cheers, patient reader

What better surprise after a busy December than homemade eggnog! Delicious. And made with freshly grated whole nutmeg! Mmm. Recipe here.




Maybe some homemade slippers to go with it? Mmm.



Moms.


Braxton enjoying a homemade remote-controlled gift (okay, not homemade; whatever).


Dave, Braxton, Magen, Amelia, Dave, Fran, Emily, Yancy


Mimi with Amelia.


Amelia, one more time.


Mimi with Braxton



How about homemade marshmallows?

Okay, fine: Braxton with his new sister Amelia:


Happy New Year!


PS, On a completely unrelated note, Tom Waits released a new album last month, and this adaptation of a Bukowski poem (now playing) is, for my money, beautiful. Please enjoy.

well done, all

Congrats to Magen and Dave, and welcome to our new niece, Amelia Frances Iwanski:

Her "stats" can be viewed on the hospital's website.


And, congratulations to Emily (or Mimi, if you prefer): she was just offered to have her hours raised from 10 a week to 37 a week, and they're raising her hourly wage as well. Nicely done.


Lastly, congratulations to me, for taking this fabulous picture of Dave, Diana, and Emily in Chicago recently:

Thanks

Yesterday we enjoyed a Happy Thanksgiving in St. Charles.

Dave, Fran, Mimi, and Chris: some wine, some cheeseball, and all is well


Fran, Mimi, Chris


Mimi: notice the new sweater--she's getting pretty handy with those knitting needles, no?


Dave working on the turkey


then we're agreed


at the table

A fabulous feast. My personal favorite: the sweet potatoes with corn and ginger. Recipe's from the Chicago Tribune. Tasty.

Hope you too, reader, had a happy day.

Congratulations!

We had the pleasure of attending Chris and Carrie's much-anticipated wedding, at Maxim's in Chicago. A grand time.

Rev. Dr. Lee, Chris, Carrie, Mrs. Lee


A shot of the band, the Reinvasion (because they play a lot of British Invasion covers--get it?) they were pretty damn good, I'd say (if anyone has heard of them, we'd love to have a link to their website (do they have a website? doesn't everyone have a website?))

Please enjoy this brief film of the couple's first dance:



Greeting the crowd after the (lovely--of course!) ceremony

This clip is long, and you can't see much . . . but if you play it, you'll hear Deron's toast to Chris and Carrie; a treat, I promise:



Paul and Angie


Deron and Haley (can you believe it? Deron's in a suit!)


And away they went

too good not to post

this campaign season has me pretty weary, but I do really like this ad:


What about it, reader? Pretty good, no?

boo! (and, yes, a duck)

Perhaps a bit hard to tell from this photo, but see if you can't guess what this young man has chosen for his Halloween costume. Note the short tie, untucked shirt, chalk-dusted sleeves; note the Nalgene bottle and cell phone . . . got it?
Pretty funny, if you ask me.

What else is new . . . ah, we went to a restaurant in Davenport called Duck City.

How else would they present the wine list?

On a more serious note, next week's election seems awfully important. A chance, perhaps, to hold hearings and compel folks to answer for some of the ineptitude of the past six years; a chance, what's more (however slim), to restore the rule of law to our dare I say once great nation. If you too share these small hopes, please help! MoveOn.org needs volunteers to make get-out-the-vote phone calls. Want to help? Click here to sign up.

where I've been

A couple weeks ago, we had a great time in Lawrence. We stayed with Haley (pictured with Deron above), and had fun seeing all sorts of friends, like Jesse (not pictured), Aaron (not pictured), Tom and Rodd (not pictured), Scott James (not pictured), and Nathan (not pictured). Yeah, not so many pictures. . . . You'll have to take my word for it--it was a blast.

Okay, fine, one picture did surface:

Jesse, Haley, Deron, Nathan, Emily

Now, I do have a few pictures from Chicago this past weekend, but they're phone pics, so you may wish I left it at "not pictured."

Why Chicago? Chris (shaking my hand, above) will soon be fortunate enough to wed Carrie, so we got together for a night on the town
("bachelor party"? that seems to misrepresent things, though I can't deny that we happened to catch Phoebe Cates' topless scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High--the movie was playing, for reasons beyond my control, at around 1am at the bar Lemmings)

anyway . . .

We began the evening at the Smoke Daddy (pictured above, with Deron), a fun place with live blues and great barbeque.
Were joined by Trace and Sam, with whom I hadn't had such fun (such trumpery?) in years, and some nice fellows from the neighborhood.


At Lemmings (post Ridgemont High, I think)


The brothers Lee.


And what better way to wake up than by seeing Carrie with a pumpkin not much bigger than a quarter?

Disjointed, blurry, and incomplete--but here's my post for the week.
Cheers

been a while, gentle reader

Sorry for my silence of late--busy life, that of a full-time professor (!).

To catch you up a bit:

Weekend before last, we had a great time visitng Dave and Diana up in Madison (don't know who they are? tough--they rock).

We had a great time--cool to be in a college town: stores with stuff we wanted, restaurants we liked, beer. And the farmers market was great too.
Thanks, Dave and Diana!


A shot of Dave, Diana, and Emily in front of a convention center designed by Frank Llyod Wright

Wondering what the drive is like? We drove along the Mississippi on the way home; here's how it looked (and please enjoy the new Cut Chemist album, faintly playing in the background (see also: Now Playing, on the right)):


And then last weekend, the Iwanskis came to visit.

We went to a (mildly disappointing) Oktoberfest, featuring fire engines, which Braxton seemed to like.

Later on we played some disc gold in Moline. Beautiful course; a bit of a hike, though. But fun, overall.


Back at the apartment, Braxton and Mimi

Yancy and Dave

Tomorrow (probably today by the time you see this, dear reader) we're off to Lawrence; it's KU's homecoming (coincidence, I swear), so it should be a real party there; and Old Man Lee promises to be in town, so it should be a blast. Maybe in three weeks I'll put up some photos.

One last thing: An article I wrote a while back on Herodotus (focused on his portrayal of the Persian queen Atossa, and involving comparisons with portrayals of her and other powerful women in Greek tragedy) was ACCEPTED for publication in the swanky Classical Quarterly. Yes, that link is for real: it's published by Cambridge. Damn. So that's pretty cool.

Cheers, good reader.

Late-ly

Here I am on the 1st day of classes
So far so good; I'm already behind on grading, but the students seem into it, and it's a lot of fun for me to back in the liberal arts college environment; has a real 'academic-community' feel going. The Quad-Cities as compared to Lawrence, you ask? Never mind.

Here's Emily's latest accomplishment, quite a feat of knitting:

Speaking of Mimi, she was offered a special made-to-order job at the Augustana library; they wanted to offer her something where she could use the skills she's developed as an archivist. So that's cool. (She accepted.)

What else? Ah, we finally have a couch! No more sitting on the floor for us:


Also, please enjoy the song now playing: Jesse helped us track down a copy of this album, "Radiodread"--reggae covers of Radiohead's album OK Computer. Hit and miss (what do you expect; mostly makes me remember just how great OK Computer is), but I really like this cover of Let Down. Let me know what you think, reader.

Some Music (more to come)

We saw an excellent show Friday--the Jurassic 5. Quite impressive, to rhyme like that--4 mc's, in unison, and so quick. Great.

However, first we could bring no camera into the show (I took some shots with my phone--I'll get back to you on how those turned out); and then the camera batteries died. The following, then, is a partial description of our weekend, facilitated mainly by my phone and the camera on our new MacBook (more on that later, perhaps).

First off, a video of Braxton on the piano at Fran & Dave's:


Here's a few shots experimenting with the MacBook's built in camera (and effects):






And one last shot of Braxton:


Cheers

We're on Page Three! and the Swing; and My Site

Yesterday, our building had an open house, having invited various "big-wigs" and MainStream Media types. Now, the Rock Island paper is weirdly expensive to read online, but I offer you, reader, this link to my downloaded copy of the story. My favorite quote?

State Rep. Pat Verschoore (D-Milan), also marveled at the transformation the building has made
from just three years ago.
"It's amazing what they're doing with older buildings, rather than tearing them down," he said."It's very nice."

Now that link may or may not have tipped you off to the fact that I finally have a page on the Augustana server. It's linked over on the right, but in case you want to write it down, the address is www.augustana.edu/users/pldominick. Now if only I can persuade the department chair to update their site . . .

Not much else to tell here; lots of orientation workshopping and such--today was like the 5th day; only two left!

We did, however, get some free tickets to a baseball game (actually, recent rains made it a double-header). The Swing of the Quad City (their name, not mine) played the Kane County Cougars (yes, that is where St Charles is--talk about drama! and the games decided 1st place in the league). The Swing swept the night, and the ballpark is just beautiful: right on the Mississippi--you can see across to Rock Island, though our building, alas, is obscured by a casino; life on the big river, I guess.


Mimi in the outfield


View from the cheap seats.


This pitcher, Chris Perez, whoever he is, sure could throw. See next photo.


That "94" there? Pitch speed. . . .


In the outfield.


Here's the view from the bridge (2nd game was a bit of a blow-out (Swing up by 7 in the 1st), so we left early to get this shot, and watch the fireworks (unpictured) from above). It's very nice.