Tuesday, November 25

Photo Project, Day 4:

Monday, November 24

Photo Project, Day 3:

Practice With Adeptive Radiation

One of the reasons I brought my violin all the way from Tallahassee ...

... was so I could reunite with Adeptive Radiation for a practice. John K., John H., Nicole, and Phoebe were all there.

I also played the electric bass that doesn't work unless a combination lock is balanced in a certain place on it.

Nicole and Phoebe played the upright bass.

Phoebe also got to play a little electric guitar, which she enjoyed.

And eventually she drifted off to sleep with the interesting sounds of Adeptive Radiation playing all around her.

Sunday, November 23

Photo Project

This week David and I are doing a photo project. Every day I'll post one photo from each of us, the idea being that it will give us a glimpse of each other's day.

A lot of bloggers are doing this sort of project -- my favorite is this blog -- but we're going to use the following rules: we'll take the picture at around the same time every day. Yesterday it was between 6:30 and 7:30, but for the rest of the week we're going to try for 12:00-2:00. We'll each select our picture without knowing what the other person's picture is going to be. In the posts, David's picture will be the first one. But I think you'll be able to tell whose picture is whose just from looking at them.

Today's photos:

A Change of Plans

I thought I would spend today in Tallahassee, but there was a last-minute change of plans, and now I'm in Bloomington! David is resting up back at home, but I'll be here all week.

Just in time for the Beaujolais Nouveau party!

What Passes For Fall

I spent most of today outside at Lake Ella, and look! We actually have some fall color among all the green!

You need a close-up to see it, but it's there.

The red car counts as fall color, right?

A snowy egret, some cormorants, and a couple of turtles were hanging out under one of the orangish cypress trees. Are they the ones I saw in January? Maybe they come to Lake Ella every year -- which means that this really is the start of the winter season.

Anti-Rain

It's gray and rainy here today. I'm looking forward to seeing the blue sky again.

(Image: Farther Than The Eye Can See by awesome photographer Jennifer Squires)

Casa di Libri

So the book organization project is taking forever, but it's almost finished! All the books that we're keeping are now sorted by genre and on shelves in the rooms where they belong. It still feels a little like we're living in this house, though ...

It's a house made of books with furniture made of books, all carved by woodworking artist Livio DeMarchi.

I think this bed would be perfect for our apartment!

Yes!

Happy Birthday, Granddad!

We love you!

The Best Winter Squash of All Time

Usually I sacrifice one of the Halloween pumpkins and eat it after the holiday is over. But this year I liked all our pumpkins too much to eat, so instead I cooked up a buttercup squash I had in the refrigerator. I found this recipe and loved reading everyone's variations on it. I had to try it for myself.

Hollowing out the squash was the hardest part.

I made the stuffing from three pieces of French bread, about 1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese, two minced cloves of garlic, and a bunch of fresh thyme.

It was almost too much to fit in the squash, but I thought it would cook down.

I poured about two tablespoons of salted cream over the stuffing, forced the top of the squash back on, and baked it at 350 for two hours. It went into the oven in this casserole dish -- I didn't use oil or parchment paper or anything. For the last 30 minutes, I took off the top.

OK, here it is in its glorious finished form. The best buttercup squash EVER. To serve it, I scooped out the squash along with the stuffing. It made about three servings, and it reheated well in the oven. I'm going to be making this in different variations all winter long.

A Saturday at the Polls

We went to the library on Saturday for early voting. We tried to pick the place we thought would have the smallest lines, and I think we did well. The whole process, from getting in line to casting our votes, took 65 minutes. The woman at the polls told me that earlier that morning people were waiting in line for two or three hours, and in Atlanta it was taking eight hours to vote.

The line was still so long that the candidates for local office were able to do some last-minute campaigning at the end of the line. We met rival candidates who were both running for the same position as judge. We voted for the one who was a professor.

When we finally got inside the library, we found that it was very different from voting in Indiana. We had to fill in the bubbles on paper ballots with black markers. The sign told us that along with our ballots we would get "secrecy folders," which turned out to be plain manila folders. "All this time I had no idea that I'd been using secrecy folders for everything," David said afterwards. David had actually tried to feed his secrecy folder into the ballot-eating machine. I couldn't even find the ballot machine and had wandered around the room disturbing the voting officials.

But finally we managed to cast our votes.

Five Levels of Scary

Level 1: my Halloween costume. Last year we had a horde of trick-or-treaters, so this year we stocked up on candy and put together outfits from our costume bag. I decided to dress as a pirate because I already own this amazing pirate blouse. (Which I do also wear in real life, but in a less piratey way.)

Level 2: David's Halloween costume. He was a Pirate King, and it was, it was a glorious thing to be a Pirate King.

Level 3: The Devil Bat. We watched some scary movies and TV shows as we were waiting for the trick-or-treaters to show up. But they never did. We only had six this year!

Level 4: a collection of vintage Halloween pictures. Everything is scarier in black and white, and these were some of the creepiest things we saw this Halloween.

Level 5: our Halloween decorations. At the last minute, I realized that we were out of our traditional spiderwebs, and the best thing I could find at the store was this green plastic skeleton. I didn't realize how eerily it would glow in the dark. It was so creepy that we kept scaring ourselves every time we went by the door and caught its eye. Maybe that's why we didn't have very many trick-or-treaters this year.

March of the Pumpkins

This year we put a big pumpkin outside and a row of tiny pumpkins inside.

David says that it looks like a pumpkin parade with elephants. (The elephants are awesome vintage bookends that David gave me for my birthday. The vases are equally awesome pieces made by Bloomington artists -- the one on the far right was a gift from Hoosierkitty.)

A Halloween Squid

OK, this is not going to become a squids-only blog, but I came across this one while I was looking up the Piglet Squid, and I had to post about it. This is (dramatic organ music) the Vampire Squid.

It's a deep-sea squid with a built-in vampire cape, red on the outside and black on the inside. Like Dracula, it can flip the cape around to shield itself (as in the first picture). And its scientific name is Vampyroteuthis infernalis, which means "vampire squid of hell!"

Could there be a more appropriate squid for this time of year? It even has a pumpkin posture. I think it's only a matter of time before we start seeing vampire squid-themed Halloween decorations at Target.

The Awesomeness of the Piglet Squid

I love squids, which is why I was so excited to see this creature. It's shown up lately on Cute Overload and other websites, with people claiming that it can't be real and has to be a Photoshop creation. But it is real. It's a Helicocranchia, otherwise known as the Piglet Squid.

There are different varieties, but they all look sort of like small floating pigs with crazy hair.

The nose is really an extra-large funnel. The Piglet Squid takes in water by expanding its muscles, then expels the water through its funnel, propelling itself through the water.

It's about the size of an avocado and has a permanently bemused expression.

This is a Piglet Squid from the Sea of Cortez. I wish I had seen one when I was there with Louise and Jennifer.

As the Piglet Squid swims, it twirls its little tail fin like a helicopter. Clearly, it is one of the cutest and most awesome squids ever. And I did not make it up! It really exists.