May 08, 2008
Finally Finished
...with my dissertation.
Only kidding.
My hands didn't do so well during my pregnancy (stupid pregnancy induced carpal tunnel syndrome), so I had to stop crocheting. I had been working on a baby blanket for the kids, even before I knew that there were two. My hands still aren't quite back to normal yet, so I've put off finishing it. But it's been almost six months since the kids were born, and I wanted them to have this while they're still babies. So this afternoon, I ripped out a halfway-done extraneous ruffle, and tucked in my ends.
Voila!
Still plenty big for two!
Posted by Tim and Jo at 03:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 13, 2008
Happy bday from twins & daddy
So....I got my first birthday present from the twins. They picked it out. Really. Look how exhausted they are from shopping.
Their daddy has been busy. He planned out a whole week of birthday surprises. More importantly, he kept these surprises secret, which is quite unusual for him. He's usually too transparent for subterfuge.
On Saturday, my childhood best friend and my cousin Melissa made a surprise appearance. Jennifer brought me candy in quantities of 30 each (I had forgotten how fun pixie sticks were!), and Melissa brought me a purse full of fun Bath & Bodyworks stuff, as well as anti-aging cremes (haha). Elanor stole the purse.
On Monday, another pile of friends came to visit! Ruth made me a chocolate and apricot birthday cake--we share the same middle name and the same birthday.
Elanor found a new friend in Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn was part of the baby countdown last fall. Unfortunately, Elanor said something that Kaitlyn didn't like, and Kaitlyn burst into tears. However, it appears as though they patched it up in the end. I hope they have as much laughter over the years as I've had with her mother and all her wonderful aunts and uncles.
Apparently there are more surprises on the way, so I'll just have to wait...
Posted by Tim and Jo at 04:59 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
February 11, 2008
Our favorite tax deductions
Tim: Taxes DONE! Joanna did them all. Not only that, she found some deductions which we could have done as credits on our last three tax returns. So we churned out three 1040X forms and are expecting even more $$$ from Uncle Sam. These refunds will allow Joanna to spend (hopefully) another year at home with kids without having to work.
Joanna was in the ZONE. The research skills she acquired doing her dissertation paid off in more ways than one! The twins helped us as well, as you can see by the photograph. Definitely, our two favorite tax deductions.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 02:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 13, 2007
A good use for those extra pregnancy hormones...
I've developed a brand new attitude of assertiveness! Over the past few days, I've had to deal with some "not our fault" bank issues. I'm not mean, but I'm having a much easier time in telling the customer service agents it exactly how it is, and making sure things get fixed.
Sweet!
Posted by Tim and Jo at 11:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 14, 2007
Old friendships, odd friendships, new friendships
Old friendships--On Saturday night, Austina spent the night with us, and we went to church together in the AM. It's been so fun--and encouraging--to have her nearby! It's nice, too, that both she and Tim are librarians, so they have plenty to talk about as well. During my senior year at Covenant, when I was sad about leaving behind so many friends, an older woman told me that God had a way of bringing old friends back into her life in completely unexpected ways. I've seen the truth of that over and over again.
Odd friendships*--she came after I left the program, but I've become friends with a woman in my old department at UGA. Over the past few years, we've been stumbling into each other at conferences, and I always felt like we'd become great friends if we ever had the chance to spend more time together. She now attends the church we're going to in Athens!
New friendships--last Saturday, we went to a baby/maternity fair (more on that later if I get up the gumption). While there, I found a Moms of Multiples group that meets each month. Tonight, I'm meeting the group for dinner. This is stepping way out of my comfort zone for me. I have a natural introversion that it makes it hard for me to reach out in unfamiliar situations. But also in some ways, it still hasn't dawned on me that I'm a mom yet, or what exactly that will entail. I'm making a slow transition from grad student to (at least for now) stay at home mom.
*odd in the way that the friendship was formed!
Posted by Tim and Jo at 04:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 20, 2007
Mr. Halvorsen in WWII
The passing of Mr. Halvorsen has made me sad in some ways, and joyful in others that he will be where he has longed to be for years. I took piano with him all four years, and he was a dear, dear friend.
I've been waiting to do a blog post until I processed the emotions that this has stirred up. But while I try to find my own words, here's an amazing story I found.
He used to frequently talk about his experiences as a POW in WWII, telling about when his parachute caught on a tree and he was captured, and how he told his guards that he would be happy as long as they brought him books (which they did).
I did a little google search on him, and found this story in his own words, on a website about the Stalag Luft I prison camp, in which veterans have the chance to tell their own stories of being POWs. I'm just really touched by seeing him in historical context
Name: Ira David Halvorsen Hometown: Gary, Indiana POW Camp: Stalag Luft 1 Name of POW: Denver Jeff Wood Postal Street Address: 1625 Five Springs Drive City, State, Zip: Chattanooga, TN 37319 Sent: 12.24 AM - 11/15 2003I was a prisoner at Stalag Luft 1 from the last few days of December 1944 until liberation in May of 1945. As I recall, I was in the northernmost compound, but I do not find my name or the names of my bunkmate Monroe David and my buddy Denver Jeff Wood.
Please notify me if you can determine the room and the barracks where we were housed. I think my kriegsgefangenen number was 4813. The night before the flight of B-17's evacuated us, a piano that my roommates had "scrounged" from the German officer's clubhouse was moved out by a roaring campfire and I played popular requests for the better part of the night. Maybe some of the other former prisoners will remember that celebration. Now I play much better than I did then. But I did so much enjoy entertaining my fellows with popular favorites of that era.
Amazing. A POW, yet he doesn't complain at all in his story, he recounts a joyful time. An old roommate reminded me the other day that Mr. Halvorsen used to say, "Everything in life is a gift." And with the death of two beloved wives, and all of the other suffering he endured over his long life, he could not say something like that lightly. So simple, yet one of the most powerful summaries of the comforts of having a sovereign God.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 08:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 13, 2007
Wish me luck!
I'm flying out of town to a real job interview tomorrow!
Excited and nervous!!
And hoping that the mounds of snow don't get in my way....
Posted by Tim and Jo at 05:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 20, 2007
Random fragments...
I've been feeling rather unbloggy lately--Trying to Figure Out Things That Shouldn't Be Blogged About In Public + the busyness of the beginning of the semester. So, here are just a few bits and pieces to try to get back into a bloggy frame of mind...
*I dressed up nice to try to make a good impression as I taught my first class a couple weeks ago. When I drove to school, one of my shoes felt rather loose--I figured it had come untied (a perennial problem for me). When I got to school and went to tie it, I realized that I was wearing one of my shoes and one of Tim's shoes. So much for being all put together!
*Teaching has been really fun this semester. I'm teaching "class piano"--to very beginning students. There are twenty keyboards that I can hook into my keyboard at front. So far, though, I've been fairly low-tech in the way I've taught it. They're a fun group of students, many of them seniors looking for a low-key, fun class to finish out their college careers.
*I finished a round of grant/fellowship applications for next year, and one job application. Phew, I'm glad that's over for now--it's time to get back in dissertation mode.
*I want to cook more this winter, fun unusual foods when I can. Now that Tim has finished his degree (woohoo!), he's no longer gone for night classes (more woohoo's!). The other night I made a middle-eastern chicken stew with preserved lemons and olives. It tasted exotic and perfumey. Maybe I'll post the recipe...Next week I want to try my hand at a beef curry.
*We've gotten hooked on BBC renditions of Dickens novels. And the novels themselves. I'm reading Pickwick Papers for the first time, and I've fallen madly in love with Samuel Weller--he's a cockney Sam Gamgee--and with dear Mr. Pickwick.
"I never heerd, mind you, nor read of in story-books, nor see in picters, any angel in tights and gaiters - not even in spectacles, as I remember, though that may ha' been done for anythin' I know to the contrairy -- but mark my words… he's a reg'lar thorough-bred angel for all that; and let me see the man as wenturs to tell me he knows a better vun."--Samuel Weller, Pickwick Papers
Tim just finished up reading Martin Chuzzlewit, so we're watching that together.
*We've had a lot of fun with the high school group at church. We've been teaching them about some of the nineteenth-century attacks on Christianity--Nietszche, Marx, Darwin--and tomorrow we're going to wrap up by having them find pop culture references to the ideas we've studied. We found a great clip from Hitchcock's Rope dealing with supermen, a short bit from Firefly that contrasts rational modernism with postmodernish neo-orthodoxy, possibly a segment from The Simpsons, maybe a bit from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and of course, John Lennon's "Imagine." They're such a fun, bright group of guys (
*Christmas was really fun--we went down to Atlanta this year, and I stayed for almost two weeks. Here's a picture of one of our fun presents--once I get the gumption up, I'll make some nice chocolat chaud pour deux.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 10:47 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 07, 2006
'Tis the Season
Funke and DiBer, those kinds of quotes don't end in grade school! Here's some little tidbits--not quite verbatim--from my marathon grading sessions of the past few days.
"Minimalism is making music using little tiny musical tools." [so cute!]
"Stravinsky used an obstinato in his Rite of Spring." [very true!]
"The King was killed by Hamlet's ankle." [I suddenly had a Monty Pythonesque vision of someone being ankled to death]
Posted by Tim and Jo at 09:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 03, 2006
Flower Children
I've been working on crocheting an afghan for over a year now. It frequently gets set aside for other big projects--like the dissertation. But I'm nearly finished with the first stage, making billions of hexagons.
The pattern is called Grandmother's Flower Garden.
Here are my little hexagons, all lined up in a row.
Then they'll become flowers.
Then they'll aquire a background.
Then they'll find other little flower friends, and be "joined together" in a community called The Afghan.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 03:09 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 12, 2006
Today's discovery
Watching a happy almost-two year old is a lot like watching Amelie (minus the overly "European" bits):
-Pinecones are magical treasures, made to be gathered in both hands even if it means you drop your little Lamby in the process.
-Watching leaf "helicopters" fly down can provide minutes of entertainment.
-Walking over gravelly sections of sidewalk is an adventure, made even more exciting by stopping to take a little of the gravel with you.
-A stopped bus by the side of the road deserves at least a little time in gaping astonishment.
-Pine-straw dancing towards you in the wind is enthralling--though slightly alarming--when you're between two and three feet tall.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 03:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 05, 2006
Dylan and dentistry
Yesterday, me and Bob Dylan took a trip to the dentist. Don't know if I would have made it through that appointment without him. There was something painfully appropriate about listening to "Master's of War" as novicaine was shot into my gums. Ah...people with masks...pain...fear... It's hard to resist making cheesy analogies between the numb consciences in that song and my numb gums. Ahh...here comes "A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall," ballad-like, piled-up with metaphors and imagery I can sink into, as I drift into music to escape my surroundings. It's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, 'n it's a hard...drill is gonna drill??? Wait!!! They're not numb after all. Eek!! Stop that drill!!! My mind moves to that awful country song (I cringe every time I hear those lyrics):
Well he stuck that needle down deep in my gum
And he started drilling before I was numb
It took her two more tries before she actually got my tooth numb. Ouch! I think the place that my insurance covers uses dental students, and this woman and her assistant weren't quite with it. They were very interested in talking about the latest gossip in the office. My inner musicologist comes to the forefront, pondering the non-imitative polyphony created by the soothing sounds of Dylan, the whiny overtones of the drill, and the bits and pieces of what sounded like quite a lurid story passing between the two women above my head.
They kept on dropping things in my mouth, and I couldn't quite figure out the sign language for "I'm going to gag if you don't get that piece of equipment out that I'm about to swallow."
Wait, I'm still here, and "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" is over. No dentist appointment should last longer than a Dylan album. Ah, well, time to start over....How many roads must a man walk down...
Posted by Tim and Jo at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 27, 2006
All My Little Chickens
It's come to the end of another semester. I just finished giving a final to one of my students who needed extra time, while the rest of the TAs give the final to the large class of students. Sigh, I realized partly through that I won't have the chance to say goodbye to all of my students, as I usually do after the final. I always feel a little melancholy at the end of the semester, after investing for months in students, and not knowing whether I'll ever see any of them again.
But as I sat outside earlier in the finally sunshiney Pittsburgh weather, one of my old students passed by and smiled at me. She was my Bouncy Ballet Girl, always cheerful and talkative, sometimes painfully so. We even caught her dancing to her seat in front of a couple hundred students. Now she wants to be a lawyer, and she plays her music appreciation CDs for her friends, trying to get them to like classical music, too. Well, in my nostalgic mood, here's a short "hall of fame" of my favorite (or most memorable!) students.
*Concussion Boy: Earlier in the semester, someone punched him in the head, and he's been struggling with post-concussion syndrome all semester. At first, he seemed a little flakey, but he's worked sooo hard for the past couple of months, meeting with me almost every week. I think he made an A on the final. *proud*
*Love Birds: I always seem to have a pair of these. My pair this year are quiet and sweet, I don't think they know that I see them holding hands and occasionally giving each other a quick peck. I had one pair another year that didn't turn out so well, breaking up in the middle of the semester, with one of them requesting to be moved to another class. Drama!
*I Won't, Won't, Won't Fail This Class Indian Boy: I loved this kid. He failed the midterm, which steeled his determination to pass the class. Always respectful, and incredibly determined, he met with me several times, and the professor, and sent lots of e-mails. And pulled off a big old A in the class! He has become our motivational example for nervous students. And he wrote neat papers about Indian classical music, very cool.
*Pot Head Boy: Okay, we don't know for *sure* that he was taking illegal substances, but sometimes he would be so spaced out, none of us knew what to do with him. He was really smart at the same time, so sometimes his questions or answers would be random, disconnected, but brilliant sounding. Like synapses in his brain had been fried on something.
*I Work Full-Time So I Can Put Myself Through School, So I Take Every Assignment Seriously Italian Boy: Enough said, he was an example to every one. And fun, too!
*My Mom is in Prison, My Grandma Raised Me, But I Know That God's Going To Bring Something Good Out of This Girl: Okay, I get choked up just thinking about her. It was years ago, but I wish I could see her one more time and give her a big hug. She was always so cheerful and upbeat, and even when she was crying in my office, she still had so much hope.
...oh, no...another sad one!
*Both My Parents Died Last Year, But That Hasn't Shaken My Faith in God Boy: I hope someone's taking care of him. Again, years ago, but I still think about him and hope he's getting through life okay. So much suffering.
Time to grade finals. Maybe I can add more later.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 05:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 21, 2006
Not good at being girly
Tomorrow, I'm in my friend Leslie's wedding. It's been a crazy week--next week is finals week at school, I got my little announcement from my advisor (see last post), and I've had tons of grading, etc. to do. Here's the dress. It's really pretty! I hemmed it myself, which was a monumental task (long story behind it).
Today, I went with Leslie and some of her family to get my nails done. I haven't had my nails done since my own wedding. At that time, I desparately tried to stop biting my nails so that my nails would be pretty. Alas, this time I didn't have enough foresight to do that.
I felt a dread in my stomach on the way to the nail place, like a miniature version of the going-to-the-dentist feeling. I'm just not very girly! I'm more comfortable in academia, where my girly quotient doesn't have to be very high to get by. Being neat and knowing when, where and how much to dress up works just fine. Plus, I suspected that some commentary would ensue from the person doing my nails. Which did show some foresight on my part--as I sat down, the man doing my nails immediately said, "You don't have any fingernails!" Thank you, sir, for sharing that with me.
I picked out a color to match the dress, hoping that it wouldn't be too bold or garish. I went through the motions of getting painted, knowing that my noviceness would be showing through. He said to dry them for ten minutes.
Meanwhile, Leslie's nephew started crying as his mom was right in the middle of having her nails painted. My sympathy-for-babies-crying instinct far outweighs my girly instincts, so I immediately went over and put his pacifier back in his mouth, thereby injuring my freshly painted purple thumbnail, and ergo, irritating the nail-guy who had to repaint it, who clearly delineated to me my disobedience to his direct orders. Yes, drill sergeant sir. Whatever you say, drill sergeant sir. Actually, at the time, I almost cried (my "not liking to make people angry" sense is way over the top), and I think he felt bad.
Sigh...if only I was better at being girly...in any case, it was fun hanging out with Leslie and the family.
Posted by Tim and Jo at 01:39 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
February 15, 2006
Bday/Vday extravaganza
Wow...these past few days have been a whirlwind of fun and excitement. Actually, December through February is our clump of exciting events--Christmas, Tim's birthday, the anniversary of our engagement, my birthday, and finally, Valentine's day. Phew!
On my birthday, we went out (thanks to ma and pa) to Joe's Crab Shack with our favorite crab, Rachel K. Heehee! Tim enjoyed having me don the requisite pirate's hat while employee's sang. Too bad it's nearly a year till his next birthday. But a pirate's revenge is never forgotten...
I had lots of fun presents this year....
Continue reading "Bday/Vday extravaganza"
Posted by Tim and Jo at 09:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 03, 2006
Dumpster Diving for Dummies
Joanna: Weird!! Who knew that dumpster diving would become a fad? I've heard of vegans, but "freegans"?!?
http://www.epicurious.com/features/news/dailydish/020206
Hehe...I do remember my brother had some pals who would dumpster dive at the local Krispy Kreme while they were at college. Eww. I've never dumpster dived for food, but I do remember a time as a kid when our local craft store was going out of business and trashing all of its unsold merchandise. So, mom took us back at night, and we found enough nice crafty stuff to last us for years.
I wonder if anyone else has dumpster diving confessions...
Posted by Tim and Jo at 08:00 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack