Alabama


31
Dec 10

New Year’s Eve

This year:

the Yankee graduated with her Ph.D.
we took our honeymoon to Italy, Greece and Turkey
the Yankee took a job at Auburn
we celebrated our first anniversary
we bought a house
we moved
we discovered we may live on an Indian burial ground
we watched a perfect season of football
I finished the coursework in my Ph.D.
we traveled to Memphis, Las Vegas, New York City and points beyond
we celebrated victories and shared in the sadness of losses
we saw many of our friends, but none of them enough
and we loved our families, but none of them enough.

It was a full, demanding, challenging, rewarding, exhilarating, exhausting, wonderful year. I’m glad you’ve shared in it with us a bit. I hope yours was as full of blessings and joy as ours, and that your 2011 is twice as promising.

Us


30
Dec 10

Things and stuff

Five miles of footwork today, this being one of the scenic and lovely roads near my home that I shuffled down.

Road

I received eight hellos and/or waves. Saw a dog, two squirrels, a horse and two raccoons. And since a quick Google Image search doesn’t show a horse and raccoon combination, I’ll share one here.

Animals

He wasn’t especially wild about the closeup, but knew he was cornered. I think he was hoping I hadn’t noticed him, intent on the branches.

Raccoon

More reading today. If I feel behind with all of this it is only because I am. But there’s a lot to do, too, and a great deal more to go. I have about 10 more pages of notes and analysis after today, though, so that’s something.

Replaced the battery in The Yankee’s car this evening. It left me stranded last week. Since she’ll soon be back in town it seems only reasonable to assume she might want to drive somewhere. So off to Walmart I went, where we picked up this battery on August 1st.

I was all ready to go to protective husband, angry customer mode, but the lady at the customer service desk simply pointed me to the automotive section. Pick up a new one and bring it back, she said. I did, and one of her colleagues pushed the buttons that denoted the change of battery ownership.

She asked for my license, and scanned it verily. I asked what that told her.

“Since you don’t have your receipt I needed to see when you bought it. It is to make sure you aren’t returning too much stuff.”

Next time I’ll ask about the definition of “too much.” Instead I simply said, July 30th.

She confirmed the date, but did not ask about my superior recollection. Shame, since I had a great speech. “Like your wedding day, or the birth of your child, you never forget the day you swap out a car battery on the same evening you move.”

Not that she would have cared … There was a product, a customer said it was faulty. She had buttons to push, keys to to turn and items to scan.

I had the new battery, picked up a commemorative Sports Illustrated, a picture frame and a handful of buttons.

Installed the car battery — and what do you know, it cranked on the first try! — and did a little sewing. A sports coat needs different buttons. I’m swapping out the plastic gold look for something a little more sedate.

The frame? I put this postcard behind a piece of plexiglass.

Postcard

The note on the back details visiting family throughout the country. The postmark is from 1912.


28
Dec 10

My day

I woke up warm, which was ironic considering I spent all yesterday cold and today wasn’t exactly spring. We’ll be in the 60s by Friday. Why can’t it already be Friday?

I make this joke a lot, and usually I’m joking. I talked with my grandmother today, it was her birthday, and she might despise the cold more than anyone I know. Whenever I run out of small talk, I can always retreat to the temperature. At Christmas, on a white Christmas, she brought up the year my cousin was born. It snowed that day too. My cousin is 27.

Anyway, I joke about the cold, but she hates it. I don’t care for my feet being cold. Socks, slippers and a space heater aren’t getting the job done tonight. Come on Friday.

Anyway. I ate. I read. I wrote maybe four pages on a methodological feature. I now know more about repeated measures design than I did before the day began. I learned other things today, too, but not enough. Tomorrow I’ll read and learn more. Comps, meanwhile, are beginning to loom large.

This Oregon-Auburn magazine came in the mail today. My step-father bought it for me, ahead of the big game. Normally I’m not a big commemorative issue kind of guy, but this is pretty nice. If you’re familiar with one of the teams at all at least half of the writing will be stuff you already know, but the photography is great. You might think of picking one up if you’re a Duck or Tiger fan.

Otherwise, there’s not much. So here are the three videos I watched today. Enjoy.

Time lapse snow video:

That is … a lot.

It was only a matter of time before someone mixed clogging with contemporary music to produce mildly amusing results:

“Hey guys, I got a new sword!”

“I got a new camera!”

“I wonder what we can do with the both of them?”

If some physicist doesn’t take that footage and rethink the way we sword fight — What? You don’t? — I will be very disappointed.

It must be good: the comments on YouTube are fairly genial about the video. We might have reached the end of the Internet. Even the Aztecs wouldn’t have predicted that.


26
Dec 10

Catching up

And, now, the regular attempt to add more pictures that were somehow neglected over the course of the last week.

Study

Studying. I’m doing it.

Notes

Lots of it.

Tree

This is the tree at the main entrance of St. John the Divine in New York, where we saw the Winter Solstice concert.

Scarf

One of the nicer things about winter is that The Yankee sometimes wear scarves and I can take this picture.

Pizza

I’m violating my food photography rule here, I know, but this is Pepe’s. This is serious. If you’re in Connecticut, or in Yonkers or anywhere in New England, really, you have to visit Pepe’s. This is one of the better pizza pies you’ve ever eaten.

ToniceOcie

Family photos are fun. These are my great-grandparents. That’s their youngest grandchild, which would put this picture in the early 1980s. They both look great here. She always looked great, though. And he was the very definition of a Southern gentleman and perhaps one of the finer men I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. We all miss him very much.

I don’t know that I’d ever seen the picture before. I took this on Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncle’s house, so this is a picture of a picture, and almost shooting from the hip, as it were.

Punch

Now I feel like I’m re-living my childhood. Punch and cookies, the staple food at my grandparents’ home.

Recipe

Want the recipe? This is a delicious punch … but do cut back on the sugar.


6
Dec 10

End of the semester

Allie

“No more typing.”

I finished, and Emailed, a 28-page paper to my professor this afternoon. My semester as a student is now formally completed.

So I’m taking a day or two to enjoy that feeling, do just work things and then … start studying again.