Indiana Idylls

This building is the library at St. Francis University in Fort Wayne. When we got to campus, we were following some signage for something like "Bonner Hall/Library". I figured this was an admissions building, but walked in to discover a circulation desk. When I asked the boy behind the counter (a disinterested philosophy major, judging from his study materials) where the rare books were, he said, "The dining room." When asked where the dining room was, he gestured backwards with his head. The architecural details were incredible! The dining room had a gorgeous pink marble fireplace and those windowed turrets actually had curved panes of glass. I should have taken pictures inside. Ft. Wayne was much nicer than we expected it to be -- many of the buildings in and around downtown were simply beautiful.

I was down and out most of last week with the aforementioned cold. I am making my comeback in fits and starts, but I'm feeling pretty well today. Delight: Saturday we biked down to Christy Woods, a 17 acre property located on the southwest corner of the Ball State University campus, for a spring wildflower walk. We saw Trout Lilies, Spring Beauties, Showy Trillium, May Apples, Poison Ivy, and a bunch of others that I'll never remember or recognize. Yesterday we had the opportunity to show off our new-found botanical knowledge when we visited a friend's fabulous home and property up near Albany, IN. (Indiana does keep us feeling at home in that respect -- there are many cities here that we're familiar with because of their NY counterparts: Albany, Dunkirk, and Syracuse, just to name a few!) Delight: We headed up to Ft. Wayne via Route 1, a scenic country road through towns with bad names and lots of farmland. Along the way, there was a highway sign announcing "Histo...

What a week we've had! Tapped as RCIA sponsors back in the fall, we attended a beautiful Easter Vigil Mass and are happy to report that all 7 of our catechumens/candidates are now full-fledged Catholics. We even went back for Easter Sunday morning Mass, since Paul had the opportunity to play piano and our "sponsee" and his family had also planned to attend. We learned Saturday night that another woman we know -- both as a recent retiree from Paul's department and co-chair of the RCIA group -- and her husband were planning Easter alone, so they graciously accepted a last-minute invitation to join us for dinner, and Paul and I managed to quickly whip the house into shape AND throw together a rather presentable meal, considering we hadn't given much thought to side dishes when we planned on just the two of us. The ham was delicious, although it took MUCH longer to heat up than our recipe led us to believe. Also unexpectedly, the ham ended up trapped between the oven...

We had a busy and enjoyable weekend. Friday night, we attended the Annual All-You-Can-Eat Fish and Tenderloin Fry at church. (Yes, tenderloins on a Lenten Friday, in deference to the mixed-faith couples at church and to encourage any students to attend. Everything was pretty tasty, but we miss the northern-style battered fry; we're apparently far enough south that everything is breaded and it's just not the same. Afterwards, we checked out the Dollar Theatre for the first time, finally getting to see "Narnia" on the big screen. We enjoyed the movie and found it to be rather faithful to the book, but we were reminded why we don't often go to the theatre. About halfway through the movie, there began a hubbub in the back (where we were seated), with theatre employees and this man coming in and out and speaking to each other in not-so-hushed voices. At the movie's climax, it became necessary for this group to turn on one of the lights and patrol the theatre. The b...

I had to take some pictures yesterday for a Web site I'm working on, and discovered the turkey pictures that have been languishing on the digital camera since I brined and baked my first-ever turkey in January. It was the tastiest turkey I've ever had, and one of the handsomest, too. Find Alton Brown's recipe here . The show transcript can answer any questions. [The Good Eats Fan Page is a great source for all info Alton Brown, including transcripts of his shows: MUCH more informative and coloful than any mere FoodTV recipe could be.] Now, we just need to get ourselves back to CNY when my Aunt and Uncle break out the turkey fryer, to see if peanut oil can rival the brine. (Can you brine and fry, or is that a turkey bomb waiting to happen?) In other news, there is a duck hanging out in the neighbor's yard, across the street to the south. There's a creek that runs about a block north of our house, where we occasionally see our fine feathered friends, but I do...

A salon haircut is one of the few feminine privileges I truly enjoy. I love getting my hair washed and cut and it's fun that the hairdresser takes the time I never will to style it. There's something about those magical elixirs that when wielded by a pro elicit results this amateur can only dream of actualizing. It looked really nice -- just a few inches shorter, but a light, breezy style. The downer was that I couldn't stand the fog of product fragrance that enveloped my head, noticeable with every motion. I had to wash it out, didn't blow-dry it, and now it just looks... normal. For dinner, I made cream of leek and potato soup, using tofu instead of cream. I found a loaf of Roasted Garlic bread on the day old rack at the grocery store -- delicious as crostini. I hope the vegetarian meal begins to make up for our splurge the night before: Paul got some good news at work and we celebrated my devouring 7/8 of a wheel of baked brie. My mother called last night and encoura...

We only wish it hadn't begun at the exact moment we were getting ready for bed. No tornadoes, just some extraordinary thudner and lightning. One of the neighbors must have lost a spooked dog, because we heard someone calling out for something/someone. I would NOT have wanted to be wandering around in that rain -- or maybe hail. Whatever it was, it sounded like big, hard drops of wet. The precipitation was actually hitting our bedroom window, so it had to have been raining more or less horizontally. We've got a wind advisory until 7pm today, winds gusting up to 45mph. There seem to be a lot of wind advisories out here. That, and Fog Alerts, with much greater frequency than either of us is used to. If it's not snow, it's got to be something, I imagine. I found this link about Delaware County's tornado history . You'll have to scroll down just a screen or two to get to the Delaware County listing. (All the weather stats I looked at seemed to only go through 1995....