Happy Easter!

This picture shows the current state of our yard. We are enjoying the rather warm weather.

Cousin visit

Last weekend, my cousins Daniel and Nathan came to visit on Sunday afternoon. They enjoyed playing rock band and helping me hang my bird feeder. They were much better at rock band than me, but they are generally much more musically-gifted than me, so I was not that surprised. Here you can see Daniel (on drums) and Nathan (on guitar) celebrating the end of a successfully-played song (top) and concentrating hard on the next song (below). Nathan also tried out singing along with the microphone (only to Brian-approved songs--Brian was screening songs for lyrics) and Daniel took a turn on the guitar.

Ferret Birthday

Brian and I celebrated the ferrets' birthdays this month by buying them a new toy. While originally designed for cats, the ferrets also enjoy this tent. It can be collapsed and put into a small bag, but once you take it out of it's package, it pops open and makes a nice play space. Here are a couple pictures of the ferrets enjoying their new toy.

Experimenting with peppers

The past couple weeks I have been working on making the perfect chili using fresh peppers of various sorts. I got the idea when I was grocery shopping and I passed all the peppers. I don't really have a good idea how each kind tastes, so I wanted to figure out the heat and flavor. Since chili is one of the main foods I know that uses hot peppers, I have been making chili each week. The first batch I made included a Hungarian pepper and 2 jalapeño. It was not very spicy at all, but the flavor was good (I used 1 lb of ground beef and a can of black beans undrained, along with diced carrots, celery, onions, and cumin, cayenne pepper, and chili pepper). This week, I tried 2 jalapeño and 1 habanero pepper. It was super spicy--so spicy that I needed to add extra cheese to cut the heat a little. I think the habanero was a bit too much for us, so I will have to try a new type of pepper next time. If any of you have experimented with this, what types of peppers do you prefer and why?

Flying over rivers

When we were coming back from DC, I sat by the window. I watched outside for a while, and I thought it was really interesting how the sunlight glared off the rivers we were passing. It was like the rivers were on fire, and you could trace the paths of rivers using the glare that ordinarily would not have been visible from the air.



There isn't any good sound for this clip (just background fans), so there is no need to turn on your computer's sound.

Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra

This weekend, Brian and I got tickets to go to the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra spring concert. (Brian got the tickets from his boss at work.) It was really a great program. The concert featured a classical guitarist named Denis Azabagic, who was really really amazing. He played the notes so fast--faster than I had seen before on a guitar, and he alternated between traditional strumming and this very fast but precise plucking. It was not a usual activity for us, but we both enjoyed it as a change from the norm.

March 2008

Things in Tallahassee have been going well. Han and I have continued to both be involved in our own work items. Han is steadily working on her dissertation work and I have finished a few major projects at work recently. The moot court team I coached did well in DC and made it to the semi-finals. We enjoyed travelling around to see the different monuments, which was a good time (see Hanneke's pictures posted below).

Otherwise, I've finished a draft of the section of the ABA publication I am helping write and have come to the end of most of my moot court projects. I'm still involved in a softball team at work and will be for a few months. My next professional project will be an article on an undetermined topic and preparing to apply for teaching positions in the Fall.

As for hobbies, I've decided to get rid of my salt water tank in favor of getting a smaller one. We have also started to attend to our garden again since it has come up and things are flowering. We, as always, have a few home improvements items to get to also.

I hope you are all doing well up north; we hear you're getting enough snow for all of us. We hope to see you all sooner than later.