Home Away Home

Well here we go! The drive home begins.

Ahh snow. Now I remember...

Well, a week after Mel wrote about needing to be reminded what cold and snow are like, we woke up this morning to a bit of a surprise. This isn't something you see in Texas very often.

Later this afternoon, it snowed for another 3-4 hours and we ended up with about an inch of snow on the ground.

Juno was all over this snow like syrup on a pancake. She seems to enjoy carrying snowballs around in her mouth. On our walk tonight, she kept showing a keen interest in all the snowmen standing around. Speaking of snowmen: apparently, people in Texas don't miss an opportunity to make a snowman, since the chance doesn't come around often. I've never seen so many snowmen in a single day. One of them was clearly constructed from all the snow in the entire yard.



And to wrap up, here's a little glimpse of our (actually, Mel made these stockings) minimal attempt at decorating the apartment for Christmas.

Snow? What's that?

It was 79 degrees today. Would someone please remind me what typical winter weather is like in the North? I need to get mentally prepared for the trip home....

Yeah Christmas!

(Jason kindly pointed out that I haven't written on the blog in a while....so here's my input...)

We decorated the apartment tonight for Christmas! Yay! However, there will be no Christmas tree this year. Too much hassle considering we'd get to enjoy it for less than two weeks and then it would just be here in the empty apartment, dropping dead pine needles everywhere. For we are heading home for the holidays!! We plan to divide our time between Goshen and Toledo from Dec. 16-Dec. 26. Looking forward to seeing our Texas-born dog's reaction to snow and cold - she's coming with us (should make for an interesting 19-ish-hour drive).

I shall leave you with this awesome shot of Jason on a stool. Every moment's a Kodak moment around here.

High School Football

My high school's football team just won the state championship! From those linked articles, it sounds like an exciting game. When I was a junior, our team made it to the championship game but lost, so it's cool to see them finish it off with a win 9 years later. Whoah, was that really nine years ago?

APS in San Antonio

Done and done. With my presentation out of the way, it's now party time in San Antonio. Too bad the entire sky is covered in one big, ugly, gray, sprinkling cloud. Still, I feel pretty good now that my presentation is over. Time to go meet Mel for lunch!

OH-IO!

I know it's a little bit mean to hit 'em while they're down, but it felt pretty good to see Ohio State beat the crap outta Michigan today. Plus, it's such a big rivalry game that there's no such thing as running up the score. Go Bucks! My sister was actually at the game, lucky girl.

Goodbye, George W. Bush!

We're not very political people, but we're pretty glued to the CNN channel tonight. Things are looking good! It's been pretty discouraging living in Texas during this presidential campaign - for example, people around here like to throw eggs at Obama's face - and it's heartening to see that there ARE some Democrats out there, somewhere! Maybe we'll go eat some cookies now, for extra luck ;).

Zzzzzzzzzzzz.....

When Keri came to visit a while back, we got to looking through some old photos from GC. Anyone who thinks Jason spent all his college years studying should think again:







How nice of Jaron to keep Jason company.

In case you can't make it out in the picture, the clock shows that this was taken on a Friday night at 7:43 p.m. Obviously he hadn't met me yet.

Well I guess now I'm done poking fun at my husband. Let's all hope he doesn't decide to reciprocate!

Mel's weekend excursion

Two weeks ago I traveled to Denver to meet up with my two best buds from high school for our first annual Girls Weekend! Heidi, Kayla and I are all spread out pretty far these days (Colorado, Virginia, and Texas, respectively) so we decided to start this tradition. Heidi volunteered to host us in Denver for the inaugural event and we had a grand time doing lots of girly things, such as spending a night at a hot tub cottage, shopping, pampering, giggling, and other such frivolousness. It was an incredibly awesome weekend that ended not too awesomely when I arrived back in Texas and realized that my camera somehow did not make it home with me (but most likely went home with the lucky stranger who found it on the airplane or in the airport). Sigh. I guess I know what I'll be spending my birthday money on...

Since I can't show you pics from the weekend, here's a picture of us from the last time we were together, at my wedding.

A Different Sort of Weekend

This time, Mel's the one who has left for the weekend. She's in Colorado with some friends from high school. I'm the lonely one left at home by myself. We'll see how this goes; it's the first time I've been here without her. Any ideas for thing I could do this weekend? Feel free to share in the comments. I'm thinking I'll do some shopping for a certain someone's birthday next month.

The Scrabble Tides Have Turned

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a red letter day. Jason FINALLY won a game of Scrabble, breaking my streak of 12 consecutive wins. He was greatly assisted by the letters Z, Q, X and J. For those of you unfamiliar with Scrabble, those are the four highest scoring tiles. And Jason drew ALL of them. And got double word scores with them all. So it goes without saying that I still consider myself the superior Scrabble player in this household. Jason just had a lucky night.

Also, my partner wasn't really pulling her weight.

Why Buckeyes, Why?

I don't think I can take much more of this. First Florida, then LSU, now USC. At least it wasn't the national championship game this time, though we might have just lost a shot at it with this loss... I don't suppose the #2 team in the country will lose to Pittsburgh in the last game of the year to let us into the national title game like West Virginia did last year.

Electricity Returns

The electricity just came back on after going out about 2 hours ago. In spite of that, Ike is definitely passing us by without hitting very hard. It's not been much worse here in College Station than a strong summer thunderstorm. I don't see much damage around here besides lots of small branches and leaves strewn around. Galveston, Houston, eastern Texas and Louisiana haven't gotten off so easily.

We survived the night!

But the worst is yet to come. Currently winds are at 30 mph gusting to 50 mph and there's a lot of rain. Now we're just waiting for the eye wall of the storm to hit us. Hopefully we'll fare better than Houston, which is completely without power. I went outside for a bit this morning with Juno and it's not very pleasant weather to be out in!

Jason just informed me that the worst part of the them storm might actually miss us now - it's apparently heading north instead of west. We'll see.

Ike.

I'm sure everyone has heard by now that there's a big storm coming through Texas. A VERY BIG storm. And according to current projections, our town of College Station is smack dab in the middle of the hurricane's path. Sometime in the middle of the night it will get very, very windy and very, very rainy. Right now we're hearing predictions of 50 mph winds gusting up to 80 mph and 5 inches of rain. Our pantry is stocked, we've loaded up on water and our electric lantern is charging at this very moment. We are prepared to, in the words of a local radio station, "hunker down for a few days."


Over the next several days, we'll try to update our situation on this blog as much as we can. Well, at least until the power goes out. For now, we'll leave you with a picture of the sunset tonight, which gave no indication of the impending storm.

Weekend visitor

Our lovely friend Keri came to visit us this past weekend, which was fantastic because we love visitors. And we love Keri. So we had a grand time catching up on what's been happening in our lives since the last time we saw each other over a year ago. We also ate some food, watched a movie or two, played Guitar Hero, and had some fun at a tailgate party on Saturday, which was the night of the first A&M home football game. The whole town of College Station had a collective cry fest later that night...

Anyway, here's some pics from our fun weekend. And there's lots more fun to be had with anyone else who wants to come visit!

Waiting to eat our yummy dinner at Casa Rod's

Hanging out at the tailgate party

Guitar Hero!

Kenwood2005 Reunion

Back in the middle of August, the nine guys who lived together in Kenwood House in Goshen for our senior year of college got together for our first ever official reunion since college (not counting my wedding). We camped in the woodsy hills of eastern Ohio at Chris's house (where he grew up), and it rocked my socks off.

Things that happened include cooking hotdogs over a campfire in the woods, throwing fireworks in that fire and waiting nervously for them to explode, frisbee-ing, going for hikes in the woods, eating delicious organic food from the farm, playing basketball, hillbilly golf, bocce ball, and reminiscing about the good old days at GC. I won't attempt any more description of what happened, just go check out the pictures. Dan and I both bought the Canon XTi this summer, so we made sure everything was photographically documented. Here are the photos.

It was great to see all those guys again and, despite big changes in all our lives, pick up right where we left off. URK forever!

We don't have kids yet so we blog about our dog instead

Juno's new favorite activity is to chase her own tail. She just started doing it last weekend while Jason was away and now she does it all the time, mostly when she's hyper and we are apparently not paying enough attention to her. We finally got some video of it tonight - she's a bit camera shy and doesn't like the beep the camera makes when it begins recording - and thought we'd share with ya'll. I had to encourage her a bit in the first video but she finally got up to speed in the second.

Gold Medal!

The clock says 3:30am! USA Basketball just won the gold medal! That was a crazy game!

Friday Night Musings

It's Friday night and we're just chilling and watching the Olympic opening ceremony - woohoo! (For those of you who don't know, we actually do not own a TV and had to buy a used VCR off Ebay so we could plug into the cable and thus watch TV channels on our computer screen). Would definitely like to attend in person some day. Here's a 30-second news update on our lives:

• Jason and I are each on a six-week quest to achieve 100 pushups. Needless to say, it's going much easier for him than for me. I am, of course, cursed with my gender's weak arms.
• Just heard about the arrival of another baby back home - Ella Beth Stoltzfus McHugh... can't hardly stand being so far away! This makes three babies born to various friends of ours in the past 6 months that we have yet to meet.
• Jason starts classes again this month. He'll have a full schedule and also be a teaching assistant again this semester.
• My baby sister is turning 22 in less than a week! It shocks me that I am old enough to have a 22-year-old younger sister.
  

Jason and I rocked it out to Guitar Hero the other night with some friends.

The Edouard Cometh

It's about to get really wet here in Bryan/College Station. We've never experienced the effects of a tropical storm before! Unfortunately I rode my bike to school this morning, so I'll be looking for a different mode of transportation for the ride home.

12pm update: Ok, it's only a light rain. I'm prepared to be disappointed once again (Dolly completely missed us).

One Year Lists

As of July 3, Jason and I have been official residents of Texas for a whole year now. We were trying to think of some way to commemorate this momentous milestone in our blog and decided to make some lists. Enjoy.

How Texas is different than what we're used to:

• Roadkill is mostly armadillos.
  
• There are no gutters.
• Traffic lights are horizontal (instead of vertical) and black (instead of yellow).
• All the ants bite.
• Instead of sewer grates, there are gaping holes big enough to swallow a small child.
• Male dogs are allowed to retain their masculinity.
• Sales tax is 8.25%. Ouch.
• Every other vehicle is a huge, noisy truck. Whose owners can't drive or park correctly.
• Texas birds are PSYCHO. First of all, there's this huge ugly one called the grackle with beady little eyes, greasy-looking black feathers and an obnoxious repertoire of screeches. Then there's this other crazy bird that is so territorial it will literally dive bomb you if you get too close.
  

What we like about Texas:

• Gas is cheaper than just about everywhere else
• No state income tax
• Sweet tea (guess which one of us likes it more)
  
• Wearing shorts year-round (well, almost)
  

Some of the most Texas-y things we've done in the last year:

• Gone horseback riding
• Eaten deer meat
• Gone to a rodeo
• Said "howdy" instead of "hello"
• Said "y'all"
• Become best friends with our air conditioner
• Gone to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library
• Gone to an Astros game

Mel recommends a book or two

Hello all,
Just wanted to call your attention to a new feature of the blog - Mel's Book Pics. You'll find it if you scroll down and look to the right. Keep in mind these are books that I personally found enjoyable and worthwhile but I do recognize that everyone has different tastes and I won't be hurt (much) if you don't share my opinion. They are simply suggestions for anyone who has ever asked me/wondered what to read (aka Mom and Tina). :)

-Mel

Fourth of July Vacation!

For the weekend of July 4, Jason and I hopped on a plane (after getting up at 2:30am to drive to the airport) for a get-together with his family at Clear Lake, IN. We had a great time eating way too much food, going swimming-tubing-wakeboarding-skiing-etc., playing hillbilly golf, and hanging out with the fam. We also spent a lot of time shivering, as the weather was way cooler than we anticipated/are used to. Perhaps the most notable event of our little vacation occurred on Saturday morning, when we all got up early to participate in the 2nd annual Yoder Triathlon. That's right, a triathlon. I am married to a man whose family thinks it is fun to get up early on vacation and run 2.4 miles, bike 6.6 miles, and swim 1/2 mile. I think they're all insane. We did get a chance to see my family on Saturday night after attending a wedding in Goshen (which is just over an hour away from where we were on the lake). Then after a delayed flight on the way home, we got back to our apartment at 3am Monday morning. Needless to say, we were exhausted. You can see more pictures from the weekend here.

I Passed!

So, I finally received an official confirmation that I passed the Ph.D. qualifier exam. I ended up scoring highly relative to the other students who took the exam, which was an unexpected surprise. I wasn't ever terribly worried that I'd fail, but it feels good for it to be over. Now I've breathed a sigh of relief and can get back to work doing the regular grad student research thing.

Happy summer everyone! We've got a lot to catch you up on! First off, we just wanted to mention that we have officially been married now for a WHOLE YEAR! June 2 marked our first anniversary. Wow. We decided we like each other so much we're going to go ahead and stay married forever :) Soon after that big milestone, Jason turned the big 2-5! He says he's starting to feel old, so everyone give him a hard time ;)

The first weekend in June we joined my extended family in Asheville, NC for a mini-vacation. Highlights were hiking at chimney rock state park, playing a few rousing games of Apples to Apples with the whole gang, and hanging out with my very zany and lively family (Jason will testify to that). You can see pictures from that weekend here. We're starting to get excited for our next and last vacation of the summer which involves hanging out at the lake cottage at clear lake with Jason's extended family over July 4 weekend and attending a wedding in Goshen.

I also wanted to report on the sad passing of a beloved family pet... We decided to put my cat Midnight to sleep after he very suddenly developed some serious health issues and started deteriorating very rapidly. It was a tough situation made harder by the fact that I was all the way over here in Texas while my parents were dealing with this at home in Indiana. He was a great cat, and we're all going to miss him. I'm not looking forward to the first time we go back to my parents' house and he's not there.

some things we've been thankful for lately......
- my sister's safe return from a semester abroad in spain
- getting to see both our families this summer
- our lively dog juno who is a constant source of entertainment
- playing on a softball team with people from our sunday school class
- AIR CONDITIONING!

love to everyone!
-mel

The Bubble-Popping Machine

My sister (Natalie, that is) sent us an Easter basket of sorts with bubbles in it for Juno to play with. Little did we know that we have a ruthless bubble-killer on our hands here. Check out the leaping black furry bubble doom in the two videos.


What a coincidence that the youtube preview image for both of these videos is a jumping Juno, huh?

It's Cowboy Time

Last Saturday, Mel and I went to Houston and met up with Thushan (and Laura Reinheimer too). Since Thushan wanted to have a real Texas experience while he was here, we all went to the Houston Rodeo. If I've ever had a true Texas experience, that was it. Reliant Stadium (where the Houston Texans play) was all filled up with dirt for the rodeo. We saw bull riding, calf roping, bronco riding, barrel racing, and a bunch of other events. Luckily, we also met up with Jeff and Leah, some friends from church, and Jeff was kind enough to explain all the rules to us out-of-place kids from the north. When the rodeo was over, the Calf Scramble started. This is a hilarious event when 28 kids from the FFA and 4-H chase 14 calves around the ring, trying to catch them and drag them into a circle in the middle to win. It's a surprisingly funny sight to see kids chasing baby cows around, tackling them, and dragging them around by their tails.

At the livestock show we saw a bunch of cows, pigs, and chickens, but since it was the last day of the month-long event, most of the other animals were gone. We finished of the day with a tasty meal of greasy pizza and crawfish etouffee. It was good to see some old friends from college here in our new home state.

Texas Trucks

Here's something about Texas that I just don't understand. There are a bajillion trucks in Texas. Many of them are gigantic. Many of those gigantic trucks are driven by petite women. Strange, huh? We once saw an ad from a car dealer promoting the idea that it would be nice to buy your son/daughter a truck as a graduation gift. Trucks. Trucks. Trucks. The thing is, even though the trucks are so huge, the parking spots aren't any wider and corners in the parking lot aren't any less sharp. The result of the first is many a double-park. The result of the second can be seen in the picture. Brilliant.

Mel got a job!

Yep, after months of unemployment and mind-boggling boredom, I finally got a job! Yesterday I interviewed with the Larry J. Ringer Library in College Station and they called me half an hour after the interview to offer me a job as Library Clerk. I'll be working at the circulation desk, checking books in and out, collecting overdue fines, issuing library cards, reshelving books, and I get to drive a van back and forth between the College Station library and the main branch in Bryan. The pay's not spectacular but the benefits are good. And I've secretly desired to work in a library since I was about 12 so I guess you could call this a dream fulfilled :). Monday I start orientation. (Picture of the library below).

More pictures of Juno!



















She likes to be underfoot. Literally. Here she is underneath Jason's desk.

She also likes to chase squirrels, which amused both me and our neighbors yesterday. You can see the squirrel taunting Juno at the top of the picture.
















































She stayed like this, motionless, for a good five minutes, just staring at the squirrel.

And then this morning she went rather crazy with her toy rope (that by now more closely resembles a dirty, stringy mop head) and I managed to catch it on video:

Spain

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a good Valentine's Day. Ours was slightly marred by Jason developing a nice case of pinkeye. :( Not a great way to celebrate our first Valentine's Day as a married couple!

Today is the blog about our trip to Spain in September ('07). Jason had the opportunity to present his master's thesis at the SAE Aircraft and Engine Icing International Conference in Seville (and I had the opportunity to go with him!). Jason's days consisted of attending presentations and lectures at the hotel while my days consisted of sleeping in til noon, then sightseeing on my own until dinner when I would meet up with Jason and we would eat and then sightsee some more until bedtime. Seville is a very touristy but amazing place and full of buildings and structures that, as Jason pointed out, were built well before the birth of our own country! During the week we were fortunate to enjoy two flamenco dancing performances, the first a formalized program for which we bought tickets, and several nights after that, an impromptu (free) performance at a lively local bar. We also visited museums, cathedrals and castles, ate paella -the national dish - twice, listened to street musicians, and walked about a thousand miles before the week was done. Here are a few of the 400+ pics we took :). Descriptions are below the pictures. Enjoy!

P.S. What's up with all that space between the text and the images??? Still becoming familiar with this whole blogging thing...

1. Plaza de Espana (where some footage was shot for one of the later Star Wars films)	2. Typical street in old part of the city
3. Bullfighting ring	4. View of the city (bullfighting ring visible) from top of the Cathedral
5. Catherdral	6.Sweaty flamenco dancers/musicians
7. A Smart Car! One of the many awesome European cars we saw.	8. Spain's a great place to be a biker as evidenced by the generous bike lanes along many of the sidewalks
9. Paella - notice the large shrimp with everything (legs, antennae, eyes) still attached	10. Taking a tour of the city on a double decker bus
11. Street musicians drawing a large crowd. This group had an eclectic mix of instruments: upright basses (3 of them!), accordion, saxophone, guitar, clarinet, trumpet, and probably more	12. The countryside of Spain - olive trees
	13. Indoor courtyard at the Alcazar castle. We actually stood in the room where Christopher Columbus was commissioned by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to go find the New World!

More about Juno

As you can see, we have finally named our dog! Inspiration came from two sources: 1) The recent movie by the same name that we thoroughly enjoyed and 2) Roman mythology - in ancient Rome, Juno was the goddess of matrimony and queen of the gods. At any rate, it's a vast improvement over Hot Dog!

Juno came to us supposedly already house-trained but yesterday was the first accident-free day since we got her on Saturday. We figure she was just kind of thrown for a loop with adjusting to a new environment and all and is just now getting back on her game. She certainly isn't as shy now as she was the first day we got her. When we leave during the day we put her on her leash and attach the other end to the washing machine, which is in the kitchen. This has worked pretty well the last couple days (once we realized we should remove everything on the outside of the fridge that is in her reach!). At night she sleeps on a blanket beside our bed. She really has adapted wonderfully to living with us and we couldn't be more pleased. She sure makes us feel loved - if I get up and walk five feet away to retrieve something she follows me the whole way. Last night was pretty amusing - I went to bed before Jason and she had a hard time choosing who to be with. She kept running up the stairs into the bedroom to say hi to me and then she'd turn around and go back downstairs where Jason was. Five minutes later she'd be back up to see me again and then downstairs again to Jason.

In other news, I have an interview for a job this afternoon that I think I would enjoy. I'm not going to say anything else about it right now because I don't want to psych myself out :)

It seems as though winter is ending here...temps have been in 60s and 70s. Our winter really only consisted of maybe a handful of days of 40-degree weather. It just boggles the mind...we're half-expecting a call from up north asking us to come help dig our families out of the snow :).

Hopefully later this week I'll post a blog about our trip to Spain (just for you, Tina!).

Take care, everyone,
-Mel

PUPPY!

I am happy to annouce that Jason and I are proud owners of a new puppy :) We adopted her this weekend from a local animal rescue organization. She is a 10-month-old black lab mixed with bull terrier (the Target dog) and she is the sweetest dog ever....we've had her three days now and we still haven't ever heard her bark! Of course, I am just over the moon with this new acquisition since I have had dogs my whole life and I have been wanting to get one ever since we moved here. Jason took a little convincing but I believe he is happy as well. It's nice that I don't have a job and can stay home with her during the day. Oh, and she is currently nameless as the name she came with was Hot Dog and we absolutely refuse to call her that. We will have to decide on a name soon, though, since it's getting old calling her "puppy" all the time.

One interesting thing we discovered last night is that she becomes very agitated when Jason plays his guitar. Maybe she just didn't enjoy his choice of song...

Enjoy the pictures of our new gal!
-Mel