Brent Went to New York

At the end of February I went to a sociology conference in New York. Unfortunately, Billie had a weekend class and couldn't go. I offered Mom my spare bed but she said that she remembered New York so well from her high school senior trip that she didn't need to fly up from Florida to see it again.

A few pictures from my trip are available on Facebook here.

We now resume our regularly scheduled lack of updates.

Our Dining Room is Finally Ready for Dining

Our dining room has been painted since before we moved into our house. Unfortunately, it has lacked two things: a chair rail to divide the red paint from the white and a dining room table. We recently bought a dining room table to use when we have visitors (like Dad and Bonita, who were here on March 3rd) and that finally motivated us to put up the chair rail. The result is a dining room you can actually dine in! Here are a few pictures:

The view from our kitchen (note the fabulous berry wreath and pinecones-in-a-jar centerpiece!)

With our tablecloth (Billie seemed to think we need one; she also seemed to think it shouldn't be made of vinyl)

From the foyer (this view really shows off the complete lack of decorations)

IU Basketball in PA

For most of my time in graduate school I had season tickets for IU men's basketball. After we got married, Billie was also able to have season tickets for our last year in Bloomington. Since moving to Pennsylvania, though, we've had to settle for watching games on TV. On Sunday, January 8th we were able to go to a game in person because IU was playing at Penn State. We decided to go on Saturday to spend some time in State College and avoid driving five hours in one day just to see a basketball game. Here are some pictures from our trip:

We could see the football stadium from our hotel room window

Joe Paterno's house

Ready for the game (we'll pretend this picture wasn't taken when we stopped to eat on the way home)

Bryce Jordan Center

Pre-game warm ups

A rabid dog was on hand to scare unsuspecting children

The pre-game huddle

Tom Crean, looking relaxed, as usual

Ready for the tip-off

...and then the game happened...

Final score: Penn State 82, Indiana 88 - it was nice that they won but if they could have won more decisively the game would have been less stressful

Shaking hands after the game

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas

Although Christmas decorations have been in stores for weeks, they don't come out at our house until after Thanksgiving. Thanks go some new decorations that Billie bought on clearance last year, we split decorating into two days, putting most of the things up last night and finishing with the tree today. For comparison, you can take a look at last year's pictures (and our relatively restrained decorating two years ago). Now, on to this year's pictures:

Here is the entryway with our new garland and some new small trees up on the landing.

Speaking of the landing, here are our new trees. One seems a bit weaker than the others...

Despite being seven years old, our regular-size tree is still doing pretty well.

Finally, here is the fireplace with more new garland and some old stockings. Billie bought four of these lighted garlands last year but we only used one.

Now that the decorating is done it is time for pizza, spiced wine, and Love Actually.

Fall Decorations

Since the yard work we did in the spring makes the front of our house visible (though the newly-small tree makes it a little more visible than would have been ideal), Billie finally got to fulfill her lifelong dream of decorating the front of a house with cornstalks. In order to experience that dream she also got to carry the cornstalks, straw, and pumpkins in her car!

For Comparison's Sake

This is a view of our street on November 13 of last year:


And this is a view of our street on October 29 of this year:

Powerless

The last time we posted something it was about the fact that Hurricane Irene hadn't done us much damage. Unfortunately, that wasn't our last storm of the year. Our snow started accumulating on Saturday, October 29 around 11 am and Dad called in the early afternoon to see if we still had power. At that point, we did, but it didn't last much longer.

Our power went out at about 1:25 on Saturday afternoon and stayed out until 9:55 on Sunday night (32.5 hours). As of Friday evening there are still almost 8,000 people in the area without power, so I guess we were relatively lucky. The maple tree in our front yard, which had not lost any of its leaves when the snow hit, was relatively unlucky. It turns out that leaves provide a lot more surface area for snow to pile up on than branches alone. After the power went out we could hear cracks from all directions as branches broke under the weight of the snow. In the end, our tree lost major limbs from three sides, including several near the top of the tree. It has been trimmed back to a fraction of its former size in the hope that it will one day return to its former 15-year-old glory.

The newspaper says that our official accumulation was 5.5 inches. While it might not sound like much, the total accumulation of all known October snowfalls since 1869 was 3.5 inches.
The pictures below will give you a sense of what our weather looked like.

Note how many limbs are touching the ground. They're not supposed to do that.

The view from the front porch a bit earlier.

The view from our bedroom window.

The view from our bedroom window this afternoon.

And finally, some candlelight Yahtzee (at 6:30 pm).

Goodbye, Irene

Hurricane Irene (pictured above) has come and gone and, as far as I can tell, everybody in our area survived. Considering it was our first hurricane, our weather last night was pretty uneventful. We did have quite a bit of rain from about 7 pm last night until early this afternoon, along with some wind. Though we haven't actually been outside today, there aren't any broken tree branches that we can see and the wind was never strong enough to knock anything over or tear off siding or shingles. It is currently 73 and sunny and tomorrow it is supposed to be 78 with a 0% chance of rain, which should be a nice change of pace!

Brent and Billie go to Washington

This summer I taught an Introduction to Sociology class in which some of the students were in Albright's Summer Start program. Summer Start is a program for students who would not normally be admitted but who are given an opportunity to work their way in by going through a pretty intense five week program in which they take a regular class (either mine or a history class) in addition to a study skills class and a life skills class that focuses mostly on reading and math remediation. On the weekends, the students in this program also participate in various social activities. On July 30, the students were going to Washington, D.C. and, because we have only been there for a few hours during the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear last fall, Billie and I decided to go with them.

Our first stop was the Smithsonian National Zoo (as always, click on the pictures for bigger versions):

This is a map of the zoo that also proves we were there.

This gorilla did not look too excited to be there, even with a baby gorilla playing underneath it.

This young gorilla was hanging out in the shade, probably plotting an escape strategy.

Can you spot the tiger?

Some lions lyin' around.

An elephant. I couldn't understand why it wasn't in the water (it was hot outside).

Zebras doing whatever zebras do.

After leaving the zoo we went to lunch at Union Station.

Billie standing in front of the (empty) fountain in front of Union Station.

Billie and Brent in front of the fountain.

The view along the front of Union Station.

Inside, Billie looks for a train (I'm not sure about the history but Union Station is currently part mall and part train station).

Another view of the main lobby.

A view of the "mall" area. We ate at an Asian restaurant to the left of this picture.

After leaving Union Station we went to the Washington Mall. We had been here before for the rally but we didn't get to do much sightseeing at the time. While the students went into some of the museums we decided to walk down to the Lincoln Memorial and then to the Capitol. This map gives you a sense of the distance we traveled.

I can't imagine a better picture of the Washington Monument.

Down by the Washington Monument we could see what looked like a big white house off to the side but we didn't have time to go see what it was.

Billie with the World War II Memorial.

Some words at the WWII Memorial (you can see the Lincoln Memorial in the background).

The Washington Monument from the WWII Memorial fountain.

The WWII Memorial fountain.

The reflecting pool was not doing much reflection on the day of our visit. It is apparently being rebuilt.

The Lincoln Memorial.

Abe Lincoln (not life sized - they were apparently going to make him smaller until they realized that if he was any smaller nobody would be able to see him on the back of a penny).

Billie and Brent at the Lincoln Memorial with the Washington Monument and reflecting dirt in the background.

After a lengthy walk we arrived at the Capitol at the other end of the mall. At this time, congresspeople and senators were inside trying to look up the word "negotiate" in the dictionary so that they could raise the debt ceiling.

This is the front of the Capitol, which faces away from the mall (you can tell it is the front because the statue on the top of the building faces this way). We tried to go inside and solve the country's problems but apparently only congresspeople and senators are allowed to go through the chain across the steps.

Here we are, left outside.

Next time we go to Washington we'd like to go for a weekend so that we have more time to go inside of some of the buildings.