Meet Me In St. Louis

We had a great day in St. Louis yesterday; we went to the temple for a session and then went to Forest Park and to the St. Louis zoo.


There were not many people at the temple at all. We couldn't even find anyone to take our photo!

Forest Park is a huge, lovely place with all kinds of (free) attractions. This is the Jewel Box, a giant greenhouse that was built in the 1930s:

The St. Louis Zoo is touted as America's #1 zoo. I don't know how they gathered their data, but I would rate the zoo pretty highly. We had a great time riding the train, seeing Big Cat Country, and just wandering around to see the different animals.

The ostriches

The tiger

On an entirely different topic, our old dryer gave up the ghost (it emitted sparks and a burning smell when operating for the last time) and we have a new dryer. Here's the old appliance, sitting out in our front yard in classic "white trash" fashion (it's been there for a whole week now):
And here's the new dryer:
And some sad news: Dobler has been missing since Tuesday morning. We've canvassed the neighborhood with his photo plus our phone number, but it seems that no one has seen him. We're sincerely hoping that he's just on a little kitty vacation and will be back soon. So if you're the praying type, please think of Dobler.

Mike took this picture of us last Sunday.

Autumn musings

It feels like an early autumn in Urbana now. Temperatures have been in the 70s during the day and the 40s at night. We're enjoying the cool temperatures and I've been using my bike more for transportation in addition to recreation. :)

We were very happy to have lunch this week with Mike's Grandma and Grandpa Brough. They were on their way from Washington, D.C. (where they've been on an LDS mission for the past 18 months) back home to St. George, Utah. We enjoyed chatting with them and only wish we could have spent more time with them. Don't roll your eyes at this and think that I've turned into one of those Mormon housewives who do all that self-sufficient stuff that M.H.'s do (I'm really not there yet), but I've started doing lots of baking on the weekends. We're eating nothing but homemade bread these days:


and I also make the granola that we eat for breakfast every morning. It's wonderfully therapeutic to not think about class and work for a few hours and make something delicious.

Me in our teeny-tiny kitchen

Classes are going well. I'm working on several projects that are all due in the first week of October. These projects are: redesigning a website for a public library (with a group), a group presentation and website on research ethics, a presentation on choosing biographical reference sources for a small academic library. It's sort of frustrating that all of these projects are due within the same week, but it will be nice to get it all done and not have to worry about it later in the semester. The project I'm most interested in is the biographical reference sources. There are lots of things to take into consideration, like scope, arrangement, cost, usability, and more. I'm finding that library science is theoretical and philosophical enough to satisfy my intellectual side and also practice-oriented enough that it satisfies my practical side in ways that the study of literature never did. So here's my love song to library science:

Library school
you satisfy me
in ways I've never
been satisfied before.
I love you for your
practicality
for your theoretical constructs
and for information theory.

Labor Day Weekend

Having a little cuddle with my Dobler.

We've had a relaxing Labor Day Weekend after a very busy week. The first week or two of school is always a bit stressful and very busy, but things should probably settle down in the near future.

On Friday night we had dinner and played games with our friends Heather and Devin. It was so fun! We played Rook, Clue, and Rummikub. (Don't worry -- I was a very good sport even though I didn't win at even one of the games.)

The weather was really nice over the whole weekend -- the temperature stayed below 90 and humidity was relatively low. Saturday morning Mike and I rode our bikes to the farmer's market in downtown Urbana, where we bought some lovely peaches and a squash. We're looking forward to some butternut squash lasagna this week.

Today we went to one of the county forest preserves: Lake of the Woods. We were pretty disappointed in what they call "hiking trails" out here. There were some gravel footpaths, but no real hiking. We did enjoy the botanical gardens and the historic one room school house.

We took a picnic lunch to the park, too!

Tonight we broke out the Whirly-Pop and made a delicious batch of caramel popcorn. Mike is very excited about the Whirly-Pop. He thinks it's a great kitchen toy.

Simone has been relaxing this weekend. Isn't she precious?

I just finished reading The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri and really loved it. It's an interesting portrait of life in the U.S. in an immigrant family. Also fraught with identity crises, the difficulties of growing up, figuring out how to get along on your own, etc. A fantastic read. Next up: Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver.