AllanThinks

Dude! The Cats are pwning the Razorbacks!

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Even the 21C Museum Hotel penguins were impressed by the University of Kentucky basketball team's win over Arkansas on Saturday. A win that should propel UK into first place in the nation on Monday.

Alison and I spent the weekend at 21C. It was her birthday gift to me. It was an experience I will never forget. It was wonderful to be pampered in luxury. The food at the hotel restaurant, Proof, was amazing.

I really want to do it again some day.

Weather Update

As many of you know, Kentucky, along with a large part of the midwest, was hit by a very severe winter storm this week. Snow, followed by 24 hours of freezing rain, followed by more snow.

From what I have read, and heard, it is as bad as, or worse than the storm in 2003.

I have been stressed out about it all week, wondering if the power was going to go out here like it did then. That was a very traumatic few days for me, and I have had flashbacks all this week. Many of my friends have as well.

Luckily, Alison and I have not lost power to our house. Many around us have though, and many might not have their power restored for 2 weeks or more. With the trees and power lines coated with a half inch of ice, we could still find ourselves in the dark.

The precipitation ended yesterday morning, and in the afternoon, we went for a walk around the neighborhood. Conditions were bad. Trees and utility lines were down everywhere, and many streets were blocked.

Tuesday night, and yesterday, I took a lot of photos. It was one way I tried to keep my fears at bay.

I also tried to find some beauty in the destruction.

You can view a brief slideshow of my photos after the jump.

They're Here!

We finally received our wedding photos, and we are very pleased with the results.

Alison is posting a few at a time in a set on her Flickr photostream.

In Rememberance

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Taken the other day at the Cathdrale Notre Dame de Paris. That's Alison's hand.

Ciné

As always, click on the photo to go to its Flickr page, where you can view a larger version.

Alison In Reflected Sunlight

 
 
 

 
 
 

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I took this photo this evening when we were downtown at the Thursday Night Live concert at Cheapside Park. The setting sun reflected off the glass of the Fifth Third building, then off the glass of the adjacent Lexington Financial Center, and finally came to rest upon Alison.

Our friend Cathy, from Port Townsend, WA was with us, as was our friend Jason. After the concert ended, we headed to Atomic Café, where we dined on the patio. The food was fantastic, the weather perfect, and the company beyond compare.

Life is good.

Angel

 
 
 

 

 

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I took this photo at the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston, SC, last week. Alison and I made an impromptu trip down there, with an overnight stop in Asheville, where we met up with some friends. 

Our honeymoon plans kind of got derailed before the wedding, but we decided we needed to get out of town for a few days after the wedding weekend.

Despite the heat and humidity, we had a good time. We wandered all over the historic district, saw some other sights, hung out with Mike for a day, and ate lots of great food.

I'm slowing going through the hundreds of photos I took. I've posted a few in a Flickr set.

Oh, yeah.

I guess y'all have heard that Alison and I got married the first of August? No? Well we did.

It was an amazing, wonderful, and fun-filled evening. The entire weekend was, really. It was great to have our families, and so many of our friends in attendance. I think they all had a blast, too.

Alison has links to some photos of the festivities here.

Oh, well.

I can't remember the last time it rained all day on the 4th of July. But it looks like it is going to rain all day here. It might clear out by evening, but the radar and the forecast don't offer much hope.

I feel sure many of the planned festivities will go on, but I won't be downtown documenting the day with my camera.

It's just as well, I guess. It gives me a chance to shop for a birthday gift for Alison (yes, her birthday is Sunday, so don't forget to wish her a happy one), and for some other stuff we need before Ali and the kids get home tomorrow afternoon.

I hope your holiday is a dry, safe, and fun one.

Remembered

On the Saturday following Memorial Day, a ceremony was taking place at the Lexington Cemetery to remember those who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, and who are buried there.

Alison and I happened upon it by accident. I don't know what organization was holding this memorial service, but it was a surprising sight to see these flags and flowers planted by each gravestone.

These soldiers are all buried in one section of the cemetery, near to, but not a part of the section that serves as our National Cemetery.

I guess whoever was doing this did not want these men, who were someone's children, brothers, or fathers, to be forgotten.

Our First CSA Share

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This is the haul for our first week's garden and meat shares from Elmwood Stock Farm. Elmwood is one of two (that we know of) CSA Farms in our area. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.

We've been talking about participating in this program for a while, wanting to do what we can to be more responsible consumers. And we found that we had been buying more of our food from local farms at the Farmer's Market.

So this year we finally signed up.

Included in our basket this week were:

Asparagus
Green Garlic
Spinach
A mixture of three lettuces
A quart of fresh strawberries
A pound of ground beef
A free-range roasting chicken

All of these are organically raised. The newsletter included in the box said they also had radishes, but they must have had limited quantities, as we didn't get any.  But that's okay.

We are very pleased with what we did receive. It was more than I expected this early in the season. 

We ate the lettuce last night, and today at lunch. We had strawberries for dessert. Tonight, Ali roasted the hen, and some of the asparagus. It was all great. We're going to eat very well this summer.

I dedicate my 1000th blog post to the woman I love.

FreeKY

This is a photo of a troupe of fire dancers called Foxfire Hypnotica, who performed during the FreeKY Festival, a free festival of music, art and exhibitions of eclectic culture, held on April 26 in downtown Lexington. It was the culmination of Alternative Music Week, sponsored by WRFL, the independent, commercial free, student run radio station at the University of Kentucky.

The entire week of concerts, art shows, and other events also served as 20th anniversary celebration, and a fund raiser for the station, which plans to increase their power, and reach a wider audience.

Alison and I attended several of the events during the week, including a concert feathering Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, at The Dame the Saturday before FreeKY, a bluegrass music show at Al's Bar, and a concert and art show held at our friend Lori's shop Isle of You.

The FreeKY Festival began at 11 a.m. and continued until almost midnight, featuring a number of bands, an art exhibit, vendor booths, and community group exhibitions. The musical headliners were Jolie Holland, and The Apples In Stereo. We hope that they decide to throw another party like this next year.

Ali and I got there around 3, and stayed until it ended. We took our cameras, and we both took tons of photos. You can see her set here, and mine, here.

As always, the photo is clickable.

 

Neogothic

The photograph is, as always, clickable.

This is the PPG Tower in downtown Pittsburgh. It is the centerpiece of PPG Place, a complex of six buildings that is the headquarters of PPG Industries, one of the world's largest glass manufacturers.

The complex was designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee, and was completed in 1984. The tower is 40 stories, and rises 635 feet above ground level. I took this photo from atop Mt. Washington, across the Monogehela River from downtown Pittsburgh. Alison and I try to make it up there every time we visit the city. Luckily, Sunday was a beautiful, if cold, day.

And for the photogeeks:

Exposure:      0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture:     f/8
Focal Length:     170 mm
ISO Speed:     100
Exposure Bias:     0/6 EV

Café Society

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The first time I visited Alison in France in the spring of 2005, I took hundreds of photos. Over 400 in Paris alone. At the time, I only processed a small number of them for upload to Flickr.

I had every intention of completing the task over the next several months, but I ended up back in France for 5 weeks that fall, and I never returned to the photos from the first trip.

Since I haven't been  taking many photos lately, I decided to try and complete the task. As it turns out there were only a handful of photos that I felt good enough about to upload. They are now in my Flickr sets here and here.

This shot was taken as we sat outside of Café Psycho, across from the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, enjoying a beer and watching the world go by.

Chomp!

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One of the things we did while the kids were here was visit the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh to see their recently renovated dinosaur exhibit, Dinosaurs In Their Time.

That was the culmination of a whirlwind trip to Pennsylvania. Visits to Erie, Titusville, and Pittsburgh over the course of four days. That last day, besides visiting the museum, we ate dinner with Ali's dad and his wife, then hit the road to drive back to Lexington. We got home in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Then we had to ready the house for a visit from Ali's brother and his family on Sunday. They returned to Erie on New Years Day.

The holidays were busy. Pretty much a blur. But we had a blast.

And I think it did me good to stay so busy. It made what could have been a depressing couple of weeks a delight.

I wish you all the best in 2008.

"Lord I was born a ramblin' man."

Alison and I are getting ready to vacate the gîte, and begin our trek back to Lexington.

It is customary to leave a rental such as this as spotless as you found it when you moved in. This one was immaculate. Alison wrote the other day about how nervous it made her. But I think we will be leaving it in very good shape.

The floors are vacuumed and mopped, and we are going to go have lunch somewhere. We will finish packing when we return.

We will pick up the kids when they get out of school this afternoon, and drive to Bordeaux, where we will spend the night in a hotel. We have to get up early in the morning to return the rental car and board our flight to Paris.

We will then board another very long flight back to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, followed by an hour drive back to Lexington. We should be home early Friday evening.

As usual, it has been an adventure. Full of fun, meeting old and new friends, and the consumption of wonderful food.

And the traveling isn't over. In a few short days we heading off again to spend time with Ali's family for the holidays.

See you all soon.

Got Jetlag?

Alison and I made it to France, and have settled into the house we are renting for the week.

We realized that we had gone for more than 24 hours without sleep. It was impossible to sleep on the flight over. The plane was packed, and we were surrounded by some of the most annoying fellow passengers you could ever imagine.

Ugh.

I wish I could afford for us to fly first class on international flights.

In any case, as I said, we are settled in. The kids are spending the weekend with us. Ali cooked a wonderful meal last night, and afterward, we sat down to watch Shrek the Third. Well, Ali and the kids watched it. I fell asleep on the sofa and missed the entire thing. I went into our bedroom to check the internet (yeah, we have tenuous internet access, thanks to a neighbor with an open router), and crashed on the bed.

I awoke sometime during the night in a dark room, fully clothed, and covered with a quilt. I went right back to sleep, and woke again at about 6 a.m. local time. I had slept for 10 hours.

Ali had slept in the kids room, and had awoken a little bit before me.

I guess that puts us back on a relatively normal schedule.

It is very cold here, but the skies are clear, and it promises to be a beautiful day. I don't know what we will end up doing, but I don't think we will spend it inside.

Time to put some kilometers on this unlimited mileage car we rented.

This is going to be an amazing weekend.

Our friends, Cathy and Mike from Washington State, who took us in back in August in a time of great need, arrived in Lexington tonight. They will be staying with us until the middle of next week.

Beginning tomorrow morning, a large group of friends will be arriving in Lexington. All of them are people we know from Radio Paradise. Some we have met in person. Others, we have never met before. But, even those, we consider friends. Radio Paradise is that kind of place.

This promises to be one of the largest meetups of RPeeps in the history of the radio station. As far as I can tell, it will be the third largest. It all came together at the suggestion of Alison and our friend Agnes.

It was so good to welcome our friends into our home. Based on this evening, I know that the next few days are going to be amazing.

Finery

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Yesterday, Ali and I, after a late start, got out of the house to enjoy a hot but beautiful day.

I wanted to visit the Lexington Cemetery to see what I might find in their gardens to photograph. There wasn't much left this late in the season, but I found a couple of interesting flowers to shoot.  We took more shots of head stones and statuary than anything.

We left there just minutes before the gates were locked, and on our way back through downtown we stopped for the Festival Latino de Lexington. It was taking place at the Courthouse Plaza on Main Street.

It was quite an event, with booths set up to represent all of the various  countries represented in Lexington's latino population. There was good music, dance, and food. Both of us took lots of photos.

You can see my photos of the event here, and Ali's photos here.

We both still have more photos from the cemetery, and general shots of the downtown area, to process and upload. We'll try to get those done today, but it is another beautiful and sunny day, so I doubt we will spend much time indoors today.

Cockpit

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Ali and I bought a new car last Friday. It's a 2007 Honda Civic LX.

We've needed a second car since she moved here, and we finally bought one.

We still have the 2002 Jetta, but plan to trade it in soon for another new car. The Jetta is out of warranty, and is becoming a maintenance nightmare. It spent the week we were in Washington in the shop, and cost me $1200 plus for repairs.

We are still trying to decide what to replace it with. We've talked for some time about buying a pickup truck or small to mid-size SUV for the utility they would provide for hauling things like furniture and garden supplies. The Honda Element seems like a pretty good fit.

But last night, while we were out to dinner with the local Drinking Liberally group, our friend Elle suggested to me that the Civic was now our 'sensible' car, and that the second new car should be something fun. Like a convertible.

She went on to tell me how much fun her Miata convertible is.

And, those of you who read Mike's blog, know how much he loves his new Miata convertible.

What to do? What to do?

Look What I Did (To Myself) On My Summer Vacation

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Okay. Where do I start?

Let's get the unpleasantness out of the way first.

Monday night, while attempting to prepare dinner  for our hosts in Port Townsend, Washington, I managed to slice my left thumb and forefinger open with a 12 inch chef's knife.

I did something really stupid. I tried to cut open the plastic encasing the pork tenderloin we were going to grill with a huge, and very sharp knife rather than do the sensible thing, and open it with a pair of scissors.

I swear that alcohol was not involved.

Needless to say, it was very shocking. Much blood was shed. And I knew that elastic bandages were not going to be enough to take care of the carnage.

Our wonderful hosts and friends, Cathy and Mike, were down at the beach walking their two dogs when this happened. Luckily, they returned home about 5 minutes after it happened.

Cathy asked me if I wanted to go to the local emergency room. I, of course, said yes. So after wrapping my injured appendages in bandaids and paper towels as best as we could, we set off.

On they way to the local hospital, we passed an emergency walk-in clinic. Cathy asked me if I wanted to go there instead of the hospital ER. I said yes, knowing that I would probably be seen quicker there than the ER.

So we turned around and went to the Urgent Treatment Center.

Fortunately, the clinic was not too busy.  There was only one other patient being treated there. A woman who had had a similar accident with a kitchen knife as it turns out.

I filled out the registration forms and was taken back to an examining room, where the nurse removed our crude bandages and took a look at the wounds.

Within 10 minutes I was seen by the doctor who eventually sutured the wounds. He was a very nice guy with a great bedside manner. While we waited for the operatory to be prepared, we exchanged recipes.

As you can see, he did a great job of suturing my wounds. Which is kind of remarkable as he only had three fingers and a thumb on each of his hands. Yes, he was missing the pinkie fingers on both hands. I assume their absence was congenital.

As a dentist, I have had a lot of experience suturing surgical and accidental wounds, so when I say this guy was good, I know what I am talking about.

So three days later, I am on the mend. The wounds are healing well. I will have my doctor remove the sutures on Monday or Tuesday after Ali and I return to Kentucky.

I guess you are wondering what the heck we are doing in Port Townsend, Washington.

It's been a very stressful past few months for Alison and me. Ali had to go to France to bring her kids to the States for a month. Then we had to take the children to Pennsylvania to see their grandfather, aunts and uncles, and their cousins. All while dealing with my sister Jo Ann's illness.

Then, after we got the kids back to France, Jo Ann's health got even worse, and she eventually died.

Ali and I discovered her the morning that she died.

Later that day, after arrangements had been made, and we had returned home, I told Ali that as soon as we could, that we were going somewhere. Anywhere but Lexington. I just knew we needed to get away.

There were several possibilities. We had plenty of standing invitations from friends to visit them.

But our dear friend Cathy came to our rescue. She knew what we were going though, and insisted we come visit them.

I did not hesitate. I made the reservations as soon as we received the invitation, and two days later we were flying to the Seattle.

We have been here in Port Townsend since last Friday.

I haven't been this  relaxed in ages. It has been a very therapeutic and rejuvenating experience. Even with the trauma of my hand injury.

I can't thank Cathy and Mike enough for what they have done for Alison and me.

Into The Mystic

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We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic
And when that fog horn blows I will be coming home
And when that fog horn blows I want to hear it
I don't have to fear it
I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
Then magnificently we will float into the mystic
And when that fog horn blows you know I will be coming home
And when thst fog horn whistle blows I got to hear it
I don't have to fear it
I want to rock your gypsy soul
Just like way back in the days of old
And together we will float into the mystic
Come on girl...

Van Morrison

For Alison

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Love Is A Burning Thing
And It Makes A Fiery Ring
Bound By Wild Desire
I Fell Into A Ring Of Fire

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

The Taste Of Love Is Sweet
When Hearts Like Ours Meet
I Fell For You Like A Child
Oh, But The Fire Went Wild

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

I Fell Into A Burning Ring Of Fire
I Went Down, Down, Down
And The Flames Went Higher

And It Burns, Burns, Burns
The Ring Of Fire
The Ring Of Fire

And It Burns, Burns, Burns

The Ring Of Fire

The Ring Of Fire

-Johnny Cash

Hidden Treasure

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While Ali is in France, I have been trying to finish up some chores around the house. One of them is to move an old Globe-Wernicke office desk from C's room upstairs down to the new rec room in the basement.

It is just taking up space up there, and we feel sure she would rather fix the room up to her liking. And, putting the desk in the basement, both Ali and I will have a workspace. She to do her writing, editing, translating, and proofreading, and me to pay household bills, taxes, and things like that.

I bought the old desk over 20 years ago. I paid $25 for it. With the exception of the top surface, the desk is painted black. There are quite a few chips in the paint, and we will probably give it a new paint job in the future.

For a few recent years, the desktop was home to my amateur radio gear. The drawers are filled with all sorts of stuff. Yesterday, I began the task of cleaning the desk out. I spent most of the afternoon, going through a single drawer, the file drawer. It contained old tax returns, professional documents, owner's manuals and warranty information, and bits and pieces of assorted junk. I discarded perhaps 90% of what was in there, and I imagine I will do the same with the remaining drawers today.

As I dug into the back of the drawer to remove the last few remaining items, I discovered this old glass doorknob. I remember finding it in the same drawer when I dismantled the desk to get it into the house. I just left it in there. I have no idea why.

But it was cool to discover it once again. And of course, I just had to take a photo of it. It won't be placed back into that drawer this time. It has earned a place on the mantle or the bookshelf here in our living room.

Smile

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Exposure:  0.01 sec (1/100)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV
Light Source:  Cloudy weather

Fun With Soap

Now is the time on Sprockets vhen ve dance.

Alison and I ate lunch at P.F. Chang's today. You can hear her review of it here. The food was good, but for some reason all I could think about was this 'show'.

myPod

Click image for a much better view. Really. Click it. You won't be disappointed.

One more week.

I ♥ The Internets

Click image for a much better view. Really. Click it. You won't be disappointed.

It makes it feel like she is not so far away from home.