Thanksgiving Weekend 2008

Well, I don't have a lot of pictures to share, but I can say that a good time was had by all.

First, selected pictures of the meal. I wanted to take more pictures with the better camera, but there was significant pressure to move from the picture-taking part of the evening to the eating part of the evening, so these two were all I got.Friday morning we got a slow start. We toured around Fort Worth a bit, then ended up in the museum district, where we had a fabulous lunch and then a little stroll around one of the museums. We had a lovely birthday dinner that night.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at one of our favorite breakfast places, and then we went to the Japanese garden (housed within the Fort Worth Botantical Garden). The garden was beautiful - and now I know where all the red trees have been hiding! Fall here has had a real lack of brilliantly colored leaves, but the Japanese was garden was quite spectacular. The garden is big - about 7 acres, and you can really forget that you are in the middle of a city. Here are a few pics from the garden - I was shooting with our new little purse-friendly camera, so the pictures aren't quite as good as if I'd had my regular camera [or any camera that I was more familiar with]:

Guest Blogging from Rich (MD) and Bren (MM)

We have been having a wonderful time in Forth Worth with Kate, Mike and Jenny. We were very impressed with TCU where we got a guided tour of the campus from a very important person (Professor Mike himself!). It is a really pretty campus with lots of beautiful buildings and greenery. One highlight for MD, the sports fan, is the ability to see the football stadium when looking out Mike's office window. Jenny arrived on Thanksgiving day and we had a wonderful Thanksgiving vegetarian meal together in Kate and Mike's lovely and spacious apartment. We have spent time eating at really fun restaurants, (we loved Cafe Modern, which is part of the Modern Art Museum,ranked by Gourmet Magazine as one of the best restaurants in America), going to the Kimbell Museum, the Japanese Gardens, walking the river trail behind their apartment and playing many games including a new one which had us giggling ourselves silly, called Loaded Questions. We even got to meet their new friend Alex and his mom and have lunch with them at a cool vegan place called The Spiral Diner. And I forgot to mention that today we went to the only independently owned coffee house in Fort Worth---Eurotazza where we spent the afternoon drinking, reading and schmoozing. All in all we really like Fort Worth a lot. Sadly, we are flying out tomorrow morning but with a heart full of fond memories. Pictures of our adventures to come soon!

Happy Thanksgiving

First, in the spirit of the season, I offer you a picture of a cranberry-walnut upside-down cake I made last week.
Sorry it's a bit blurry, but hopefully the ooey-gooey deliciousness comes through.

This particular dessert won't actually be on our Thanksgiving table, although it was quite good. Instead we're going with apple-cranberry-currant pie and pumpkin pie. We're also having mashed potatoes (using a very special recipe from a very special person), green beans with garlic and pine nuts, salad, and pasta with lentils. Mike will make his usual spreads - olive, hummus, and roast garlic - and I'll try my hand at some biscuits.

We're a small crew this year: just Mike's parents and his sister. But we're so happy that they made the trip, and we look forward to showing them around Fort Worth.

We have much to be thankful for: our families and friends (and the good health of those individuals), each other, our jobs, the arrival of good leadership, trees, and puppies.

A very happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

TCU v. Air Force

Mike & David getting ready to watch a football game.

Technical Difficulties

So, my computer had some sadness last night. Luckily, Mike - through his infinite skill and patience - was able to save my documents and pictures.

But the machine is probably toast, or soon will be.

So, it looks like it is new-computer time. Right now we are leaning toward a Mac desktop, but I'd love to hear your opinions....

In the meantime, I'll be able to post using the laptop my work gives me - but don't count on too many pictures since I try not to put personal stuff on my work computer.

Trying the poll thing again

Okay, here goes my new attempt at embedding polls in blog posts.... I can't say how this will look if you read the blog over email digest or through an RSS feed, though.

The subject concerns a new phone I'm about to purchase. I figure since you all are the major people I call, I should ask you. On the other hand, a local number is more convenient for many things - not the least of which would be not having to explain my out-of-state-ness each time I give my number!

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Election, part II

I just ran across this collection of photos. If you're not a regular reader of the site, you're missing out. The photos are always beautifully composed and poignant; this really is photography with a purpose. Seriously, go look at the pictures.

Also [did you look at the pictures yet? I meant it!], apparently we aren't the only people having trouble getting a dog. After our most recent setback - the dog we wanted was placed with another family - we've decided to wait until after our holiday travels.

In an attempt to share a third tidbit with you, I'll tell you about fall here. Fall just arrived - the days are still in the high 70s / low 80s, but the nights are getting into the 40s. This has been cold enough to prompt some of the leaves to change - but they just go from green to yellow to brown. There's none of that hills-afire red and orange. In fact, it kind of looks like all the trees are just drying out and dying. Guess all those folks who gush about fall in New England and the foothills of the Cascades were really right after all.

Election Night

First, an observation: I noticed that candidates for local political offices here in Texas had TV commercials that featured many more horses, barns, and saddles than I ever saw elsewhere. Those things sort of seemed to be the equivalent of the generic kitchen table scenes. Go figure.

Anyway, so, wow. Dallas county went blue, but Tarrant County (where Fort Worth is) went overwhelmingly red. Our house, however, is blue as blue could be.

So we were elated last night, to put it mildly.

We have a friend who did some work for the Obama campaign and she invited us to the Democratic Party victory celebration at a downtown hotel. First, we all went to dinner. Dinner mostly involved a lot of checking of the iphones and watching various news and polling sites fail to load because of all the traffic they were getting.

We arrived at the hotel around 8pm, just as most of the polls were closing on the east coast. Here are a few pictures (taken by our friends) in the hotel lobby:The Dems had rented a big hotel ballroom and set up several big TV screens. The room was PACKED with people of all different shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. There were lots of little American flags, Obama t-shirts, TV cameras, and local political candidates.

Here are a few pictures (taken by our friends) from inside the ballroom:The first few states to be called went for McCain, but as news from the Northeast came in, the spirit of celebration grew. Obama took Pennsylvania, and then Ohio. We waited some more, waving our flags, checking the maps, watching all the different TVs. It got hot in the ballroom from all the people crammed in there, so some of us went down to the lobby to get some air. We were getting tired, but as we returned to the ballroom, there was a real air of history, hope, and, yes, some anxiety and disbelief.

Shortly before the polls on the West Coast closed, Virginia was called for Obama. Doing some quick math, we realized that California, Oregon, and Washington alone would put him over the top. At that point, CNN put up a second-by-second countdown to the polls closing in the West. The whole room counted down, shouting out each number. As soon the polls closed, CNN called the election for Obama.I feel like I can't even begin to describe how crazy the room went: there was laughing, crying, hugging dancing, shouting, screaming. We all hugged each other over and over; strangers smiled at each other, noting the tears in everyone's eyes.

I cried. I can't believe it; I couldn't ever believe it all along. It just seemed too impossible, too good to be true, too good for us, too different from all that came before. All the big problems and great challenges still remain, but it really, really does feel like a brand new day.

We raced home, listening to McCain's speech on the radio, and then catching Obama on TV as we made it home in time.

That speech was amazing: full of beautiful sentences, heartfelt emotion, and honest truths. Oh, how we've missed all that.

I teared up again this morning while driving to work when they played excerpts from last night. And then I came home, and Mike and I watched the speech again.

Dear Obama: Please don't let us down. We believe. We need you. We are ready.

Someone's having a birthday....

Today is Mike's birthday. We had a pretty low-key (but fun!) time.

Mike made waffles for breakfast. Hey, I wasn't going to make him cook his birthday breakfast, but he wanted to. Then I ran some errands, coming home for lunch [Mike made pizza - again, he wanted to make it himself!].

After that, we headed to the park to eat some cake, play some games, and just veg. Here are some pics:


And here's a very happy birthday wish for many more!

Happy Halloween

So I totally blew that last post with the poll in it (trick!). Some of you saw the poll, some of you didn't (and, family, thanks to all of you for writing to me and pointing out all my typos! Love you!). I think I've fixed the issue, so we'll try a new poll in a few weeks.

Some Texas updates: It actually got near freezing here last week. So we had to pull in all the plants from the balcony and nestle them next to the bike of great injury.Also, Texas has earthquakes. Who knew?

Here is some Halloween cheer for you (treat!).[the robot costumes were supposed to read "robot love", but whatever. . . .]

Happy Halloween!

Houston

Last week I had a small work event in Houston, and Mike tagged along. We left on Thursday and came back on Saturday.

The drive down there was surprisingly pretty and somewhat pastoral - trees, gentle hills, and creeks. It was also greener than I expected. Also, there was a giant statue of Sam Houston. You know, just 'cuz.Houston itself was, um, kind of, well, exactly what I expected. Which is to say: not good. There was much sprawl and many freeways.

Here is a picture of Mike at the conference dinner and a picture of the city itself.


It wasn't quite *that* bad. Mike actually found a cute street that had a little crepe place with very delicious crepes.

But we were glad to get back to Fort Worth. There might be strip malls and freeways here, but they're familiar strip malls and freeways.

On Sunday, we went on a little picnic with our new friends Alex and Ariane. And by picnic, I mean we went to this outdoor place to eat food and play with our iphones.(please be a sport and try to think of this last one as artsy, not, um, poorly lit and me as too lazy to fix it with the photo editor)

It's a zoo out there!

On Saturday we went to the zoo with Mike's colleague and his kids. The Fort Worth Zoo, is - unlike the San Diego Zoo - totally manageable. You can see everything in a day without having to rush off to ten zillion animal shows, ride the sky train, and take in the latest special exhibit (you also didn't have to walk fifty billion miles to your car in the parking lot or pay amusement park rates to see the animals).

There were lots of great animals.Here are some pics of our friends:And then on Sunday we had a homestudy visit from the Lab adoption group. We passed! The next step is for us to start meeting some dogs. Hooray!

This weekend

We accomplished a couple of things this weekend.

First, on Friday, we found a really good Thai restaurant: Thai Tina's. We went on whim, and we were totally surprised. The tofu was delicious, and there were lots of fish entrees. It was a lot of food - so much that Mike ate the rest for lunch on Saturday. We'll totally go back there!

Second, on Saturday night, I finally finished the penguin I started as my Olympics knitting project. The goal was to cast on during the opening ceremonies and cast off during the closing ceremonies. Although the Olympics ended a bit ago, I still had Olympics coverage on the DVR recorder. So I wasn't really late. In fact, I finished my recorded Olympics coverage the same day I finished the penguin. So I was right on time! Here's a picture of it, posed on the "iceberg" and "permafrost" of our clean sheets (albedo effect, anyone?).Third, we finally framed and hung the last pictures in the living room. This was a bit of a tricky hanging job, since this was a set of four pictures that had to be spaced exactly right on the wall and in relationship to each other. Mike did a super job!Fourth, I ran across the remainder of the cream cheese from last week's apple cake. It was exactly the right amount to make a small batch of sugar cookies. So I did. We intended to share some of them with our friends who shared their organic veggies with us, but then we forgot. Hopefully, Mike can track them down on campus tomorrow.What we didn't do this weekend was adopt a dog. We'd found a dog we liked, but she was adopted before we had a chance to get to the shelter to get her. I'm feeling a little dog-disappointed and a little dog-burned. I want a dog, I just don't want the heartache of the process of adopting a dog. We've also filled out an application with a lab rescue organization. This is a good deal since the dogs from the rescue group come house-broken, crate-trained, spayed/neutered, with all their shots, and have been living in foster families with other dogs and kids. But the wait can be as long as five months. So we'll see.

Also, check out these beautiful roses:

Texas updates

We had a good weekend. For me it was pretty baking-intensive, as I had set myself up with three different projects.

My first project was making Chocolate-Chocolate cupcakes from Dorie Greenspan's Baking cookbook. The un-critical me says: "these were yummy, and the recipe is a total keeper." The critical me says: "you fool! You slightly overcooked these because you couldn't believe that they would be that squishy when it was time to come out. Follow the directions next time." Here's a picture that some other enterprising baker took of her cupcakes. Taking pictures, um, didn't occur to me with a plateful of cupcakes before me.My second project was a cake for a co-worker that had a baby recently. Since this person isn't a very adventurous eater, I went with a plain pound cake. This cake, though, had a twist: it was leavened with 7-Up. The link there is to something similar, but I actually used a recipe from Mike's family that someone gave us at our wedding shower. The cake was sweet and citrus-y. I glazed it with a little lemon glaze. Pretty good for a pound cake. Again, no time for images of my own, but here's a picture of a similar-looking item.My third project was an apple cake. I struggled with the skill known as "following the directions" on this one. As it turns out, it is not a good idea to add one more apple and 2 more ounces of cream cheese than the recipe calls for. This will make your cake dense and doughy. Luckily, Mike was able hop in and make a second apple cake (this one more closely guided by the convention known as a recipe). His cake was a total hit! Again, we didn't do the picture thing, but here's really, truly exactly what it looked like (even though this comes from a magazine).[And now for those that might worry about our waistlines: the cupcakes were made for an event on Saturday, and we shared them. There were no lingering leftovers. 95% of the pound cake was given away. And the apple cake went to dinner at someone's house, but didn't make it home, so no potential snacks there. we're doing just fine, thankyouverymuch]

In other Texas news, it was finally cool enough that we slept with the a/c off and the windows open last night. All this because of a cool front that has our temperatures down to 85 during the day.

Also, we saw a snake tonight. It was small and harmless. But slithery.