Kitchen knobs before and after

We finally decided on the style of knobs we wanted for our kitchen cabinets, and Paul carefully drilled through the cabinets and drawers to get these suckers on. Amazing what knobs do for the look and the function!

Kitchen before knobs...


Kitchen after knobs...


Yay!

Navy Ball in French Lick

This weekend Paul and I were invited to the Navy Ball for Crane Naval Base, held at the French Lick Springs Hotel, about an hour and a half drive south from us. What the heck were we doing at a Naval Ball, you ask? Well, as part of Paul's job, he's supposed to hobnob with area businesses, and Crane Naval Base employs a lot of subcontractors and local small businesses. For me, it was a great excuse to get dressed up for a ball and have a much needed mini-vacation! Since I doubt many of our friends will ever have the chance to head out to French Lick, I'll give a bit of history about it.



French Lick Springs is an old hotel that used to be a therapeutic getaway for wealthy people to go bathe in and drink the spring water that flows out of the ground there. There's actually two hotels - one in West Baden, called the Carlsbad of America, a National Historic Landmark known for it's impressive round atrium. We actually stopped at the real Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary) in the Czech Republic on our honeymoon. Pretty much the only similarity I noticed was that both places have springs. Beyond that, Karlovy Vary is a fancy, built-up city with lots of shopping and charming restaurants. It's also home to Becherovka, a delicious Czech herbal liqueur. French Lick and West Baden, on the other hand, outside of the hotels, have Denny's and a CVS and windy back roads. There is the French Lick Winery that makes sweet regional wines, though I can't say we were inspired to bring any home. The hotels had become quite dilapidated over the years, and several years ago Bill & Gayle Cook, owners of the local Cook Medical company, donated over $500 million to renovate the hotels. So they're pretty darn nice now!

We tried to get into the West Baden Hotel to check out the dome, but it was closed for a private event until Sunday afternoon.


But, the French Lick Springs Hotel has its own nice features. Here's the casino:


And the renovated lobby


And the Grand Colonnade Restaurant, which is probably the fanciest buffet setting I've ever seen


Here's the back courtyard.




And, of course, the "World Famous Pluto Spring" itself. I was glad I had been to Karlovy Vary so that I knew that the rotten egg smell was supposed to be there from the sulfurous spring water.


And in case you were wondering for what reason someone would partake of rotten egg-smelling water, here's Paul posing with the promotional message, "America's Greatest Laxative"


As for the Ball itself... I loved the floral arrangements - they had little LED lights in them so they glowed as it got dark


It started out with the important people being announced and going to the head table. These included high-up officers of the Navy, and people like the Lieutenant Governor. Here's the flag procession which preceded the National Anthem


After a bunch of speeches by a few different high-ups about this celebration of the Navy's birthday and a recounting of the many humanitarian efforts put on by the Navy (eg, medical care in Haiti, Pakistan, etc following natural disasters, among other things), they had a special ceremony for Prisoners of War. It was a really moving event. They had a table set up with one chair, and said how it was to represent that that the POWs are alone. Then they lit a candle to symbolize the strength of our POWs to stand up to their oppressors, and a red rose to symbolize the family waiting for them, and so forth. It really makes you stop and think about the sacrifices our armed services are making right now for our country. At the end of the speeches, they had the official cake cutting. I believe they had the newest Navy member present a sword to the most senior member, and together they cut the cake. (You can see the table-for-one on the right side of the picture)


Here we are at the table


After dinner, they had a live band and dancing. Before we turned in for the night, we hit up the casino with the $5 credits they gave us at the front desk when we checked in. We each got a free t-shirt and headed in for the slots. I wound up with a cool $3.75 in my pocket that I didn't have when I went in there, so that was pretty nice. I won't disclose Paul's outcome.


As we left the next morning, I noticed a high roller was visiting the casino. Check out that detail work!


Finally, here's a few scenes from our drive back to Bloomington.
This is where your grain get stored before it gets packed and put on grocery store shelves or fed to animals.


There are a lot of falling-down old barns around Indiana

Many people in Southern Indiana have farm animals


Here's a farm in Loogootee (which is where we got our former puppy, Rewley)


And we made a quick stop in Amish Country


They're great bakers - we got a huge thing of cinnamon buns - yum!


Just watch out for buggies!

Island Hopping in Southern New England, Part II

Following up on the post below, our next excursion was to Block Island. No one in my family had ever been to Block Island before, despite it being just an hour's drive and an hour's ferry ride away. We took the famous Block Island Ferry, whose commercials have charmed television watchers around New England with their caribbian beats and lyrics "sail away on the Block Island Ferry". Well, we took the ferry and it has no sails, but we were willing to overlook that.

Here I am getting ready for the boat to start out.


Before taking off, we checked out the fishing boats that were already done working for the day even though it was only 10am. This is where your Atlantic cod and whatnot comes from!


Here are my parents hanging out on the ferry (before the seasickness set in!)


When we got to the island, this boat caught my eye - check out the name on it! haha (in case you can't read it, it says "it's all I could afford")


After trading our sea legs for some land legs and having some lunch, we walked to the southeast lighthouse. It had been built near the edge of the island, which was eroding away (whoops!), so in the mid 90s they had to move it further inland. You can read all about it here, if you're into that kind of thing.



Near the lighthouse, you can climb down the cliffs to the beach. Some people may not realize that a lot of ocean beaches aren't all nice and sandy. There's big rocks all over the place, and it takes lots of work to move them out of the way for the nice smooth sandy beaches. Here, people have come and made some of those prayer rock piles that seem to be the thing to do when you have a bunch of rocks lying around.


Here's a neat looking cliff


And Paul, once again, tempting the Atlantic with his legs


Before we left the island, we walked around the touristy shops and stopped for some gelatto - yum!

The next morning, we went back to Bloomington and thankfully, all our flights were right on time. I wish we would have had more time to spend with my family, especially my grandma because she's had a really tough year.

Binsey seems to have had another good stay at her puppy summer camp (aka the kennel) while we were away. She was pooped when she got home, taking up her usual spot on top of the air conditioner vent

Island Hopping in Southern New England - Part I

I'll put this right out there - I'm not really a beach person. I don't tan; I just burn and the sun gives me headaches. But, for Paul the beach is a real novelty having always lived in landlocked places. So while we were close to the ocean, we went to a couple of interesting local places to admire the beach habitat.

First was Plum Island. It's located about 45 minutes north of Boston, and is a great example of a managed maritime ecosystem. It's made up of sand dunes (much like the dunes in northern Indiana) that serve as a storm buffer for the mainland - a big reason why much of it is conservation land. There are miles and miles of beach, plus hiking trails that go through the dunes. We were surprised it wasn't too crowded since it was a Saturday in the summer and they had free admission that weekend (normally $5 per car).

Here's Paul checking out the Atlantic. Yes, it's still cold in August!


Here we are walking the beach



What's interesting about Plum Island from a conservational (and maybe financial) standpoint is that it's partially man-made and partially natural, with some conservation mistakes put in (decades ago, they planted some pine trees there thinking it'd hold the dunes in place, only to realize it's not really a good idea to put non-native species in if you are trying to conserve the natural state). The marshland is a man-made section to serve as spawning grounds for birds and the like. They have a boardwalk going through it


And the dunes themselves. Those little bushes are the plum bushes from which the island gets its name. Paul tasted one, and said it was like a plum flavored cherry with a big pit. Here I am reading the guidebook from the visitor's center that leads you through the different ecological zones.



After the hike, we met up with our friends, Andrea & Mike for dinner at a Polish restaurant, Cafe Polonia, in South Boston. Since both our husbands are Polish, Andrea and I have come to appreciate the Polish cuisine! We're lucky that the only Polish restaurant in Boston (maybe in New England) does have good food.


After dinner, we went to JP Licks on Newbury Street (right near my old apartment) for ice cream - so good! Though, as much as there is good food in Boston, the traffic does not tempt me to move back!

The long road to Rhode Island

We just got back from a trip to Providence to visit my family and attend my friend Anne's wedding. The trip there was awful. We flew from Indianapolis, were supposed to connect in DC and then fly to Providence, arriving around 6:30. Well, there were storms in DC, so we boarded the plane at 2, deboarded at 3, had to wait by the gate for a couple more hours, took off at 5, then circled around DC until we almost ran out of fuel and hand to land in Pittsburgh to refuel. We finally got to DC at 10pm, and learned that our PVD flight was cancelled, so we'd been automatically rebooked for 10PM, yes PM, the next day! What stinks the most is that United didn't give us ANY food in all that time, plus they wouldn't help pay for our unexpected hotel room.

Here we are circling DC. The clouds were pretty neat until it got dark out.


Luckily my mom was home and helped us book a last minute hotel room when I called her in a panic after the airline was of no help. We got a good deal on Hotwire.com, but that was the best part of it. First, the shuttle that was supposed to run every 30 minutes took 50 minutes to show up. To add insult to injury, when we finally got to the hotel, a Weston in Reston Virginia, the problems continued. We asked the front desk for local menus of any place that was open at that hour (now 11pm). After first suggesting that we could run to their restaurant (they were about to close), where dinner for 2 would cost about $100, the woman at the desk handed us a few take-out menus, and when we went to call them, they had all closed at 10PM! After another frantic call to Mom (there was no phone book in the room), we got the number to a local Domino's pizza and finally got dinner at midnight. (A big thanks goes to my mom for helping us out even though we were whiny, cranky, hungry and very unpleasant to talk to!) As we went to turn in for the night, I went to use the toilet and discovered it was CLOGGED! So at 12:30AM, we had to get dressed again, pack up and move to another room. At least the second room didn't have a dirty wine glass by the door, and the toilet flushed. However, we're not too keen to stay at a Weston again.

We managed to get on a standby flight to Providence the next day at noon after the customer service person told us it was useless to get on the standby list. Needless to say, I was none to pleased with United, but was relieved to be done with airports for a bit.

When we arrived in Providence, my grandmother was eager to share with us some chocolates that her brother, Stig, in Sweden sent her in honor of Princess Victoria's recent wedding. She'd been saving them for our visit, and they were delicious!


We then went to Iggy's for chowder and clamcakes (something you must do once a year and then you can't stand the thought of them until the next summer).

The next day we went to Anne & Bill's wedding at the Squantum Club. Apparently she had some huge problems with the seamstress at the bridal shop she went to (The Wishing Well) and after repeated fittings, the dress was still not ready the day before the wedding! She had to go to a family friend who worked overnight to fix it, so it was a big relief to see her looking gorgeous in her perfectly-fitting gown! Here are the newlyweds.


Here we are taking cocktail hour outside to see the bay


As we walked back to the cocktail hour, we saw a crowd gathered outside. It was time to shoot the wedding cannon. Yes, CANNON! That thing may look small, but is is super loud when you're in its path!


Here's the action shot of the cannon


I'll update with another post about our island excursions to Plum Island and Block Island!

Research Funding

I don't usualy write much about my research interests on here since I try to keep this a blog about what kinds of things we get up to in our free time, but today Paul sent me this article on the CNN website that hit home. It's about how teachers are the first place parents go for advice on ADHD, and some teachers go so far as to "diagnose" kids with ADHD and suggest they be given medication. Clearly this is not all teachers, but it's an interesting issue from a sociological percpective (how does this change the medical profession, or should teachers be more or less involved in behavior issues?) and I am, after all, studying sociology.

So why does this aricle bother me? Because I applied for a 3-year fellowship, which would more than double my stipend and relieve me from being a teaching assistant, from the National Science Foundation (yes, they include sociology) last fall to study this very issue. I was rejected. There are very few awards I am eligible for because I am early in my program, am not studying an "underrepresented group" or the Middle East, nor am I an ethnic minority. So this was pretty much the only thing I could apply for. Clearly people care about this issue, since just this CNN article was published at 8AM this morning, and now 3 hours later there are over 200 comments on it. I would think that these people would be happy to see their tax dollars go to studying this issue, but they're not the ones who get to decide.

Wouldn't it be great if academia's and the real world's concerns were aligned? I try not to get too upset by this stuff, because I know I will only face more and more of it in my career.

Monroe County Fair

Last weekend we went to the Monroe County Fair with one of my classmates and his wife. They're from India, and they'd never been to a county fair before so we tried our best to show them what it's all about.

First was the dog show. It wasn't nearly as exciting as the professional one on TV, and the hostess had to remind the crowd not to laugh at the kids showing their dogs (I admit, I did chuckle at a couple points because the dogs were so cute and reminded me of our often disobedient dog). But it was super cute! Here is one of the contenders.




Then we got tenderloins, which are a Hoosier thing (pounded pork tenderloin that's battered, deep fried and served on a bun). Next Paul and I got an elephant ear. I have to admit, I like the doughboys I've had in New England better - this one was thinner and cripier than the chewy doughboys I'm used to, and they serve it with cinnamon and sugar instead of powdered sugar.


Then there were the pork rinds that Paul couldn't resist. Here he is trying to select a flavor.


Then there was the main attraction: THE DEMOLITION DERBY. This, we knew, would be a great way to show an American tradition unlike anything you'd see in India. First they send out two teens on horses with a big American flag. They ride around the derby track while the national anthem plays. Next, they introduce the cars that are competing for best looking car. This comes with a $100 prize and bragging rights. Here's an example of one of them (Note the girl with the tiara - she's the County Fair Queen this year):



We thought there'd just be one round of cars coming out and smashing up, but the program went on for hours with multiple rounds of cars coming in. The "winners" of each round (the ones that can still run) move on to the finals. See what happened to that car with the corncob design?


Once we had enough Demolition Derby, we went to check out the animals being shown by the 4-H club.

Here's one I would not want to meet in the wild


And look at the feet on this one!


And finally, the bunnies. These two wanted to get together!


Before we left, we checked out the tractor exhibit. Don't we look like naturals?