March Madness-The Women's Final Four

April 5, 2011

For any of you who are college basketball fans like us, you can imagine how crazy, mad, excited we were when one of Rowan's Phd students offered us tickets to go see the NCAA woman's final championship game in Indianapolis. We dropped everything and headed up to witness our first ever NCAA final anything. The final game was between Texas A&M and Notre Dame. Everyone on the planet had expected Connecticut and Stanford to be in the final game, so it made it extra exciting that we would see underdogs battle it out. Our seats, mid court of the floor section, row 21, were outstanding and unbelievable. We had the Texas A&M rooting section to our left and the Notre Dame rooting section to our right. Insanity is the only word to describe it! Too much fun!

The tickets were crazy. They came in an envelope that opened up like a stadium, revealing the crowd and our passes to extreme entertainment.

We arrived early so we could park :o) and experience the fans as they entered the Conseco Fieldhouse (home of the NBA Indiana Pacers basketball team). Here is the view from our seats.

Yes, we are very happy to be here :o)

The national anthem sung by a children's choir from Indy.

The cheering sections from both sides had giant photo heads of their favorite players and coaches. Most of you have probably seen these on TV during athletic events. It is hysterical to see a sea of them in the crowd. Here is one of the Texas A&M coach, Gary Blair, that a woman right behind us kept raising in the air.

And here are the giant heads of the TA&M team stars.

Photo of the jump ball at the start of the game.

A video of the Notre Dame student cheering section. With all of the bumping and grinding going on, it was really amazing that none of them fell out of the balcony!

The No. 1 Connecticut women's bball teams coach, Geno Auriemma, was sitting just a few rows ahead of us. He was so gracious to sign autographs and take pictures with all of the young fans in the crowd during half time.

The final score of 76-70 was light years beyond the final score of the men's final game and way more exciting. There were only 2 points between the two teams with 1 minute to go. Texas A&M took home the trophy. In our minds, both teams won. WHAT A GAME!

Raising a Fist & Be Our Guest

It didn't take long for the snow to follow us home from Canada. After only one day back, our local weather returned to winter. Well, don't think for one minute a little snow and freezing rain would keep our local folks from coming out into the streets of Btown to continue the labor law protests (and other local issues) during a visit from our governor, Mitch Daniels (R), who came here to speak to our local chamber of commerce. For those of you in the USA that are reading this, get ready............Mitch will surely be running for president against Obama in the next election. This is why he is trying to table anything controversial going on in our state at the moment. He is against our state house and senate members (taken over by republicans/tea party in the last election) trying to push through anything controversial. However, they continue to stir things up, prompting protests all over the state. It is such an interesting dynamic. He really agrees with his party, but won't publicly admit it. When is honesty and integrity going to return to politics.............UGH! I won't go on, and believe me I DO have an opinion! :o)

Here are some us as we begin to gather in front of the convention center waiting for the governor to arrive.

Of course the governor came in the back door to avoid 'the people' out front. My friends Bob, Lynn and I were working on getting arrested as we went into the lobby of the center to see where all the 'important people' were. We could see them arriving in the back and being protected by the police as they entered. We were told we could not be in the lobby and were asked to leave. As the police started to approach us, we very quickly exited the lobby and went back out into the cold, snowy street. THEY ARE ALL COWARDS! :o)

Me, Bob & Lynn.

Now, back to something that doesn't raise my blood pressure as much as politics - The House!

We had 10 days after our return from Canada to get the guest room ready for my sisters visit. She is coming from Seattle to go to the opera with us for her birthday. We will get to spend five days together and we are really looking forward to it. We had to move many boxes of books and assorted other items out of the guest room before we could get to the painting, etc. I had retextured all of the walls to match the original plaster walls and then added new paint.

The new pine bed frame needed staining too, so I was doing that in the garage in between the painting.

We got that whole project done with two days to spare before my sister arrived. Believe it or not, this is the last room that needed painting in the house. It feels good to know at least that part of the inside work is done. Only some window trim painting to go!

On to the next post...........

A Road Trip

We took a break from house projects and went on a road trip to Waterloo, Ontario, Canada in mid March. Nothing like driving north in late winter to a place where it is pretty much guaranteed to still be winter! Rowan was giving a lecture at the University of Waterloo Optometry School there and I was scheduled to pick up a piece of research equipment from a colleague there to bring back to the US for a new project we are collaborating on and about to begin in our lab. Our trip took us up through Michigan (we took the Flint/Port Huron route and crossed over into Sarnia, Ontario). We hit the road in the dark at 6am for the 10 hour drive. The sun came out and the air was very crisp. It was about London, Ontario that things started to get wintry. We could tell that it had snowed there the night before, the trees still heavy with snow.

As we continued east towards Waterloo and Toronto the temperature kept dropping. The car began to get covered with ice. You can see here the windshield as it began to freeze no matter how much we had the defroster on.

We eventually hit a major snow storm with about 2 hours to go to our destination. Thank goodness Rowan had downloaded the satellite directions to her iPad because we eventually were unable to see the road signs and really had no idea where we were. Thank god for the little blue moving dot that was us on the map. It eventually became a complete white-out. Such a relaxing drive! Rowan had to peel my white knuckles off of the steering wheel to get me out of the car. :o)

We had great luck when we finally got to our hotel. We got upgraded to a suite with a hot tub and fireplace in our room. Exactly what we needed after our very long and challenging drive to get to Waterloo. After a good nights sleep, we were up and at it the next morning to get over to the Optometry school for a visit with friends and colleagues. We woke up to a -14C temperature, that is about 7F. Brrrrrrrrr is all we had to say. And we thought winter was about over! Here is a photo of the school as we arrived. Looks like most sane folks stayed home today after that storm last night.

The front entry of the new clinic.

During our 5 day visit, Rowan gave her talk, we visited with friends, I loaded the Pneumatic

Esthesiometer into the car for the trip back to the US and we even had time for a trip to the local Amish farmers market on the weekend (a highlight of the trip for me).

The stacks and stacks of beautiful home canned vegetables were outstanding. What a sight! I could have bought it all.

The stacks of homemade pies set my head spinning.

And..........we can't forget to feature Gramma's Handmade Microwaveable Slippers. Yes, microwaveable slippers! Just wash em and throw them in the microwave to dry and disinfect. Who knew??!!!!

We really loved the horse buggy parking lot for the Amish farmers. They have covered parking, but the autos don't. Another reason to stop driving a car :o)

I've got a bunch of catching up to do, so I will be making a few more posts in the next few days.

International Food, Venting & Cheers!

April 2, 2011

First, I have to apologize for the extended time between posts. There is just so much going on between our real jobs, working on the house, travel and some very needed short breaks from all of this. There will be a couple of posts in the next few days as I will have time to sit and spew what has been going on while I watch the final 4 basketball games for the men and women NCAA college basketball tournament. GO BUTLER!!!!

Let's get to the food first. Since we have most of our kitchen back (the stove, butcher block and counter space is a wonderful thing!), we have been cooking up a storm. We are so grateful to have this part of our house back after cooking on camping stoves in the garage during the last 6 month construction period. I fear that the 15 pounds I have lost during the past 3 months will be coming back to me soon :o) I will let the following photos help to tell the story.........

Rowan is our master pasta making QUEEN. Every time she makes this stuff it just gets better. Must be those European genes that give her the knack for doing this. She uses 1/2 flour and 1/2 semolina, eggs, salt, some drops of olive oil and warm water as needed ( a recipe our dear friend Nina, the Ms. Universe of pasta making gave us). The real secret is making sure not to kneed it too much once you get the dough together. The resting period for the dough is about 15 minutes and then it is ready to roll out and put through the pasta cutter.

The eggs are cracked into the top of the volcano of flour/semolina/salt. Then, very slowly you start to fold the flour into the eggs. If you are unlucky, you get a lava eruption of eggs coming down the sides of your flour volcano, onto the table and over the edge onto the floor. In the interest of time, we won't show you all of those pictures from our experience here :o)

Through some luck, this is supposed to be what the end result is. Once you have this ball of dough, cover it with a kitchen towel for a 15 minute rest and then get ready to roll.

Meanwhile, while rowan was whipping up the pasta, I was creating the Putanesca pasta sauce, literally "whore style spaghetti" in Italian. Interesting history of the dish can be found on the Internet here: http://www.foodreference.com/html/a-ladies-puttanesca.html

This is one of the most simple and delicious authentic southern Italian pasta sauces. It is simply made from olive oil, anchovies, whole crushed garlic cloves, red pepper flakes, chopped tomatoes, calamata olives, capers, chopped parsley & basil. Simple. Extremely flavorful and better the next day. This is major comfort food. Here are the sauce pics:

We had a blast making the pasta and getting flour everywhere in our new and improved kitchen. The dough is rolled through the pasta machine many times to get it nice and thin.

Once it is just the right thinness, it is put through the cutting side of the machine. The job is made easier with two people as four hands are much better than two.

The pasta is laid out to dry before going into the pot.

Our next international food adventure brought us back to India. It has been just one year since we returned from our sabbatical in that great country so we thought it was appropriate for us to make our favorite Indian dinner to celebrate. I won't give you all the details of how to make the dishes here again. If you want to see all of that, go back to the 2010 postings on the blog side bar and look at the posts from 1/31-4/25.

Here our friend Sally is helping to make the chapati flat bread.

A few of our favorite Indian dishes: Palak Paneer (spicy spinach & Indian cheese), Eggplant Bharta (a Pakistani dish), Chicken Masala, Punjabi Sukha Urad Dal (spicy lentels) and basmati rice. Yum! Yum! Yum! We even ate dinner like Indains, using our hands :o)

On to the new developments on the house..........

Most of what we have been doing since the last post is putting more of the inside of the house together - hanging pictures, adjusting furniture and working on the prep work for painting the outside of the house. We did have to do a little more constructing on the ceiling of the front porch to add some vents for that attic space. Rowan and I had fun by doing this ourselves.

Rowan remains the mathematical measuring queen, so she organized the spacing for the vents.

I, being the power tool princess that I am, cut the holes in the porch ceiling. It was really fun being up in the small warm attic space. Kinda like being 12 years old again and being in your fort, hiding from all of those grown-ups outside. :o)

The most exciting thing that has happened since our last post it that we had our first open house cocktail party for our immediate neighborhood friends. All of them have been very anxious to see what the inside of the house looks like. We invited about 20 friends from the neighborhood to this first gathering. We had professors of mid-evil studies, law, music, Spanish languages, neuroscience and assorted business people and artists from our community. We could never have entertained that many guests at once in our old layout. We look forward to having many more gatherings with our friends and family.

News of Spring being sprung, some travel and more protesting coming next...........