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

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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.

Nightmare of the Wilted Plant and Flying Salad Greens

On Monday of last week, I had a nightmare that one of my houseplants was wilting. I laughed at the thought of that as a nightmare, which woke me up, only to discover that I'd overslept by an hour.

That morning I went to an interesting workshop by Dr. James Zull, from Case Western Reserve University, on deeper learning. That night, my parents, LA and I went to Thai Cafe, in Durham. This time I had the Massaman Shrimp, which was quite wonderful.

Thursday, I had lunch with AE outside the Refectory. I discovered what happens when you eat salad greens without dressing on a very windy day. It's very important to note the wind direction unlesss one wants the leaves plastered to oneself.

Last Friday, I went to a talk on modeling transparent fish liver bile ducts using Amira at the Friday Visualization Forum.

That afternoon, LA and I microwaved a valentine peep. They deflate about as quickly as they expand. Yes, I'm afraid that a peep was harmed during the production of the content for this blog. If you are concerned, be sure to check out peepresearch.org.

That night I had dinner with AE, JH and GM at Chai's, followed by coffee at Shade Tree Coffee. The coffee artist has a new foam design, which is rather pretty.


JH decided to mask his identity with a book, borrowed from AE, titled, "Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis" while GM successfully disguised himself with a mere drinking straw.

Sunday night, NP came over for dinner. I made my shrimp and bacon over pasta dish, which I thought turned out well. He built this cool looking bridge out of geomag after dinner. I'd also made brownies for dessert. At my mom's suggestion, on four of the brownies, I put Necco thin mints just after I took them out of the oven. They melted in a nice odd sort of way and were pretty good. I like topping them with my standard drizzled semi-sweet chocolate blobs better, though.

Later that night, I watched part of the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. They had this cool fan generating 125mph sustained winds with people floating over it as if they were in the free fall that sky divers do before opening their parachutes. It was a wild thing to see in a stadium, especially when they started wearing fake snowboards and other accessories.

It's a Bargain!

There's been a lot of talk today on various blogs about Apple's announcements for new products, including the $99 leather iPod case. They say that it's waay too expensive for what you get. Well, they've got it at all wrong. You see, for $99 you get this somewhat unexciting piece of leather. For just a little bit more, you get an iPod! Is that a deal or what?

Bad Timing

It's time to interrupt the regularly scheduled program of month old events and tell you all about what happened yesterday.

Yesterday started out to be very good. At lunchtime, I went to the Visualization Forum in the Levine Science Research Center, for a talk on combining Macromedia Flash with XML. That was combined with a free lunch of chicken gyros and a lemon. I was worried that I was going to be late, because I got lost in the Hudson Engineering building. They've added a ramp to the front of the building, so I went in a different door from the one I used when I was a student. That was the building in which I took Algorithms and Operating Systems.

Later that afternoon, I went to a tutorial on the ViewsFlash surveying tool. It seems pretty cool, actually, and DF did a great job teaching us.

After work, I went over to practice guitar with JJ and EB. At first my chording hand seemed to not be cooperating at all and later it was clear that my timing was way off, particularly on John Denver's Country Roads. Playing faster and faster doesn't help if you're playing with other people. After carefully analyzing my playing and the songs, they suggested that I try practicing just downstrokes rather than a more complicated strumming patterns. Also it does seem like I need to learn the words of the songs well enough to get a better sense of the melody. Fortunately, Brown Eyed Girl is just four beats per chords. In any case, I had a really good time and I think JJ and Biscuit, did, too.

Afterwards, JJ, JA, EB, MP and I went to the new restaurant across from Nana's, Thai Cafe. LA had recommended it to me earlier in the day, so I suggested that we try it out. I tried their Pad Thai with shrimp and I was very pleased.

After dropping JJ and EB off at JJ and JA's house, I headed home. I was on 147 and about to merge with I-85 when a deer jumped out right in front of me. I braked and then I saw that there was another jumping between me and the first deer. It was so close that there was nothing I could do. It was horrible. The good thing is that I was ok. It made me thankful that I was in a full-sized van, because I'm betting it would have gone through the windshield of a sedan.

I immediately went into shock and was shaking uncontrollably. It is so sad and traumatic to hurt an animal involuntarily. It makes me wonder even more how anyone could do it intentionally.

My van was making odd noises and I pulled off to the side of the road. Fortunately, there is a really wide shoulder where 147 merges with 85. I put on my blinkers, called home and my parents headed for me. My mom suggested that I might want to call 911 and let them know. When I called, I didn't know how bad it was, so I said they didn't need to come by to write a report. It was about 10 minutes from our houses, but they had to go past me, exit and get back on in the other direction. Once they arrived and saw the damage, I called the police back and asked them to come after all. My van was a mess. That took quite a while.


As you can see, the grille is completely broken, the turn signal light is broken, my ham radio antenna is gone. The air conditioner condenser is pushed in, but it's hard to tell how bad that is inside. The driver's side door makes a noise when you open it, so the fender may need replacing. My dad has been working on trying to get it driveable so we can take it places to get estimates.

Evacuation on a Warm Summer 's Day in January

Tonight I'm babysitting FIFO to distract him from his desire to tear something up while my parents are out for the evening. This is a perfect opportunity to write more about my not so recent adventures in between bouts of petting and general adoration.

Perhaps the most exciting event of January was the fire in the library. We were nearing the end of the lunch portion of an interview with a candidate for one of the open positions within CIT when the fire alarm started going off. Fortunately, it was in the new Bostock part of the building, so we heard the polite request to leave and not use the elevator instead of the excruciatingly loud buzz in Perkins. I actually haven't heard the Perkins one, but if it's anything like what we had in my building at IBM, it's awful.

We were on the second floor, so my boss headed for the stairwell. They are rated for four hours in Bostock and it's a fully sprinklered building, so it's safe. Besides, what are the chances that it could be a real emergency in a brand new building? Then we noticed that the fire safety people were running upstairs. We smelled smoke. During a drill, you don't tend to observe either of those things.

They didn't seemed to know where the problem was, but we somehow came to the conclusion that I should leave the building. Fortunately, PW and MG suggested that we go through the old part of Perkins to leave. It's sort of a windy path through special collections to get out, particulary since the first floor of Perkins is closed for construction. By the time we got out and back around to the outside of Bostock, the alarm had stopped so we could go back in.

Our offices, which are in the basement, smelled horrible and it was hard to breathe in there. We thought we would grab our laptops and go work somewhere else. As we were leaving, the alarms started going off again. The elevators weren't working again yet, so we had to go around again. Note that I said that we would grab our laptops. I did not say anything about grabbing my purse, keys or anything useful like that. In fact, my boss had gone in to get my laptop, but in my infinite wisdom, I decided I needed to go in to turn off my lava lamp, in case I wouldn't be back for a while. Unbeknownst to me, I ended up locking my keys in my cubical in the process.
I didn't realize any of this until I'd gone back outside to the main quad.

So, I had to wait outside the building for the alarm to go off again. You can see in the picture what it looked like at the time, with the firetruck between Bostock Library and the Old Chemistry building, but you'll have to imagine the flashing lights. After I got back into my cube, got my stuff and started heading home to work from there, I was interviewed by a reporter from Duke's student newspaper, the Chronicle. You can read the article. I also made the quote of the day on their masthead page, saying "At least it's nice out," she added. "Better being evacuated when it's 70 degrees outside."

It turned out that this all resulted from a malfunctioning air handler on the fourth floor and all the smoke got to the basement via an elevator shaft.

New Toy

I'm still a month behind, but I will catch up soon, I promise. This was one problem that I used to have when writing hardcopy journals, when I was a kid. I would get behind. It was easier back then, because I never had anything terribly interesting to write about except for food. Wait..

When I got back to work after my brother's visit, I traded in my 4th generation "photo" iPod for a new 5th generation video iPod. Watching video on it is just incredibly cool, although I, to this day, have not found anything that I would want to watch on a regular basis. I barely even watch television as it is. I almost hesitate to say that I am looking forward to more content's being available for it, but I already have enough to do. The screen is just so nice and I am looking forward to the audio recorder's becoming available for the new model, so I could try recording some guitar playing with which I could play along on my own. I know I'm not the only one looking forward to their availability.

I'm hoping to get some software that will allow me to convert my AVI files produced by my Canon SD500 camera to iPod video, but I haven't gotten around to finding something good and free yet. From what I've heard at work, some of the software is a lot better than others.

The Arrival

I'm still behind in blogging, but there are still some things that I want to write about from early January (yes, 2006) before I start grossly glossing over details to catch up to the present.

On Tuesday, January 10th, I got to enjoy one last day of vacation, even though my brother headed back home to Boston earlier in the day. It was gloomy, of course. It really seems as if 80% of my days off are gloomy. It's gloomy now. I guess if there's a chance of rain, I'd rather not have to go anywhere, so this isn't necessarily a complaint.

The most exciting thing of the day was that my new guitar arrived! I decided to get a 3/4 size Martin LX1 "Little Martin". Fed Ex brought it late in the afternoon and I was very excited. This was dampened somewhat by the notice on the box saying that it should adjust to the temperature of the house for a few hours before opening the box. That was fairly agonizing.

Fortunately, I had to go play "Madame Secertary" at the Durham FM Association meeting anyway. I need to write up those minutes today, too. JH was there and we scheduled a time that evening for his first transmission on his handheld ham radio. I rushed home after the meeting and was relieved to see that the guitar already had strings on it. That was one less thing I had to figure out immediately. I was and am *extremely* pleased with the guitar. It's just the right size and sounds great, too. I did take a brief break from looking at it to talk to JH on the radio. Since then, I've been practicing playing the guitar almost every day, and that's been cutting down on my blogging time just a bit. What, you didn't notice??

Two Nights of Culinary Heaven

The night after the juggling party, we made my dad's crepe style pancakes filled with cranberry sauce. I tried adding the melted semi-sweet chocolate but the cranberries pretty much overwhelmed it.

That night, we went to ACME Food & Beverage Company. I had a wonderful blue crab and goat cheese ravioli appetizer with a Northern Spy apple salad with gorgonzola, spicy greens and a minted vinaigrette. Strangely enough, I didn't feel like having dessert afterwards, so I had a decaf cafe mocha instead. The ravioli, in particular, was just superb.

The next afternoon, we went to A&M Grill. Their barbecue is kind of sour and I wasn't in a sour mood, so I tried their fried chicken tenders. They were ok. I probably won't get them again, because I'll probably be sour.

That night, we went to ACME for the second night in a row. Sunday night, I'd had a hard time decided whether I wanted the duck or what I got, so I knew exactly what I wanted. The duck, with tangerine sauce, was wonderful. My parents and I had an apple cobbler to finish it (us) off.

You really can't beat going to ACME two nights in a row.

The Juggling Party

Now that I've spent too much time updating my picture for this blog and my website today, I'll continue writing about last weekend.

Last Saturday, I spent most of the day cleaning up my house making rolls and coconut macaroons, in preparation for The Juggling Party. Once AE, KD, GM, JH and IS arrived, we started out by playing with my Geomag sets. Given that I failed miserably at protecting the identity of JH last time, I'll quit worrying about it and post an unobscured photos of JH and GM. AE gave each of us guns that blow bubbles, which turn into vapor when they burst. We played with those and JH's fog ring blaster. I was nervous about having so much vapor flying everywhere in the house, but those things are very cool.

Since my brother was visiting, my mom made a wonderful dinner. She made three turkey breasts, dressing, cranberry sauce, and broccoli. This time when I made rolls, the dough actually rose. At my mom's suggestion, this time I left out the 1/4 cup of water and then I didn't have to add much extra flour. We wonder if this might be necessary since the recipe was written for a higher altitude.

After dinner, we got back to playing with Geomags. My brother, Karl, was the first to finish a buckyball, starting with an unstable base that my dad had started earlier. JH and IS actually ran out of pieces for their buckyball and had to incorporate some pieces from a Magnetix set.
Finally, GM posed some Acrobots from ThinkGeek on top of the two balls.

We watched a silent cowboys and Indians movie, made in the early 50's, starring AE's, uncle, mother and grandmother. We also saw the Wallace and Gromit shorts again, because JH hadn't seen them.

Finally, we juggled! Even my dad gave it a try. We watched the contact juggling DVDs, too.

Fierce Bad Rabbit and Sushi Theft

Here's one picture of FIFO that I took on New Year's Day. He transforms into a fierce bad rabbit when he's upside-down.

The Thursday before last, my brother flew down from Boston to visit us. After work, I met my parents and him for dinner at Bullock's Barbecue. That was the start of my vacation while he was there. They now have deviled eggs as a side dish, which was very exciting. I had two whole eggs with two chicken legs and their wonderful cole slaw. I was extremely disappointed in their chocolate pie. I've been eating there for almost thirty years now and they've always had a deliciously smooth chocolate pie with meringue. The filling has always been similar to chocolate pudding, but slightly thicker. This time it had a weird consistency and wasn't very chocolatey at all. It was very sad.

That Friday, I went over to my parents' to visit with the dog and everyone. We had ham sandwiches with Leerdammer cheese. I also took some good pictures of FIFO. That evening, we went to Mt. Fuji for dinner. It's funny, one review says that they "kind of wanted to take a picture of my plate". As you all know, that's what I like to do. We had a bit of a fiasco that night, because our favorite waiter didn't use his reading glasses and didn't see about half our order on our sheet. Since we didn't know what the rolls were supposed to look like, we ended up eating one of the rolls that my mom had ordered, the red NY roll in the picture. We forgot to ask for a replacement when we were getting it straightened out. Fortunately, she liked the couple of pieces of my wasabi roll that she had.

Crispy is Challenging

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I also ordered three more Geomag sets on New Year's Eve Eve (the 30th). I found that the cheapest price for them was on eBay, from Taylor's Toys and Collectibles. I actually made my first bids on eBay for that purchase. Since no one bid against me, I got them for $40 each. It was all very exciting.

On New Year's Day, I met JJ and H at Fowler's for brunch. We had a great time talking about various non-serious things. I tried their Huevos Rancheros again and it wasn't as good as last time, but it was still quite good. I don't think the avocados were ripe enough, but otherwise it was the same.

That night, we tried frying chicken in my new electric frying pan. I ended up being alone with a dead (a good thing) frying chicken and I was supposed to turn it. This appears to be something that requires guidance, experience or common sense, because I didn't do it right. I didn't scrape up the skin that was stuck to the bottom of the pan, so the crust didn't turn out right and crispy at all. It was still good, but just not what we were hoping for. Next time.

The next day, Monday, was extremely gloomy. We were supposed to have severe weather, but we didn't have that either. After that, it was back to work. Things were really starting to pick up before the start of the semester. One wouldn't think that professors would be preparing for their spring classes on the 2nd of January, but they are. This is particularly surprising to the daughter of a faculty member. I thought these things were always done at the last minute.