Sppprrriiiinnnggg bbbrrreeeaaakkk!!"

This clip is necessary I think...

We are on the road to Bethlehem, PA! So far we are in Harrisonburg, VA.. this means we have a little over 250 miles left in the trip! We left at 3:30 am today and have been switching off shifts every 300 miles! Hannah seems to be tolerating the drive thus far.  We've made the back seat cushy for her with a nice plush sleeping bag. We've got a couple of pounds of sliced pork and ribs from Archibald's and will be grubbing on that tonight! Yeah!

More to come soon!

Happy St. Patty's Day!!

Hello!  What a whirlwind of activity the last couple of weeks.  I don't feel like we've done much that was eventful, but it sure does feel like we've been busy bees.

The weather is WARM.  Yesterday was somewhere in the 78-79 zone and it was GREAT!  We spent the day running some errands to prep for the garden!  Yeah!  All our starts are out, supposedly Good Friday is the "safe" day that marks the time to plant outdoors!  We got a little crazy and loaded up on tomatoes - maybe 5 different varieties?  Almost as many peppers, and then some eggplant, dill, and basil.  Soon there will be some cucumber starters at our favorite nursery and we'll put in a few of those as well.  I know I've overloaded the garden, but I just can't help myself after our (my) crappy winter garden.

Yesterday was also my Dad's bday (Happy Bday Dad!) and Thursday was my brother's (Happy bday Simon!)...I hope they had good birthdays...

Today we spent St. Patrick's day at the house and just got the mad urge to CLEAN!  It's a nice way to welcome the spring with a fantastic clean home...I mean some DEEP cleaning...like move the furniture and vacuum and mop behind it, wipe the window sills down, and wipe the top of the refrigerator clean.  Dan tackled the upstairs (absolutely nothing more romantic to me than a man who will spend a Sunday cleaning with you!) while I hit the kitchen.  After our all day cleaning fest it feels great to sit and revel in our nice clean house.

We also finally got our yard mowed after the landlord has neglected it since September (grr!!).  Granted the grass doesn't grow super fast over winter, but the weeds were getting close to knee high in some area so it's nice to have a respectable front yard that Hannah can actually do her business in..Ahh...it's so nice how the little things make your day.  Last night we slept with the window open and it was fantastic!  A nice breeze lulled us to bed and the birds chirped us up in the morning.  Let's hope Spring sticks around for a bit before the oppressive summer sets in!

We leave for PA in a few days to visit the Nelson clan!  It'll be great fun to road trip up there with Hannah and spend Spring Break relaxing about.  We are planning a quick trip to NYC as well - my first jaunt to the Big Apple!!  After about a week up there we zip back down here where Dan heads to Iceland for 10 days for more field work (it'll be his last until he leaves for the summer in late May!) and I head to Coweeta for a few days of our regular benthic sampling as well as sampling for aquatic inverts for gut analysis.  Should be nice!  We (thankfully) don't have much else planned for April, but we will be having another Yearly Garage Sale at the end of April!  Our dear neighbors are leaving us in mid-May (so soon!), and they'll have a lot to purge.  We don't really have a ton of stuff, but we can always find stuff to sell!!  Our friends the Kendricks are also ready to purge after recently having a baby in October, so it'll be a nice multi-family sale with (hopefully) some nice weather...

I can't believe it's past mid-March already!!  This year has been FLYING by!!  I suppose that is how it always is, hopefully that means we're having fun and getting things done!

Here is a link to some pictures of late!  Mostly of Hannah, some plants, some food, a short hike at Lake Lurleen, the usual...

xo

A Saturday...

I am in the current mindset where I don't ask too much of my Saturdays..as far as the days anyhow.  Today - some dishes, a long walk with Hannah, yard work, a couple of loads of laundry, a new set of sheets on the bed, and a meatloaf..is there much else to expect or want?  Perhaps for some, but for today....that'll do pig..

Xo

a few things...

The sad, happy, happy report...

1) Rambo (our house anole) was laid to rest today in the back yard, 2/27/2013...he was a good friend and a good house guest...may he rest in peace
2) Dan was awarded a year long fellowship from the University! Congratulations to him, yeah!!!
3) On Sunday was the Oscar's! Which means it was also our anniversary!! It was four Oscar Sundays ago that Dan, Hannah, and I had our first date together...we had ice cream...we continue that tradition today...no matter what we do or where we are, we eat ice cream on our anniversary...seems easy enough to follow and everyone is happy to comply...

xo!!

Quick pictorial recap!

We are very behind on posts and whatnot...now I know why people Tweet and Facebook, keeps other people in the loop with little effort...But alas, here we are...

The Old 97's show was GREAT!  Rhett Miller has not aged in the last 10 years...if ever (he's supposedly 43 if you believe Wikipedia)...here's the opening of the show playing 'Timebomb'...I like his windmill move at 1:39 and again at 2:53..he did it all the time and it looks like he's dislocated his arm or something..I love it!  He also has a pretty adorable shimmy that can be seen at the start  and throughout of this song seen here...windmills also seen...

Pictures from our Atlanta trip!

Pictures from New Orleans!  It was a GREAT trip...SO.MUCH.FOOD.  revision - SO.MUCH.AMAZING.FOOD  I think about a week of New Orleans is all I can take at one time.  Then I need to give my cholesterol a break..so much meat and seafood that needs to get in my belly stat.

We will be back for sure...we barely scratched the surface of the city - so much more to visit and walk through!  It'd be great if we brought bikes next time to take longer tours of the city...

We had some great weather and not so great weather, but it was fantastic to explore the city and attend parts of a great conference as well.  

ASLO was a lot of fun - they had a great app for smart phones and tablets that you could use to check out what talks to see and when.  Much nicer than caring around those bulky programs!  

There were a few talks on the city of New Orleans where we learned they get 100% of their water from the Mississippi River, historically, it was above sea level, but it's been sinking basically due to human development (we mess everything up), this eventually led to the disaster that was Katrina.  It's much more complicated than that but Richard Campenella wrote all about it in Bienville's Dilemma: A Historical Geography of New Orleans...this is on my reading list from the library...

New Orleans is definitely a city we could both live in (and I think Hannah too)!  Which means let's start looking into jobs at Tulane! Yeah!!

Ok, all for now, I'm in Coweeta, it's late, and it's time to turn in for the night...

xo

ct

And we're off!

Here we go here we go to Atlanta! It's a dreary day in the Southeast. At least we aren't dealing with freezing temps and power outages! I am currently typing this message on my new smart phone! Woo hoo! dan and I have finally joined the ranks of tech savvy 10 year olds everywhere . After a couple frustrating road trips where we were unable to find any stores we were looking for, and even tried to steal WiFi driving around bham neighborhoods, we decided enough was enough.  Dan has an iPhone and I happily went Android... This is especially well timed for this Atl trip and the upcoming New Orleans trip! We've got maps of great places to try and we are not afraid to use them!
Tonight we are going to the newish Terminal West venue to watch the Old 97s sing their alt country hearts out.  They are playing their album Too far to Care in its entirety plus some "other hits"..it should be a great show in a great venue.  The Old 97s sing a lot about love but mostly the messy parts of love. Broken hearts, cheat in' hearts, hearts dying of longing.. with some great guitar in between.  A few lyrics I particularly enjoy include:

"It's not my fault, you slipped a mickey in my heart"

"I think I like you better in your birthday suit"

And that's not much of a list but staring at this thing while in the passenger seat gets me a little queasy so I'll end things here for now.  The city's skyline just popped up woo hoo! Peace out!

Super Bowl Sunday in the woods...

Many pictures. Where you can see I planted some flowers in the yard at the wrong time of year but I don't care, a chilly Coweeta trip, and us hiking at Bankhead National Forest this past Sunday to take advantage of the Super Bowl-induced quiet...

Here is Hannah a tad upset when forced to cross the stream...sigh, I wish she was more of a water dog, but this is fun too...

xo