Saturday Stuff

Our rabbit, Bugs, was ill this week and the illness could have potentially been fatal if left untreated, so we took him to the vet. He seems to be recovering, but is not at 100% yet. One of our remaining pumpkins have ripened indoors so we cooked it. We started putting up indoor Christmas decorations today. (Karen pointed out that for the two last years we have had snowdays in early December to work on this.) Here is an experiment in decorating using our bird's nest collection and silver Christmas balls. We are also working on shopping and the letter.

Campus conjunctions

I missed the closest meeting of the moon, Venus, and Jupiter on Monday night due to clouds, but here they are above campus on Tuesday night. (Venus is on the left and Jupiter is on the right, just to the left of the clock tower.) I have also attached another curious conjunction picture.

Saturday and Sunday activities

Saturday we went to Door County to visit Karen's dad and stepmom and her uncle, aunt, and cousins. I also went for a walk and took some pix of an abandoned schoolhouse. Today we drove back to Peoria and encountered more snow than we anticipated. After unpacking, Kris and I added to our outdoor decorations.

Friday activities

Today none of us partook in the "black Friday" activities. My mom, dad, Kris, and I went to their cabin for a while, then picked out a Christmas tree. It is very tall.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from Wisconsin! This picture was taken on the way back from church this morning and shows about a dozen wild turkeys to the left of the pine trees. We also cut wood. After a HUGE Thanksgiving dinner we cleaned up, puttered around, and did a Skype call with Dace and Susan and Arlan (who captured the image and sent it to us). Oh, and I included a nice picture of the fireplace. Maybe you can use it as a screensaver.

Sunday stuff

Here is a recent picture of construction of the new Bradley University fieldhouse.

The weather was relatively warm this afternoon, so I hauled downed branches out of the woods, cut or broke them into reasonable lengths, split some of the wider pieces, and stacked them. It was good exercise, but rigor mortis is starting to set in.

Tonight we watched the "Clone Wars" movie, which we rented. It was not as good as the six movies, but it is still Star Wars. For the sake of the battle scenes I wish I had seen the movie in theaters. There was no scrolling exposition text at the beginning! Kris was initially not interested in seeing it, but she got really into it. She liked the silly lines by the battle droids (e.g. "Outnumbered? Let me count...). She had not remembered much of the other movies; I guess it is time for a refresher.

Saturday stuff

This morning we rang bells for an hour at the mall for the Salvation Army. Kris and Karen have done that for a few years now as part of Karen's involvement in the Heart of Illinois Association for the Advancement of Young Children. They asked me to do it too, and I was a bit unenthusiastic about it, but when I heard last night that the homeless shelters in Peoria are seeing record use in these rough times I was more motivated. It was fun.

Tonight we helped Kris study for an exam about Illinois history and geography. It reminds me a little about learning about Wisconsin history at about her age. Y'know we send our Catholic daughter to a Protestant school and have not had too many issues, but I tell you, raising Kris as an Illinoisian weighs heavily on me sometimes. Born and raised in Illinois, now learning about geography of this state more than Wisconsin....I'm motivated to say stuff like "What river forms the western border of the state? The Misssissippi? Good! By the way it also forms the western border of Wisconsin." Trying to maintain that cheesy heritage!

Tonight we attended a play at Bradley (Karen won free tickets for most of the season). The play was a postmodern deconstruction of the Greek trilogy Oresteia (so they said). It was an interesting mix of conventional staging, projection, puppetry, audience plant interaction, and even text messaging. It got a bit preachy/un-subtle and had a bit of rough language, but the most unusual part was when they summoned the audience plants up to the stage near the end to act as the jury for Orestes. One of the names they called was a "Mr. Campbell" - I had a moment of panic there!!!!