Happy Chinese New Year!

From Google Image

May your life take off this year to new heights like the prancing horse in the picture!  May it carry you to where you wish to go!  For my part, I think I'm due for some distant travel this year; not sure what life has in store for me.  I'm hoping Kirk might be invited out to give a paper somewhere in Europe, say, Germany, for example, so that I can tag along and put my German to practice.  This semester, instead of going to classes, I've been meeting with a German Ph.D student once a week to practice German.  It's been working out very well so far; we meet at a coffee house across from where I've been working. Hope our friends in the south have not been too adversely affected by this new cold blast from the North Pole.  It no longer bothers us when the temperature is in the teens.  We've definitely grown accustomed to the cold, especially, now that we're well insulated by the inimitable "Canada Goose" parkas!

Year End Updates

I have concluded my semester of Beginning German with flying colors, an A+ no less.  Kirk was disappointed though; he thought I should have gotten an A++, if such grade exists, considering the numerous advantages I have over the other students.  Towards the first week of November my life got considerably busier when, out of the blue, I was called to help out with a project at a small, local architecture firm here in Bloomington.  Having to juggle a first-period class four days a week and then go to work for 9 hours straight was no stroll in the park, but I'm glad to have the opportunity to get involved in some architectural design work and get paid for it!  I don't know how long this gig will last; the plan was to resume work after the holiday break with the hope this might herald more opportunities to come.   

I used my first paycheck to buy a new refrigerator, and as a result, was called "white trash" in jest by a friend.  (The reference takes some explaining, which I'm not sure I can do convincingly.)  The truth was that the ice-maker of our vintage fridge which came with the house built in 1966 broke during Thanksgiving week and leaked water on the floor; it would have had to be replaced anyway.  This winter will be our fourth in Bloomington!  We have been slowly replacing our kitchen appliances in the past couple of years; the changeover is now complete for the kitchen.  We will be working our way to other parts of the house in the coming years.  My inclination is for small, piecemeal improvements, while Kirk favors large-scale overhaul.    

The followings are some computer renderings of the interior renovation of the Monroe County Library Teen Center project (in the Design Development Phase) which I participated in -

Floor Plan

Longitudinal Section

Lounge Area

Radius Bookcase

"floating" Graphic Design Space

Quiet Reading Area

Here's to you all a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year!  

Happy New Year!

(from Google Images)

If your new year's resolutions haven't quite taken hold after a little over five weeks since the beginning of this year, now is your chance, symbolically speaking, to renew your commitments as the Chinese are getting ready to usher in their New Year this coming Sunday, on February 10.  As the customary Chinese New Year's greeting goes - Gong Xi Fa Tsai - here is to you all, A Happy and Prosperous New Year! 

Greetings from Snowmiz

Snowmiz

Inspired by Judy's comments, our jolly snowman in the process of filling out has morphed into a snowmiz and now she is all decked out for a stroll in the park.  She bids you all a Good Day!









12.28.2012 Update:
After a night out in the cold, my snow lady did not fare any worse for wear; I hope she'll last a few more days longer.

    

12.29.2012 Update:
My poor snow lady was almost unrecognizable after another night out.

1.11.2013 Update:
Alas, such is the remains of my snowmiz!

Spring Fever

Kirk and I have both caught the spring fever brought on by the delicious warmth of the sun and intermittent days of thundering showers.  We have been marveling at and documenting the daily transformation of our surroundings which spring has wrought.  Trees and shrubs are coming alive with new green buds and some are bursting with flowers, pink, yellow, and white.  Like everyone else, we have been patronizing the local hardware store almost every weekend; gardening projects seem to be on everyone's mind. 

Fern Fronds

Fern unfurled

For our first spring season in Bloomington, I plan to turn the raised-bed area in our backyard into an herb and butterfly garden.  I have been pouring over gardening catalogs and websites and have since placed my order for new planting.  Last Sunday, Kirk helped me turn up the soil in those boxes and mix in some new topsoil. They will be ready to receive new plants as soon as they arrive.  While turning over the soil in the boxes, I unwittingly and ruthlessly uprooted some yet-to-be unfurled fern fronds which had been growing in the lower boxes, planted there by previous owner of the house, Ed Cohen.  I had no idea what they were; they looked kind of ugly and I thought they were weeds coming back to infest my garden boxes.  Not until I chanced upon a picture of fiddleheads in the Slow Love Life blog by Dominique Browning did I realize what I had done.  Luckily some of them survived.

Mulan Magnolia

Also in our backyard are some flowering trees, one with large pinkish flowers, the other with white blossoms.  I think the former is Magnolia liliifora, also called Mulan Magnolia or Tulip Magnolia.  The latter, I believe, is Japanese Cherry tree, Prunus serrulata.  The white blossoms look similar to the plum flowers I remember from Taiwan but I guess plums and cherries are not exactly the same.

Cherry Blossoms

By the way, I was told by Ed that the Wisteria vine at our Pergola in the backyard, for which our house is named, is not guaranteed to bloom every year.  It will be such a shame if it doesn't this year!  Alas, it is not showing any sign of blooming so far.

Hyacinth toppled over
of its own weight

The bulbs I planted in the fall are coming up nicely.  Here is a picture of my hyacinths weighed down by their own blossoms.  
They looked like drunken sailors in a row; I had to prop them up with sticks.

Happy New Year!

The weather was unseasonably warm today, the last day of 2010.  All the snow that had accumulated on the ground in the past couple of weeks rapidly vanished and to our pleasant surprise it uncovered a verdant lawn lying beneath, greener than it sometime was in the summer, during the drought.  I believe we have acclimated to the cold weather in Bloomington, for when the temperature reaches the upper 30's we regard it as kind of balmy.  


I hope 2011 brings us much laughter and lightheartedness.  
Here's to you all, in sympathy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The word 'snow', as in "chances for snow", has been uttered for the first time this year in the weather forecast for this Thanksgiving night!  Wouldn't it be great if it were true?!  We are going to Kirk's colleagues, Mark and Joan's house for Thanksgiving dinner and I will be keeping my eyes at the windows at dinner so as not to miss the first indication of falling snow.  Besides, we are now properly geared up to face the snow challenges, with the mighty snow shovel and scraper for the car windows.




Another bit of evidence that we have settled in was that we've gone to our first IU basketball game last night at the Assembly Hall.  Out of the blue our next-door neighbor, Mr. Sam Bell, the famous retired IU track coach, http://www.usatf.org/halloffame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=16, came over yesterday afternoon and gave me two tickets to the basketball game!  It seems that we've somehow managed to live next-door to people who have season tickets to sporting events but cannot make it to the games all the time.  (To wit, the couple who live in south Florida but keep a pad across from our house in Golf View just to go to Gators games.)  

The basketball game, though not as full of pageantry as those in O-Dome, was a lot of fun.  IU has had a very illustrious history in basketball under the reign of Bobby Knight, the winning-est and most controversial coach of NCAA Basketball, who was fired by IU in fall 2000 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Knight.  During the game they have this "Big Heads" thing - fans waving big cardboard faces of cheesy entertainers at the opponent players behind the backboard during free throws - which was something else!  Compared to what the Gators fans do, i.e., waving skimpy bikinis, this seems like a more tasteful thing to do. 

Finally, after forty some years, I've got to learn to play the piano!  It is like learning a new language at this time of my life but, I suspect, probably not as difficult as learning, say, German or Russian.  You're probably wondering what those disfiguring marks are on the keyboard.  Well, those are drafting dots with inked letters on them to help me memorize the names of the keys; not a very kosher thing to do to a piano, to be sure.  As you know, there is a piano in the basement which comes with the house we bought.  As it turns out it is more like a painted, 'crippled' (two of the pedals being broken), maiden, trapped in the basement of the house.  I had it looked at and learned that the reason why the piano, I suspect, as well as the billiard table, was offered free with the house was probably because that it was not possible to be moved upstairs without first being taken apart.  The piano technician told me that as it is the piano is worth about $250 and I can have it refurbished and tuned for about $1000 but it would only then raise its value to about $500 and I'd never be able to get it out of the basement without having it taken apart!  He strongly recommended against my doing anything about it but learning to play it.  According to him, though sounding flat, all the keys work.  I have since been taking piano lessons once a week and practicing about an hour every day.  


I hope y'all have a great Thanksgiving wherever you are.  Be safe and enjoy the festive occasion.  I will be singing and dreaming, let it snow, let it snow ...