Rearranging the Furniture

Since we've been using hand-me-down couches since the beginning of time, Billie and I were both looking forward to having some new furniture. Getting some new furniture for the family room also allowed us to put a few things in the empty living room. Here are some pictures:

Our new recliner, couch, and pillows with the fireplace.

Another view of the recliner and couch.

The matching loveseat. The benefit of buying the same style of everything is that you don't have to worry about it matching!

Here is our old couch in its new living room location. Since we don't have new end tables, this room is still pretty bare feeling.

The old loveseat and chair in the living room. Some day we might put some more things on the walls!

We're back (though we never really left)

Given that our second to last post was on April 4, you may have been surprised by yesterday's Halloween post. If you aren't friends with us on Facebook then you may not know that we bought a house on April 23 and spent most of May, June, and July making some cosmetic changes.

At the end of August we went to Hawaii with Dad and Bonita, Lorien and Dave, and Jessica and Mike. The fall semester started at Albright the day after we got back and we've both been busy with work since then, though we did find some time to attend a few football games, clean up the yard, and rally to restore sanity, which we hope to share some pictures of in the coming weeks.

We are still making changes to the house. We recently bought some new furniture for the living room and we're hoping to have the guest room operational soon. Regardless, we've got lots of space so stop by if you're ever in the area (or looking for an excuse to be in the area - we're still an hour from Philadelphia, two hours from New York, and two and a half hours from Baltimore and Washington, D.C. I hear there are some casinos somewhere, too.)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Here is a picture of this year's pumpkins:

Here Comes the Sun

Surprisingly, the snow we received in February melted pretty quickly. The weather in March was pretty drab until the end of the month when the sun finally reappeared. The weather has been in the 60s and 70s for the past few days and today Billie and I went on an Easter walk around Flying Hills. Here are some pictures we took on our walk. Happy Easter!

Yep, this is where we live. We normally see this sign from the freeway on our way home.

Here is what appears to be my favorite view of the area around our apartment (previously documented here, here, here, and here).

At the bottom of the hill we approached the pond, where there were some people feeding the ducks.

We sat down on a bench for a few minutes to enjoy the weather, the company of the geese, and the budding willow trees.

Some ducks stopped by to visit but left soon after finding out that we didn't have any food for them. We also saw a brief duck fight.

Leaving the ducks, we continued down the road.

After walking through the apartments and houses we looped around and came back through the golf course.

Snowpocalypse Now Redux

Up until Saturday I had always thought of 6 inches as a lot of snow. Then we got over 18 inches of snow. We cleared off our cars, the snow plows came through, and by Sunday everything was pretty much back to normal. Normal lasted two days...

Classes at Albright were canceled last night before the first snowflake had fallen and Billie was told that she could work from home. Forecasts varied, with our area placed in the 6-12 inch band on some, the 12-18 inch band on others, and even the 14-20 inch band on one. Still, when we went to bed last night the snow hadn't started here and I thought that the forecasts may have been wrong. This morning when we got up there were about six inches of fresh snow on the ground, with forecasts saying that the worst was yet to come.

Although the snow isn't supposed to stop until sometime tonight we wanted to clear some of the snow off of our cars. When we did there were about 15 inches of fresh snow on them. By the time we had cleared them and shoveled around them a bit there was another inch and a half on top of them. Luckily (I suppose), a weather person in Philadelphia said that the chance of getting three snowfalls of this size in one year (remember, there was a big one in December that we missed because we were on our way to Michigan) is incredibly small and that no matter how old you are this is likely to be the only winter like this in your lifetime. Billie says that means we will always be able to tell stories about "our first winter in Reading." In the meantime, here are some pictures:

Here is the view of the apartment buildings. They plowed a path through the driveway about an hour before this picture was taken.

This is the view down the hill near our apartment (you can see what it normally looks like in the third picture of the "First Snowfall" post).

This is the view the other direction. Billie suggested that we go sledding on the road. Unfortunately, we don't have anything to use as sleds.

This is a view of the freeway through the trees from our apartment complex. You will notice that nobody is driving on it. That is because it is closed.

Snowpocalypse Now

In December there was a big storm and the Mid-Atlantic got a lot of snow. Fortunately, Billie and I left for Michigan the day before the snow arrived. By the time we got back a week later it had all melted. For the past several days the weather forecasters have been predicting another big snowfall. The snow was scheduled to start around 5 pm yesterday and continue through today. Schools and some businesses let people leave at 1. When I got home around 5 last night there were some snow flurries. Still, years of Chicken Little-esque weather forecasts in Indiana have prevented me from accepting forecasts of major snowfall. I thought that maybe we'd get six inches. It turns out that you shouldn't doubt the power of a Nor'easter. Here is what we woke up to this morning:

The view of the walkway that we take to get to the parking lot. We aren't going anywhere anytime soon!

Trees and some piles of snow where cars used to be.

So how much snow is there on the walkway? Only 18.5 inches!

Billie with our cars (we think).

First Snowfall

As noted at the end of our last post, the snow had started to accumulate in our backyard by the time we got home on Saturday the 5th. The snow continued into the night, so this is what we saw when we woke up on Sunday:

The warm temperatures the day before appear to have allowed a lot of the snow to stick to the trees. The amount of snow on the ground is deceiving...

Our apartment building and the trees behind it apparently blocked some of the snow because there was a lot more out front. It looked like we had about 3 inches on the cars.

If you've been paying attention you may recognize this view from such classic posts as Pennsylvanian Sunset and Fall in Reading.

This is the view looking in the other direction. The snow on the trees looked nice and I was glad that there wasn't more of it on the ground. We're still not looking forward to driving on all of these hills in the snow!

Around Reading: Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center

On December 5 we went to "Christmas on the Farm" at the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center. We got to walk around the old buildings and there were some people with tables set up selling food and various other items. We also learned a bit about the Belsnickle, which is like a mean version of Santa Claus who comes around bearing candy (for the good kids) and switches (for the bad ones).

This house was so full that baby Jesus had to lay out in the front yard!

It is a little-known fact that fire hydrants have protected barns for hundreds of years.

Billie enjoying the first snow of the year.

The snow was beginning to accumulate in our yard when we got home...

Christmas Time in Reading

We put up our first Christmas tree in Reading on the weekend after Thanksgiving (sorry the picture is a little blurry).

What Else Do You Do?

Even though teaching currently takes up 100% of my time, it is only one of my three duties as a professor. The second is service, which includes serving on committees and advising students, and which I don't have to do until next year. The third is research and the presentation and publication of said research. I recently had some success in the third area when a paper that I worked on with two professors at IU was published in the October issue of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. It was nice to have the paper published, but since this is a normal part of my job it did not seem particularly extraordinary.

The paper is about gossip in the workplace and, because the topic might be of interest to people, IU put out a press release on October 28. A few web sites reprinted the press release, but the press release also led to a few newspaper articles, including the Toronto Star, Huffington Post, and New York Times, some of which mention me (and my current institutional affiliation) and some of which do not. The New York Times also talked about the paper in a blog post that is related to their article. We even got criticized by a newspaper-affiliated blog in West Virginia that obviously does not understand how research funding works! Unlike publishing things in academic journals that very few people will ever read, having research discussed in major newspapers is not a typical part of my job and there is a chance that it will never happen again. Beyond newspapers, Good Morning America inquired about using some of our video footage (due to confidentiality requirements, we told them no) and Tim was scheduled to appear on CNN but that appearance got postponed indefinitely as a result of the Fort Hood shooting. Our 15-minutes of fame are drawing to a close but it has been fun while it lasted.