Thanksgiving 2005

(As usual, click on the thumbnails for the larger picture.)

Allie set the table the night before. Very nice, yes?




Mmmmmmm. The words "carcass" and "cavity" come to mind, and don't they make you hungry? The tofu, on the other hand, put up very little fight as it was being stuffed, and managed never to look dead. (I kid. They were both delicious.)




Andy serving himself from the spread. See Mama's new kitchen? It was a joy to cook in. So much so that I was moved to make shortbread the hard way (with molds) Saturday.




I think Layla enjoyed the food, and Truman enjoyed some of her leftovers later. Allie and I enjoyed playing with Buffy dolls (and one Mr. Scott Evil).




Mama, Allie and I got the tree put up on Friday with only minimal problems with the strings of lights. The other picture is the Christmas cactus Jessica gave me three years ago; I was thrilled to see it bloom for the first time this year.




It was a pretty cloudy weekend, but Daddy managed to get the gutters clean. Good timing; we ended up having strong storms and tornadoes all over the state Sunday night.

Breaking the absence

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted anything! It was a busy summer; I had one week of vacation after the spring semester, then we started the very intensive summer semester. That's ten weeks of 30 classroom hours per week. Pretty exhausting. I did take a day off at the beginning and visit my friends in Dallas, which was nice, and I went back for a weekend when the semester was over, too. It's close enough to drive, but far enough away that it's, well actually "away."

Here are some recent pictures. I should really find some of Allie and Layla, since of course they're changing a lot (Layla is crawling and holding herself up on her feet!), but I'm sure there will be some cute things to share around Halloween. I should also post some fabulous pictures of Daddy. He knows what I'm talking about. :)




The birthday card I made for Grammy; a necklace I made the weekend Mama and Daddy came to visit; Truman showing off his magnificent whiskers.





Zinnias growing on my balcony; September tomatoes from my potted plants.





The flags at half staff in Mena following Hurricane Katrina (or possibly Chief Justice Renquist's death, I wasn't sure of the occasion); the harvest moon, taken by Daddy with his new SLR camera.

Just click on the thumbnails if you want to see the full-sized pictures.

Celebrity baby names

Daddy and I were talking about this last weekend. I actually like some of the more creative ones, especially when they reference nature, but we agreed that it might not be nice when the child is in grade school.

Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom and Pixie!

You'd think they were pet yorkies, but no. They are children.

Ethiopian girl reportedly guarded by lions - Africa - MSNBC.com

Ethiopian girl reportedly guarded by lions

Neat about the lions, if it's true. But regarding the estimate that 70 percent of Ethiopian marriages are still by abduction--very disturbing.

May break

This past week was my one week off between the spring and summer semesters teaching. I had a really nice time at home. Sunday Mama put together a Subway sandwich picnic on the porch. Grammy was here, and Andy, Jessica, Allie and Layla came over. Afterward Allie and I stayed outside, gave Truman a chance to eat some yummy grass, and then played on the lawn.



Monday Allie had a softball game. She's Number 12, plays "behind shortstop" (a special mid-left field position), and has lost her two front teeth.



I took several walks and got some pictures. The roadsides are full of coreopsis (the gold flowers) and there's one spot where some climbing roses are all wild over the road. On one of my walks I made friends with some cows, as I often do. I should remember to tell Allie I didn't have to wiggle my bottom at them to get them to come (her method).



And there was wildlife: five or six foot black snake on the dirt road and a skink Andy caught in their kitchen.



I came back to Little Rock with a trunk full of discount stuff from the Food Mission, a sack of freshly-picked kale and spinach, and some cups of zinnia seedlings planted in worm castings Allie and I dug up from the ditch by the dirt road. What a wondrous worm habitat to play in!

Soccer, Heifer, and school

Two weeks ago was Mama's OLT production of Meshuggeh Nuns. It was lots of fun, and everybody came. Layla had to be held a lot out in the lobby, but that meant I got to dance with her. Afterwards we had birthday cake for Gramma, and Allie spent the night. Saturday morning I took her to her soccer game. She was back in the evening, still incredibly full of energy: play outside (a game in the pasture involving CB radios, magic wands, the cedar tree as a lair, and villains named Ursula and Dracula), bath, make cookies for Gramma, and finally I settled her on the couch and rubbed her back while she watched TV. The apple trees were blossoming. It was a really nice weekend.







Last weekend I went to Heifer Ranch in Perryville for their Earth Day celebration. It's sort of an open house/activity day at the farm they use for education and research about small-scale sustainable agriculture. They also have a "global village" of different types of houses from developing countries. (Here's a link to a page about Heifer International's work.) Gorgeous day, beautiful scenery, and I got to see and touch the camels, llamas, ducks, goats, water buffalo, and bunnies.





I've got one more week of classes, then finals. It's the busy time of the semester. The students are distracted and burned out, and I think we're all ready to be finished. Thank goodness for coffee!

Hubble photos

Cosmic views mark Hubble’s 15th birthday - Space.com - MSNBC.com

Pretty, pretty pictures of the Whirlpool Galaxy and Eagle Nebula. The universe is an amazing place. What's more amazing to me is that anything we can imagine is probably already true.

Hoppy Spreing!

Here's how my beginner students described our city in a writing assignment this week.

Little Rock is...

...not very big city. But it's Beautiful and Serenity. I like here and very happy here.
...very small and very cheep. The wither naw is spreing.
...a small city but so peaceful. I like it. It's became spring. It's a fine season. The tree is coming into leaf.
...a small city. The people are big.
...a very small and calm city. It has fresh air but It's too hot weather and often change climate.
...a very small city. It's very hot now. but I'm very happy here.

What amuses me most is that they're calling it "hot." In April. Oh, if only they knew what they were in store for! Most of them also made some reference to it being quiet or peaceful here. In some cases that's praise, and in some cases (from students who would rather be someplace "exciting" like NYC) it's polite, veiled criticism. Students here do tend to note, though, that being in a place where there's not much going on helps them stay focused on studying.

One student refered to me as "Shengy" in his assignment. Hee. A lot of Arab students come with very, very low literacy skills in any Western language. Their education system is very much based on oral teaching, not much writing or many books. They're at the invented spelling stage, so I get words like "siven," "onkel," "rane," "hoppy," and as you can see above, "spreing."

More spring break

Spring break continued to be springy and breaky. Yay! On Wednesday night we had a bonfire, which we'd tried to do in December, but everyone but me thought it was too cold. This time, it was a little windy but the temperature was just right. Beforehand, Mama and Allie and I got things ready in the pasture by marking all the potential shoe disasters (i.e. cowpies) with newspaper. Once Daddy got the fire going, we roasted dogs and made s'mores. I love our bonfires.







After heading back to Little Rock, I had two friends from Texas come to visit. We went to Hot Springs and did the spa thing, which I'd never experienced before. I recommend it, and for what it is I think the prices are pretty reasonable. I wish I could remember the name of the little Italian place we ate at afterward, because it was fantastic: the food, the wine, the atmosphere, everything. I had something that incorporated a huge portabello mushroom. I'm drooling thinking about it. It was right across from the bathhouses, that would help you find it. Our waiter tried to push the crabcakes on us, and normally we would have gone for it, but we had decided to make our own crabcakes at home the next night. We did, and they were good. As were the mangoritas. :) Good times.

Everything is flowering now. This is the Arlington hotel seen from the park across the street, the one where the hot water flows down the side of a cliff, all steamy and covered with algae, into a pool, and you can wade around in the hot water if you can stand it.