Fourth Anniversary--flowers

We went up to visit NW Mass and SW Vermont for our fourth anniversary. We were so smart to get married around a 3-day weekend. We visited, among other things, Edith Wharton's cottage in the Berkshires, shown here with some inspiring tulip display. Dan is shown next to a statue of his ancestor General John Stark, who routed the British in the Battle of Bennington. We were also caught in a tremendous thunderstorm in the Green Mountains--here is soaked hiker Eva.

Garden Results

Dan and I worked on the front yard, which had before last week been a strange 2-level conglomeration of mostly grasses, some weeds, and some randomly placed flowers. Last week we finally took charge and bought some shrubberies from a sale by the Friends of Hammonasset. Though I don't have a recent "before" picture, if you are super diligent and don't blink you can find a picture of our house on TV on a program called something like "Best places to Live in the US." Pizza was the reason for New Haven's inclusion in the program, but they interviewed our neighbors and showed our street. Our dear homelet got a split second of fame (I saw it at our neighbor's, since we don't have a TV). OK, now I have to figure out how to add a picture.

100 things about Eva

1. I love making lists like this! Dan and I had a great time on Monday night together brainstorming these lists, and even though our fourth anniversary is upon us, we still learn about each other.
2. I had always thought I would marry someone I'd been friends with for a while. With Dan, it was love at first sight. Now I'm a believer.
3. My favorite colors are red and pink--mostly red, because I am particular about pink...it has to be light, never hot or neon.
4. I am an Oregonian through and through. That's right, I love the rain--it turns everything silver.
5. When I was in elementary school I wanted to be an artist--and sometimes a famous violinist, dancer, doctor, or astronaut.
6. One of the hardest lessons of adulthood for me was that I cannot continue to cultivate and improve on all the things I love to do.
7. I still fancy myself an advanced violinist and harpist. But it is increasingly difficult to keep them up, especially since my sister Joni is studying viola at music school. I still think I could get in to music school if I tried, but maybe I'm just dreaming.
8. My whole family is musical, thanks to my untiring mother. In my house, we had a nasty little saying: "no reading for fun until practicing's done." What kind of family is that, where we all love to read so much that it had to be a reward for practicing? I am grateful to her efforts, because making music is one of the loves of my life.
9. I have a competitive streak, and I'm territorial. I don't like it when other people copy what I am doing.
10. I'm ABD! (right now that is About to Begin the Dissertation.) I'm the first person in my family to pursue a Ph.D, though my brother is about to start a program in biology and I have a cousin studying linguistics. I think that's great--but I do want to finish first. That competitive streak helps keep me going. Plus, Dan's family oozes academics.
11. I love art history for many reasons. For one, all of the books I read are full of pictures.
12. I've always liked going to art museums. I love that now it is part of my job.
13. I went to Swarthmore College and majored in music and art history. I loved my years at Swarthmore.
14. Thanks to its Quaker traditions and to Wilfred Owen and Benjamin Britten, I have embraced pacifism.
15. I didn't know that art historians existed until I went to college. Luckily, I thought I wanted to be a professor and get my Ph.D since high school, so I've been gearing up for this for a while.
16. I love dancing--all sorts--but at Swarthmore my harp shared a room with the Gamelan and I ended up dancing with the group for three years. Balinese dance is my favorite--the flowers, the mannerisms, the costumes, the narratives...
17. I also love ballroom dancing with a good lead. Dan and I had a great time taking ballroom and salsa together, even though Dan had never taken a dance class before.
18. I swore when I was ten that I hated cooking and my future husband would just have to do it. I think this is because of several cooking-related mishaps that my family never let me forget, such as the time I burned peas in a microwave. I'm now tolerable at cooking (especially since I stick to just vegetarian dishes), but lucky for me, Dan is a better chef than I am.
19. I do like baking muffins and pies, however.
20. I only like to clean the house when playing music really loud at the same time. Pink Martini, Cuban music, or big band jazz works well.
21. In general, however, I prefer Classical music--and Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, and 20th century. I consider myself to be hard-core about this. Telemann, 12-tone, Takemitsu, I can take it.
22. I love music history and theory.
23. I have a really really hard time choosing favorites. I was about to list my favorite composers, and the list included Schubert, Brahms, Bach, Britten, Prokovieff, Ravel, Beethoven, Josquin, but it was hard to stop. I also can't pick a favorite author, poet, movie, let alone artist. It just depends on the occasion. I like too many!
24. I could also never choose between violin and harp. Though perhaps because I have no memory in which I was not a violinist, it is closer to my personality than is the harp.
25. I played the lute in college, thanks to my friend Samantha, whose birthday is today and to whom I owe so much. (I could write 100 things I like about Samantha. Maybe I will try.) I want to take it up again. Perhaps Santa will bring me one.
26. I have always been a cat person.
24. I am very loyal to my opinions. Because cats are my favorite animal, I thought (at age 9) that Garfield had to be my favorite comic, even though it is pretty stupid. Luckily Calvin and Hobbes came along. Tigers are pretty close.
25. I am a huge Muppet fan. Any pop culture I may know came from the Muppets.
26. My favorite cult movie is Cold Comfort Farm. I'm engorgingly in love with it.
27. I like 1930's design. Fashion, architecture, cars, silverware.
28. My favorite season is summer. Maybe because my birhtday is in August; but I love going out without a coat, wearing sandals and skirts, picknicking, lounging...
29. Also, my favorite foods are summer berries--from strawberries to raspberries to blueberries to blackberries.
30. That said, here in CT, the most beautiful months are May and October.
31. I like making crepes on my birthday, and Angel food cake is my traditional gateau.
32. While I'm talking about food, my favorite ice cream is black cherry, sometimes strawberry, but in Oregon, it is Tillamook's Marionberry Pie ice cream (almost as good as the real thing)!
33. I can roll tortellini, gnocchi, and orecchiette.
34. I like to eat seasonally. Like wintry stews and cornbread in winter, delicate greens in spring, etc.
35. I gave up read meat from age 12-20, and still eat mostly vegetarian.
36. I love spicy food--Indian, Thai...but I can also, like Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail, have bread and milk and blackberries for supper.
37. OK, now I need to exercise. My favorite sport is Ultimate (frisbee). I jog only reluctantly, to improve my game.
38. I am a sprinter. My shortlived nickname in middle school was "speedy gonzales."
39. My Dad taught me to play chess when I was 5 or 6. At that age, I would make up narratives and interpersonal relationships between the characters, for fun but also to win. I lost the bishop of my Dad's good set in the bushes when I played with it outside. We found it later, much faded.
43. I like classic children's toys--jump rope, blocks, hopscotch, marbles.
44. I love brio trains.
45. I collect lullabies.
46. I am grateful for my Scandinavian heritage. The design, the culture (maypoles, sagas, vikings) and history, the people...this justifies my addiction to IKEA.
47. I am 1/8 Icelandic. I've been to Iceland twice. The first time I saw my great-grandmother's village, and hiked the volcano that (much later) destroyed her house. Ha!
48. My favorite cities are Reykjavik, Venice, Modena, Portland, OR. I also like L'Aquila, San Francisco, Boston, Paris, Antwerp...
49. The best hiking is found in Southern Utah. That landscape is part of my blood.
50. I don't much like camping, however.
51. I am God's gift to mosquitos.
52. I learned this during my childhood years in the Philippines. My Dad joined the Air Force to pay off med school. For me, it was eternal summer, the greenest green rice-paddies, the juciest mangoes, typhoon days from school, earthquakes, geckoes, terrorist scares, baskets galore. For my mother, I bet it was rough. I remember lots.
53. I went to six different elementary schools. Well, one of them was a middle school (5th grade) then we moved and I went to an elementary school for 6th grade, then back to middle school for 7th.
54. Middle school was horrible but defining. I had crooked teeth, thick glasses, straight A's, and therefore few friends.
55. High School was just a long recovery from middle school--braces, contacts, growing out the perm...
56. In HS I was co-editor of the Avatar, a literary and arts magazine.
57. Once I skipped class (or more likely an assembly) to pursuade a local business that in exchange for a few Avatar magazines, I could prune their overladen rose bushes for an Avatar-related event. I then proceeded to decorate the school library with hundreds (OK maybe 150) pink roses.
58. Wearing flowers in my hair is one of my trademarks. For HS graduation, I wore long pigtails with daisies; for a concerto I performed I wore little cream-colored roses; perhaps someday I'll wear fruit like Carmen Miranda.
59. I have donated 10 inches of my hair to Locks of Love, twice.
60. My favorite item of clothing is a skirt I made when I was 14. I still wear it and am in denial if it is wearing out.
61. I am intimidated by sports coaches, weight machines, tax forms, and cafeterias.
62. I hate having anything go bad in the refridgerator. It is a matter of respect. If I let the vegetable go uneaten, its life it gave for me was in vain.
63. I attended the 6th World Harp Congress.
64. I have gone skinny dipping. Multiple times.
65. I like to play games based on personality...like everybody born in May stand up. (This list could be an incriminating tool for such games.)
66. I hate long complicated riddles. Just tell me the answer, and be done with it.
68. I am not ticklish. (Dan is. Bwah ha ha! Actually we have a non-tickling marriage agreement.)
69. I cannot whistle--OK I can make a few notes. Not much.
70. I like singing harmony with a small group.
71. Caroling is my favorite Christmas tradition.
72. I also liked dressing as though for St. Lucia's day, and bringing my family Swedish Cinnamon Twists.
73. I like long white nightgowns.
74. I like waking up before everyone and eating berries in my nightgown on a porch or balcony.
75. I am a morning person. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day; I work best before lunch.
76. I don't stay up late very easily. I and everyone around me finds it horrid when I must.
77. I am a weepy person, always have been. When I'm tired, grumpy, angry, overjoyed, inspired, moved, I cry. It's very strange.
78. I wear my heart on my sleeve. Therefore, I am a terrible actress. (or liar. or surprise-keeper.)
79. I like formal dinners with good conversation.
80. I also like being silly with Daniel. We've shared many laughs over the silliest things.
81. I have always wanted to attend a masquerade ball. I once went to a masked party for carnevale in Modena, dressed as "la Primavera". It was disappointing, but I had fun dressing up.
82. I like Halloween. This year I was the dead Cleopatra (complete with asp) and last year I was a sea cucumber.
83. My interest in prints goes back to an art camp I attended at age 12. Who knew I would write/begin my dissertation on Renaissance prints?
84. I was voted "most likely to become a mad scientist" in fifth grade. I've always liked science, and I'm glad I married a scientist so I could continue to learn without actually spending much time at it.
85. I took a semester off between MA and Ph.D to fix up a fixer-upper house. It was a great break from academia, and I am now a handiwoman who likes electric drills, new paintbrushes, and spackle.
86. On my first project my sister (and her now-husband) came to help me paint the patry. We used oil-based paint and tried to clean up with soap. (I didn't know what mineral spirits were.) Panic and chaos ensued. I've learned tons while working on this old house.
87. Such as, do you know how much atrocious wallpaper there is in this world?
88. I love mythology. I could name the exploits of the Greek gods (at one time) like other kids knew dinosaurs or basketball stats.
89. I think Miss Manners should be declared a national treasure.
90. I like celebrating holidays, including those not of my culture or religious tradition. I'm an "additive" celebrater of Passover. Pass the matzoh-ball soup.
91. I know how to row a gondola. Actually, the boat I learned on was called a Sandolo.
92. When Dan insisted that we go on a gondola ride (I was going to take him the very next day) I knew he was going to propose. The ring was a huge surprise, however.
93. I like it when my cat Calamity sleeps at my feet. I don't like it when she sits on my face when I am asleep.
94. I talk to strange cats in Italian.
95. I love to attend (and help plan) weddings.
97. Two of the best compliments I've ever been given: after a talent show in which I played the violin and everyone else lip-synched, my violin teacher told me that I was courageous.
98. Another was a neighborhood kid who said recently, "you know what I like about you, Eva? You're just like a kid."
99. I never really wanted to grow up. Really, I'm pretty much the same person that I was when I was three.
100. I am grateful to learn and live surrounded by a wonderful world!

100 things about Dan

1. My earliest memory is when I was 2 or so, on a family vacation to Florida. I remember throwing an enormous beachball into the waves, and it drifting out to sea. Very traumatic.
2. Another very early memory is falling down some (carpeted) stairs.
3. I played a lot with blocks and tinker toys when I was little. There are pictures of some pretty fantastic structures that I built.
4. I learned to read when I was 3, from Uncle Scrooge comic books that my dad had collected. I am still a connoisseur of old Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books from the '50's. I had many imaginary friends.
5. I also learned a lot of words by copying them on an old manual typewriter, one at a time, from a "Superfriends" dictionary.
6. I read a lot when I was a kid. My parents didn't have a TV, so reading kept me entertained. I went through many many stacks of books from the library.
7. I didn't go to kindergarten. Meeting the principal before starting first grade, I told him that I had built a "hovel" in my back yard, which, I am told, impressed him with my vocabulary.
8. I grew up in Dearborn Heights, a suburb of Detroit. This is "Ford Country", and most of my friends' parents worked for Ford or the automotive industry in some way or other.
9. My neighborhood was working-class, with sidewalks in front of all the houses. Every other house on my street had one or two kids near my age.
10. I was the neighborhood Dungeon Master, and I can still recite obscure Dungeons and Dragons facts and statistics.
11. When I was 11 my parents got me a puppy (a miniature schnauzer who I promptly named "Fritz"). He was lots of fun and very sweet, but kind of dumb. Before that we had a toy poodle named "Cupcake". He was a rather spiteful little dog, as I remember. Probably because I chased him around a lot, or perhaps because he thought his name was humiliating.
12. I was an only child until I was 12, when my brother Gabe was born. I followed his progression month by month and read all the baby books. I would baby-sit him for $1/hour, and that's how I got my spending cash all through high school, and gained much experience in changing diapers.
13. I was definitely the class nerd, with big thick glasses. I was very nearsighted until getting Lasix a few years ago. Eva and I both had it done (it is amazing!). I did it first (the guinea pig).
14. In second grade I wanted to be a paleontologist (I knew all the dinosaurs), but then by fourth grade I wanted to be an architect. I had discovered graph paper, and used it to draw building plans.
15. I decided that I wanted to be a physicist when I was in fifth grade, during a science fiction-reading phase. I flirted with the idea of being an economist a bit in my first year of college, but decided that I'd rather be a mediocre physicist, pursuing larger truths, than a good economist, studying how people behave. Immature, I know, but hey, I was in college.
16. In any case, I've always planned on being a college professor. I've always felt that ideas, pursuit of truth, and discovery are noble pursuits, and being a professor lets you pursue truth for a living.
17. My job is my dream job, but I have a long way to go before I'm especially good at it. The responsibilities weigh me down, the multitasking is extreme, and I make a lot of mistakes. But sometimes I discover something new (if obscure), and that's pretty exciting to me.
18. My parents are both academics. My dad is a philosopher (philosophy of language) and my mom is a historian (Russian history).
19. Favorite chore: filling/emptying the dishwasher. It's well defined, you can easily think about something else, and it doesn't take too long.
20. Least favorite: yard work, especially during allergy season.
21. My favorite color is green. It was yellow when I was young, then I realized this was too girly and switched to green. In high school I switched it to blue, but then I came back to green in college
22. My eyes are green (so are Eva's).
23. I met Eva when I was in graduate school, at a party thrown by my fellow graduate student Carlo and his wife Becca. I didn't expect to meet any dateable girls at the party, but I heard there was food.
24. I like to cook, and I'm learning new recipes all the time now that I can cook for both of us. I particularly like to make spaghetti, fish stew, a north african lamb dish, and key lime pies.
25. I love to play chess, but I am depressingly bad at it. I can waste hours online playing other mediocre opponents.
26. For last Christmas, Eva and my dad teamed up and got me an acoustic guitar. I have wanted to learn to play most of my life, but could never justify buying one until now. I would love to someday learn to play as well as my dad.
27. When I was 10, I lived for a year in Helsinki, Finland, and went to a Swedish-speaking public school. By the end of the year my Swedish was quite good, but it has atrophied ever since.
28. Once, in the playground at the Swedish school, I started rolling a snowball, and decided to see how big I could make it. Pretty soon all the kids on the playground were helping, and I was just pointing to tell the rest where to push it to pick up the most snow. It got to be about 8 feet tall. Later in the classroom, we looked out the window and saw that a snowplow was about to wreck it! The teacher let us run outside and save it.
29. I love reading about history, especially ancient history.
30. For books, I like ones that are well-written but have a discernible plot.
31. I bought my car, a green Ford Escort ZX2, in my third year of grad school. It is still our only car, my bachelormobile, also know as the "Lizard". It is now at 104,000 miles and I hope to keep driving it until it falls apart.
32. I don't understand religion or how anyone could be religious. The claims religions make seem ridiculous to me, and I think that most religions exploit their members. I also think that many politicians exploit religion to attain or retain power.Though the real "opiate of the masses" is professional sports.
33. I am addicted to following professional basketball and baseball, mostly by keeping track of the Detroit teams on Sportsillustrated.com.
34. I am very liberal, especially on social issues. I am a political addict, and am easily entertained by reading the news.
35. I ran cross-country and track in high school. I was one of the better, though not the best, long-distance runners at my school.
36. I play basketball twice a week, Wednesday and Friday mornings at the gym. It is great fun, and I look forward to it all week. My excuse for taking the time to do it is that it is good exercise, and good stress relief.
37. One of my favorite summers was one during grad school I spent in the French Alps, at a summer school in atomic physics. We would go to lectures by (mostly) Nobel Prize-winning physicists in the mornings, go hiking in the afternoons, and eat dinner on a porch overlooking Mont Blanc. One weekend we drove up to central France to watch a solar eclipse.
38. I am a good whistler.
39. I am very ticklish.
40. I like beer (especially India Pale Ales) and red wine.
41. I love watching movies (all kinds, but especially film noir, science fiction, mobster/crime movies, and thrillers).
42. I have a checklist of the top 1000 movies of all time, and have seen about 200 of them.
43. If left unchecked, I will eat dark chocolate until I feel sick.
44. My favorite animal is the turtle.
45. But our cats (Calamity Jane and Cyrano de Pussycat) are terrific and highly entertaining. I am now more a cat person than a dog person (though I like dogs too.)
46. I was terrified of talking on the telephone when I was little.
47. I was terrified of asking girls out until college. I never had a girlfriend until the summer after college.
48. I went to the University of Michigan for college. I got into Cornell, U Chicago, and Berkeley, but they were all too expensive by comparison. At U of M, I had a 3.9 GPA, graduated with "highest honors" and got an award for the best senior thesis in the physics department. It was about measurements of positronium decay. Positronium is a bound state of an electron and a positron (like hydrogen, but replacing the proton with a positron) and lives only 140 nanoseconds before the electron and positron annihilate in a burst of gamma rays.
49. I was valedictorian at my high school. My valedictory speech was about comparing life to a cross-country race.
50. When I got to Harvard for grad school, I quickly realized that I wasn't the smartest person in the class anymore. So I decided that classes didn't matter, and that pleasing your advisor, working hard, and thinking imaginatively were more important. Now the professors at Harvard who taught my classes have all retired, and no one will ever know my grades in grad school.
51. I played soccer in grade school. There were lots of Dans on the team, so I was called "Mac". Another kid named Dan was Polish, and he was known as "Ski". I played right midfield, generally.
52. I like to plan trips and read travel guides. I can stare at maps for hours. So much information!
53: I have been to: Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Italy, Greece, and Japan.
54: I had 4 years of French in high school, but I have forgotten most of the vocabulary I once knew.
55: I have been to all the states except: Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, and Alaska.
56. On the weekends, I like to hop in the car and spend the day exploring somewhere new.
57: I like limericks, and have a good collection of them in my head.

Testing the blogwaters

Sing out for the mud and sing out for the frog,
It's ever so jolly just starting a blog!
(blog, blog, blog, ribbit)

Prize to the first commenter who correctly identifies the reference.