A Tale of Three 'Villes - Nashville

Last week was the second half of our Summer Roadtripstravaganza Oh-11. It's less epic than last year's, but we've still gotten the chance to visit a lot of people we miss in Indiana and Tennessee. After a short visit to Memphis where we saw John's family, we made our way east.
Here are some random pictures I took along the way.

First we went to Nashville to visit my bff Kira and to see John's friend Tanner get married (that needs its own post, I think).

Kira's cat, Thelonious Monk, hanging out in the hallway.










Unfortunately we didn't get to spend a ton of time with Kira because she was the chaplain at this awesome church camp. But it was a nice, short visit.

Here's her other kitty, Duke Ellington. I love this picture because Duke looks like a cat-shaped pillow with eyes.






Also, Kira, I hope I have the cats' names right!






























He seems to love having his picture taken, and put on a brooding face.


While we waited for Kira to come back from camp for a visit, her husband Joe took us to a cool restaurant called Bread and Company, not unlike Panera but local and nicer.


















Joe and I studied the menu carefully.















Lots o' granola.












Joe and John both chose omelettes, something Bread and Co. is known for.





John's omelette - broccoli, tomatoes, and cheese (or some other veggie combo) with sourdough bread.














Joe regaled us with stories from his job as an anesthesia resident at the Vanderbilt Med Center.



















While I wish Kira had been in town longer, it was really great to talk to Joe. Normally when I visit Kira and I talk 90 miles an hour and no one can get a word in. I always wish our visits to Nashville could be longer. John can't get enough of this face:

Frigidaire Pro

Two weeks ago our apartment welcomed two new additions. First, the patio furniture:




















Once the weather finally improved and John killed some of our neighborhood wasps, we started looking around for cheap patio furniture. After considering a set at JYSK (similar to this one but on sale for $40) we remembered that winter can last for up to 6 months, so there's no point in spending a lot on patio furniture. I almost bought two chairs and a small table from Wal-Mart that are exactly like the ones we bought, but then John thought to look on Kijiji (like Craigslist), where he found the set we have now for a whopping $15. Score!





That milk bottle has flowers in it. Duh.













We sat outside the next night and ate dinner on the new-to-us table. I plan on spending a lot of time in those chairs this summer.

Then, after a long process of talking to our landlord and calling repair guys and appliance guys, we got a new fridge! Our old one was so old that they don't make parts for it anymore, and it apparently really guzzled the electricity. It would trip the local breaker it was on and shut off until we realized and reset it. It's not ideal for times when we're traveling.


























But then the new one arrived! First the guys came and removed the cabinets above the fridge, since the new one is too tall for them. I put everything out on the counter tops before they hauled it away. Watching them struggle to get it down the stairs reinforced to me that I don't want to get a couch because I don't want to have to move one in and out of this place.

























AND BEHOLD!!!!!! OUR NEW FRIEND, FRIGIDAIRE PRO!
Aka, Blue Velvet.
























Ooooooooooooooh!!!!



















Ahhhhhhhhh!!!




















I think we're going to get along just fine.

London Ultimate Club

Hope you enjoyed my last, very rambling post about the comps. I'd like to write a more thoughtful post about the exam process, but for now I've enjoyed the chance to think about ANYTHING ELSE, so it will have to wait.

Meanwhile, this summer John decided to join the local ultimate frisbee club. He'll probably write a separate post about it later, but for now, I wanted to post some pictures I took at the game two weeks ago (again, trying to learn how to take action shots with the fancy new camera).





















Most of these are in no particular order, and in some cases, the moment I captured was less triumphant than it looks. It was easy to take pictures that made the team look like they were doing something impressive.
For example, I snapped the next three pictures as John caught a frisbee close to where I was standing.





John spies the frisbee.


















The frisbee approaches.














He makes the catch!















Unfortunately, the reason I was able to take such close pictures is that John caught it out of bounds. But like I said, it photographed well.

He was able to receive some good passes that were in bounds, though I'm not sure if any of the actual points were John's.











Note the cows behind the goal post. It's just like rural Indiana!



































I've gone along to a couple of games, once just to be supportive and the second time to take photos, and I've really enjoyed meeting all his teammates. John registered as a free agent and was placed on the New Wednesday Team that normally wears powder blue.





The guy in blue with the leg brace is Chris, another PhD student on John's team. Their facial expressions make it look more like they're running from a UFO.












At some point the team name was "That's What She Said," but this year they've also considered calling themselves "NWT," "Layout Melroy," and "Stinson," or "Stinson's Mom," the last couple referring to two different members of the team whose names they like to shout.










Paul (?) makes a lot of photogenic catches.













It's been fun to see John play a sport since he's lost a ton of weight in the last year. It's like he gets another shot at high school gym class, except now he's leaner, stronger, and generally less awkward.
















He gets a huge kick out of every game, and a good work out, since they run almost constantly for at least an hour.




















Every week at least one teammate asks if I want to play (they're often short on girls and it's co-ed), and every week I say no thank you. I've played ultimate a handful of times, only one of which I enjoyed. I can run (at least I think I can), and I like to be active, but I've only ever really played me-against-me sports like swimming and running. I have no concept of the strategies they use and it just doesn't appeal to me. The good news is, though, ultimate frisbee is actually fun to watch - especially with the camera. The game pictured here went by quickly, but that might have been because everyone wanted to get to the bar to watch Boston vs. Vancouver in what I think was game 4 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Either way, it's been nice to meet new people and for John to put all his super fast running to good use.

The Comps: A Narrative Through Food

I decided the week before our exams started that I wouldn't upload any photos from my camera. "It's the comps!" I thought, "No fun of any kind!"

That turned out only to be partly true. For the first two weeks, I worked about 7-8 hours a day, every day, and I wrote a LOT in that time. But by the end of the second week, I was physically spent and really stressed. My body figured out a new way to manifest that anxiety in my skin:






Nope, not a sunburn.











That picture doesn't really convey how red my skin was (and that's good, it's less gross). Basically, it looked like I had a sunburn on my chest (just above my tank top) and neck, but I actually had some kind of rash. You can also sort of see the irritated skin around the corners of my mouth. A doctor at UWO gave me some stuff to put on it, and after I kind of hit a bottom with my stress after week 2, it went away. That seemed like a big warning sign to me that my 8-hour a day method was not working out.

So I took some time away from the exams each day, I was more liberal with break time, and I still finished with a couple of days to spare for final tweaking and editing. I guess I won't really know how it went until I know if I've passed, but I know for sure that I couldn't have finished them at all if I'd continued that way for all 4 weeks.

Today I uploaded the photos I took on my point-and-shoot camera during the comps, and of course, they are mostly food pics. So here's a very random account of some stuff that happened during the comps and just afterward.

Our last pre-comps meal: cajun catfish, hot crash potatoes, and whisky glazed carrots (based on this recipe, but with WAY less butter).















At one point during the exam our friend Dana had a party, so I made some vegan chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, and iced them with very non-vegan peanut butter cream cheese frosting that was left over from the Easter cake we made.

















It was nice focus on something other than the exams and get out my cake deco kit. I was particularly proud of how the piping turned out on these! Also, I've had some hits and some misses with this cupcake book, but the basic chocolate cupcake recipe seemed pretty solid. I'll probably make these again.























Here they are perched on top one of my many piles of books for the comps. I ended up checking out probably 30 or so books and I initially stacked them in little piles in the living room.





Note the laundry, clean but not folded. That was the way of things during the comps.













Unrelated to the comps, John and I decided to get a small table to put some potted herbs on, and didn't find one we liked. Instead, we bought this new-to-us bookcase and figured it could do the job.


















The herbs looked nice on it, and I realized that I could put my books for the comps on it. Win win! But that window doesn't give the herbs enough light, so they went to live in the kitchen/balcony. Still, the new bookcase is probably our favorite piece of furniture.

John and I planned all our meals for the comps in advance, including this little number: grilled cheese on bread from the farmer's market, and roasted tomato and garlic soup. Nothing like comfort food when you have to write 60 pages in 4 weeks.


















Tuesday we had a brunch with a few friends to celebrate the end of the exams. It involved mojitos in some glasses I bought at Goodwill (score!).

















I've also been experimenting with variations in iced tea, including this one with either mint or basil, plus frozen raspberries. I usually add 3/4 tsp of simple syrup. It's easily spiked with whatever alcohol you prefer!
























So there you have it...a super random post about what we've been eating and doing for the past few weeks. I may write more about the comps themselves another time, but it's still hard to turn my brain off after thinking so intensely for 4 weeks. John and I have a lot of fun stuff coming up in the rest of June and later on in the summer that I will be sure to write about here. John and also joined an ultimate frisbee league, and I have some pictures to show off that I took with our fancy new camera (thanks, John's research grant!). Hope you're enjoying the summer so far!