Christmastime - Yay!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's Eve!
(Look at those goofs!)

We had a busy and fun trip to Ohio... it was fun getting to see everyone that we could. We're back in Lawrence now, trying to decide what to do for New Years... hmmm...

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

Now I'm going to have that song stuck in my head for the rest of the morning.

Well, it really is starting to feel more like Christmas. Aaron and I chopped down a tree a few weeks ago, so home has looked festive for a while now. Downtown Lawrence is full of Christmas lights and decorations, and it looks really pretty. Classes are over, so the halls are pretty quiet on campus, and that really makes it feel like the holidays are here. (Yay!)

We leave for Ohio on Friday morning; we're flying this time, which is going to be a lot nicer than driving. We'll spend a few days in Kinsman, drive down to Cincinnati for a few days, and then make the trek back to Kinsman before flying backto Kansas. It'll be fun to be back in the home state for a few more days.

Susie was out here last week and we had a great time! We didn't do anything too crazy; shopped a lot. That was fun. We bummed around Kansas City, downtown Lawrence, and watched movies. Fun!


Aaron and I have been having fun planning our summer vacation. We're going to be taking a tour of the northern national parks. We think we'll be able to take two weeks and do the following:

Lawrence, KS - Black Hills, SD
Black Hills, SD - Yellowstone (WY / ID / MT)
Yellowstone - Glacer / Waterton (MT / Canada)
Glacier - Banff (Alberta, CA)
Banff - Home

It's going to be a lot of driving but I can't wait!!!! I've been picking up maps here and there, and I'm getting pretty excited. Only 7 more months.

Nothing much new

Ah, the semester is winding down. Or up. I don't know - it's almost over, though. Thanksgiving is next week, and I can't wait. I am also looking forward to a nice long break in December and January, and I might even be able to get something done!

Aaron and I are driving to Cincinnati on Wednesday, probably leaving pretty early in the wee hours to make it to the 'Nati by a reaonable time. The drive will likely be awful, but being home will be nice, nice, nice.

Lawrence life and November

It's been a while since I've written about anything - sorry about that. Things have been beyond busy at work. I feel like I'm just trying to keep up during the week, and then I try to catch up on sleep over the weekend. All is going well, though...

We went out to California a few weekends ago during KU's Fall Break. We spent a Thursday through Sunday wandering around northern CA with Keith, Steve, Dave, & Beth, and it was a great time. Aaron drove Keith and I aorund Napa Valley on Thursday while we went wine-tasting, and that was swell. We got really drunk, though, so all the wine that we tasted seemed really yummy. By the end of that wine-tasting tour, a very sober Aaron was ready to kick Keith and I out of the car because of our carrying-ons, but he was very nice and continued driving our wine-drunk-butts around.

We went to San Francisco that evening and met up with Steve, and re-met up with Dave and Beth. We went out and had a nice time in San Fran. The next day we ate lunch at the Pier, sat in CA traffic for awhile, and eventually made it up to Lake Tahoe (which is awesome, BTW). We spent the next couple of nights staying with one of Steve's friends, Paul, in Lake Tahoe. That whole area is pretty incredible. We didn't do much hiking or anything, but we had a great time. We flew out on Sunday afternoon, and back to Lawrence life.

Lawrence life is going OK. Northeast KS is great in the fall (there really are trees here, and they really do turn colors). It's been pretty wonderful to go outside and DO something. We went hiking at one of the state parks last weekend, and in general, it's just been nice to have the windows open occasionly. Plus, it's nice to not smell my own hair burning when I walk out the door.

Today is the one-year mark since Mom died. I'm not sure what to write about that here, so I probably won't. I will say that I miss her like crazy, and although things should hurt less 365 days after the fact, it really doesn't.

Art and Apples

We had another really nice weekend. The weather has been nothing short of stellar for the past few weeks - sixties and seventies in the daytime, and cold at night. Apparently autumn in Kansas is as nice as summer is terrible. We went to the Kansas City art fair on Saturday afternoon, and walked around downtown drinking margaritas and beer. It was a pretty swanky art fair - pretty much everything was waaaaaay out of our price range (except for the maragritas and beer). Nonetheless, it was still fun to wander around and look at everyone's wares. Afterward, we hung out with some of Aaron's friends from work.


Yesterday was equally un-stressful. I slept in, drank a lot of coffee, read the newspaper, baked a coffee cake, and generally was lazy. It was another gorgeous day, so around 2:00, we decided to actually do something. We drove to Fieldstone Farms, which is about 40 minutes southwest of Lawrence, and picked apples. Winesaps were in full season, so we picked a whole bucket full of apples. I have no idea what to do with thirty pounds of winesaps, but I'm going to figure it out. Mmmm... apples. I brought five apples to work with me today, so there's a solid chance that I'm going to be writhing about with a terrible stomach ache by the end of the day.

Sleepy Weekend

It's finally cooled off in Lawrence, KS. Finally. It was 63 degrees today - heaven!!! What bliss...

Things have been insanely busy at work for both of us. Ever since the semester started back, everything has been non-stop. At least I haven't been bored...

Aaron bought a huge used Delta tablesaw on e-bay today, and it's actually located in Farmdale, OH, which is right down the street from his parents' house. Not only is it very cool that we're going to have a big piece of heavy machinery, but it's also nice that the location of it worked out so well. Jerry is actually going to pick it up, and we'll pick it up from him once we have (ahem, ahem) someplace to put it. Cough, cough... like a house ...with a basement. Which hopefully, will be sometime sooner rather than later. Aaron's excited, though, and I'm looking forward to all the cool things he's going to make. Dad, brace yourself for the onslaught of phone calls one of these days!!! :-)

Rocky Mountain National Park

RMNP is awesome - We had a terrific weekend. The weather was perfect... around 68 degrees in the daytime and cold at night.

We left Lawrence Friday afternoon and made it to Denver by 9:00 p.m. MT. We went out and had a few beers with Nic, and then crashed for the evening. We got up bright and early and drove out to RMNP. We were really afraid that because of the holiday weekend we were going to have a bunch of trouble finding a camping spot, but we had no trouble. Traffic wasn't bad, and we found a really nice campspot in Granby, CO. Here's a picture of the lake we camped on:


You can look at the pictures here.

...More later...

ROADTRIP!

We decided at the last minute that we're going to the Rockies this weekend. We packed things up last night, and this afternoon we're going to drive to Denver. We'll crash with Aaron's buddy Nic from Penn State tonight, and tomorrow morning we'll drive out to Rocky Mountain National Park. YAY!!!!!

And this is a big problem?

Aaron and I were at a neighborhood pool hall this past weekend, and we thought one of their posted signs was particularly funny...

Douglas County Fair

Ah, Fair Season is here...

Philadelphia Freedom

I was in Philadelphia all week for a conference... it's a pretty cool city! I had a nice time, even though almost all of the time was spent at conference sessions. I got to walk around town for a while on Tuesday afternoon, and I checked out the Liberty Bell and some of the old buildings in the historic district of town. Security is pretty tight at the Liberty Bell, which surprised me... not that it's not cool and all, but if you were going to engage in a destructive act, would the Liberty Bell be high on your list? I think not, but whatever.

In any case, I had a good time. My flight was out of the Philadelphia airport at 7:45 on Thursday morning - the same morning that the terror plot in London was foiled. As you can imagine, airport security was insanely tight. Since everything had just happened, no one traveling knew about the tight carry-on restrictions. Including myself. I got up to the security checkpoint, and they took all my makeup. That's right. Lipstick. I can't really blame them - I'd rather lose my makeup than be exploded, but I am still a little sad about my lipsticks.

Freakin' Awesome Cat

That's right. Milo is awesome.

Is it fall yet?

Summer is starting to drag on a little. I can only take so much triple-digit weather before I start thinking of October...

Last week in Cincinnati was great. It was wonderful getting to spend a week at home seeing everyone. Aaron & I drove in on Friday after work, and got into Cincinnati around 4 a.m. It was a long drive, and very rainy for the last few hours of it. We went out on Saturday night and we went to the Kluesener family picnic on Sunday. It was a very fun weekend.


We drove to the Dayton Airport on Monday morning (at 3 a.m.) to get Aaron on a plane to KC. So he went to work on Monday morning, and I went back to sleep. The rest of the week was more relaxed... I got to visit almost everyone. Thursday and Friday were spent bridge testing with some cohorts from UC, and Saturday was the lonely drive home.

I made incredible time driving, all the way to St. Louis. Record times. However, a freak thunderstorm made an appearance while I was on the loop around StL, and that stopped things for about 20 minutes. It was hands-down the worst thunderstorm that I have ever been in a car during. I don't say "driving", because no one on I-70 was driving during this craziness. Traffic stopped. Everyone sat in their cars for 20 minutes while lightening striked everywhere and hail flew horizontally through the air - it was completely insane. Almost as quickly as it started, it moved through. I was glad to drive out of that one. After that, there was more record-setting speed, all the way until the east side of Kansas City, where traffic once again stopped. It stunk getting so close to home only to sit, but sit I did. I was glad to get home, see Aaron, and crack a beer.

OK, Seriously.

Really. It's just way too hot around here. 104 degrees without accounting for the heat index? What the heck is that?!?!? The heat index was 112 yesterday, and that's just not reasonable!

It's been really hot for the past two months. May and June were in the 90s fairly consistently. However, it wasn't really all that humid, and it was always windy. For some reason, when the calendar ticked over to July 1 the humidity skyrocketed, the temperature decided to stay around 100 billion degrees, and the wind stopped all together. Complaining about it seems to help.

It's Getting Hot in Here

Summer in Kansas is hot. Really, really stinking hot.

Rain, tomatoes, and Cincinnasty

It's finally raining in Lawrence. The area has been in such a drought for the last month and a half... the rain that started this weekend is really the first good soaking we've seen in months. The grass in the backyard has been crunchy and yellow, and there was a chasm opening up in the yard where the underlying clay had dried out and started to pull itself apart. Over all, the backyard looked like aftermath from a small earthquake in the desert. It's been a great rain, too - slow and steady, ever since sometime early yesterday morning.

I picked the first tomato of the season from our garden yesterday evening! It's beautiful. A lovely, perfect, little Roma tomato. Yay! There are quite a few more which are getting ready for picking. We have six tomato plants of various types, so I'm hoping that we get a ton of them. I love homemade salsa and spaghetti sauces... mmmm... Pretty soon we'll have bell peppers, too! I love the garden!!!

I realized the other day that it's been seven months since I've been to Cincinnati. That's the longest I've ever been away, and realizing that made me a little sad. Even when I lived in Florida, I was home a couple times. I'm going home in a couple weeks, and I can't wait. I have a list of places to go and people to see, and it's a mile long. I also realized that I don't really know anyone who lives in Clifton anymore - weird!!! How am I going to walk home from Arlin's?!?!?

K-Town

Aaron and I spent a long weekend in Kinsman, and had a great time. Aaron's parents threw a big wedding reception at their house for us, which was pretty awesome. It was a pretty packed house - about 80 people came and went throughout the day! Nora cooked up a storm, and it was completely delicious (as always). Most of my immediate family made it up from Cincinnati, and that was pretty cool, too. I got to see Dan and Dave for the first time since we left town in December, and Dad and Lou for the first time... in a week and a half! :-) Funny how that tends to work!

It's back to work this week. It was so nice having the long weekend, though, and it's a bit painful getting back into work mode...

Things have been pleasantly busy lately. We've been trying to keep up with the local music scene, but it's almost too much for us! We saw moe. and Umphrey's McGee a couple of weeks ago in Kansas City, and they were both pretty good. This past weekend, we went to Wakarusa in Lawrence, which was pretty awesome. Wakarusa is a big music/camping festival out at Clinton Lake; they bring in about 70 bands, and you camp for four days and try to see as many as you can. We saw the Flaming Lips, Railroad Earth, Robert Randolph and the Family Band, the Disco Buscuits, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and some more. They were all pretty damn good. I left off the ones who weren't...


Wakarusa came to a close on Sunday, the same day that Dad, Susan, and Louis got to Lawrence! It was so nice getting to see them. :-)

Summertime Rolls

Summertime is here!!! Well, not technically, but close enough. It's definitely warm enough to be summer. Things have been busier than I know how to deal with. Spring semester has wrapped up, and now it's onto summertime activities - writing, writing, and writing. Good thing I like writing! :-)

On the home front - Aaron and I bought a used 17.5-ft aluminum canoe last weekend, and it's pretty awesome. We took it out yesterday morning and paddled around Lonestar Lake. It'll be nice to get our fishing licenses and float around trying to catch fish.

As for other hobbies, I've started gardening, and I'm really enjoying it. The folks who lived in our townhome before us had laid out a whole bunch of gardens, so we just had to maintain and re-plant some stuff. We now have a whole garden dedicated to tomatoes, a vegetable patch, and a whole slew of flower gardens. It's really quite impressive, considering that approx. 35% of our yard is taken up by gardens. We even have an herb garden!!!

We've been grilling out a ton, too. I'd say that we grill 3-4 times a week, and everything comes off delicious. Aaron is quite the griller. He made pork chops last night that were absolutely incredible. Plus, they were $2.59 a pound at Steve's - can't beat that! Aaron also made us a picnic table, and it gets used even more than the grill. Our backyard is the place to be...

Tempus Fugit

I don't know where time goes any more... the weeks have been going so fast I can hardly believe it. The weekends seem to arrive in the blink of an eye, whihc is always nice. The weather has been quite spring-y here - it's 80 degrees today, and the forecast is calling for EIGHTY-NINE DEGREES tomorrow!!!???!!! It's April, folks! Not even late April! I think it's safe to say that the weather here is even more insane than it ever was in Cincinnati.

The last couple of weekends have been very nice... the weather has been spectacular over the past two weekends. This past weekend, we set out to build a picnic table for the backyard. We drove out to DeSoto, KS to buy some dimensional cedar, but they were closed. We were a little disappointed, but as we were driving back to the highway, we passed a butcher - Steve's Meat Market - with a big smoker out front. It smelled heavenly, so we stopped to check it out. It turned out to be the world's greatest butcher store. There was gobs of smoked meat for sale, and every cut of beef and pork imaginable. If it wasn't in the dsiplay, they would cut it for you. They sell half-a-cow, or half-a-pig, so at some point it would be cool to get a deep freeze and have 50 lbs. of beef sitting in the garage. YUM. Anyway, we got two awesome Kansas City strip steaks and grilled them up later in the evening. Yum. Bliss.

We drove out to Clinton Lake that same afternoon and went for a little walk. Here are some pictures we took at the park...




The park isn't all grass and sky; I just thought the part that is was awful pretty. The drive home was nice... we saw lots of purple fields (they have PURPLE WEEDS here!!! How lovely!) and farmers burning their fields...

Torrid Tornadoes Tear Through Tiny Town

This past weekend was a wildy and wooly one, weather-wise. (Avidly admire all the asenine alliteration!)

OK, I'll stop.

Really, the weather was quite crappy. I take back what I said concerning the lack of rain. Aaron and I woke up Sunday morning to the sound of severe weather sirens, and assuming that Kansans probably don't fool around too much with the severe weather warnings, we bolted downstairs and hid in the pantry. With one pissed off cat.

Let me describe our pantry. It may be the safest "room" in our basement-less house during a tornado, but one thing it is NOT is large. There is barely enough room for one person, let alone two people and a small, claustrophobic, furry mammal. There's certainly not enough room for two people to sit, so one of us had to stand or squat the whole time. And Milo just tried to claw his way out.

Well, we didn't hear any "freight train" noises, and eventually we came out of our very small pantry. The power was out, but nothing really awful had seemed to have happened. So, Aaron's hungry stomach decided for us that we would drive around Lawrence and see if we could find a restaurant with power and breakfast. Neither seemed to exist, as it turned out.

All the traffic lights were out, and traffic was behaving about as well as could be expected. There were trees where they weren't supposed to be (in cars), powerlines down, transformers in the street - things were a real mess. And we couldn't get any breakfast.

Well, we went to the HyVee (grocery) down the street from our townhome, and went home to eat some bagels and cream cheese. The power came back on soon after, and everything was hunky-dory. Unfortunately, parts of Lawrence didn't fare so well. Classes were cancelled at KU on Monday because of the mess on campus - 60% of the buildings sustained damage! Ouch! We went to church at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday evening, and power was still out downtown. Plus, a number of the downtown streets were really a huge mess - there were old growth trees lying broken everywhere.

So, that was our first Lawrence, KS severe weather experience. Hopefully the whole springtime isn't quite that crazy.

"...And I start to complain that there's no rain..."

Saturday was one of two rainy days that I can remember since arriving in Kansas in late December. It simply doesn't rain here. Despite the much-needed rain, we had a fairly eventful day. Aaron got up at the crack of dawn and drove to KC to see if he could get some free doors. I know, it sounds weird. Burns & Mac was doing some remodelling and told their employees that there were going to be 40 solid-core doors free for the taking at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. (We thought they would make excellent desks and/or workbenches.) Aaron drove out to KC in the rain, got to the loading dock at 7:30 a.m. ...and they had already all been taken. That was a little disappointing... no cool desks and/or workbenches for us.

Later that afternoon we drove back out to KC, this time to go to the La-Z-Boy furniture store. I was excited; Aaron was less excited. Nonetheless, we picked out a beautiful couch and a lovely green upholstery for it. We will get a gorgeous green couch with cream accent pillows sometime in May. Ugh. Two months away from now!!! We ate a late lunch at Popeyes (mmm... fried chicken) and then moseyed beck towards Lawrence, taking the long way home on Route 56.

Sunday was supposed to be rainy, but true to past experience, the day dawned clear and sunny. Aaron packed us a lunch, and we hit the road. We drove west from Lawrence, towards the Flint Hills of north-eastern Kansas. It was a gorgeous day - sunny and warm. We drove with the windows down for a good part of it, and everything still smelled reminiscent of Saturday's rain. It made me think that spring was almost here for good.

I don't know that we actually ever technically got into the Flint Hills region. We certainly had it surrounded. Wherever we actually were, it was quite pretty. It was very open, very big, and gently rolled along. We pulled off a main highway and ate lunch by a ranch fence. We ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and listened to the cars not going by. It was so quiet... There was a bird in a nearby tree making the only audible noise other than the wind in the tallgrass.

I find it hard to imagine what the first pioneers felt when they started settling in Kansas, moving here from places like Virginia, New York, and Pennysylvania. It's so wide-open and unsheltered. I supposed it would have been quite scary to see the horizon in 360 degrees, and not see another house.

Lately...

Everything has been going pretty well here. Aaron started work this week at Burns and MacDonnell, a very large engineering firm based out of Kansas City. Everything seems pretty good on that front, except for the hour-long commute each way. Hopefully that will change to a reasonable amount of time sometime in the not-unforseeable-future when we buy a house.

Lent has begun, and today is a Friday. I didn't pack a lunch this morning, so it's either popcorn, brown rice (by itself), or a walk to the Burge Union for me. I vote for Burge Union.

I'm glad that Lent is here, which I suppose is a little weird. Lent really shouldn't be something to look forward to. However, it means that spring is ALMOST here, and I really can't wait for spring. Even though this winter has been mild, it's still been winter. I can't wait for warm breezes and windflowers everywhere. And bike rides! I really can't wait to get a road bike!!!

All Quiet on the Western Front

Things are indeed quiet here. Aaron left for Cincinnati this morning (very, very early), and will be getting back to Lawrence late this weekend, which I am looking forward to very much. We got out of bed around 3:30 this morning to get to the airport on time - that was not very much fun at all. I felt like I had worked a full day by noon - ugh.

However, we had a great weekend. The weather was only so-so, but not necessarily downright bad. We spent most of the day Saturday dealing with computing issues... getting a wireless network set up (which was no easy undertaking for two laptops) and reformatting Aaron's laptop. The whole ordeal took most of the day. We went to church at St. John the Evangelist's on Sunday, and we went for a drive afterward. We drove out to KC, thinking that we would find a cool part of town to walk around and explore, but all we found were the Projects. That was the second time we've tried to find some fun in Kansas City and only found deserted streets and slums. I'm sure that nice parts of the town exist, but we've yet to find them.

Well, the 3 a.m. rising time has done me in for the evening. Later.

Nice, long weekend

Cable TV is the devil. I have spent way too much time this weekend in front of the TV. I'm hoping that the root of the problem is the novelty of having cable, but I am doubtful. I did manage to tear myself away from 24/7 "Law and Order" long enough this weekend to do some other acitivities. I went out to Clinton Lake on Sunday and went for a hike, found my way to a mall in Kansas City, and got almost entirely up to date on my photo albums. It was certainly nice to have this long weekend.

I thought that I would post some pictures from Christmas, since I kind of glossed over November and December.

More Pictures of Lawrence...

Here's another one of the downtown landmarks... pretty cool looking place, but I don't think I'd quite fit in on "fetish night"...


This is Lone Star Lake, near the outlet flow. There were lots of cattails, and it looked like I place that I would like to live if I were a duck. Or a bluegill.


And, the part of campus that I now get to call home...

Some Pictures of Lawrence, KS

Here they are, as promised...

I drove out to LoneStar Lake, which isn't too far from Lawrence on Sunday afternoon. It was a very nice lake, and I was pretty much the only person out there. The rest of the photos are pretty much just random pictures of downtown Lawrence ...

We're Not in Ohio Anymore, Milo

Amidst all the other life changing events which we've been dealing with these past few months, we finally made it to Kansas! Lawrence, KS is on the east end of the state, about 45 minutes from Kansas City, MO. So far, I am really enjoying the town. It's actually quite pretty - lots of rolling hills, beautiful sunsets, and a great big wide-open feel to it. The city of Lawrence has a population of about 70,000, and seems to be exploding. I'd say that 75% of the housing here has been constructed in the past 15 years. Everything is all new and shiny, which has its ups and downs.

I can't wait until this spring - I'm going to get a new roadbike and zoom (or plod, you know, whatever) all over the coutryside. The terrain is perfect for roadbiking. Seriously, there ARE hills here! In general, this part of Kansas looks a lot like Southern Indiana. There's a big lake just west of town that is very nice, too. It looks like there should be some nice hiking trails out that way. Someone told me the other day that there is a nest of bald eagles right off of the road by the dam, and you can see them flying about quite often.

The townhouse that we're renting backs up onto a farm field, and there are a couple of old dead trees in the middle of the field. I wish that I had a pair of binoculars, because I swear that there was an eagle in one of them the other day. It would make sense - there certainly are enough field mice around. I know because they have decided to pitch camp behind our fridge in the kitchen. Although Milo doesn't have front claws, he's still a fine mouse-catching cat. I almost felt bad for the mice. Almost.

I'll be sure to post some pictures after I upload them...