Enjoying your snow?

It's been an oddly tropical February here in Texas, so we decided to capitalize on our warm weather this weekend.

After much begging, Dan finally decided I am allowed to start running again. I have notoriously terrible ankles that have been sprained and broken more times than I can count. In order to keep me from pushing things too far too fast, I started a timed running plan and Dan tags along to keep the pace slow and steady. So far, we have only gone on two, two mile excursions -- maybe a third of that being actual running. But we are both feeling great, and dare I say.. ready for more? Barring heat stroke or another injury, we are hoping to be up to 5k in the next 9 weeks. Fingers crossed! Running is such a great stress reliever, I'm glad to have it back in my life!

We also utilized our heatwave to do our first wave of summer gardening (eat your heart out, mom!). We planted a few window boxes of herbs, a red bell pepper and beefsteak tomato plant. In a few weeks, we will be harvesting garlic -- and Dan will get another stab at growing eye-watering, sweat inducing hot peppers.

Saving the best for last --- as a delayed holiday gift for ourselves, this weekend we went to see Cirque Du Soleil's Ovo show. The show is based on a world of insects. The costumes were amazing, and the acts were insane. Picture a man on a slack line, operating a unicycle with his hands (because he is "sitting" on it upsidedown on his shoulders, naturally), while simultaneously being hoisted 30+ feet into the air. Or another favorite: 9 men throwing themselves off of a climbing wall and into trampolines -- then performing crazy spins and twists and tacking themselves back on the wall. It was quite the show. If you haven't seen a Cirque show, you really need to!

And a little teaser: great news for D is on the horizon.. and maybe some for me too!

Miss you all!

-K&D

Back in Texas!

Hey all,

Kristin and I have just gotten back from our trip home to Minnesota. We were very excited to visit and had we had a great time! So now, before I get into the details about our trip, lemme try to recap our first month of the new year.

At my job, we've just got a couple employees back from med leave. It's always nice when things go well for people and we're happy to have them back. But, the best thing about my coworkers right now is that we've had the same ones for a while now. Not that I dislike new hires, it's just nice taking a break from training once in a while. :)

Kristin's really starting to hit the grind with her work. It's not coursework anymore, so there are no more monthly due dates or general guidelines. I don't rightfully know if this is better or worse, but K is doing what she can to keep on top of her obligations and her own publications.

At about mid month, I got the news that my Grandma Connors passed away. This was a very hard time for me and the family, so I want to thank everyone for their support during this difficult time. Kristin and I attended the funeral and wake in the North Minneapolis area. We weren't expecting to beat our MN trip to Minnesota, but being able to connect with my family was worth the effort.

100,000 is now the number of miles that our vehicle has now achieved. Our car, Stewart, was purchased by Kristin at the end of college, and he's hardly ever felt like he was gaining on the years. Time and time again, I am reminded of how nice it is that K and I can survive with just one car between us.

Thanks to NPR, I am now reading The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. I caught part of "Fresh Air" on my drive home from work one day, and I listened in on a quick description of String Theory. I made a point to find the whole segment on-line later that day and picked up Dr. Greene's 2004 book from the Library that weekend. The new one, of course, is what they were talking about on the Radio, but when it comes to physics, I've got some catching up to do.

OK, I think that about gets me up to our planned MN Vacation! Our general plan was to start in Duluth, work down to Lindstrom, and close in Cambridge to see a hockey game, celebrate Kristin's Grandma's 80th B-Day, and catch up with family.

So here are a couple points of interest...

Flight Out: So Kristin totally lucked out after I dropped her off at the terminal. She was supposed to visit Duluth a few days ahead of me so that she could visit the EPA for research stuff. However, Texas got nasty the week we were supposed to leave, and her flight got canceled. Then, it got canceled again the next day, so K got desperate and canceled the Waco flight, so that she could leave right out of DFW. We thought that the Duluth leg was canceled as well, but Delta kept it intact. So, after I parked the car K calls me an says we'll need one less spot at the table tonight. I quickly rushed her some carry-on items she didn't think she'd need, and off she went to Duluth!

Hockey: Kristin and I had the opportunity to attend one of the first games at Amsoil Arena, the new home of the University of Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs! The stadium gets my vote of approval. This was a huge improvement over the old DECC, and K and I really enjoyed the game. Sadly, the Gophers and the Bulldogs skated to a tie, but we still had a great night (and the dogs won on Saturday, so they took the weekend).

Turning 80: This one wins the award for 'most preparation'. Kristin's Mom started putting this together months ago. She went to near extreme measures to invite just a whole bunch a people to come celebrate Kristin's Grandma's 80th Birthday. Leading up to our visit, K's G-ma was very excited to know that we were going to be in town over her birthday, and she kept wanting to plan things with us, and K's family. So, it was a very hard secret to keep, but in the end, the Surprise Birthday really did catch her unaware. Attending were over a hundred friends and family, many from the senior community across the road. Overall, things went really well, and most importantly, I think K's G-ma had a good time :)

Winter Driving: Totally shouldn't be it's own heading but it was two fold. It'd been almost two years since K and I had seen anything close to snow on roads, and we got a lot of it in Duluth. Not only had we forgotten the feel of snow under your tires, but also how nicely the snow banks up on street corners, completely blocking the view of oncoming traffic. Yes, it was great getting reacquainted with the finer points of February weather in MN. Kristin's rental worked out well for her, and my mom's car worked great... except for one thing. On my drive up Mesaba Ave, the road the cuts up through downtown Duluth, I nearly got stuck. The Volvo has some pretty swanky anti-skid technology, but when you need to get up hill, and you don't care if your skidding or not, well it makes it kinda tricky.

Ok wow, I think I've gone on long enough now. Thanks again to everyone for helping us with our MN visit! Keep MN warm for us till we can get back ;)

K had a unique Birthday request,. She wanted to make Swedish Potato Sausage from scratch. We were headed down to Austin anyway to eat out at an Ethiopian place, so we decided to pick up some sausage casing from the Whole Foods Market downtown. I love the grocery store in Austin, and we found a lot of items that we don't usually come across at HEB.

Anywho, I think I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

The result: 11 lbs of delicious homemade sausage. We will be eating it for weeks!

Next year, we are definitely buying some type of device to put the sausage into the casing, but it was still fun putting it all together!

Out! DJC

Texas Winter

This blog is about more visitors in Waco! Thank you for coming!

First off, we are always super excited when folks come to visit. It's a tough thing to live so distantly from family and friends, so we always appreciate it when people come to see us. Mike and Chelsie included us in their between-jobs-Texas-road-trip. Mike made me miss living in a democratic environment, and Chelsie reminded me that all meals do not need to include meat. This second point is more of a problem than you might think here in Texas. There is a lot, lot, lot, of Beef here. And, it finds it's way into most meals. In fact, sometimes it just is the meal if you're at a Steakhouse or a Roadhouse or a Smokehouse Bar-B-Q establishment.

However, the best part about M&C dropping in was that we got to put our board game library to use. We of course played Settlers of Catan. And yes, we played the Cities & Knights expansion. Now, K and I had played that add-on before, but we never got a chance to really figure it out until this most recent December. We also played a lot of hand and foot. Probably too much hand and foot, all things considered. Mike and I got Clobbered in a way that would be most difficult to replicate in this game. Normally when the other team does well, they end up having a higher meld and Your team can catch it up a bit. This was certainly not the case when Mike and I teamed up. So, to make up for it, Mike and I decided to clobber Eighteen Pounds of Oranges that we bought for $6.00. That's right, 18 lbs. is a lot of oranges and anytime one of ate one, the other had to keep up. Luckily we decided that making 40 of them into OJ was PC.

Last game: Dominion. Its a card game where you 'buy' cards to add to your deck. So every turn you are adding better and better cards to your future hands as the deck gets shuffled and reshuffled. The former Magic: The Gathering player in me loves this game for its draft style play, but the best part was getting an opportunity to see it in action with four players.

And yes, I did spend way too much time talking about the games, but they also dominated a good deal of our time as well. So that leads me to "other interesting points"!

--We took a Vegetarian to Rudy's!

--We ate 18 lbs of oranges in like 3 days of eating.

--Dozens of hours of board/card games...

More stuff later!!!

DJC

Season's greetings!

A little Holiday Card preview =)

Picture Updates!

Without further ado -- the pictures as promised!

Finnegan's week of terror:

He can also perform this high-wire act on the shower rod. Fair warning, this is his new favorite attack location.

A visit with old friend is not complete without some questionable boardgames. Shown below, Gassy Gus!

My Portland presentation!

Our beautiful Halloween pumpkins =)

Catch it up II

Alright alright, This post picks up where we left off...

And once we're through here, We'll be caught up through October and ready for the pending, Waco Thanksgiving Celebration (in our apartment).

Right, So! I think we still need to 'carve' it up with... The Pumpkin.

It's a real contest. You've got to pick a design that will appeal to both the judges and the general audience. But, you've also got to do it in a time frame. Yes, the Quadrangle Pumpkin Carving Contest is a real combination of art and efficiency. The best carved pumpkin gets $75 off its creator's rent for the month of November with other prizes for 2nd and 3rd place. We didn't win, but at least we had a fun time carving some cool pumpkins. This year, I finally carved a Trogdor pumpkin (thanks to Kristin for finding the template!). And I was able to help K with her pumpkin, suggesting she do a Pumpkin π.

We'll post pictures soon!

So we weighed Finnegan and he is starting to turn into... A Monster.

Yeah, he's grown at a pretty good clip. He's at least eight pounds now, which puts him just three pounds under Loki. And, he will probably fill out his already lengthy frame. So he will at least catch up, if not surpass greatly, Loki is the Size department. And of course, he is still very much a Kitten at heart. He does not really respond to discipline, in that he still jumps up places we have greatly discouraged. But he has learned. Learned that he's going to get wet if we are around when he does it (which doesn't seem to deter him...) But the last fun nugget of news about Finn is that he has now taught himself how to get a whole roll of toilet paper off the roll. Yeah, so we're going to leave the TP under the sink for a few weeks before we test it out again.

And Lastly, I've caught up to current evens with... The Conference.

Kristin is a Scientist. And Scientists always need more ideas, or at least to make sure their ideas are valid, good, and worthwhile. So, this past week, Kristin has been talking work with a bunch of fancy-famous people from Labs all round the country to share her ideas and catch up with what's going on round the field. Portland OR is the location of this year's SETAC convention. The Society of Environmental Toxicologists and Chemists draws in researchers from all realms of environmental work. Researchers from both Schools and Government programs (like the EPA and USGS) are the main contributors of the material. Kristin did a poster session (where she compressed her work to fit on a 3' by 4' surface) and she attended many platform presentations of research. She got a lot of good feedback and a lot of positive interest in her paper.

So yeah, that's October through now. We'll patch in some images from this past month soon here, and we are super excited to host the (immediate) Connors family for Thanksgiving!

DJC

PS

You should totally click on the Trogdor link, this is probably one of the Best Strongbad Emails ever created on www.homestarrunner.com