Update

Nothing too exciting to report since our last post. We got central heat and air installed for the up and down stairs. I've been working on taking out the radiators and all of the plumbing that went with that system. I took 560 lbs of pipes and a a boiler to the scrap yard. They gave me $40 for it so it was worth it, plus it gets recycled. I've got probably another 1,000 lbs to take assuming I take the cast iron radiators.

We also knocked a hole in the wall at the base of the stairs so now you can go directly from the upstairs to the downstairs without having to go through the laundry room. That really improves the flow of the house and now it feels more like one house instead of a duplex, which it was. A guy from church built a nice casement and stairs for the job.

Sarah's mom had a photography exhibit/reception yesterday. We were supposed to go down for the event, but we both got sick.

My favorite country music artist, Josh Turner, is coming to Chattanooga for this summers downtown Riverbend music festival. I am not a fan of most modern country music, but this guy seems kind of old school. Here is a link to a song he did with a nice bluegrass influence.

Things are exploding with green around here lately. Our Oak Leaf Hydrangea and Japanese Maple are coming out, and our Fig tree looks to be just a few days behind. We got a freeze this time last year which really hurt the looks of things so hopefully the cold weather is truly behind us.

February Afternoon

It's been a cold and rainy weekend, perfect for lounging in the sunny spot coming through the window...

And also a perfect day for cooking. I made chicken and rice soup and, get this, crackers. That's right, I made crackers. And they were easy, too.
You can get the recipe right here.

Of course, the pictures on the professional blog are beautiful, but here is my picture anyway.

Spring break is next week, and I'm hoping to catch up on some reading (recommendations from a few of you!), grading, and maybe some painting (walls, not canvases).

Pictures from Paris

Okay, so this post will be a little short on narration, but there are some pictures...

Here we are, Mark and I. He always seems so determined in these pictures. I think it
might be the beard. We're standing in front of the Notre Dame. It was a pretty incredible building to see. We didn't go inside because there were long lines, but it was cool to walk around it and see all the architectural details.

Yes, we're eating Brussel sprouts in Brussels. We were eating a Thanksgiving-inspired, vegan meal, on our way from Germany to France, using chopsticks.

At a cafe in Paris. I just pointed at the menu, and this is what came out. Mmmm. Cheese...

Obligatory picture of the Eiffel Tower. Mark took this.

Ahem. He also took this.

We went on a boat tour at night. It was beautiful and incredibly cold.

Breakfast at the bed and breakfast we stayed at in Paris.

I guess that's it for pictures from our trip. It's great to travel with friends, and we were lucky to have such great traveling companions. They took care of us in Germany and shared our adventures (and sometimes exasperations) in Paris, and we're so grateful to them for our time.

One more picture

The name of the hunting lodge was "Falkenlust,"I guess because of a desire for falcons.

Where was I?

Sorry about the delay. I know you all were on the edge of your seats about our fourth day in Europe. When we got back to the U.S. I remembered that I had a half finished bathroom project downstairs that needed attention. My brother told me that old houses will eat you up, but until this point we had dodged some bullets. Not so with this project. It was a pain in the butt, about 4 times as much as I expected, and WAY more work, but as of tonight I am more or less done. All that needs to be done now is new paint, and a new light fixture. That should be pretty simple.


So anyway, once we got back from the Neherlands we had one day in Germany before we headed to France so we decided to take it easy. We did want to see a castle however, so we took a short train ride to Bruhl where we saw this.

This is the Brühl Castle Augustusburg. It was commissioned by the Archbishop of Cologne - Clemens August von Wittelsbach. It was started in 1725, and modeled after Versailles. From what I am told it is a great example of Rococo architecture. This castle had a huge amount of property and about a mile away through the woods and gardens was this "hunting lodge."

This was his weekend retreat from his weekend retreat home, as if I have my facts straight the first house was not his primary residence. It would be best not to think about that for too long.
As we were walking around the property I started to miss millie. Everyone had their dogs with them. I did not see any German Shepherds or Rottweilers, but I did see a standard poodle, and I wanted to pet the dog, but I couldn't remember how to ask if I could, even though Courtney told me about 10 times.

The day was kind of dreary so we headed back to Cologne by way of a thrift shop, and grocery store. As I remember we tried a bunch of random things, cheese, drinks, bread, candy. I also went on a mission to try to find out the difference between liverwurst and brunchweiger, turns out brunchweiger is what they call liverwurst in Braunschweig, Germany, but not in Cologne so people had no idea what I was talking about.

Back in Cologne, Courtney and Dustin had three of their local friends over, Kai, Gunnar, and Susana. It was neat to meet some locals, so I learned much about being a German and they got to practice their English on us. Their hunger for English, and determination to go beyond their native tongue impressed me and convicted me of my laziness to pursue a broader knowledge.

So anyway, I think we stayed up until 1:00 a.m talking, eating awesome cheese, and sampling new beer and wine.

Tomorrow we go to Paris....parle vous engles?

PBS

The most watched show on PBS, Antiques Roadshow, will be coming to Chattanooga on July 19th.
I just signed up to try to get tickets. They are chosen at random so you should try to get tickets. If you can't attend I'll go for you. Here is the link. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/tickets.html

I just saw a person who brought in a first printing of the Raven that the guy estimated at 600,00-800,0o0 with a strong feeling that it could go for over $1,000,000 at auction. If I find anything that I buy at a garage sale and it is worth 1,000,000 I assure you that I will sell it and retire. Sarah will of course keep working.

Day 3: Maastricht the Netherlands

I am not as eloquent as Sarah, but I will try to give you the gist of our third day in Europe.

We took a train from Cologne to Aachen which is the last city in Germany before crossing the western border into the Netherlands. We then took a short bus ride into the city of Maastricht. It was Sarah's favorite place of the whole trip.

When I first got to Europe I was most impressed by the churches, but likes the beaches of Florida I grew to take them for granted. I mean, they all have crazy history, and are staggering architecturally. Our church in TN was built around 1900, and most of the churches in Europe were built by Moses himself. My Dutch is not good, but if Moses didn't build it, it is real old.

After walking around downtown and checking out the Christmas market we decided to walk to the outskirts of town to check out some caves. It was only 4 inches on the map, but it was about a 2 hour walk. The upside is that it took us through a neat residential neighborhood and then the countryside. This is a house and car that I thought was pretty typical of the area. I didn't see any pickups and very few SUV's. Their cars are much smaller. Here is a link to "Smart Car" which is coming to the US. It starts at 11,000. http://smartusa.com/

As we made our way out of town and walked through the countryside, we came across another old church. The farmland there looked rich and fertile. I noticed that in addition to big farms even the average homeowner had a small garden. To match their small cars, they also have small yards. I saw very few homes that were bigger than ours or that had more land.
This is the cemetery at that church.
And finally, we arrived at the caves outside of Maastricht. The tour we took was in Dutch, but this is what I gathered.
* This picture is one of the stations of the cross that was drawn on the wall when church was held there during WWII since they had to meet in Secret.
* The caves were originally built as they mined them for limestone during construction of the city.
* There are many kilometers of tunnels which translates to many miles. The whole town would seek refuge there during bombing.
* Some art was hidden here to protect it from the Nazis.

We walked back into town and ate Thai food. We were exhausted. I asked the waiter what he recommended, but that didn't go so well. The problem was not the language barrier since he spoke English, but rather he just didn't want to bother. I have always heard the waiters in Europe are rude, and this confirmed it, but here is the catch. They don't get paid by tips. They get paid a normal wage, so they have no reason to kiss butt. So I conclude that waiters in Europe are not rude but rather honest and waiters here are just good actors. I would say that a waiter in Europe is no more rude or ambivalent than your average clerk at the DMV.

So, anyway we ate Thai food, and it was really hot.

Day 2: Touring Cologne

The second day we were here, Dustin and Courtney treated us to a good, German-style breakfast (or so they said) -- bread, cheese, spreads, veggies, coffee, and tea. Then we walked around town, first stopping at the church of St. Gereon. It was neat. Gereon was a Roman soldier, and they had a statue of only his head on the ground outside (follow the link to see a picture). You can also see pictures of the church here.

Then we walked around town, saw a Roman wall, and walked downtown to see the cathedral (known here as the dome).

Here's a picture that Mark took. This cathedral is huge, and very decorated (gothic style). There are some pictures with a different perspective here.

Here's a picture from the inside.

We climbed 156 meters to the top of one of the spires. We climbed using a narrow stone spiral staircase. Our calves were not happy with us the next day. Otherwise, it was really neat. This is the view from the top.

We did some other things that day (ate lunch at a Lebanese restaurant, walked around the shopping district, went to a gestapo museum where there was also a special exhibit on stolpersteine, and then we had dinner at a traditional Cologne brauhaus (brew house) that serves the traditional beer for the town: Kolsch). This is a picture of Mark and Dustin having a Kolsch. We had brautwerst and sauerbraten. Courtney and Dustin had salad.

From our first night in Germany

We're sitting in Courtney and Dustin's apartment in Cologne; it's around midnight. We've been here a few days now. She said, "we're so glad to spend time with you in this time zone. You would definitely be asleep by now." Hmm, I guess so.

Here are a few pictures from our first night here, after we had a long, overnight flight to Frankfurt, a snowy train ride to Cologne (on a very fast train), a small train ride to our friends' neighborhood, and a walk to their apartment, we were ready to relax.

Courtney and Sarah sitting on their futon, in front of the kitchen.

Dustin is cooking us some pasta with butternut squash sauce.

Funny light switches here.

Merry Christmas

I am sitting at my old office here in State College, and the snow on the ground makes it feel like it is indeed Christmas. I check the icon, in the lower right hand corner of the laptop, and my suspicion is confirmed, it is Dec 21. So while it is not Christmas presently, it does appear that another season will come and go without us sending out cards. I do not feel that this makes us complete failures, but certainly partial failures. Over the last few weeks the cards we have gotten in the mail have reminded us of how far we have to go in the evolution into civilized adults. Maybe we need to have kids so we can have a family photo and an accompanying letter. But as I think about having kids so that we would send out cards, I think that is probably not a good idea.

So, in lieu of a card, we would like to wish all three of our loyal blog readers a Merry Christmas. Sarah, me and Millie love you all very much.

Lookout Mountain in the Fog

Mom sent us this picture that she took a few weeks ago. They were here in town, and we took a riverboat cruise on the Tennessee River. This is a picture of Lookout Mountain in the fog. Just to the left of the mountain is where our neighborhood is. The fog can get pretty thick here. Some mornings I'll wake up, look out the kitchen window, and not even see the top of the mountain. On days like that, campus can be pretty moody:

This is a picture off the webcam from today. The fog gets really thick, and often the building I'm walking to won't even be visible until I'm pretty close to it.

Some days, though, I'll wake up, look at the fog, groan about what it must be like at the top, and then find something entirely different up there. The fog will settle down around the mountains and ridges, and when I get to the part of my drive when I'm at the top of the mountain and there's a big overlook, I can't believe how beautiful it is. I've never managed to get a picture (something about driving 40 mph while turning quite close to a cliff doesn't scream "take a picture..."), but I did find a school blog that had a few pictures:

Goodbye summer

Tomorrow is November first, and I think we're going to be turning the heat on soon. The trees are starting to turn (though, with the drought we had this summer, we're not sure that they'll put on much of a show), and there are trick or treaters screaming at the "haunted house" down the block. I wore a scarf on our walk this morning.

In other words, it's fall.

But here are a few pictures from this summer.

I took this picture this summer because it seemed like an essential summer cooking moment:

We had a lot of people over for dinner this summer:

My friend Gwen came over and cooked with me. We wore matching Anthropologie aprons (thanks Mom and Duncans!):

No more long summer evenings for projects at the house:

Hope your summer was as great as ours, and I hope the fall is just as great...

The last few months

• We went to a very nice wedding in South Carolina and watched two good friends get hitched.
• We visited Sarah's parents in Fl and watched the Gators beat Tennessee.
• We hired a new person to work in recruitment with me who starts tomorrow.
• I bought and successfully used a table saw.
• Sarah started her second year at the college.
• We went and heard the archbishop of Uganda speak.
• Sarah is supposed to have an essay published in a few months.
  

This is how it turned out.

Getting the house painted...

What do you think about this color? Green body, tan trim, copper accents.

... and that's how we learned something new about plumbing

Q: Why won't our outdoor faucet let any water out?






A:
Ah ah. The guy at Ace said, "You haven't been drinking out of that, have you?"

A few pictures from a few weeks ago

Our good friends (http://www.houseofkee.blogspot.com/) came through Chattanooga a few weeks ago. We liked seeing them.



Walking bridge + ice cream = don't you want to come visit us, too?



"I see a Cardinal"





Waffles (picture from the rental, not the new house)

Weekend Surprise

This weekend Mark and I did a little yard work together. We put anti-weed plastic down in a few of the flower beds, trimmed back our invasive mimosa trees (our neighbor said: mimosas are so beautiful -- I'd like to have them fill the slope between our houses... It's not unlike saying she wants to cultivate kudzo, but whatever), and cleaned out the gutters. The gutter that runs along the front of our house goes down a drain pipe that goes into the ground. The pipe then runs about 12-15 feet underground and empties at the road. This weekend, we put a hose at the top of the pipe and noticed that no water was coming out the other end. Time to clear it out. So Mark cleared out some of the grass that had been growing in front of the opening and stuck his hand as far up the pipe as he could reach. He knocked loose some leaves and mud, but not much else.
"Sarah," he says, "come stick your hand in here and see what you can reach" (you see I have no muscles and therefore have skinny arms).
So I stuck my arm in the pipe and the tips of my fingers just grasped a root or two. I pulled. Out came not only the roots but some muck stuck to them:




I kept pulling. I guess the water had knocked some stuff loose because all of a sudden it was like that magic trick where the scarves keep coming out of the hat. The root-muck-rope kept coming. I kept pulling slowly and gently so it wouldn't break. It kept coming. Mark started yelling. Our neighbor came out to look.

Twelve feet later the rope ended:




Sick, huh?

projects are hard work

So dirty, it looks like he's still wearing socks...



So tired, he took a beer with him to the shower.


(these are pictures from the old house, while we were building the fence at the new house)

First Project

Although we're all moved in now, I thought I'd go ahead and post the projects as we've done them.

First project... building a fence.




Millie: "It's hot. I'm on a rope. I wish I could run free in my yard."



Lance and Mark figure out the complicated mathematical formual to get the pickets spaced and dropped evenly over a 75 foot span with a 3 foot drop in elevation. We had Lance write it down before he left.


All done! It still needs to be stained/ sealed (not painted).


Millie: "I'm so happy in here."