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