Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

Two bowls of the second-best tasting vegetable ready for canning:

The NYTimes has a review of Reading the OED by Ammon Shea. Now I’m rather fond of the Oxford English Dictionary myself, but, um, this guy is crazy. Still, ‘ploiter’ is a really cool word and one that really does need to be revived.

Sydney

I’m having a hard time getting back into work mode after so much traveling this summer (two weeks with my parents, two weeks with Sydney’s parents, and a week-long conference).  My goal is to get a very good and very thorough prospectus submitted by the time school starts–and that’s in just a few weeks.  Unfortunately, such pressure doesn’t seem to make the actual job of doing it any easier.  But I’m getting there.  Earlier in the week I organized files, notes, and bibliographies to remind myself of what I’ve got . . . and what I need to tackle.

But in the midst of that, there is a lot of fun.  The garden is full of such good stuff that there’s great food in the house every day.  Today it’s cauliflower curry, using two of Sydney’s beautiful cauliflower from the garden.  We made a beautiful salad yesterday with lettuce, caramelized onions, walnuts, feta, and the remains of a beet dish from earlier in the week.  So good we forgot all about adding dressing!

I’m also spending some time catching up with friends after my time away, so throw some blueberry-picking, hiking, and dinners with friends into the week and it’s looking quite busy and fun.

Now, to get to those dissertation notes . . .

Erin

The harvest has begun to get bountiful around here.  You know those zucchini Sydney posted about a few days ago?  Well, we still have half the pile left and we’ve made a zucchini casserole, zucchini bread, and Sydney used 25 cups to can zucchini relish.  Tonight I’m making zucchini-and-avocado pizza, and I’ll make more zucchini bread and some zucchini-filled lasagna in the near future.

In what, you might ask, did Sydney mix 25 cups of zucchini, 10 cups of onion, and other such sizable ingredients for the relish?  In one of our 11-gallon garden buckets (thoroughly cleaned-out, of course).  Standing guard over the relish as Sydney hosed down the mixture on our lawn (the chickens apparently love zucchini) prompted the thought, “Farm wife indeed.”

Erin

Our cat won’t eat mice. Christi’s chickens, on the other hand …

She didn’t even turn blue in the face like my chickens used to.

I’m officially tired of rain now. One should not be able to go whitewater rafting down the road outside one’s house every day.

But it didn’t rain for a little while this morning so I went to the garden. I came home with this:

These are big zucchini, by the way, ones that weigh two to four pounds apiece. Erin could you come home right away and help me make relish?

Yesterday I drove down to Virginia to be there in good time for a friend’s (Jared Stutzman, for those of you who know him) wedding today and to go to the pre-rehearsal dinner last night and catch up with some of my Mennonite friends from my Rosedale days. I decided to get up really early in the morning so that I would get to Virginia early enough to meander down the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park and to do a bit of birdwatching. I’m not sure that bit was worth the trouble. Here’s roughly what the Shenandoah Valley looked like from the mountain tops:

I’m sure it would have been spectacular, had it been less hazy. As for the birdwatching, well, in the middle of the afternoon on a really hot day is pretty much the worst possible time to go birdwatching. But I did see a couple of nice birds.

The dinner with old friends was great, though. The wedding this morning was also lovely. One of the lovelier weddings I’ve attended, I think. Which, given my general sentiments about these affairs, is saying a fair bit. Of course, good four-part congregational singing is always bound to warm my Mennonite heart and we got to sing a number of pieces.

Jared, incidentally, gave Erin and me a delightful book by G. K. Chesterton, Manalive, when we got married. He suggested that it made for good marital advice. I’m looking forward to seeing how Jared is going to apply this in his marriage. And I hope Rebekah is ready for this.

In other news, about twenty minutes from home I was reminded of the fact that I was back in Ithaca, home of winding roads and aggressive/incompetent/insane drivers not from here. I’ve done enough driving in my life to have experienced a fair number of close calls, but I think this was the closest one yet. Some idiot decided to pass a string of four cars in a no-passing zone. Around a curve. With forest on either side. In the dark. So I come around this curve and suddenly see someone in my lane coming from the front. Worse, he can’t move back to his lane because he isn’t even quite caught up to the front car of the pack that he is trying to pass, let along far enough past it to be able to swerve back into his lane. I figure a head-on collision with both of us going around 60 mph is the worst possible choice, so I swerve to the right. Fortunately the paved shoulder was just wide enough so that I didn’t have to hit the trees. Anyway, I’m now rather thankful to be home alive.

Sydney

The conference started yesterday, and they’re keeping us busy with lectures and panels and the like.  Yesterday evening I walked with another girl to the fish fry (yep, you heard me: it was fried catfish, hush puppies, and french fries) that was held across the street from Faulkner’s home.  The talks have been an interesting mix of academic papers and sessions on teaching Faulkner (yes, I’m definitely attending those).  There are lots of different kinds of people here: professors and grad students, professors with their entire class of students, and groupies.  I bet you never dreamed that Faulkner had groupies, but I’m here to tell you that they’re real.  And numerous.

I had to walk across campus after the noon session to warm up my toes: they keep the auditorium freezing!  I am trying not to think of the environmental cost of keeping a huge auditorium at 65 degrees when it’s 100 outside . . .

Erin

Mom and I took off in the car today to hunt down some Civil War battleground sites not too far from here.  We started too late and had to reconsider our plans, but on the way we stumbled across Elvis’s birthplace in Tupelo, MS.  We walked the grounds, took a picture of his house (which was only about 350 sq. ft.), and had a good laugh at the funny things you stumble across down here. 

Conference starts tomorrow.  I’m excited! 

Erin