Yaaaay! It's about dadgum time!

Winter has come! Winter has come! Happy dance!


Unlike Autumn and Linden, who were prone to Dances of Joy at the first snow, Starbuck and Cricket are much more blasé. They did a perfunctory lap around the cabin, then came back inside. Cricket requested a belly rub:


Here is a photo of her posing rather nicely:


And a little goofily, watching us eat breakfast Sunday morning, weighing her odds of getting a handout:


Couchal photos!


Trading places!


Here is a photo of Roo's sofffty schnozz:


Chinese Easter was over six months ago, but we still have one chocolate bunny left. He is milk chocolate, which I don't really care for, so I am going to make him into brownies. I figure mixing him 1:1 with unsweetened chocolate will do the trick:


The bunny is gonna get it!


I've had this brownie recipe in my file for several years now and have not tried it yet. I got it from a book that describes how a successful chef moves to Paris after the death of his long-term companion. As he copes with his grief, he wanders around Paris trying to learn about the cooking scene. He brings batches of these brownies to visits, and they apparently do the trick!

After I measured out the chocolate pieces, the B's called and informed me that they had a friend visiting with a puppy, so of course I had to go see the puppy. They had just made brownies themselves, so packed me home with some. So I put my chocolate pieces, with bunny, into a baggie for another day. Now DL's been hovering around the baggie: "When are you going to make those door-opening brownies?" "door-opening"! What a lovely descriptor. We should all aspire to have a few door-opening gifts in our back pockets.

Welcome? Sorta winter?

Last night, a "winter weather advisory" appeared in the forecast, so DL an I swapped to my winter tires by headlamp. It half-rained, half-snowed all night, coating everything with wet snow, water, and slush. In the morning, it was still raining, so I decided to cancel my 9 a.m. meeting and wait to walk the ladies until it was light enough to walk without a headlamp, which is pretty useless when it's raining. The bright beam of light merely reflects off the falling water droplets, rather than illuminating the path ahead.

Several inches of wet slush coated the roads when we took off, so I did my run in Bean Boots. Not bad. I didn't feel as nimble as in my light running shoes, but my feet stayed dry, and my traction was okay.

On my way into town, I stopped at Gold Hill to check the air pressure on my winter tires, since they'd sat unused all summer. The place where you park near the air compressor was a giant, slushy puddle several inches deep. Again, thank goodness for the LL Beans!

Now, the snow is gone, and it continues to rain. The forecast calls for this all week. How annoying. :(

Here are some photos from the past week or so.

The sweeties and their toys, all on their bed:


Overhead view:


Look at these crazy grapes I found at the store:


Each one is like a finger!


Inside, they look normal:


It turns out, they are Moon Drops, a proprietary breed that was created by selective breeding. Apparently, this "grapery" does this frequently, creating all kinds of crazy grapes, which they then patent. To the answer "to bee, or not to bee" they obviously chose "not to bee", opting instead for hand pollination.

Here is a Portrait of each Lady, looking uncharacteristically dignified.

Starbuck-A-Roo:


Cricket-Pants:


Next up, we have DL cuddling a lady under each arm. Lucky guy!


Moose-lasagne!


Rhubarb nectarine cobbler!

Happy Moon Day!

Happy Moon Day!



The mooncakes we get in Fairbanks are very beautifully packaged. I feel guilty about the packaging waste. Maybe I'll just need to start my own Chinese bakery. :)

I have the cuddliest cuddlies and the snuggliest snugglies

4th year review

As a tenure-track faculty member, I get reviewed in my 4th year, basically an interim check-in to make sure I am on track for eventual tenure (for which I go for review in year 7). This consists of documenting everything you have done in your career, typing it up into a *very* particular format, and organizing it into a binder (which comes from the Dean's office prefilled with tabs and categories). You also submit an electronic copy. This file gets reviewed by a committee that spans a range of disciplines, so you have to explain your work in "lay" language. For example, I have to make my engineering accomplishments comprehensible to a professor of English literature.

Well, here it is! And totally not last-minute, since I turned it in at 10 a.m., and it's due at 5 p.m.!


There is a section for "awards and honors", and I had not won any, and I felt like a loser leaving it empty. However, later when I was cruising through the internet looking for copies of my own papers, I came across this. So I printed out that page and stuck it in there. It totally counts, right?

Then, upon further consideration, I walked downstairs and took a photo of this to include:


It totally also counts, right?

In other reportage, here is a photo of the ladies having decided to share their bed for the first time:


They had also piled all of their toys in the middle there. I guess they don't want me tripping on them. They are so considerate, huh?

First snow!

Apparently, we got our first snow this morning at around 2 a.m.

I was sound asleep and missed it.

Rope toy

"Good morning, Rope Toy. Did you have a nice night?"

"I'm a frayed knot."