Indiana Idylls

Wishing everyone peace, contentment, and all good things in 2007!

To quickly recap: We enjoyed a late-October weekend in St. Louis, accidentally arriving during the 8th inning of the Cardinals' World Series Winning Game. At the Ballpark Hilton. One block from the stadium. It was a night -- and very early morning -- to remember. We visited the zoo, Union Station, the Arch, the Botanical Gardens (to see the Chihuly exhibit), and I don't remember where else. Great city, good times. The furnace installation was completed on November 4th, and we've been toasty warm ever since. On November 15th, I hosted (with the immense help of three friends) 20 at the Ladies' Gourmet dinner. "Cranberries" were the theme ingredient. Everything was delicious. I was exhausted. The afternoon before leaving for St. Louis, I taped three half-hour shows for the Health Department, which I then had to scramble to assemble and deliver by November 17th. Of course, nothing ever goes smoothly over at the studio, so it took three times as long as planned ...

Saturday evening we had some friends over a pumpkin-carving party. Unfortunately, my digital camera battery wasn't charged for the big event, so I'm sorry to only be able to present our own two pumpkins to you. This was the first year I splurged on the little pumpkin-carving kit, and although the tools appeared blunt and flimsy, they held up well and carved beautifully -- in spite of my pumpkin's 2"-thick skin! Those narrow blades make a cinch of more complicated details, and I doubt we'll turn back to paring knives anytime soon. Paul's pumpkin was an unusual triangular shape that reminded him of a fish. I think his has a terrifically aquatic feel to it. I kept with the baby theme and tried to carve a little punkin in pumpkin utero, as it were.

Our first ultrasound was this morning -- a miracle of life and a wonder of technology. I've posted our take-home pictures online . What a cutie! We were quite pleasantly surprised by the image quality. It's strange to think February is still a long way off.... The doc was happy with all results, though he mentioned something about a "prominent" kidney and will schedule another ultrasound in six weeks. We're not worried (because we don't understand what that means!), but we hope it all sorts itself out in the meantime to keep the doc from worrying. I also found out that when they say I'll be having fetal non-stress tests, they mean I'll be having non-stress tests TWICE a week from week 32 (Christmastime) until the baby is born. Yikes! I hope they don't become "maternal stress tests".

It was just brought to my attention that you IE users assumed I was not in the profile picture to the right. I was there all along, IE just didn't know it. I was also told that my delightful double-border was not displaying properly. Both "errors" should be fixed now. If anything doesn't display properly, please let me know or -- better yet -- get Firefox ! Besides being web-standards compliant and more secure than IE, it's a darned cool, customizable browser. I'd be lost without the tabbed browsing ability, and I don't know how I'd get by without radial context menus, Adblock, and many more fabulously handy Extensions .

To recap, the house was built in 1967 with Electric Celing Cable (ECC) heat and, from educated guess, central air. There are four vents run to the first floor, which made the guy suspect the system had to have been installed at time of construction. The vents throughout the house (a total of 9 for 12 rooms and 2250 sq. ft.) are located on inside walls at ceiling level. The previous owners never turned the ECC on in their seven years in residence. Last fall, I tried to get someone to come and inspect the system, as it seemed like it could be a good back-up system for two people in a huge house. Upon inspection the other day, the electrician seemed to feel that most if not all of the ECC had long since been disconnected. At some point along the way, the owners were persuaded to simply install a gas furnace in the attic, and heat and cool with forced air. Even with only a rudimentary understanding of thermodynamics, the notion of creating hot air in the attic and blowing said air down two...

Wow. The Ladies' Gourmet Dinner was a bunch of fun. What a feast! The way it works is that four people sign up to "host" each month, and prepare a meal amongst themselves to serve the group. They also provide all the recipes for the meal for the members to take home. The meals generally follow this formula: Appetizers, Beverages, Soup, Bread, Salad, Meat, Vegetable, and Dessert. I and two other friends signed up for next month, November 15th. There's still an open space, but the group's fearless leader will be calling those members who were unable to attend last night and get them signed up for any openings. In December, there's a Cookie Exchange. The whole meal was fantastic, but I wanted to share two super, simple appetizers that were a big hit. OK, and the punch recipe. Everyone needs a good punch recipe. Fruit Salsa and Cinnamon Chips Fruit Salsa 8oz. raspberries 1 lb. strawberries 6 oz. blueberries 2 T. white sugar 1 T. brown sugar 3 T. fruit preserves,...