Devastation

First of all, thank you all for the wonderful comments in the original garden post. I appreciate them.

Second, remember how mentioned I would keep you updated on said garden? Well, this may be the last post in that thread.

So, I mentioned that it was raining and we were having thunderstorms, right? Well, I awoke this morning to a co-worker who also has a plot near us: 'The rain gods are fickle.' I know he's trying to plant his plot, so I thought there was too much water still and he was sad.

I was so wrong.

When I walked down to the garden plot, I noticed an unusually large number of cars coming through the complex. Then, as I got close to the plot, I saw this:

You're looking at a soccer field. And that's water. A lot of water. More water than there should be. Like, say, a flood.

And this is where our garden plot is/was/should be:
There is a river that runs a couple hundred feet to the south of our plot, and apparently it crested overnight (I heard someone say it crested 5 feet, which sounds really bad):
Now the river is like 10 times as wide as it was before. And flowing really fast.

And if it looks deep, it is. See these basketball hoops, they're 10 feet tall. Keep in mind that the original height of the river was at least 5 feet BELOW our garden plot.
There's also a golf course across the street, which is along the river. Guess what happened to that:
I think that hole now has a water hazard.

It's supposed to thunderstorm pretty much non-stop until next Wednesday, so I think the water might continue to rise. We're fairly high up, so I think we'll be ok, but I think the units down near the filed are in trouble.

I don't know what happened to the fence and plantings at our plot, but I'm going to go ahead and assume they're all gone, based on how fast the water was flowing.

Here's the schematic of our plot now:

I'm not sure what it will look like once the water falls, so I'm not sure if I'll replant. right now, I'm a little shocked.

Goodbye dear garden, we barely knew ye.

[More pictures of the devastation on Flickr]

¡Hola de Mexico!

Hi all! We arrived in Mexico last night after a long flight (with transfers) and then a 3 hr bus trip (unfortunately we arrived during rush hour). We got settled in and slept like the dead.

I'm here in Queretaro, Mexico with a classmate J and professor C. We're working at the Tech, one of the 15 universities in this city. J and I will be teaching a conversational English class for the Mexican Tech students, and also hosting a language exchange between them and the American exchange students.

Eleven years ago, I did my own study abroad in ths town, but at a different uni. A lot has changed. The city is even bigger (1.2 million now) and there's more traffic. But the centro is stll historic and the churches are amazing.

I'll ce keeping you all updated and hopefully will have pictures of exciting travels and local scenes. Mom is going to be joining me after school lets out and then Peter's coming after that. I'm sure that means that lots of adventures are in store!

I have regular access to emails, so send them along like normal. Thus far the weather is fine, warm but not hot and a slight amount of humidity. Apparently, there was a heat wave before we got here. Sounds like I'm bringing the cool weather with me wherever I go. It sounds like we might be headed to San Miguel de Allende this weekend for a little trip.

More news to follow....

I Will Soon Be Very Sick of Eating Tomatoes

Here at our housing complex run by Farm U, you can sign up to get a community garden plot. Since our existing outdoor space consists of (1) a concrete, fenced-in patio almost completely screened of sunlight; (2) a concrete patio that is regularly terrorized by the neighboring dogs (so much so, in fact, that we can't really use it at all - dog poo smells terrible); and (3) a small patch of land that I commandeered from our former neighbor that doesn't really belong to us, and which I already planted with sunflowers [Quick sunflower note: most of the sunflowers I planted in that spot died, since I waited too long to put them in the ground and they were all weak and falling over. I started some new sunflowers inside and planted those earlier. They are now flourishing], we jumped at the chance for a community spot.


After the-longest-winter-in-the-history-of-the-middle*, the weather finally calmed down right after Mother's day enough for us to go investigate our plot. We had asked for half a plot (about 8' x 16'), so were surprised when we were given a full plot (16' x 24'). We weren't sure what we were going to plant, but now we could plant even more of it.


Our first task was to put up a fence, since the rabbits around here are fruitful (and cotton-tailed cute) and deer live right next to our plot. After a trip to the local chain hardware store for supplies, we constructed a pretty sweet fence, using plastic stakes, wooden stakes, wood lathe, and 3-foot chicken wire. We're pretty confident that the fence will keep out rabbits, since we staked it down to the ground, but we're pretty sure the deer could just walk through it or jump it. We have some home remedy type ideas to keep them out, but we haven't done anything just yet - please let us know if you know of anything that might work.


After constructing the fence and raking out all the hay, we drove over to our local, actually local, plant nursery, which was super cool. We ended up buying a bunch of starts and seeds, most for about $1.50 each, some $1.50 for 3. That seemed cheap to me.


A couple days later, we got down to the plot, fence still standing, and put everything in the ground. We have lots of good stuff, too much of which to list, so here's the schematic we drew up after we planted:

(click on the picture to actually be able to read it)

And corresponding photo of the actual planted garden (looking southwest towards the big pumpkin):


Anyways, within 2 days of planting everything, we left town for a week to go to a wedding in Arizona. We were worried that everything would die from lack of water, but the opposite happened. It rained almost everyday we were gone, and now things are looking good. We already have some cayenne peppers that are maturing. The beans and peas are all coming up. The tomatoes look happy and we've had to pinch a few flowers already (although one of the Romas is dead, I think). The sunflowers are already ridiculously large. And that 'Big Pumpkin' - it's supposed to grow to 100-lbs. Only the watermelon doesn't look so happy right now. It's pretty exciting.

The only thing is that Kimberly left for Mexico today. She'll be there for 2 months, leaving me in charge of all garden matters, including pruning, weeding, eating, and (potentially) canning if the Romas decide to mature really fast. And as if to taunt me, we are having insane thunder storms right now, with the same predicted over the next few days. I'm a little worried that everything is going to drown now, rather than get killed by drought. This gardening thing is nerve wracking.

Anyways, I posted some pictures on Flickr and I will try to keep the blog updated as things progress. I also just got a call from a friend that he's been given permission to plant some stuff on a vacant lot near work, so I might put some more stuff in there, like more 100-lb pumpkins or huge watermelons. Because if there's anything I'll need, it's more produce.

*verified by real Midwesterner

Current Events

Sorry for the lack of posting recently, it's been a bit hectic in our household these last few weeks. At the moment, we're hanging out in lovely Tucson. Some dear friends are getting married and we're happy to help them celebrate. Lots of posts are brewing (including photos from our new garden, my thoughts on education, saguaro cacti in bloom, Peter's latest adventures, and Miles' hard life). Also in the latest news, I'm heading to Mexico next week for a 7 week stay. Posting will be unpredictable, as although the university has wi-fi, computer access is unreliable.

We'll keep you updated the best we can...

Outside Our Backdoor

When we moved to the middle from Portland, somehow our bird feeder didn't make it on to the truck. While we got a fair amount of birds at our house in Portland, we were excited to have the feeder here, as the middle is pretty well known for its bird varieties. From some minor research, it appears that the Rockies are a dividing line for bird species. There are a bunch of birds here that are unknown to Kimberly, as she had spent her whole life on the west side of the mountains.

A few weeks ago, Kimberly decided she wanted to get a bird feeder for out here, and I was all for it. We put it up in the back of our house, which I was a little skeptical of. There's a lot of dogs back there (from our neighbors) and all the A/C units, which are loud. But Kimberly insisted it be placed in the back, which afforded the best views for her and Miles.

At first, we didn't get many birds, just some small guys who look like little finches or chickadees. But then more species started arriving, with lots of cool new colors.

First a couple red-breast robins. Then, what we assumed are some gold finches (small-yellow birds). Then something that looked like a kingfisher or woodpecker, and would hang upside down while eating from the feeder.

Then this morning, I went down stairs, and saw this guy eating:
Now that's not a very good picture, but you can clearly see we have a cardinal eating in our backyard. This is particularly exciting, since Kimberly had never seen a cardinal before living in Iowa. She has seen some around campus, but hopefully he'll come back to the feeder so she can get a good look at this one.

A Visual History of Dead Animals...and A Possible Cause of Species Extinction

'Smile, you're at a weird museum!'

[This is the latest installment of our travel log from our summer trip to Italy. We will add new stories sporadically (like once every six months) until we have no stories left. Today's installment: the Natural History Museum at the University in Bologna. This one is a bit long, as I need to introduce us to Northern Italy and provide some back story.]

Italy is very much two very disparate regions connected only by inclusion in the same country borders, much like Civil War-era America. The south (commonly referred to as The Mezzogiorno, and generally considered the area south of Rome) is mainly agrarian; the north (north of Rome, oddly) is mainly industrial, with internationally famous brands such as Fiat and Ferrari headquartered there, and generally has the higher concentration of wealth. Due to the extreme heat in the south during the summer (and our desire to limit the amount of chaos in our lives; for an example of chaos, see this old story), we headed north for most of our trip.

We honestly didn't know much about most northern Italian cities, except Milan, where I have a cousin. I knew that Milan is a world-class city, with a famous Opera, as well as a center of world fashion and finance. I knew that the highest Italian soccer league (Serie A) is generally dominated by northern Italian teams, since these cities have a higher concentration of wealth and can therefore afford better players. And I knew there were major tourist cities, such as Venice and Florence, that brought more wealth to the region.

Other than that, most of the cities I knew of were for food or sports reasons reasons: Genoa, for its various salami; Parma for its hams (prosciutto) and cheeses (parmigiana); Bologna, for bologna (maybe?) and bolognese-style pasta sauce; Modena, for its balsamic vinegar; Turin, for Juventus, their soccer team, and home of Fiat.

Early in our trip, we made a quick list of cities we'd like to visit and did a quick read through in our travel guide to help us refine the list. One city that made the list was Bologna, which is home to the oldest continually-operating University in the world. We figured that a college town has to be pretty cool right? Well, when we would tell native Italians that our next stop was going to be Bologna, they would inevitably ask, 'Why?' (this happened at least 3 times I can distinctly remember, and probably closer to 10).

I'm not sure if it was lingering side-effects from my sickness in Lucca (where we had just come from) or the doubts planted by all the 'Why would you go to Bologna?" statements, but our first impression was not good. We had heard/read that the north is industrial, but we weren't really prepared for a capital C City. In Italy, all the tourist cities you visit are kind of quaint and quiet: Florence, Venice, Lucca, Assisi; even Rome doesn't feel like a City to some extent. But Bologna is a City: wide streets with lots of traffic, densely laid out, tall buildings, sketchy characters, alleys, trash on the streets, etc. When we walked out of the train station, I think we were shell-shocked.

After we settled in to our really-nice-but-run-by-some-kind-of-sketchy-people hotel, we started to wander around the city and found that it wasn't actually so unlike the rest of Italy as we initially feared. (Tangent: supposedly, Bruno Magli, the shoes guy, lived in the same building as our hotel and he paid some old woman to stand in the lobby and visually inspect, and yell at, everyone who came and went. If you know anything about old Italian women, you'll realize this may be the greatest form of security available). Of course, we found some excellent food, wine, and ice cream in the city, as well as the best falafel/gyro place we ate at in Italy. We were able to walk all over without any problems. We also found a cool photo exhibit on Gypsies (or Roma), watched a movie in Italian in the main square, saw some monuments to the Italian resistance during WWII, and found a phallic statue of Neptune (all of which I will hope to expand on at some other time - this intro is already too long and I haven't even gotten to the main point yet).

But the main attraction of Bologna was the University and its museums. You have to figure if an institution has been around for almost 1000 years, it has had to have seen some cool stuff, including the 'discovery' of the 'New World' and colonialism.

As we wandered around the University, we came across this place, which in retrospect, is one of my favorite places in all of Italy that we went to:

I believe this says something like:
The University of Studying
Museum of Zoology, Comparative Anatomy,
and Anthropology.
But you probably already figured that out.

The museum wasn't in our guide book, and we really had no idea what to expect. But Kimberly likes animals and nature, and I'm always up for an adventure, so we went in. Possibly the best decision we made all trip.

This place was both a museum and a department building for the University. But, it was empty - the offices, the museum, everywhere - and unlocked. I could have walked out of that place with a jar full of dead snakes,

I think that one in the front is trying to make a break for it.

a rhinoceros head (honestly, I have no idea what that is the skull of. A saber-tooth tiger? A Woolly Mammoth? Any help?),

and an elephant leg waste basket (in retrospect, I wish I had taken this, but it probably would have caused quite the stir at customs).

Loosely translated this sign reads 'Don't put trash in the Elephant leg.'
Apparently they don't teach reading at the University of Bologna, as the leg was full of trash.

When we first walked in, we just noticed some stuffed heads on the wall, kind of like a hunting lodge. Then we saw a whole wall of heads of various African game animals.

So well ordered and presented. But could someone dust them, please?

Then we started wandering, turned a corner, and found this:

This picture does no justice to how many cases of animals there actually were at this place.

Rows and rows and rows of animals, stuffed or preserved. And it looked like it hadn't been well-maintained.

Some animals looked like they were still decomposing.

Usually, the shell is attached to the turtle.

Some were actually decomposing, because their preserving fluids had evaporated.

This possum (opossum?) has definitely seen better days.
Someone might want to top off that embalming fluid.

There were extinct animals.

I originally thought this was a dodo, but looking at it again, it looks like a big eagle. I don't know.

Animals on the verge of extinction.

Kiwis,and most other small, flightless birds, are rare in the wild in New Zealand because of the introduction of possums and cats to the islands. And the Zoological Museum of Bologna.

Imaginary half-and-half animals.

I think they were trying to make a point about evolution with these guys, but still, kind of strange.

Re-enactments of the circle of life.

I wonder if they were found this way in the wild. That would be cool.

Weird interpretations of life in the wild.

I'm not a biologist, but I'm pretty sure boars and seals don't kiss/snuggle in the wild.
Nor, do I believe, they share the same habitat.

An ostrich egg.

That's big.

What appears to be a Unicorn corn.

A scientist may say narwhal horn, but I say Unicorn horn.
And some assorted stuffed heads.

Animals we ate on our travels.

Wild boar (or cinghale, in Italian, I think) is very tasty in sauces and in salami.

Bambi and his family.

The Lion King and his family.

These lions have no back halves. They end at that wall.

Hedwig.

Stupid Death Eaters

And this cabinet full of weird, random horns, stuffed heads, and other stuff.

In all, I think we took over 100 pictures in about an hour and a half (I've put most of them on Flickr, but tried to get rid of the ones that were really out of focus or otherwise not good). We were totally infatuated with this place and started referring to it as the Extinction Museum. In fact, we went back the next day because we didn't believe it really existed.And the really crazy thing: this wasn't even the weirdest place we found in Bologna (looking back, its actually not as weird as it was when we were there). But that's another story for another day.

[Photos here on Flickr, and here in slideshow format]

Overheard Conversation

The other day, I was weeding our front yard, when two of the neighborhood kids walked by. One was on a bike, the other had his shirt off. They must have been 10-12 years old.

Bike Kid: (deadpan) Nice Abs.

No-Shirt Kid: (sincere) Thanks.

B.K.: Have you ever heard of sarcasm?

That made me laugh.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Dad.

We'll be thinking about you today.

Love always-

Yay!!!

Welcome to the world Howie!!!

The C word

It strikes again. A classmate of mine just found out that her cancer has metastasized. She's been in remission for the last few years but hasn't been feeling well for a month now. It's never a good time to find out, but it's been particularly harsh for her to not be able to finish out the semester. Chemo starts in a few weeks. We don't know the prognosis yet, but it's not looking good. This is a very rare cancer, and the fact that it has metastasized is very bad.

We're working on a plan to help - groceries, company, dinner.... but we can't help with the bills. The rough part about being a grad student (or really just a person in the US) is that health insurance is dependent on employment. We get fairly inexpensive insurance here. But what happens if she can't take classes and TA in the fall? Her insurance will expire in August. If she can't comeback, it will be because she's too sick. This means she'll need the insurance (chemo and cancer not being a particularly inexpensive disease). So she's also facing a terrible catch22. We talked about this a lot after Dad died. Illness is most expensive for those who can least afford it. Why we can as a nation afford billion (trillion? I don't even know) war and weapons but not health care?

Farm U is reminding me a bit of CityU right now. People have banded together and are acting like family, rather than the "system". We have quickly shifted into discussions about who will do what, and are trying to help and support each other. And interesting wrinkle is the cross-cultural nature of our department. I spent a while today talking with my officemate (from China) about the appropriate responses to finding out that she has cancer. Officemate was surprised that she knew- telling me that people with cancer in China never know, because their families don't tell them. This way, everyone is "happy". We talked for awhile about what it meant for the diagnosis and prognosis to be known. We talked about what types of support and comfort could be given. Although I A NOT GRATEFUL for me previous experiences with cancer (and PLEASE do NOT tell me anything like that), I know that I can rely a little bit on them, and be a better friend because of them. I know that I can avoid saying the unhelpful things- and instead offer a hug, a tissue, and a shoulder to cry on. I won't tell her it's going to be better. I won't tell her that it's part of the "plan". I don't know if she believes this or not. But I can offer her friendship right now.

So, tonight I'm sitting here, ostensibly writing a paper, and thinking about her. She's not writing her papers, as she can't focus with the dose of oxycodone she's on. We'll be babysitting her pet for a while, and doing what we can to make sure she's not alone.

And, for now, I'm feeling very sad. Very scared. And, honestly, pretty pissed off. Damn cancer. She's my age.

Done... sort of

I just finished teaching my last class of the year (literally, 2 minutes ago). Although I'm far from done (2 papers to write, one take home exam, 23 portfolios to grade, 50 final exams to grade, and 30 term papers to grade), the end is in sight.

Phew. I'm really looking forward to being done with my first year.