Happy Birthday to the USA

In honor of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Paul and I did what is required to be a good member of US society by going to our local 4th of July celebration at the Monroe County Fairgrounds. The AmVets post puts on an annual fireworks show here in Bloomington, and this was the first year it was at the fairgrounds rather than at the university stadium parking lot. The fireworks were to begin at 10pm, and living about a 10 minute drive away from the fairgrounds, we left at 8:45 in case there was traffic. Well, after an hour of being reminded of why we prefer living in the country to living in Chicago or another big city, we managed to get to the fairgrounds and park. Walking up to where the action was, we were treated to the aroma of fresh fried dough, kettle corn and BBQ.

Despite the long line of large and tattooed men, as well as pregnant women, already ahead of him, Paul, being Polish, could not resist stopping at the Polish Sausage cart (he's on the right in the dark).


Here he is with his prize - juicy polish sausage topped with "everything", which appeared to include sauerkraut and onions among other things. The glow of the yellow neon light from the cart adds to the ambiance of the dish.


Of course, Paul isn't the only one who enjoyed the bounty of the Polish Sausage cart. I was treated to something called a "potato blossom". I don't seem to recall such a delicacy being served in Poland, so this must be a New World creation. More convincing of its US origin is the fact that it's a potato (or probably several potatoes) cut into a spiral, deep fried and smothered with ketchup (or plain if you're too dainty for the red stuff). While the neon yellow glow is not the most flattering light on me, I did want to share the image of this fried treat, in all it's glory, with those who may not have seen it before .



As we enjoyed our rural fairground fare, an 80s cover band played such hits as Van Halen's "Jump" and other Hair Band classics. Finally, at around 10:30 the fireworks began. It was actually a much bigger pyrotechnic show that we expected. There were several times when the audience started clapping because they thought it was the grand finale, but then it would start up again. Pretty impressive, though the paper this morning said they spent $25,000 on the show and only raised $17.000 in donations. They've been short like that two years in a row. Whoops!

What was cool is that we were pretty close to the show, but not so close that we thought we might get hot ashes on us.


And finally, when the show had ended and the line for the Sugar Shack food cart (pictured in the background below) had died down, we ordered our dessert - FUNNEL CAKE! Does it get any better than funnel cake? We think not.


Let the French keep their baguettes. Real Americans take their bread fried and loaded with powdered sugar!

In other news, Indiana ranks 17th in the country for its 2010 level of obesity.

We're not in Kansas, but we still have tornado warnings

The past two nights we've had tornado sightings near Bloomington. Now I love a good storm, especially when I'm at home with some tea, but it's not so much fun when I'm out somewhere else.

On Monday night, I was working at the survey call center (that dreaded mandatory assignment for my PhD program) when the tornado alarm went off in the building, an old 10+ story limestone dormatory. There was an announcement in the building and we all had to go into the elevator area in the center of the building until the warning was over. Someone had a fancy phone and got the weather forcast from it, and reported that the tornado was spotted west of Bloomington and the storm was headed toward the campus, first going right through our neighborhood. So I borrowed someone else's phone (of course mine didn't get reception) and called Paul, who was taking a nap at home. Thankfully there was no damage to our neighborhood, but Paul and Binsey waited it out in the downstairs bathroom anyway. Here's a shot Paul got of the double rainbow that happened right after the storm. I could only see a single rainbow from the call center, so I'm jealous!


The second tornado warning was last night.We'd happened to order pizza just before the siren went off, so we had just enough time to go pick it up and then go back and wait out the storm again. We could barely hear the siren, even standing outside. It sounded almost like someone's air conditioner was malfunctioning. If I hadn't heard the announcement on TV, I don't know if we would have known anything was going on. While we didn't get a tornado, we got a really loud and rumbly storm with torrential rain. So much that we got a fairly fast flowing river through our back yard and into our neighbor's yard!


At first I thought that was a bad thing, having all that water go through our yard and maybe leave sediment, but then I realized our next door neighbor (upstream) goes nuts with his lawncare, so all the fancy stuff he's been putting all over his lawn is probably now in ours! So that's not so bad after all!

The Big Harvest

Our saskatoon berry bushes have borne fruit, and here's the big harvest we got from one of them the other day



They're like mild, sweet blueberries. Very tasty! It'll be a couple years before they produce enough for more than a small snack, so don't get too excited. I also found out they are sometimes called June Berries. Makes sense, since they're ready by June!

Feelin' Hot Hot Hot!

It's still May, but temperatures here have reached the low 90s. This does not make me nor the dog happy. While I appreciate that we finished our 14-day streak of rain, going straight to hot humid weather is not what I had in mind to wrap up the month of May. To illustrate what happens when it's unbearably hot outside, here's an example of what Binsey gets up to:

After coming back inside to the air conditioning, Binsey decided she wanted her blanket. A corner of it was sticking out of the back of her crate, so rather than walk all the way around, she tried to pull it out the back. However, as lazy as she gets in the hot weather, this is the result.



Making some progress:


...and way to tired to deal with that, plus the floor is sooo nice and cold...


Maybe I can bring it around the side and pull it the other way without having to stand up...


...wait, is that it?


YESSS!


It's mine, all MINE!!


Note also that I am on my summer vacation and I have a lot of time on my hands during the day while Paul's at work!

Time for bed

Here's what Binsey does when she wants to go to bed. I should note that she sleeps in her crate with this blanket, however she won't settle down in there until you give her a treat and rub her ears. She'll tote the blanket around wherever you are until she gets tucked in.

From Binsey

From Binsey

It looks like someone lives here!

While I was busy working on my final paper, Paul was busy planning and planting our new garden areas. He dug up the grass around the mailbox so we could put a bunch of plants there. We moved the plants from our front walk area to the mailbox patch so we could re-do that section with lavender and phlox. The tiny plants up by the walk aren't much to look at right now, but they should start to fill in that area over the summer. It's amazing how much work it takes to garden such a small area! By the mailbox, we've got mums, salvia, maltese cross flowers, multicolor columbine, and a weigela bush. They all should be nice and filled out for next summer. I am so happy with how it turned out! Paul did an awesome job planning it out and getting it all in the ground!

Here's what the front yard looks like now.


It's really starting to look like someone lives here!

Good things

It's one of those days. I've got a big paper due tomorrow and a bunch of small but annoying problems have come up (one of which is that the study where I'm working looks like it was hit by a tornado with my journal articles all over the floor). So here's some good stuff that has been going on.

1. Binsey was sent out by herself to get the newspaper for the fourth day in a row. She successfully brought it back and dropped it on the doorstep. She also did not get mud from the gardening all over the carpet today.

2. I'm sipping a tasty amaretto flavored iced coffee (non-alcoholic - I have a paper to write!)

3. Our water & sewer bills arrived today and they were lower than usual.

4. The air conditioner is all fixed after 4 weeks of repair action and the service was covered by our builder.

5. Despite waking up to find I'd "ruined" my homemade yogurt by adding too much starter, I can still turn it into cheese! It's currently draining in a cheesecloth. I also discovered I can take the liquid whey and make ricotta cheese - so that's TWO kinds of homemade cheese!

6. I saw a beautiful FULL double rainbow yesterday!

7. My wonderful husband has been working really hard to make our front yard look gorgeous with new flowers including three hanging baskets with petunias, and planting, lavendar, creeping phlox, saskatoon berry bushes and some kind of berry-bearing tree whose name I forget.

8. The dog escaped through the gate yesterday morning while I was upstairs getting dressed (with all the gardening the gate was accidently left open), and all she did was run around to the front door and bark to get back in! No chases, no nothing!

9. We finally hung up our most expensive wall art - our diplomas!

10. I had a nice chat with my awesome sister-in-law Anne today.

11. I'm done with my teaching assistant job for this semester.

12. Binsey is making cute puppy sleeping noises

13. It is a beautiful day - bright sunshine and not too hot.

14. All I have to do is finish this paper in the next 24 hours and I'm done for the semester! Just 5-10 more pages!