My, how time flies...

So we've been a bit lax about updating the blog. Emily's been busier than a weasel in a henhouse teaching her summer class at UIUC, but she finished that this week and now assumes the life of a gentlewoman of leisure. Except that she'll also be teaching a "Legal English" class to incoming foreign students, and I'm afraid that starts next week.

Yes, I've pimped her out for two summer jobs. I need the money.

I've also been busy. I went back to KS to house-sit while my whippersnapper of a nephew and his grandparents were galivanting around Europe. I spent a couple of weeks with my mom's dog and 6 cats. They're not terrific conversationalists, but they left me alone to work on some math problems. I also got to visit with my sister, brother-in-law, and niece, who live just a few short blocks from my folks.

But I'm back, and I've spent the last few weeks revising the trashy mystery novel I drafted when we lived in Palau. I finished revisions today, and I suppose that means that I need to find a publisher. Wish me luck. For those of you who actually read this blog, I'll give you a small bonus: the butler did it.

I'm meeting up with high school friend John and his two boys for some camping this weekend. I can't wait to build a fire, roast some marshmallows, and tell some ghost stories. And we'll be camping at a lake with a beach, so I'm sure I'll manage to squeeze in a good sunburn, too.

That's all I've got at the moment. Emily would add something, but I won't spare her the time. She's got work to do.

Alan

Where've we been lately?

Emily has just completed her 8th day of teaching summer school, and I've managed to complete my 8th day of being a gentleman of leisure. Another summer, right on track.

Before Summer school really got underway, Emily and I spent a couple of weeks traveling. You may have already noticed the entry from Atlanta--that was what I call my "relaxing" vacation. But before we went to Atlanta, we took a real, Griswold-Style vacation to South Dakota. It was an action-packed few days for us, culminating in that once-in-a-lifetime, "Make-a-Wish" type of day where everything magically clicks into place. I'm not really prepared to tell you about my "Make-a-Wish" day yet, but I'll take this chance to fill you in on the other things we did.

We flew into Rapid City and rented a car, and for the rest of the day we drove from tourist site to tourist site, soaking it all in. We started at Bear Country, a drive-through park where you'll

see hundreds of bears, as well as elk, reindeer, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and mountain lions. The best part of the experience was watching a mountain lion play with her new cubs, who couldn't have been any bigger than my hand. Much more entertaining, might I say, than watching my two grown cats lay around the house holding the carpeting down. We also saw quite a few bear cubs.


Then we headed to the Cosmos mystery area. It's basically a cabin that has been jacked up so that it rests on one corner. Here's a picture:

The weird thing is that when you're inside, the forces of gravity fight with the visual experience of being in a room that's slanted. Here, I get angular inside the cabin:

Even if you know the "secret" of the mystery area, seeing things that should be straight up and down but aren't can upset your equilibrium; I felt a bit queasy, and other people in our group were on the verge of vomiting. And all that for the low, low price of 7 bucks.

We finished our day with a trip to Reptile Gardens, a fabulous reptile park where we got to see dozens of the world's deadliest snakes, like the pair of green mambas pictured here:

We also watched trainers put on a reptile show with crocs and caimans, and gators, and finished the day by hanging out with some giant tortoises from the Galapagos.

I'm planning a trip to Africa for next summer, so it was fun to point out all of the snakes I'll be seeing when I'm there: "Hey look, Emily, it's the black mamba, one of the world's deadliest snakes! I'll see him in Africa!" "Hey look, Emily, it's the puff adder, one of the world's deadliest snakes! I'll see him in Africa!" "Hey look, Emily, it's the boomslang, one of the world's deadliest snakes! I'll see him in Africa!" "Hey look, Alan, it's the double indemnity rider for your life insurance policy. Sign here, initial here, and I'll get it mailed in before you go to Africa!"

Hotlanta

So Emily has a legal writing conference, and I'm honing my "gentleman of leisure" act, and together those two pursuits lead us to Atlanta in summertime. Emily's been conferring up a storm, and I've been catching up on some leisure pursuits. More on that later (and more on our South Dakota adventure), but I wanted to share this evening's dinner with you.

When in the South, for pete's sake, get some Southern food. Emily and I hopped a cab to Gladys and Ron's Chicken and Waffles. By the way, the Gladys is Gladys Knight, and I don't know who Ron is; maybe he's a Pip. Their establishment isn't in the best neighborhood (the abandoned building next to it had potential, but it was still abandoned, as were several others within eyeshot), but the menu looked good.

I know what you're thinking: who on earth puts chicken and waffles together? The answer? Who cares!? The food at this joint was fantastic. I loaded up on catfish fingers (juicy, with delightful breading), cornbread muffins (the tenderest, flakiest, most delicious corn muffins I've ever eaten) and homemade macaroni and cheese that takes a close second to the M&C my very own mother makes. I know, everyone says their mom's *insert mother's signature dish here* is great, but my mom's mac and cheese is truly terrific. And Gladys wasn't far off the mark.

Emily had an apple-cinnamon waffle, and a buckwheat waffle. I helped her down them, and they were worth the eatin'. We finished up with sweet potato cheesecake. I pride myself on knowing a decent cheesecake. This was awesome. Terrific graham cracker crust, drizzled with caramel and pecan, with whipped cream on the side. And not the crap out of a can--they actually took cream and, well, whipped it. Holy cow.

The best part was the bill. The two of us ate to bloatedness for twenty six bucks, total. It was worth double that, because I won't have to eat for another week. If you're in Atlanta, or any of the other cities with a franchise, it's definitely worth trying.

Happy Anniversary Cecil and Joan!

Today is my parents' 25th wedding anniversary! YAY! Congrats, and here's wishing you many more!

Going Batty

They're back. The bats, I mean.

We've always had a few in this house; they've generally made their home in the garage rafters safely tucked away from view. Every now and then we'd see one, bouncing up against the window into the garage in pursuit of insects. (Really, don't ask--I know it's not normal to have a window looking out into one's parking structure, but that decision was made long before we moved in.)

It's not a huge deal to me that we have bats in the garage, though it does get annoying to find bat poop and pee all over everything that lives out there. The bad part is that somehow they seem to occasionally find their way into the house, and once they're in, they can be a bear to ferret out.

It's not so bad if you catch them when they're flying; Emily's broom handling makes Barry Bonds look like a sissy. But they only fly late, late at night, and hole up during the day. If you're lucky, you can find a concentration of droppings and locate their hidey-hole that way. Or you can make a bunch of noise and if you're lucky they'll hiss at you in return. But mostly, you just have to resign yourself to the fact that while you're snoozing, they're running around your house, dancing techno or hunting insects or whatever they do. But mostly pooping and peeing.

So they're back, as witnessed by the spoor left in our under-construction family room. And I feel like Jack Lemmon did in Grumpy Old Men, that these Walter Matthau-esque bats are the bane of my existence, that no matter what I do, no matter how many I catch (and I do catch them--in fact, I've got one in a jar in my freezer as I type), they'll always return to laugh at me.

At least I haven't gone so far as to do what some friends of ours have done. After finding bats in their house, and after learning that they can carry rabies, they went through the entire sequence of rabies shots. Yikes.

Headed for South Dakota

Tomorrow, Emily and I leave for the great state of South Dakota. We're headed to the Black Hills, where we'll participate in the Deadwood-Mickelson Trail Marathon. It's a marathon run on a rails-to-trails gravel path, that finishes in downtown Deadwood. Here's a photo from last year's marathon:

As you can guess, it's more scenic in SD than it is here in central Illinois. I'm really looking forward to running through the trees, alongside swiftly flowing water, through cool mountain air.

One of the advantages of the rails-to-trails route is that when the path was laid out some hundred-odd years ago, avoiding hills was the primary motivation. It's just too hard to get a train to climb steep or rolling hills. But hills are hills, and you can't wish them away, so the compromise that was reached for the 26 miles I'll be running on looks like this:

It's going to be a rough first thirteen miles, but hopefully the last half will make up for it.

Emily and I will also be doing some sightseeing while we're there, including visits to Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument, as well as a full day of looking at other attractions. We'll update you once we return.

Construction Project

We recently decided to remodel the rooms in the back part of the house. The previous owner used these two rooms for his State Farm Insurance offices, and when we moved in, they were decorated with indoor/outdoor carpeting and brown paneling. We painted the paneling as a temporary measure, and are now finally getting around to tackling the rooms head-on.

Currently (or at least as of three weeks ago) the two small rooms are separated by a big closet that hides an old brick chimney. (The sticky-outy corner along the left edge of the photo is the closet.)

We decided to take out that closet and chimney, and make one large room with built-in bookshelves at one end and a woodburning stove at the other (right in between the two windows). And while we're at it, we're reroofing this section of the house.

Don't get me wrong -- when I say "we," I mean the guys we've hired to do all the work.

So things are moving along fairly well. All the walls, flooring, and ceiling are off. The electrician has wired in new lights. And part of the bookshelf is framed.

We've ordered the stove, picked out paint colors (goldstone and lucy, if that means anything to you!), and looked at wood floor samples. And, of course, you can't have a lovely new room with college furniture (which we're still using how-ever-many years later). So we picked out a new couch and love seat.

The construction mess is fairly well contained, though dust manages to filter under doors and seep through plastic sheeting. And everything from those back two rooms is now sitting in our living and dining room, including a couch, two desks, two filing cabinets, and about 700 books. And the cat food, water, and litterbox are now in the kitchen until the basement is accessible again. Yick.

It'll be nice when this project is over...

Emily's New Wheels

Well, it was time...

Emily's little red Honda had 160,000 miles on the ticker, and though we'd still been repair-free, it was becoming obvious that another winter or two would be hard for it to bear. And we were looking for a car with four doors, just in case a "little Grant" happened to come along. So here she is, Emily's new, 2006 Toyota Corolla, affectionately dubbed Yoko:

We got it with two (count 'em, two!) miles on the odometer. And, though we still seem to be unable to spend more than $20k on a car (and believe me, there aren't many cars you can get into for less than that these days), we managed to convince ourselves that power door locks and cruise control were worth the price.

We turned down power windows, though. Didn't want to feel pampered.

We're back!

After a long haitus following the hacking of our beloved alnemgrant.com, we've decided to resurrect our blog. No particular reason. We don't have anything especially brilliant to share. We're not going away for another amazing year in paradise. We just like the idea of a regular venue for communications.

So here we go.