Archive for the ‘General’ Category

2012 Christmas Tree and House lights

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Yeah! It’s that time of year again.

We usually put up our Christmas decorations – the tree, in house things like some candles and pictures, and the outside lights, the weekend after Thanksgiving. Because we had a crazy week that week, we had to wait another week to do the outside lights.

Then, when we started putting up the tree inside, we found out that most of our lights had died, and it was too late at night to go buy replacements!!

So, the tree stood at the top of the stairs looking a bit forlorn with boxes of decorations scattered about but nothing on the tree.

We finally got some lights, spent some time arranging things to get at least one good string that worked, and finally put up the rest of the decorations.

I think it turned out pretty well, and we had fun finishing it up.

Oh, we always do this as a family. This also was part of why it took so long to put everything up since we are all so busy it isn’t easy to have time together for doing it.

Here are some pictures of the tree and outside, plus a short video of the outside lights so you can see what that looks like while it’s blinking.

 

httpv://youtu.be/rXHZKDOLnMg

The Inside Fish Pond

Thursday, November 15th, 2012

So I have fish outside in my garden in their own little pond. They’re getting really big, and that pond is doing really well.

Last year we bought several smaller fish and put them inside the house in a large bowl.

Several of those fish didn’t make it, but the ones who did are doing very well.

This bowl is on the middle of our stairs landing and I enjoy walking by there every day and seeing them. They also are used to seeing me and sometimes come up and beg, like little puppies, to be fed.

I wish I could say I always take the time to watch them for a while when I fee them, but I just don’t always have time. I do enjoy sitting on the steps and watching them eat while I drink a cup of coffee when I do have some time. This is especially true now that it’s getting colder and the morning sun shining through the window there onto the landing makes it very comfortable.

Here are a few pictures of them:

The Best Way to Eat Icing

Thursday, October 18th, 2012

A few days ago my youngest son had his birthday and we celebrated it in the usual fashion: cake and presents!

A few days before his birthday he surprised me by asking to have a turtle on his cake. Hmmm, not easy, but I told him I would give it a shot.

I tried making turtles from icing, but using fresh cream icing is too difficult to get the shapes to stay for any time, so I gave up. Might have been able to work it out if I had a little more time, but I didn’t. Luckily I had stopped by Toys R Us earlier and picked up a very nice turtle to use, just in case.

Actually I went by several places looking for something suitable, but couldn’t find anything.

The one I got is really life-like. Some people thought it was a real turtle on the cake. Come on, no way I’d ruin a perfectly delicious chocolate cake by doing that!!! 😉

I added a frog just because I thought it looked interesting and balanced things out.

Oh, about eating the icing? You’ll see what I mean in the photos below.

My new picture

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

I was in class the other day and a student came up to me and said:

“Professor, will you go ‘aaarrghhhh!!!’ and make a gesture?”

I said, “aaaarrrgghhhh!!! of course”.

And she used her iPhone and took a picture of me.

That might seem unusual to some people, but it happens to me, occasionally. I’m asked to take a photo, say something for a short video, etc.

Later I got a message from Facebook saying there was a new picture of me posted.

It was this one:

Me in manga form

I think the app that was used is called Manga Camera.

Anyway, it’s an interesting picture, I think.

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A “Shining” type moment?

Saturday, August 18th, 2012

This week while we have a little time left, my wife and I took a trip up to the mountains.

We had a great trip, ate some really good food, saw some beautiful country, waterfalls, mountains, and rivers.

We also had a couple of very strange things happen.

One thing that happened was although we were 3 and a half hours from home, in a small mountain town, on a little backstreet, we met two of our students. That was very interesting. I know it’s a small world, but that was very strange. We stepped into a small restaurant to check out their lunch plate offerings and standing there doing the same were two students from our university and our classes.

That was a surprise, but not that strange, and certainly not a bad thing.

That happened elsewhere 😉

We stayed at the lodge our university owns up in the mountains. It’s built to handle mostly large groups – up to 180 or so people. However, this time of year it’s not so busy.

In fact, no one was there.

I mean no one.

There was one caretaker there – very nice guy, and very kind to us!

We ‘checked in’ and he told us he’d be leaving at 5 and how we could get into the building when we returned from having our dinner.

This lodge is in the mountains, almost a kilometer off the main road up on the mountainside at the end of a dead-end winding lane. It also has no television or internet. I know!

I’ll admit it was a little eerie, but I was up for it. I didn’t think I’d have a Jack Nicholson moment and start stabbing anybody at least 😉

Sulseob was a little less enthusiastic about it the more she thought about it.

It turned out great though. We had a breakfast reservation for 8am and sure enough, we woke up, heard some stirring around, and looked over the balcony into the dining area to see our breakfasts set out on the table. No people though…

It was a little strange, but all in all, not nearly as uncomfortable as I’d thought it might be with strange sounds in the night.

Here are a few photos of our lodge 😉

The Shining... maybe...