Friday was beautiful here in NC- 80 degrees and sunny- so we headed over to the Duke Botanical Gardens in the afternoon. They have a number of raised beds filled with tulips in the spring and this year we seemed to visit right around their peak.

and irises too

The garden allows dogs so Riesling got to strut her new haircut (and pink bandanna) around the grounds.

As usual, she got a lot of smiles and comments from folks. She’s not used to heat yet so she was panting heavily; of course, this didn’t slow her down too much, though she did stretch out on the cool futon when she got home.

More pics can be seen on our flickr pages.

Over the last few months I’ve been working on a new way to update our collection of waterfall photos. Previously, we would add new waterfalls by hand into the respective state and county indices. While this worked for a few waterfalls, now that we have well ~140 falls it had become hard to manage. Instead, I decided to build a small database that would hold the important info (state, directions, photo, etc.) and write some PHP code to build the pages for us. I’ve been wanting to learn a bit more PHP code and this seemed like a good excuse reason.

As you might have guessed, I’ve finished the first version and our redesigned waterfall site is now automatically generated. Anytime we have an update we only need to add the data to the database and let the scripts do the rest of the work. Sweet.

Leandra has spent the better part of yesterday and today organizing her stacks of old photos- she’s making good progress and finding some great old shots along the way!

“Would you like to go and visit the puppies?” Um, YES! We went over to the Southeastern Guide Dogs breeding center down the road this morning and got our fill of fuzzy warm pups.

Rocky was the only puppy born to Sensei (Lynn’s sister’s dog), and he came out big!

Love the paw over the head of the one pup… What, you want MORE puppies? Alright, you asked for it:

Surprisingly, Leandra made it out of the building without stealing any. :)

Leandra: He’s serious. I was <this close>.

The recent rainfall along with the warm temperature has brought most everything in our garden to life over the last few weeks, and we are fully in mid-spring in Durham. Some photos from the garden:

Our daffodils started blooming in mid-February, and this is one of the last with a bloom. I’ll need to deadhead them next weekend.

A group of grape hyacinths in the front yard. This is the most prolific they’ve ever been, which is surprising considering the drought we’ve had.

These hyacinths have a great scent so we’ve been cutting some to bring inside.

With a little luck our dogwoods will be in bloom next week!

We are back from our weekend trip to Zürich and definitely glad to be off the plane! It was a great weekend and we’re really glad we went. We were lucky to have sunny weather both Saturday and Sunday, so we walked all over the city and took lots of photos (naturally), visited the art museum, sampled Swiss chocolates, etc. I’ve posted two photos below with more to follow over the next few days…

above: a side street in Zürich below: the famous Grossmünster church towers

This morning I flew up to Maryland for another interview, and due to the weather, I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get here. Though the weather is just fine here, it was very foggy both at home and especially bad in my connecting city of Philadelphia. So a delay leaving Raleigh meant a further delay getting into Philly. Fortunately, my second flight was also delayed, so I was able to catch my second flight. Unfortunately, my one checked bag didn’t make the same flight as me. Normally I don’t check a bag, but in this case I had to because these planes were so small. Foo.

At least I have my toothbrush with me… here’s hoping that my suit will show up in time for my interview tomorrow :)

Edit: my luggage arrived at 12:10a Wed morning-phew!

We’ve gotten great use out of our Samsonite luggage over the last few years, and while they’re in surprisingly good shape, on a few occasions I’ve wanted something a bit more mobile. Over the past few months I’ve been researching convertible bags, i.e. bags that let you have both backpack straps as well as a wheeled option. This weekend I finally settled on one and we purchased a 22″ Osprey Meridian Wheeled Convertible pack (reviewed favorably by Outside online among others). I like that the bag has wheels for the airport, backpack straps for moving through rougher environments, and a removable daypack for sidetrips. Plus, as long as the daypack isn’t full, the entire bag is carry-on sized.

On the left you see the main bag with the daypack attached; on the right, the front of the bag with the straps stowed behind the flap. Below you see the main bag separate from the daypack.

Leandra and I have been gradually paring down the amount of stuff we bring on our trips, and my goal is to use this bag exclusively on our 11 day Barcelona trip this summer. Fortunately I’ll have a few chances to try it out on smaller trips before then!

We’ve been a bit absent from posting the past two weeks, mostly because we’ve been very busy. Here’s what we’ve been up to:

• Leandra has gone “official” with her creative and web design business, having obtained a business license, bank account and business credit card, and is now doing business as LeGa Design Group. More importantly, she’s working on several projects. Plus, she sold a painting (thanks Beverly and Chris!)
• I’m still in the midst of my academic job search. At this point all my applications are submitted, I’ve had several interviews, and I’ve got a few more interviews coming in the near future.
• Planning our travels for 2008—between now and July we’re traveling to Zürich, Switzerland; San Diego, CA; Tampa, FL; Denver, CO; and Barcelona, Spain. We’re very excited :) On the travel note, we definitely want to highlight Kayak.com, our airfare and hotel search tool of choice at the moment.

Part of our Christmas tradition includes watching some of our favorite Christmas movies, so last night we had some friends over to watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. A stupid movie, yes, but one that still makes us laugh. It’s hard to believe that we watched this movie in South Africa just one year ago! I hope they’ve forgiven us by now :)

Somehow, Leandra has never seen It’s a Wonderful Life, and while we’ll eventually watch it, I’m not in a big rush to see it again.

There are two other movies that we try to see each Christmas season: A Christmas Story and A Wish for Wings that Work (which ties in with our Opus n’ Bill ornaments). Oddly enough, I was introduced to A Wish… in my high school chorus class, where we spent the last class before Christmas watching it. 12+ years later I still like this movie.