Hi!

Hi there!

Well we are back up to "hot" in Alabama...the house is currently 80 degrees and it's 8:31 pm!  There's a nice breeze so it's actually not all that bad.  I dropped off Amy at the airport yesterday after first dropping Jon and Alex at the airport for an April Iceland sampling trip.  Then Amy and I had coffee and lunch (so-so lunch, my crawfish perogies were great, her catfish cakes needed some flavor), then stopped at the peanut depot for some salted peanuts, and then off to the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum where we spent the rest of the afternoon taking it all in.  The museum is quite hi-tech, it starts off with an 8 minute video in a small room, then the screen rises to reveal the rest of the museum, there were a lot of interactive displays, a lot of audio and visual displays, tons of cool photographs - amazing!  Definitely something to see again as there is so much to see.  It was pretty cool to see pictures of how parts of downtown Birmingham once was in its heyday...now, not so much, but trying to get there.

All in all I had a lot of fun with Amy visiting - she is a dear friend from way back when.  Unsure how exactly she puts up with me, but I think that goes both ways (she's a loud Italian and loves it, my eardrums suffer).  We ate a lot of good ol' Southern food, saw things I've never seen before here in the South (largest slave cemetery in the South! old southern houses! Gip's Place!).  It's always fun to host visitors and show them around your new hometown while discovering new things that make you love your home even more (Thank You Amy!!!).  I think all of the Bio Grad students are enourmously thankful for the Gip's Place experience - all are the envy of us!!

all for now, I head into Coweeta tomorrow for monthly sampling...should be beautiful up there, and I look forward to a meal at Manrique's, even though I've eaten so much this past week...more soon...

More Pics 

Quick Hi!!!

Hi Folks!

It's been a busy few weeks, hence being MIA in the blog world...but, the skinny:

1) Amy is visiting us!!  Amy is one of my best friends from middle school...20 years we're known each other...that in itself is crazy...what we've done while she's been here is also crazy - see pictures (Gip's Place - a Juke Joint in Bessemer, various historic sights in Eutaw, AL, the garage sale...)  she is a 19th century American historian so she's in her element here...

2) We had a garage sale!!  Our neighbors and friends came and contributed as well, the Chau-Dan contingency sold over $200 in what we deem as "junk"...but to someone else - treasure...either way we were pleased and had a great day sitting outside with friends, BBQing, makin' deals with the locals, etc...fantastic!!

3) Gip's Place - One of Amy's (many) wishes whilst in Alabama was to visit a Juke Joint to listen to some blues, lucky for her we have google, which resulted in finding Gip's Place in Bessemer,which can be difficult to explain in words, but we can say weekly house party with blues, BYOB, selling shirts dyed with the red clay dirt underneath the stage at Gip's...just crazy...

more soon...

xo

Another post!

Here's a quickie - 

Dan and I went to the first Farmer's Market of the season at the new Riverside Market by the Black Warrior River this morning.  The space is awesome, let's hope the farmers like it and come sell their wares!  There was a small showing today - they'll have a month of soft openings before the grand opening in May.

I grabbed some mulch from the UA arboretum finally!  Now I feel like the garden is ready for the season...$10 for a load of compost mulch and we are good..I think it makes the garden really shine..

pictures here!

Also, watch the Hengill Diaries blog if you haven't in a while - it was quite the winter!!

okie dokie, time to hit work!

xo

hi!

Here is a link for some pics from March's First Friday at Grace Aberdean with Simon's art opening!

Also, a few pics from the last few weeks...some work in the garden finally, and field work... 

This past weekend we went out on a collection trip, Dan came along to help speed things along.  We left Friday night and made it to Atlanta to try some SE pho - the original plan was to hit up Pho Bac, but they close at 9 (boo), so they steered us to Pho 24, which, as you may have guessed, is open 24 hours a day - they said they get pretty crowded around 3 am when the clubs let out..the pho was decent, and we grabbed some banh mi sandwiches for lunch the next day - pretty tasty, but still ain't got nothing on Westminster sammies...the hunt continues...

Field work was successful, but most exciting was a dinner at Manrique's, our favorite place to eat when we go out in the field, where we gorged ourselves silly on carnitas nachos, lengua and cabeza tacos, chorizo sopes, and quesadillas with every delicious meat imaginable.  We also tried a new place for lunch on Sunday before heading home a place called Universal Joint  in downtown Clayton, GA- it was awesome, mostly because of the outdoor seating and the wonderful sunny day that accompanied us.  They had some pretty tasty tater tots and a great B.A.T. - bacon arugula tomato sammy that I had.  Dan's burger was pretty tasty as well.  There are a few other locations in NC - maybe they'll come to Tuscaloosa!! 

Anyhow, it's time to get back into the groove of the work week and try to keep cool - it's supposed to get into the 90s sometime this week - yikes!!!

xo