We start every Saturday in the fall with breakfast while enjoying College GameDay with Chris, Lee, and Kirk. It’s a rare day when football isn’t on from mid-morning through late evening.

I was all ready to write a post about the Georgia/Auburn game, I even found the most famous photo of the rivalry…

And then Illinois beat #1 Ohio State!

My dad, sister, and brother all went to Illinois and that game was so exciting. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that Georgia absolutely creamed Auburn, but we still need Tennessee to lose one of the their next two games. So, go Kentucky! :)

I spent a good hour this morning looking through old photos trying to locate one from when Eric and I first started dating. Ah, the days before digital photography!

(we were just kids! 21-year-old kids, but still.)

Ten years ago we passed each other on campus, I was on my way to a party and he was heading home. I asked if I could stop by later and he said sure. We were just friends at the time, but I had a huge crush on him. Two hours later I was sitting in my friend Kerri’s room deciding whether or not to call, it was 2am after all. I called, he picked up, and we spent the rest of the evening on his couch talking.

It turned out that he liked me too. :)

Our first date was to the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts to see “Sewing Comfort Out of Grief: The Oklahoma City Children’s Memorial Art Quilts” and we held hands while admiring the old photography collection.

And here we are, many dinners of lobster ravioli later… happy ten years, Eric! ;)

I took a bread baking workshop early last year and since then I’ve made this focaccia bread at least two dozen times. Absolutely delicious!

Herb Focaccia Bread

nonstick cooking spray
4 cups flour, divided
2 Tbsp salt
2 cups water, 105-115 degrees F
2 Tbsp dry active yeast
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried thyme
4 cloves garlic (or to taste)
2 Tbsp olive oil

Coat the inside of a large bowl with nonstick cooking spray. Set aside.

Sift together two cups flour and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

In another large bowl, combine the warm water and yeast. Use a mortar and pestle to break up the dried rosemary and thyme, then combine with the garlic and olive oil. Whisk herb mixture into water and yeast mixture. Let rest for five minutes.

Add flour and salt mixture to water and yeast mixture. The dough will still be very sticky and slack at this point.

Fold in another cup of flour by hand. Continue adding flour in quarter cup increments, until the dough begins to hold together and it pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Transfer the dough to lightly floured work surface and knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic. Transfer the dough to the prepared bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow to double in bulk.

After about an hour, deflate the dough by using a scooping motion rather than punching it down. Let the dough rise a second time until doubled. Coat your hands with olive oil and fold the dough over on itself three times.

Move dough to a well-oiled sheet pan and gently spread it into an even slab. Allow dough to rise for another hour under a kitchen towel.

Coat the top of the dough with olive oil and using your fingertips, push down on the bread leaving small indents randomly across the top. In this case I brushed the bread with a mixture of pesto and tomato sauce too.

Immediately bake for 30 minutes or until outside is golden brown and has a hollow sound when tapped. Remove from oven and cool on a rack for 15 minutes before cutting.

Tasty with an assortment of cheeses!

A recent article on the American Association of University Professors website caught my eye with details of international scholars that have been denied entry, or in some cases, re-entry, to the US. While all the cases are troubling, the cases where the government has refused to provide cause for denial are the the worst. In an atmosphere of secrecy and silence it is too easy for government officials to abuse power in an already bureaucratic process. Accountability demands a measure of openness and a system of appeal, and we need to make it easier for people to visit and conduct business, not more difficult. Continuing with the current system will only lead to continued bad publicity and animosity toward Americans traveling to other countries.

I was inspired by this post to write my own entry about why we traveled to all the places we have in the past year.

South Africa—Technically this was last December (13-31), but it’s my list so I’m including it. :) This was our second trip to Cape Town to visit my aunt, uncle, and cousins who live in Kommetjie. The plan was to visit them for Christmas… a few weeks after we bought our tickets, we invited my dad to come with us and he took us up on our offer. My mom had passed away in August and we figured he could use a change of scenery. It was the first time he’d seen his sister’s home and marked his second visit to South Africa after 35 years.

London—This was a planned extension of our South Africa trip to visit my other aunt. We had arranged to fly through Heathrow (blech), so we could stop for a few days in early January. Thanks to my dad’s thousands of rewards points, we stayed at a lovely hotel near Hyde Park for free. I was in England for three weeks on a school trip back in January of 1997, so I dragged my dad and Eric all over the place to show them the sights.

Miami Beach—Work paid for this trip. Not only did I get to attend a Creative Suites conference for free, but it was in South Beach! I learned a ton of new information and ate a lot of good food. The only downside was that there was absolutely no way to make my per diem food allowance last past lunch unless I ate fast food. Which I did not.

Wilmington—In the two years we had been living here, we never made it down to the coast so when Eric’s parents came down to visit for Easter, we booked a B&B and headed to Wilmington. The downtown instantly became one of my favorite places, very charming with many tasty-looking restaurants. I can’t wait to go back next spring.

Shenandoah Valley—Three weeks later, we drove north to join my dad at a River Rats reunion in Norfolk. From there we drove through wine country (stopping along the way, of course) to spend a few days with a friend of his in Harrisonburg. Eric and I used to opportunity to break in our 2007 National Parks Pass (thanks Neil and Nicole!) by hiking in Shenandoah National Park.

Three National Parks and Las Vegas, NV—Mere days after returning from Virginia, we hopped a plane to Las Vegas, rented a car, and promptly drove into Utah. Our plan was to visit three national parks to make full use of our aforementioned National Parks pass—Zion, Bryce Canyon, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. This was a trip of a lifetime and one I would highly recommend to anyone… we did all three parks in four days!

Nova Scotia—Eric had a genetics conference in Halifax in late June, so we arrived a few days early to tour Cape Breton, experience several waterfalls, and eat fresh lobster. One nice thing about this trip was that work paid for his airfare and the hotel in downtown Halifax. Even so, this trip was pricier than we would have liked. Still, we can check this province off our list! (I should add that I quit my job just before we left on this trip… not having enough vacation leave jump-started my freelancing career.)

Chicago—A day and a half after we returned from Canada, pup and I drove up to Chicago to trade in my VUE and spend 4th of July with my dad. Thankfully, Eric flew up for a few days to help us toss/donate some more of my mom’s stuff and keep us company on the drive back.  15 hours each way, not recommended.

Montana—We hadn’t been out to Kalispell since 2002 even though we have a standing invitation to stay with my dad’s friend. So this summer my dad generously flew the entire family out for a week. We stayed on Lake Blaine, celebrated my 31st birthday, and spent two full days hiking around Glacier National Park (another use for our parks pass). And I had the pleasure of driving everyone around in a minivan.

Curaçao—American Airlines offers excellent deals to the Caribbean in the fall to encourage travel despite hurricane season, but which island should we visit? We narrowed it down to Curaçao or Turks and Caicos, mostly because of the snorkeling. Originally, my dad and his friend Lynn were planning to come but that changed when he started his radiation treatment. Because they had wanted to go in October, the island outside of the hurricane belt won out. We used 50K of my miles to score the roundtrip tickets and my sister and her boyfriend joined us instead.

St. Petersburg—My gram lives here and every fall we take a trip back to our old college stomping grounds to spend some time with her. Eric gave a talk at Eckerd, so we could write off the cost of his ticket and lodging was cheap because my dad let us stay at his place in Parrish. These four days barely felt like a trip at all because Florida is such a familiar place but it was nice to get our second dose of palm trees and beaches in October.

Eric and I made a promise on our 5th wedding anniversary that we would get at least one new passport stamp every year for the next five years. We managed three this year (although an upcoming trip to Niagara Falls will make it four). We take advantage of deals as they come along, so who knows where else we’ll go in the next four years! One thing is for certain, Barcelona and Paris are on our agenda for next spring.

Apparently.

(whatcha looking at mama?)

Here I am just minding my own business, looking up B&B information for our upcoming trip to Buffalo later this month, when WHAM! All of a sudden a sleepy dog is sitting ON my computer keyboard. And I will give her credit, when she jumps, she absolutely commits to it.

I have since shooed her off and she is now curled up in the dark guest bedroom on a pile of clothes we need to donate.

For those that don’t know, for the past several years a format war has been taking place over the next generation of DVDs. The two competing formats are HD DVD and BluRay. Both offer a high-definition version of movies that look great, but I’d put off buying a unit until one format became the standard.

I’m still not sure which format will be the eventual winner, but in advance of Christmas the price of HD DVD players has dropped so low in the last few days that we couldn’t resist the urge to buy one. Most deals have been for limited quantities so we missed a few, including Leandra’s trip to a Walmart at 7:45a on Friday (Leandra: grrr!), but we finally snagged a great deal on a brand new Toshiba HD-A3 this Saturday.

We can’t wait to watch Top Gun in its full high definition glory!

We had to turn the heat on for the first time in months when we returned from Florida as the house was a cool 62 degrees in the middle of the afternoon. Eric is the designated “pilot-light-turner-on-er” as I refuse to crawl under the house because it looks like this…

The furnace is in the middle of the house, which I’m sure helps the heating process, but it also means one has to crawl for a bit to turn the darn thing on. I’ve been under there exactly once to help Eric clear out some decaying wood that was left under there along with about a case of empty beer cans. Ick.

When we first moved in, it was March and the house was freezing, I think it was about 50 degrees inside. For some reason, the previous owners let the pilot light go out under the house, but we had no idea and just thought the heat wasn’t working. In a mild panic, we called them and they casually told us what to do. Easier said than done… poor Eric had to light the furnace with a taper candle and a flashlight in the dark. I’ve since bought him an automatic lighter. :)

We have an adjustable thermostat so that we can save money by keeping the house a little cooler during the day. This means that I have to wear socks and pup finds other ways to keep warm.

I loved the following quote from Salon’s Oct 12th Ask the pilot:

“At this point, the whole apparatus of concourse security is little more than a stage presentation, a theater of the absurd, choreographed to the cowardly notion that confiscating shampoo bottles and forcing airline captains to remove their footwear actually makes us safer. How we got here is an interesting study in reactionary politics, fear-mongering, and a disconcerting willingness of the American public to accept almost anything in the name of “security.” We have come to equate intrusiveness and inconvenience with safety.”

I agree whole-heartedly. The TSA workers in Tampa on Thurs only reinforced my feelings with the following pronouncement: “all electronics bigger then a CD must be scanned separately.” Leandra and I remarked that we didn’t even know what that meant - longer? wider? heavier? And of course they took a half-empty water bottle from an elderly woman. Sigh. The idiocy of it all…

Oh behave! :)

Our rental car reservation was for a boring old compact car but we were offered our choice of “premium” cars when we got to the counter. Eric grabbed the sheet and immediately pointed out the PT Cruiser convertible.

Even though it rained on and off during our entire trip we managed to get some topless time on our visit to Anna Marie Island on Tuesday night. And while Eric was giving his talk at Eckerd on Wednesday, I chauffeured gram around downtown St. Pete. It was a warm sunny afternoon, she loved it, and we both had a lovely windblown look about us when I dropped her back off.

What’s not to like?