Pac-Man cornbread

So, a few photos from the handy iPhone, which reminds me that the best camera is the one you have with you, and lo and behold I always have my phone, so by default it's the best camera I own. (Is that sad?)


I made buttermilk cornbread in a cast-iron skillet last week and it was amazing! As you can see Pac-Man loves chevre cheese as much as I do. Goat cheese is easy to digest for all you L.I. folks out there like me (that's Lactose Intolerant for all you laypeople).


Grace from work scored this new string art for me from an estate sale -- she and her boyfriend went to bid on a Gator with a snowplow, and out they came with a string-art golfer that I won by text in bidding. What?!


This place looks amazing. How can you make a bar easier than paying money for alcohol? Ummm best go and find out.


Snow is pretty -- as seen here on this Blue Atlas Cedar -- but really killing me: after three days of shoveling and snow-blowing I am sore sore sore.

Our backyard friend is surviving the winter just fine. Here he/she is watching 3 dogs barking at him/her without flinching.

Last night a bunch of us went sledding after making homemade eggnog and drinking it in an igloo. I drank the milk-laden eggnog without eggs and without dairy products, so figure it out. Sledding last night was the first time this winter that I enjoyed the snow instead of endlessly moving it around.

Only SEVEN deadly sins?

That is sooo Middle Ages. This was shown as part of a lecture in class this morning: 

I recommend printing it and keeping it in your wallet as a handy guide. The world is a complex place.

The hills are still alive

This evening I got together with a few friends to watch/rediscover The Sound of Music, a film I saw probably hundreds of times as a child. (For a while we owned only three videos: TSoM, Mutiny on the Bounty, and Old Yeller. Romance, adventure, and tragedy really cover all the entertainment bases, right?) 

I made my first-ever apple strudel in honor of the occasion, and I do believe it turned out nicely:

Our timing was perfect, since the real-life Liesl, Agathe von Trapp, died only a few weeks ago at the age of 97. Here's to a legacy of gazebo dances, hiking over the Alps in light outerwear, and big musical finishes.

Bait and switch?

I was under the impression that Nashville's winters are short and mild, and that snow is a rare occurrence. Well, we're in the second week and the second snowstorm of the semester, so I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I am actually loving the cold -- I've been waiting years for a good winter -- but I won't say no to the warmth of a car when it's sleeting. Fortunately, I scored a ride home last night and did not have to brave the wintry mix en plein air. Phew!

What language do you speak?

-- is nearly an irrelevant question. How, or why, or where, or when, or with whom you speak might all be more informative. On the other hand, maybe those questions are all tied up in the choice of which language to speak when.

I've long been interested in the issues surrounding translation among languages, and I spent a lot of time this week reading about language and how it works (Wittgenstein, MacIntyre, Kristeva, anyone?). Is language a social phenomenon? How does narrative work to construct self-identity?

I remember reading years ago about Alex, the African gray parrot who was perhaps the non-human animal most fluent in a human language. He was able to communicate effectively on a number of fronts -- to the point of coining words -- but I always thought it was a little suspect to evaluate his intelligence based on his performance in a second language.  I was happy to discover this morning that language is not, after all, distinctive to humans, and we will have the chance to learn the syntax of another species. Hopefully they think we're smart (and that speaking with us is worth their while!).

As a side note, I saw Whistler's mother at the Frist last Saturday. She's looking as well as ever. 

[Insert joke about her talkativeness here...]

 

Kids in sweaters

I went to the PA Farm Show this past week and it was amazing. As proof, I submit the following:

Yes indeed, that is a THOUSAND POUNDS OF BUTTER! This is definitely the most action I've seen from dairy products in quite a while.

Q. What's better than watching the very cool (okay, and slightly gross) process of chicks hatching?

A. Watching duckings swim and slide! (As long as you were lucky enough to catch one of their performances, of course.)

Is this a reindeer? If so, is this what usually happens to them in the off season?

Aaaaw, angora rabbit!

Even more aaaaaaww: super-cute alpacas! (Do you think the neighbors would notice if we kept a few of these in the sideyard?)

Lest you think the farm show is all cute animals and food sculptures, this is what it mostly looks like:

That's a crazy amount of people, but I guess PA is 90% rural and 10% Philadelphia (okay, hi Pittsburgh), so it's no wonder there were thousands of people there.

Back to the cute animals:

Cutest. things. ever.

From one library to another

I ran across this box the other day at work. During my year and a half of working at the Library Company of Philadelphia, I always said it sounds like a place to buy shelving units and other library supplies (though, of course, it's not). Lo and behold, someone else thought so too.

One year.

365 days since the earthquake, and Haiti still weighs heavily on us.

and then...

As you may have noticed from the upsurge in posts, Sharon and I are back to living apart. She has a tish (but not more) of spare time on her hands as the semester isn't fully in motion yet, and I have no class at UPenn at the moment. So time abounds. The biggest news for me over the past week is my attempt to cut back on my cheese intake. I already don't eat meat, drink milk or much fast food, so the loss of cheese is a big hit. For various reasons I decided to cut back, and about one week later I'm doing okay. I've found that I am much better at NOT doing something than starting something new (like flossing).

That was exciting. In other fun news, on my commute to work on Monday I was surprised to see a deer out in the middle of a creek on an icy logjam under a bridge. I thought about taking a photo, then decided against it -- I didn't want to spook the deer into a cold icy death, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Today I saw a fox and when I stopped to look, he ran away a bit then stopped to look at me. We watched each other for a minute until it got too cold to just be standing around in sub-freezing temps staring at another species. Later in the day I saw a group of deer trotting through the woods with a big proud buck prancing behind his ladies like one of those high-steppy fancy horses (like this).

I've enrolled to take the Arborist Certification Exam at the end of the month. I still have a class project due from my class at UPenn last semester, and my intern project needs to get rolling something serious to save myself from embarrassment. The Morris Arboretum spring course catalog just came, out so I'm picking out my favorites (one of the perks of being an intern are the free courses).

Lastly, as I sit here in Philadelphia with snow falling, the hum of four-wheelers racing in the streets, and the faint smell of smoke from yet another warehouse fire about a mile away, I remember where I was a year ago today: in Desarmes, Haiti, just finishing up a fun weekend with friends. A lot has changed since then. We are happy to be back in the US and look forward to the future. The news stories from Haiti are still heartbreaking: disease, destruction and corruption. My faith in international aid has been practically obliterated, as I see where Haiti is today and the many foreigners that have come and gone (a little wealthier with their resumes bolstered). I know good people there are doing good work, I just wish they were all those good people. This article seems spot-on in the Huff post.

Welcome back to Nashville

Nashville doesn't seem to do much in the way of snow removal, so let's hope the roads are bikeable tomorrow.

Workity work work work

So, you may remember that I am an intern at the Arboretum, and with such titles they tend to make it a learning experience. With that "learning experience" goal, they ask us to do intern projects. For my project, I'm working on educating folks about what arborists do. This phase is geared at future arborists and potential interns, so the other day I brought my camera and tripod and shot a ton of photos to make a time-lapse video of a tree removal. The guy in the tree is Brian from Schectman Tree Care, one of our contractors, and the acting chief arborist Andrew pops in a few times and then makes the final cuts on the trunk. I am absent as I am pressing the shutter button. Enjoy.

What's a month-long silence between friends?

 

Those of you who still mosey over to our corner of the blogosphere have probably noticed that things have been a little quiet around here. We've been preoccupied with doing things like seeing each other in person (!), celebrating the holidays, and generally taking a break from our online life. Now that I'm headed back to Nashville tomorrow to start the spring semester, we figured we should reactivate our blog for the new year. 

 

And what better way to do so than with low-light, high-drama photos from Longwood Gardens? We canceled our pre-Christmas visit because of snow, so we actually just went on Thursday. Highly recommended.

 

 

 

  
More soon -- promise.