Nervous Nellie

We were out sailing today under pretty windy conditions - beaufort force 4. We had 2 reefs in the mainsail thankfully, but we were unable to tack because the 2 reefs caused the main to be underpowered. Previously when we've had 2 reefs we were able to tack, so I don't know why exactly we couldn't tack today. I didn't like this at all - it is analogous to not being able to turn left while driving. Also the weather was forecasting a very strong front to come in tomorrow and I was thinking that it might be coming in now - the wind was quite strong and gusty. So I told Andrew I wanted to go in, and thankfully he agreed. Other boats were going in too, so I don't feel too bad. Of course Andrew was a little peeved because that meant we only had a 1 hour sail, but tough! He needs to find another guy to sail with so they can be all gung ho and crazy ha ha. Last weekend Andrew got a call from the Keowee Sailing Club. They had reviewed his application and asked him to come meet the members at their board meeting. Andrew was approved and now he is on the waiting list (probably 1 year). Once he is in, we can move the boat to Lake Keowee and he'll have lots of sailing guys to sail with and heel over in windy conditions. Maybe after I get more experience I won't be as nervous when the boat heels - who knows. Tonight it is home made pizza for dinner with beer and a movie. We'll be watching the remake of 'Miami Vice', which I don't have high expectations for - you can't beat the original Crocket and Tubbs I say! Andrew reports he played his best ever last night at the 356 club. Even his fellow band members told him so. Perhaps it is time for that solo!

New Soup

I made a new soup last night: White Bean with Roasted Garlic. It is an italian style soup using crushed fennel seed and fresh sage for seasoning. I had never roasted garlic before and this recipe called for 2 whole heads of garlic (about 20 cloves), which I thought was rather a lot. But the roasting really mellows the garlic flavor so it was not as bad as it seems. Andrew loved the soup so this one is a keeper. Yeah another week of workouts is behind me. I confess that it is still very difficult to get out of my warm bed into the cold morning air, but I am so far sticking to it. After the workout the house almost seems too hot, so it is all relative. I am also keeping up with my lunchtime campus walks - in this cold weather I can walk really fast without breaking a sweat so my legs are definitely getting a good stretch after sitting in my office chair all morning. Tonight Andrew has a gig to play at the 356 club. His drum instructor says he is good enough now to consider adding a drum solo to a song or two. He'll have to run that by his band mates to get their opinion first! The weather tomorrow is forecast to be 60 degrees and mostly sunny, with a west wind between 5 and 13 mph so we'll go sailing if Andrew is up to it after his late night tonight. We need to get more practice in before our next set of lessons in March. We watched the DVD 'Little Miss Sunshine' last night - it was really funny and had us laughing out loud in parts, so I recommend this one. It was nominated for best picture, but I doubt it will win since its competition in that category is pretty tough.

Samosas

Yesterday for dinner we tried something new: samosas. They are like little Indian style perogies. The recipe we used called for baking them rather than deep frying. They were pretty tasty along with a coconut milk and mint chutney for dipping. The insides are filled with potatoes, edamame (soy beans), carrot, onion, popped yellow mustard seed, popped cumin seed, and turmeric. The turmeric sure turns everything a yellowly orange color, there is some in the dough as well. The samosas were a little time consuming to make so this is definitely a dish reserved for the weekends only. Each Monday morning is my weekly weigh in and this morning I gained a pound from last week - boo. But my freshly washed and out of the dryer jeans fit just a little loose this morning (that has got to be one of the best feelings in the world!) so that must mean all the working out is not in vain. On the weekend we watched two new movies. 'Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby' was pretty funny, especially because being down here we see people that talk and act exactly like that. Those two little boys were hilarious!. 'Thank You for Smoking' was excellent - it's about a tobacco spin doctor. The main character is perfect and the movie is a really funny satire on current day morality and the whole political correctness crap. I highly recommend it!

Rainy Sunday

It has been raining pretty much all day today, so we've only been outside to go grocery shopping. Even the cats have spent the day inside and I think they are a little bored. Andrew finished up with the installation of our new surround sound speaker system. We purchased 3 shorter bookshelves to put in between the 2 taller ones, and that meant we needed to finally upgrade our speakers. The ones we had been using were Andrew's from when he was a teenager (amazing they still work after going to Texas and then South Carolina). So now we have a pretty good home theater system and lots and lots of storage space. There are 3 speakers in the bookcases, and 2 more that are by the fireplace, and a subwoofer by the tv. In the photo you can see Andrew doing his favorite thing - couch computing.
Yesterday the weather was pretty decent and Andrew chopped down some trees encroaching into our yard from the forest while I spread out some mulch to smother weeds. It is much easier to get Andrew to help with yard work if it involves purchasing a new power tool. In this case we got a chain saw which made short work of the tree trunks. The chain kept coming off which was a little frustrating but in the end the job was done and from now on I will not let the little trees grow so big before I chop them down.
January 18 marked 1 year of no smoking for me which I find hard to believe sometimes. I really didn't think I would ever quit smoking. Using that success as motivation, this year I really want to get in shape. So every workday morning I have been getting up at 6 and doing a home workout in the living room. I alternate between the Cindy Crawford 'Next Challenge' and a beginner step video. Even though it has only been a few weeks, I can notice a difference in my strength and endurance. Hopefully I can keep this fitness routine up and lose some weight too!

Sailing

Unbelievably warm weather for this time of year - yesterday it was 70 degrees. We had a short sail for 2 hours or so. The wind was around 10 - 14 mph and we basically headed out across the main part of the lake into Georgia and then turned around. A few gusts here and there freaked me out a little since I hate gusts when I am at the helm. Coming back in I took a photo of the lake with the sun peaking out. We made another home made pizza for dinner last night and then watched the DVD 'A Scanner Darkly'. Neither of us liked that one very much. The story just wasn't there for us. I had higher expectations since the novel on which it was based was written by the same guy that wrote the story that 'Bladerunner' was based on, and that movie was excellent. Today it is the MLK holiday. The weather is a little drizzly so it is probably a stay indoors and veg on the couch type of day - Andrew will probably be working on the computer.

Finally an update

Its been awhile since I've updated this site. I guess that's because not much out of the ordinary has been happening. So I asked Andrew to help me write something - here is his guest entry, with a few edits from me: Last weekend we finally put away our Christmas lights. Since it was raining, it was a good opportunity to do something inside. I wanted to mic up my drums and record a few fills in GarageBand (bought an Apple learning series book for it at B&N and wanted to try it out). But I was missing a stereo cable adapter so we had to go to Radio Shack, which happens to be by the Lowe's. While shopping at Lowe's for some storage boxes for the Christmas lights, Corey found some shelves that she wanted to buy on impulse. I thought we were just there to buy boxes, so the shelves were a bit of a suprise. Once we got back I got Corey to bang on the drums while I adjusted the mixer levels. Afterwards Corey put together the shelves while I made Pad Thai for dinner. We've made this dish before, it's not too complicated and has a nice Asian taste to it, accented by peanuts. I also added some jumbo shrimp to mine. The shelves look nice and we now have a small library in the living room where the books are easily accessible. I also cut up some white boards to add two more shelves to the kitchen pantry. This past week was the first week of classes. The campus is buzzing with students again and parking is once again a bit of a hassle. My year got off to a busy start; I'm working on about 7 projects right now, each with fairly good potential for publications. 2007 has the makings of an exciting year. Just yesterday I got invited to go to Stockholm and Frankfurt that I happily accepted. The dates are yet to be determined, but probably before end of April. Meanwhile, I'm working on papers for conferences in Tuebingen, San Diego, Tempe, and Rio. Those depend on paper publications, so from now through April I'm going to be busy writing papers. Right now we are in the middle of a three day weekend due to the MLK holiday. We did some yardwork and are going sailing today. (Corey: I am a sucker for anything blooming this time of year and couldn't resist buying 6 new creeping phlox and I planted those out so we have a tiny bit of color in the yard now.) I finally got a replacement mirror for the car ($142 spent that could have been used for something else, thanks to the vandals). The body shop would have put it on and painted it to match but they got pre-empted by other jobs, probably more lucrative than my small $50 job. Turns out the mirror installation is pretty simple and it took me no time at all to bolt on. And since finding matching paints is next to impossible, I just painted both mirrors black and today I will put them back on the car. The driver's side mirror in factory "paint to match" black doesn't look half bad and since black goes with everything. That should finish things up nicely.
Corey: Yesterday I went for a forest walk to check out the beaver dam and the lake levels. Recent rains have brought the level up by 2 to 3 feet, but we are still 5 feet below full pond. The shot on the right is the beaver dam - you can see the water on the far right and no water on the left of the picture. The shot on the left is what we call the 'boat channel'. It is basically a big ditch right now. Hard to believe we drove our power boat right through here a few years back.

Photo Booth Fun

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everyone! Andrew and I rung it in with a bottle of champagne and then we called Mindy back in Vancouver (and we are still on the phone with her right now!). Mindy had the most horrible trip back home - over 40 hours of delays and overnight in a Denver hotel, etc. etc. but she pulled through and is now home safe and sound, with her bags. We all really enjoyed the winter canoe trip we took. We hauled the canoe up from our dock, loaded it in the truck and launched from the Seneca boat ramp. A most lovely day with sunshine and a slight breeze - great weather for the end of December. Today Andrew and I went shopping up in Greenville and I purchased, among other things, a new set of pasta bowls and a fluted pasta cutter. When we got home we made another batch of the homemade ravioli which turned out great, the new cutter made such a pretty edge on the raviolis (last time Mindy and I just pinched them with our fingers). We are getting much better at using the pasta maker and had nice uniform 5 inch wide strips this time. And the batch was large enough that we have lots of freezing raviolis in the fridge just waiting for snack time.