shop

Our next morning in Memphis, we set out to get the tire fixed at a tire place that the hotel recommended. We headed down the wrong street, but eventually discovered that the directions they gave us were from a different entrance. It turned out that the tire had a broken valve stem, which cost only $11 to fix! I had feared that it would be so much worse, but we were on our way in no time.

Our next top was Tom Lee Park, to see the Mississippi River. That was really cool because the park had these long flat sidewalks with a clear view of the river and the giant houses along the levee. The only downside was that it was extremely hot since there really wasn't any shade. In the photo, you can see the Mississippi River and the Interstate 40 bridge on the left, downtown Memphis on the right and the Pyramid Arena in between.


Next we looked at Mud Island River Park, but it was only easy to get to via overhead rail. It was cool looking, but I wasn't in the mood to explore that method of transportation, plus we didn't have much time to spend there.

We drove across town, to Midtown, and ate at the Beauty Shop, which HB recommended. Basically, it's an eclectic restaurant in a building that used to be a beauty parlor. They used original furniture from the parlor, had mismatched silverware and glasses and added some very interesting art glass lamps. That was just the decor. The food was really quite good. I ordered whole fried chicken wings in a spicy sweet sauce with cashews, small chunks of bleu cheese and large pieces of watermelon. It was a great combination, but it was a lot of food. I wanted to try their desserts, but I just couldn't eat anymore. I would have loved to have also tried their savory crepes and several other dishes.

Bird Returns for Fall Break?

I have to interrupt the scintillating tale about my flat tire to let you all know that the Crazed Woodpecker is back. I hadn't seen him in about three months or more, but somewhere around the crack of dawn this morning, I heard him flinging himself into the great room windows. He's still at it.

In other news, I received a tip from one of my dear readers that Pepsi Co has purchased Izze Soda. My initial thought was to cringe, because yet another giant company has swallowed a little one. They also might mess with the ingredients, such that it will be less healthy and delicious. The only good that can come out of this is that Izze will likely become more readily available and might (this is a stretch) be cheaper. I'm still cringing.

Walking in Memphis Due to a Flat

The drive to Memphis was fairly uneventful, although we did run into an extremely heavy downpour. I literally couldn't see the car right in front of me. This was still not as noteworthy as our actual arrival in Memphis.

When we pulled into the parking garage of the Memphis Holiday Inn Select and I maneuvered into the parking space in their garage, they pointed out that our tire was aflat. Very flat. I was somewhat distressed, because HB had given me all these recommendations of what to do in Memphis and I figured that we might not get to do all of them.

The people working at the hotel were extremely nice and put on the spare for me. I then had to drive the van up to the third floor, up an extremely steep ramp, so they could pump some air in the spare. The spare was very low, so we were worried about the seal, but we made it. Overall, the hotel, the Holiday Inn Select, was very nice and was across the street from the famous Peabody hotel, where they have the ducks that march to their fountain at scheduled times. The Peabody looked cool from the outside and they had quite a collection of horse drawn carriages. The room in our hotel was not quite as spacious at the Hampton Inn room, but the service was just incredible. The bathroom was also nicer and more accessible.

Since we weren't confident about wandering about on just the spare, we abandoned HB's dinner suggestion and decided to walk somewhere. We first went around the corner to Erika's German Restaurant, but that had closed. Then we went across the street, to Sawahdii, a Thai place. That was quite good. Unfortunately, I had attended the cocktail hour at the hotel and apparently ate more than I should have. I couldn't come close to finishing my Pad Thai. I also had Tom Ka Ghai soup, which was excellent.

One funny thing at the hotel was that one of the elevators refused to stop on our floor, the fifth floor. It reminded me of Grey 17 is Missing.

Visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame

The morning after my dad and I arrived in Nashville, we had breakfast at the hotel, which was ok. They had strange egg discs, which were surprisingly good. As we were leaving the hotel, I got a call from RR to say that she had her baby. That was an exciting way to start the day!



We visited the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. I thought it was pretty interesting thinking about what sort of things my ancestors would have listened to and the instruments they would have played. Plus, I'd heard the music of at least some of the musicians they featured there. I've never been a huge country music fan, but I am more likely to like the old stuff. Of course, the Joan Baez Country Music Album is one of my favorites. I took an inexplicable number of pictures while I was there. The lobby was one of the coolest things, from an aesthetic perspective. Another cool thing was the architecture of the room containing the Hall of Fame itself, particularly the ceiling.

We had lunch at the cafe in the lobby area and David Andersen was playing guitar while people ate. He showed me a few things, both simple and complicated, and seemed extremely nice. We bought a CD and a book from him. My dad was most amused when he recognized a Bach piece, because he hadn't realized that Bach was a country musician. Andersen apparently will play just about anything that's requested, showing off incredible versatility. I had a fried green tomato BLT for lunch, which was pretty good.

One Night in Nashville

On the 10th of July, I spent all day packing, putting more music on my iPod and sorting photos. Instead of taking all the old photos I'd been sorting, I decided to make collages in the printer/copier and photocopy them. That worked rather well.

The next day, my dad and I drove to Nashville! I know many of you have been wanting to read about the trip for a long time. Now you finally can, at least a little bit at a time.

We drove to Nashville in eight hours, despite one wrong turn that cost us about 10 minutes. We stopped in Canton at a McDonald's (not included in the time estimate). It was interesting driving through the mountains and experiencing how it leveled off not far into Tennessee. Driving downhill made me somewhat nervous. I've always been queasy whenever I'm in close proximity to large cliffs with signs saying "Falling Rocks". As I've told many of you already, my first words were "I'm afraid of the big rock." Well, driving downhill on a curvy road in a heavy van gives me something else about which to worry.

Driving in Nashville reminded me of Boston, for some reason completely unknown to me. I'm really not sure exactly why. The main differences I observed were that there were actual lanes marked on the road and the traffic lights were in the "right" place.

For dinner, we went to Tayst, which was similar in many respects to ACME Food & Beverage Co. Once we got to our hotel, I called up my mom and asked her to look up restaurants on Citysearch. I can't remember why I didn't do this myself, but I guess the laptop was still in the van. In any case, she picked out the perfect restaurant for us.

For an appetizer, Dad and I shared "Donuts and Ice Cream", which were shrimp beignets served with bacon ice cream and macerated blackberries. You read that correctly. It was really quite good. I tasted what I thought was a little vinegar on the blackberries, but my dad didn't notice. The beignets were slightly spicy and sweet on the outside. The ice cream was sweet with little pieces of bacon on it. It was wild, but very good.
For my entree I had "Duck Duck", which was duck cooked with cherries and duck ravioli, served with spinach and black eyed peas. That was delicious. For dessert, I had Krispy Kreme doughnut bread pudding served with a shot glass sized coffee milkshake. I really liked that. So, if you're ever in Nashville and you have the time, you need to go to Tayst.

I was pleased with the hotel, the Hampton Inn - At The University, next to Vanderbilt. It was nice and clean and we had two double beds.

Upgraded to Blogger Beta

It was a nice day, my house was all clean and I could have done anything I wanted. I chose to spend all day upgrading to the new Blogger Beta. It was easy to move it, but not so easy to convert my old customizations to something with which I was happy. The good thing is that there are several new features, it's easier to add new stuff and I think my photos within my posts are formatted nicely now.

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.