A Tale of Three 'Villes - Cookeville

After our goodbyes to Kira and Joe, John and I headed to Cookeville to see his conducting teacher/mentor from his undergrad days, Dan Allcott. Dan's always been so supportive of John, and me - even though he was never my actual teacher - so we love to visit him and his family.

As we drove along I-40 we saw a sign for Del Monaco Winery just 5 miles from the Cookeville exit, and we decided to pull off.


















They had a nice tasting room, beautiful property, and friendly staff. Dan told us that the winery is THE place to have a wedding, if you live in Cookeville, and if you click here to see their pictures, you'll understand why.

We tasted several of their wines and you can read about them here. A lot of them were too sweet for my taste, but the chardonnay pretty nice. A lot of them would be good to drink while sitting out on their patio.


























Their tasting room overlooks the production part of the building.






































After some tasting and buying a bottle for our Knoxville hosts, we went on to Cookeville to hang out with the Capron-Allcotts.



















Dan and his wife Susan made us a fabulous dinner of grilled pizzas and salad, and then we played with the family's new dog, Sandy.




















Their son, Carter, posed some of his action figures for John to photograph.

































Dan still imparts life lessons to John when we visit. This time we learned two important things, though I'm sure John can tell us more:
1) When pouring beer in a glass, you want it to have some foam because its more fragrant.
2) If the glass is warm, pour slowly. If the glass is properly chilled, you have to pour aggressively to get the right amount of foam.
























The next few photos take a little explaining. The gist of the story is that Dan went to IU for grad school, and while there, his wife really fell in love with the Bloomington children's museum, Wonderlab.









John puts the dress frame-thing on Jacque (short for Jacqueline), their daughter.















After they moved to TN, Susan felt Cookeville should have something similar and so she started her own version of it: the Kiwanis Cookeville Children's Museum. This year they had a fundraiser called the Mad Hatter's Ball, where the Allcott's bought that dress frame-thing (can someone tell me the real name of it?) that John is putting on Jacque in the picture above.

























As part of the fundraiser they also asked local artists to create a fancy hat for the auction. John is modeling the one they took home.

We were so grateful to the Capron-Allcotts for hosting us. It's always nice to visit them and to see the local changes around TTU and Cookeville.

Next up: John's-professor-reunion part 2 in Knoxville.

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!

Forest City Road Races 2011

About a month ago John and I ran in the Forest City Road Races. He ran a PR in the 5K and I opted for the 10K.

For pre-race fuel the night before we made this vegan Pesto Gnocchi Soup from the Post Punk Kitchen. It was a great way to get some carbs that stuck with me for the race, and it made enough for leftovers. A+.

















John and I both ran the 5K at Forest City RR last year, and the set up was pretty similar this time. The race leaves from Victoria Park in downtown London, home of the tamest squirrels I've ever seen. This one sort of looked at me as I walked by, and (because I'm weird) I said, "Hey, little buddy," and he ran right over, expecting me to have food.


























Back to the race. The 5K started at 8:30, but the 10K didn't start until 10:00 - I'm guessing to allow people the chance to run both. It was sort of an inconvenience, but by the time John finished running we only had an hour to stand around, stretch, and for me to warm up.

The camera didn't exactly cooperate, but here's a picture of the 5K start. If you look hard enough you can see John's red hair on the right hand side.


















The runners rounding the first corner. John was out of sight by the time I got this picture.
















After about 20 minutes I knew it was time to head to the finish line on a different side of the park. John wanted to beat 23 minutes and I wanted to get a picture of him.



























He was alone for a lot of the race - faster than the bulk of the runners, but not fast enough to be with the lead pack. It seemed like he was one of the first ones in - 30th over all, pretty good for a race this big. In the picture above he was gesturing to the crowd to cheer for him, and they did, especially after I yelled "GO JOOOOOOHN GOOOOOO!!!!" really loudly.

























His time was just over 22 minutes, so he accomplished his goal. But now, like you'd expect, he really wants to beat 22 minutes. His time earned him 3rd in his age group. That place didn't come with its own award in this race, but I'm still really proud of him. It's a tough race to try to place in, the biggest in town.

It rained on the 5K runners briefly, but the weather looked like it would hold out until the end of the 10k. Not so. It sprinkled while we waited to congregate at the starting line. And with about 6 or 7 minutes until the start, it really began to rain serious rain. My feet were wet before I started running. The temperature felt colder than I expected (I think it was in the lower 40s with wind), so I kept the fleece jacket on that I planned to give to John to hold. I was definitely under dressed and wished I had some gloves. My hands were numb before we even started moving. It wasn't pretty. But what are you gonna do? I don't skip training runs because of the rain, and I sure as hell wouldn't skip a race that I'd payed for and trained for for months just because it's raining. Hail, maybe. Lightening, definitely. But it was just cold and windy and raining, so we ran anyways.

Despite the wind and rain, it was still manageable. I got a nasty side stitch in the first mile, but I slowed the pace a little and it gradually went away. There were a couple of hills, but the really tough one was in the last mile, and by then I just wanted to be done, so I kept moving. My goal was to set a new PR (my old one was about 64 minutes from the Halloween Haunting) and run a strong race. When I passed the 5K mark at 30:30, I knew it would be hard to break 60 minutes (the goal at the back of my mind), but that I could still set a new PR. We wound through campus and then Gibbons Park, one of my all time favorite running spots, and it was nice to run in such a familiar setting.
Somewhere in park I met up with this women who I talked with at the starting line. She and I knew we had similar time goals, and I drafted off of her for a little while before she started a conversation. We agreed to stick together and I appreciated her so much. She suggested we take the 9th KM easy so we could go fast on the last KM, and I agreed. She said it was important to her to stick with someone as much as possible, and I told her she was helping me a lot. And that's true - I was struggling mentally more than anything, my fleece was soaked and heavy, my shoes were filled with water, I was freezing, and my allergies picked up this week so I was also fairly congested. Not ideal conditions. But with a running partner it's easier to ignore all that stuff. I know I would have run a lot slower without her.
As we rounded the corner back to Victoria Park, we agreed to start really increasing the pace at a certain spot, and I lost her before the finish line. I looked for her afterward to say thank you, but I couldn't find her, and I was too exhausted to wander around much. John walked with me through the food tent and we sat down in another so that I could re-group and get out of the rain.





The only passable picture he took after the race. John LOVES goofy pictures of me in situations like this. And I hate them.



















My time was 61:13 on my watch, and the chip time was about 15 seconds later (I think), so I was pleased. I still feel like I can do better and break 60 - or go significantly under 60 - but that goal will have to wait. Better weather would help, but crappy weather is always a possibility, so I don't like using it as an excuse. This race definitely reminded me of how it can be easier to run in the winter than in the spring. I plan to run during the comps, only 2-3 days a week, and nothing longer than 4 miles. It's not a time to focus on running, obviously, but a 30 minute exercise session is supposed to be really good for you brain, and I know that it helps me clear my head and reduce stress. So I'll run, but without a race date set afterward. There will be more 5Ks and 10Ks, and I know that sub-60 time is within my reach.


As I post this, we have 2.5 days left in the comps! They are due on Monday and I have a lot to catch up on with the blog, so I'll probably do a comps-round-up post. John and I also have some exciting plans for the rest of the summer that I'd like to write about here, too. Hope you're enjoying the summer weather!