Snow Day!

As forecasted, we received a real winter storm last night and into the morning. Snow started falling around 8 pm yesterday evening, and we may even get some more tomorrow.

Everything, and I mean everything, is closed in the region. As I type, the happy squeals and shrieks of neighborhood kids playing in the snow can be heard. I'm rather surprised how many of them actually have boots and decent coats, given that it is Alabama and rarely are such outer garments necessary here. But a full 7-8 inches of snow is a once in a decade (or more) occurrence here, so I'm sure they want to live it up while they can!

I made my favorite yeasted waffles for a spontaneous brunch this morning, and we'll be curling up big steaming bowls of chili and cornbread to watch the football game tonight. I was tempted to make some of my favorite chewy molasses spice cookies, but Jeff said this snow had better not last more than a few days or we'll be three hundred pounds by the time they dig us out!

Just so you believe me about the 7-8 inches:

Snug as a bug in a cozy house covered with snow nestled in a frosty subdivision:

We won't be going anywhere soon:

Out and about (on foot):


Some of the many snowmen and snowladies appearing on the block before noon:

Day Trip

To cap off a fun-filled time working and playing together over the winter break, Jeff took me to Southern Accents, an architectural salvage company about half an hour away. It's all antique and historic elements and structures that have been saved from old homes and buildings in the region. Southern Accents is one of the largest salvage companies in the southeast, and they have an impressive collection.

We enjoyed touring through their multiple warehouses and the outdoor "plumbing garden". They have an astounding selection of mantles and doors, but there are also plenty of light fixtures, stained and leaded glass windows, drawer pulls, hinges, knobs, flooring, banisters, claw foot tubs, faucets, tile, ironwork, you name it!

Need a giant wall sconce, anyone?


Just a tiny fraction of the neat things we saw!

In the heat of the night...

With daily highs in the triple digits for the past week (and heat indexes of 110 for three days running), our upstairs heat pump finally gave out. We have been limping it along for a year or so now, having refrigerant added several times and a hard start installed. But this afternoon it must have officially died. I quickly noticed the increased humidity even before the temperature started to climb inside.

But thankfully, since we have such a large house, we also have two independent HVAC units. We had the downstairs unit replaced just last year, so we can enjoy the efficient, cooling, dehumidified drafts while we wait for the upstairs replacement.

For fun (and comfort), we decided to "camp out" downstairs in the living room. Since it's more formal than the family room, it gets less use, so it's about time it pulled its weight; I just never thought it would be as a master bedroom!

Concert in the Park

Jeff and I enjoyed a bit of Americana Monday evening at the concert in the park put on by our city Parks and Rec dept. It was thankfully not as hot and humid as earlier in the day, so we were quite comfortable in our chairs on the lawn, overlooking the Tennessee River.

The stage


DaVinci came too

Boogity Boogity Boogity

(Okay, lest is seem as though I actually know something about NASCAR racing, let me just say I happened to see that particular catchphrase everywhere yesterday. I had to look it up on Wikipedia to understand the connection.)

Another exciting Sunday in the Evans household! Jeff and I participated in a regional church fundraiser at the NASCAR 499 Talledega Superspeedway yesterday. We've done it a few times now; ushering last spring, cleaning up the stand last fall, and ushering again this past Sunday. There were strong storms and tornado warnings on Saturday, so a smaller race was bumped to Sunday also. So we had the painful (or privileged, depending on your point of view) duty of ushering a double header!

We were up at 4 am that morning after staying with some area brethren, and we got home around 10:30 that night. I would hazard a guess that we were on our feet nonstop for at least 12 hours. It may not sound like much, but standing in basically one place in the sun, wind, and grit for that long gets a bit wearing. But with almost 50 volunteers we were able to raise a good bit of money, and we certainly had a good view of the speedway. Apparently it was a very exciting race, but I really can't tell the difference!

Safe in Huntsville

For all those who were wondering: yes, the University of Alabama in Huntsville where the shooting occured last Friday is the same university at which Jeff is employed as an assistant professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. He knew both the shooter and two of the faculty killed (he had been working on an interdisciplinary project with the biology chair and one of the associate professors). Jeff's office is about half a mile from the Shelby center where it happened. We're all fine, and we appricate the concerned friends and family who called and emailed to check up on us. The campus is closed all this week, so it will be interesing to see how things go next week when classes resume.

Odyssey into Space Art

Huntsville Skyline

In honor of NASA's 50th anniversary, the Smithsonian Institute put together a national tour titled NASA ART 50 Years of Exploration. It is currently on exhibit at our Huntsville Museum of Art, so Jeff and I took one last afternoon off (before he begins teaching classes next week) to go see it this past Tuesday.

We accidentally wandered into the last exhibit hall first and were initially rather disappointed. It was all very modern and "forward thinking", but not exactly to our taste. It didn't seem to be art that took much talent, just an odd way of thinking on the part of the artist (and the viewer, for that matter). But we quickly realized where the beginning was and found some great works we really enjoyed.

NASA had commissioned established and renowned talent from the very start of the space program to document its progress with fine art. The art was grouped in exhibit halls by the stages of the NASA program; first Mercury, then Gemini, Apollo, the Space Shuttles, etc. We had started in the more futuristic Mars exhibit that looked forward to the NASA missions to come; hence the less concrete, more abstract works. But we loved the acrylics, watercolors, pen sketches, and oil pieces in the exhibits from the 60's and 70's.

My favorites were several of Paul Calle's works. Here is a photo of one of the actual canvases we saw, The Power to Go; in person, the texture and colors are amazing. You can almost feel the heat and energy. Jeff remarked how well the artist had superimposed the color variations of an intense flame, with the white-hot heat in the center and the darkening glow on the perimeter. It was even more personal to realize this was an interpretation of the 7.5 million pounds of thrust produced by the Saturn V rocket, the very same rocket model I drive by in Huntsville on a regular basis.

Paul Calle's "The Power to Go"

Jeff was drawn to a lesser-known Norman Rockwell work called Behind Apollo 11. The bright, talented faces looking upward are so reminiscent of a time when the whole world watched in anticipation of our success. I love that Rockwell included the wives and launch pad workers, who surely worked as tirelessly behind the scenes as the more prominent scientists and administrators did in the public eye.

Norman Rockwell's "Behind Apollo 11"

All in all, it was a fantastic exhibit, so please be sure to visit if it stops at a museum near you!

Eighth Anniversary!

Well, I've been absent from the computer again, but for a very good reason. Last Wednesday (July 8) was our 8th anniversary, but since we had just been camping and Jeff was leaving to present a paper at a week long conference in Ottawa soon after, I didn't expect anything special. But Tuesday evening, Jeff told me I needed to start packing! He gave me guidance on what to pack but no other details. Wednesday morning, he drove me to the shoals area of Alabama, a beautiful location about an hour west of us right along the river. There are four small cities all grouped together and so many things to see and do. We stayed at the Marriott Golf and Spa resort and had dinner at their revolving restaurant up in the tower; who knew the only such rotating dining experience in Alabama was in a little town overlooking the Tennessee River?

We spent a leisure Wednesday afternoon strolling through the old downtown, browsing antique stores, driving through historic neighborhoods, and seeing the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in Alabama (another one and only for Alabama).

But Thursday was my favorite. Jeff took me to Helen Keller's birthplace in Tuscumbia, one of the four cities in the shoals. The original house, cottage/school room, and water pump are right there on 10 remaining acres of the former plantation. I've always loved the history of Helen Keller; she was such as incredible woman and an inspiration, especially to those with disabilities. To be deaf and blind in rural Alabama in the 1800's would be a tremendous obstacle for anyone, but she used the opportunity to grow personally and teach and enrich the lives of others.

The water pump where Helen learned her first word

If that wasn't enough, we then had lunch at a little outdoor cafe just outside the city park beside the largest man-made natural stone waterfall and saw the tributes to the Trail of Tears, as Tuscumbia was a stopping place for the Cherokee on their way from Georgia to Oklahoma and they had been well treated and cared for by the residents of the town.

All in all it was a relaxing, educational, incredibly enjoyable surprise. I can't wait to find out what he has planned for next year!

Settling In

It's hard to believe we've been here in Alabama almost one year already. We moved at the end of July 2008, so we're coming up on the anniversary of that big adjustment. I still miss Arkansas a lot, but we're finding things to enjoy in the Deep South. The summer weather is not really one of them right now, though. It's only June and we've had almost a week of heat indexes in the triple digits. Since it's too hot and humid for outdoor activities, I'll be spending most of the week inside, trying to wrap up a few ongoing projects. Updates to come soon!