Another Warm Spring Day

Temps got to 86F today. Kris and Katie played outside and the ice cream truck came by. Flowers are blooming in force and I swatted my first mosquito. The anticipated severe weather at the end of the day was not as bad as feared and just blew over.

A Little Bit of Amish Country

Thunderstorm rolled in about the time I got up at 6 am. It stuck around for a couple hours and actually knocked out my hotel power for a few seconds. I was quite wet by the time I got to the EIU campus. The meetings, like yesterday's, were pretty uneventful. On the way home I stopped by Rockome Garden - it was closed, but from what I could gather it is sort of meant to celebrate/capitalize on Amish heritage and it has some sort of features of rocks cemented into sculptures (some are in the picture under the trees). I have the feeling that I'm about 20-30 years younger than the typical visitors :*) Driving through a small bit of Amish territory was fun - the best sight was one I could not shoot with a camera: a man in full Amish attire (straw hat, beard, etc.) on a (mountain?) bike pulls into a driveway past a trampoline with about five young boys and girls bouncing around in full Amish attire (boys in trousers, dress shirts, and straw hats and girls in long dresses and white bonnets). I told Karen that I felt a little culture shock like I was in China. The rest of the ride home was pretty uneventful. Weather is warming again. Tonight the family visited the nearby woods and got some frog eggs and even caught a couple chorus frogs. We were going to keep them overnight inside but they got quite loud - so now they are doing their singing on the screen porch.

ISAS Meeting

This year's annual meeting of the Illinois State Academy of Sciences was at Eastern Illinois University. It was cloudy this morning - in one area the bottom of the clouds were level with the turbines of the windmills. The sun came out later, there is a pic of one of the older campus buildings looking like a castle - what is it with universities doing that anyway? After the meeting activities I had just enough time to drive to a state park featuring a reconstruction of Abraham Lincoln's father and stepmother's farm after he was grown up. It was closed, but I guess when it is open there are reenactors. After that I drove to another historical site, the cemetary where Lincoln's father and stepmother are buried.

First weekend of April

Friday was April Fools Day, so I made up a fake sabbatical announcement:

"After a long wait, we have finally gotten the contract for a sabbatical. We will be heading to Kigali, Rwanda (yes that is in Africa), where I have accepted a nine-month position at the University of Rwanda. Now I know when you think of Rwanda you think of the horrible things that happened there years ago – but that has mostly diminished. We have a lot of preparation work to do - do you know anybody that would like to rent our house next year? We are all nervous about the whole thing but our recent trip to China has whetted our appetite for international travel (we have a lot of our booster shots already). There will be adjustments to be sure - I will have to adjust to eating lots of banana dishes. Karen was initially not enthusiastic about traveling to some rural areas where the women are required to go topless, but now her attitude is “When in Rome…”. We have been taking a few language classes and Kris has been doing quite well – the teacher claims that tweens are just really good at making clicking noises with their tongues. Kris and Karen were also concerned about the inroads that Al Qaeda has been making in that country, but I told them that if I were to run into Al Qaeda members that that I would tell them just what I think of their horrible activities. Katie is largely oblivious to the whole thing – we think that that a school system that canes people for not being perfectly still might ultimately be good for her. The travel there will take many hours, but , if there are no big strikes or civil unrest, we anticipate arriving there on June 28 (the date of Karen’s Major Birthday). Anyway, we have been wanting to tell you all this , but wanted to wait until the contract was in hand on this April 1, 2011."

The response ranged from total belief to total disbelief.

Friday night and throughout the weekend, Kris and I worked on her science fair project, which involved finding the mass and volumes of bowling balls to find a pattern of which ones floated in water and which ones did not. Katie's soccer practice was 8:30 Saturday morning. It was about 40 F. The fairly-clueless kids are fun to watch. In the afternoon we had a visit from our college friends from Madison (the Kaeders). We hung around together and went swimming at a hotel. Today we had lunch on the east side of the Illinois river. Note the very defensive Canadian goose in one of the pictures - apparently there was a nest nearby. High in the 80s today (we had snow flurries last week). After the Kaeders left I tilled our garden and we planted some seeds. It is fun to see the flowers starting to come out. Tomorrow the high is supposed to be in the 50s.

Weekend

Last Friday night we did demos as part of an event on campus called Late Night BU. I call the picture above "Good thing I was wearing lab goggles!" This past weekend my parents reciprocated on our visit to Green Bay by visiting us (and they brought their dog). We played frisbee golf on Saturday. This evening was Katie's first soccer practice. As one might expect for 4-year-olds, the practice was sort of chaotic, cute, and funny. It was also only about 45 degrees F outside.

First Day Back

The first day of classes after break was a short one for me. Katie had her second procedure to have tubes placed in her ears. Because she was placed under general anesthesia she had to do this as an outpatient at the hospital. Even though it was a somewhat minor procedure we still had a very similar check-in to Katie's and my surgeries last year - which put both Karen and me a little on edge. She was out only about a half-hour and she recovered very quickly from the anesthesia to her usual spunky self. Karen and I were actually able to make it to our noon classes. Warm weather continues: students are starting to wear shorts on campus, and we heard some chorus frogs on the way to a visitation for our pastor's late mother tonight. Tomorrow's weather might be a bit colder. In other news, I got written up in the Bradley quarterly magazine Hilltopics. See: http://www.bradley.edu/about/publications/hilltopics/2011spring/notebook/page4.dot#campbell under the header "Igniting an interest". I really like the picture that accompanies the acticle.

More Spring Break, 2011

Bought a new used van on St. Patrick's day (the 6th one we test drove). We were a little sad to let the old minivan go that we had for 9 years, but we like the 2005 Grand Caravan so far. We drove it up to Green Bay for a quick visit to my parents house. We played with their new dog Snickers. Tonight Karen and I went to see a comedian (Michael Joiner, also stars in the movie The Grace Card) at the CupO'Joy Coffee House. We wish Peoria had a venue like this. Tonight is supposed to the closest full moon to earth in many years. Here is a picture of it rising above the courthouse in Green Bay.

SUNDAY UPDATE: It was snowing when we left Green Bay at about noon on this first day of spring, but when we got to Peoria six hours later the temperature was a balmy 76 F!