purple cowboy

i discovered this wine last night and it was very, very good and a perfect complement to watching White Christmas with Mom and Dad last night.  yum.

family christmas

it has become easier over the years for my family to gather the weekend before Christmas for our holiday celebration.   so i'm cheating with the december photo thing by posting several pictures from that.  :)  i got a little behind with posting these due to needing to submit final grades and traveling back and forth from dubuque to marshalltown.  it was a very fun weekend!  i think the kids had a lot of fun together and everyone got plenty of food and merriment.  i was especially happy to bring a special someone home with me this year (thanks again Todd for joining us!)

checking out what luke got.  

so excited!!

lovely little princesses

luke being silly in his new pajamas

my niece amanda who is going to be 18 in february.  unreal. :)

:)  

christmas tree

finally got this shot and it's not too bad. (and i didn't crash my car.)

busiest finals week yet

this week has been downright nutty.  i spent most of monday and tuesday grading stuff, updating grade books, and giving finals.  today i went shopping in madison with my awesome friend erin, which was really fun but also quite necessary since my family's christmas celebration is happening on saturday.  tomorrow i have two meetings,  need to give another final, and have presents to wrap and more grading to do.  then i'm hoping on friday i can finish up as many final grades as possible, make some treats to take home, finish up shopping, and then head to marshalltown.  i think i will definitely need a break after this week alone!  i still managed to take a few pictures with my trusty iPhone.

the first one was meant to demonstrate to people who don't live in the Midwest exactly how cold it has been lately.  it might be hard to see, but the frost on my windshield was on the inside of my car.  it was there in the morning and i'd hoped that it would be gone by the time i left campus at 4:00.  not so much.  if anything there was more of it.  the temperature also reads about 11 degrees, though it was colder than that with the windchill.  gotta love using the scraper inside the car.

the second photo is from my shopping trip with erin.  since we were going to be in madison, we decided to eat at one of our favorite restaurants...CHIPOTLE!  sure, we could have eaten some thai food or indian food or some other type of food that is likely better in madison than dubuque, but we opted for this instead and i'm glad we did.  it was yum-tastic and i had a coupon for a free burrito that i needed to use in 2009.  didn't think i'd be cutting it this close.  :)





finally, on our shopping trip we stopped in H&M.  i went to one for the first time when i was in san francisco and found very little that i would actually be able to pull off wearing.  the same was true this time.  not only did i feel not trendy enough (or young enough) to be in there, but then i saw things like the next photo which truly horrified me.  yes readers, those are elastic-waisted acid-washed jeans that are tapered.  if this style is back again, then i'm happy to not be trendy.  :)

okay, so these photos don't quite put me on schedule with the photo project.  things have been busy with grading (i'm finally done!) and our family christmas.  i'm heading back to marshalltown tomorrow though so should be able to catch up on blogging and photo posting.

another busy/fun weekend

hi friends who read my blog,

as the subject line states, i had another fun and busy weekend which meant i didn't get a lot of pictures taken.  though i should have taken some since i was at two parties on saturday.  ah well.  i did attempt to take a picture of someone's christmas decorations.  they have no less than 20 trees in their yard made of strings of lights.  i'm guessing there's a center pole and then strands of lights from the top are attached to the ground to make a cone.  (if that made sense at all...i'm not so good at the spacial thinking stuff.)  i wonder what their neighbors think of this every time i have passed it...especially because there are probably 8 different colors going on and they are concentrated in a moderately-sized front lawn.  regardless, my photo attempt with the iPhone didn't really work out and instead looked like trees were on fire.  i also attempted to take a picture of the huge tree on campus that has white lights on it while i was going down the hill, but that one also didn't work out and i figured i should be paying attention to driving.

for those two reasons i will be recycling some photos for today's post.

i posted this picture on my facebook page a while ago, but it's too fantastic to not highlight on my blog.  i saw this car in the parking lot of one of our local grocery stores and just had to take a picture of it.  it's cheetah-tastic.  (unless those are leopards...then it can be leopard-licious.)  please note that the interior is also covered with leopard/cheetah spots.  all the seats.  the steering wheel.  you get the idea.











this next photo is one of me sitting in the window of my rented room in austria.  i had a fantastic view!  my 9 months in austria were wonderful and i can't believe it has been a decade since i was last over there.   i really hope to get back to europe sometime in the not too distant future.  i've been thinking about applying for another fulbright and doing some research there.  if i do, i hope i have a view as good as this one! (don't judge my sweater vest.)

this last one is a picture i didn't remember that i had (which is a little pathetic because it's from october of this year.)  this is me and my nephew luke and niece cami when i visited them in st. louis for my brother's birthday.  are we cute?!  i can't wait to see the family at the end of this week for our christmas celebration!!

okay, back to grading for me.  i'm pretty sure all my posts this week will end that way.

this will be the last of the snow pictures...i promise

here is a picture of my car in the alley behind my apartment building after the big snow on tuesday night.  one of the things i love about my building is that my landlord hires someone who shovels back there, so i don't usually have too much concern about being able to free my car from snow drifts.  trust me non-midwest friends...this is a HUGE perk. 

the other photo is the view from my apartment window.

baby it's cold outside...

i'm using the below zero windchill as an excuse for not having a new photo to upload today.  i know, not the best excuse since people have been known to take pictures inside.  regardless, i'm out of energy to be creative, so i'm going to post an oldie.

this is a young kate eating a cookie while wearing sweet cookie monster slippers.  :) those are some awesome bangs i've got going on as well.  :)

photo project days 8 and 9

yesterday,  the weather channel and local paper kept saying things like blizzard warning, winter storm warning, and ominously "the strength of the storm gathering force in the plains could approach levels not seen in 20 or 30 years."  after consulting with some trusted faculty friends yesterday, i decided that holding my night class would probably not be a good idea.   we can finish what we were going to to last night during finals week and it just didn't seem worth it to risk of car accidents and twisted ankles.  (plus those of you who have been to my school are well aware of the giant hills.  it was tricky enough getting down one of the in the civic at 4:00 when i finally left and it had only been snowing an hour!)


all this is build up to yesterday's and today's photos.  once i made it home and felt the sweet relief of not having to deal with class for the evening, i made myself a yummy cup of hot chocolate.

this is what dubuque looks like today!  we got ourselves a little winter wonderland going on.  :)

told ya!

we did get some snow last night, so this is the view from my office today.  the weather channel and local meteorologists keep talking about blizzard watches in the next few days, so i anticipate a lot more snow in our future.

my weekend was too fun so...

i'm a little behind on posting photos.  i've still been relying mostly on the iPhone for this project.  i like my camera, but it's a bit hard to lug around.  i thought about getting a smaller camera before i went to NYC but it didn't happen.  :)  maybe later.

so in the meantime, here are my photos for the last three days.  the first one is a fun picture of my mom from mother-daughter weekend in october.    she cracks me up.















the second photo is me and my great friend erin at the gap.  we tried on turtlenecks that we liked and then discovered that the collars were giant.  we opted not to get them, but we did look pretty cute.















finally, i took some time yesterday to get my christmas decorations put up (i even listened to christmas music while i was decorating...it was a nice afternoon actually.)  so here's a picture of my little tree.  i even made sure my yoga frogs were in the festive spirit.  :)

i predict my next photo will involve pictures of the first real snow fall for the winter.

okay, my coffee still hasn't kicked in today and i'm having some trouble being articulate.  this was another great weekend and i hate that it's already almost over.  one more week of classes and then finals though!!

my classroom is usually less scary

a few of my students have been on crutches in the last week, which means that two of my classes got moved from my usual building to the science hall.  negotiating four flights of stairs isn't easy to do when you're dealing with repaired ACLs and twisted ankles.  today's picture is of some stuff that was in  my classroom this morning.  i'm not sure what that giant saw is used for, and i'm not sure i want to know.  

I wish I could have taken a picture of tonight's sunset...

it was truly amazing.  unfortunately though i was driving my car and only had my iPhone with me which promptly froze up the very second i needed it.  so, i didn't get a new picture taken today.  though i tend to be a rule follower, it isn't clear if i have to take a new picture every day.  it appears others don't necessarily do that, so for today i'll post a picture of the sunset when i was on my way back to dubuque after thanksgiving.  pretty iowa skies.

decemeber photo project

my friend haley participates in this on her blog and inspired me to do the same. i figured since i've been slacking on posts lately that this would give me good motivation to keep my blog more up-to-date. of course, in my haste to get out of the door i forgot my digital camera (plus i'm not sure i could have fit anything else into my school bag), so today's picture is from my iPhone. here's a shot of my desk and perhaps an explanation for why the blog posts have been lacking!

(for the record...the stack on the left of the laptop aren't papers to grade...but it is a pile of stuff that i've been needing to sort through since august. *sigh*)

grading schmading...must finish NYC posts!

saturday in NYC was a busy and yet fantastic day! we had a lot planned, so we got up at a reasonable hour and got ready for the day. on my way to one of the bathrooms, an elderly lady was

peeking out her door saying in a new york accent of some variety: "excuse me....excuse me...are you the maid?" i opted to not answer that question, partly because i was tired and mostly because i figured that yellow pajama pants and an orange striped shirt couldn't possible be confused with a maid's uniform. i'm pretty sure shelley and i spent the rest of the day saying that phrase. :)

first on our agenda was finding some breakfast. we opted for bagels with schmeah and coffee. mine was del

icious!! cinnamon raisin with blueberry schmeah. yumtastic. shelley got an egg bagel with whitefish salad. i was skeptical, but she let me try some and it was really, really good.

after we were full of bagels, we jumped on the subway and headed to the staton island ferry. it turns out the ferry is free and it provides excellent views of manhattan, the statue of liberty, and ellis island. it was also a fun ride! it's going to be hard to put this into words, but it was also amazing to see the statue of liberty. i wasn't expecting to be as excited about it as i was. maybe because i've been spending so much time in my race and ethnicity class recently talking about immigration, but there's just something special and majestic about her. see for yourself.

lady liberty

ellis island

the big apple

kate and shells freezing their asses off

:)

the ferry ride was about 30 minutes, so when we got to staten island, we jumped on a ferry going back to the city, because we needed to get to times square in time to see AVENUE Q!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is one of my favorite musicals of all time (and probably the same is true for shelley as well). i've been listening the soundtrack for something like 4 years but hadn't seen the show so i was THRILLED when shelley informed me that it was going to be playing off-broadway. i literally almost shrieked in my office upon hearing that news but managed to restrain myself. we hustled to find the theater for the 2:00 matinee. we made it with time to stop at the lobby bar for a $9.00 glass of wine to enjoy during the show. (and no, it wasn't magic wine. it was quite good...but not worth $9.00 probably.)

the show was everything i hoped it would be. i knew the music, but i didn't know many of the plot points that connected the songs, so it was great to finally know why nicky was homeless and what happened with kate monster and princeton. i was so happy to be watching a show that i loved with shelley in new york city that i kept getting all misty-eyed. i'm a total cornball sometimes. during intermission we decided not to buy anymore $9.00 wines, but shelley did procure us two cups of ice which made drinking our mini-baileys a lot easier. :)

after the show, we were starving so we went to an upscale mexican restaurant that we noticed on the way to the theater. i had two of the best fish tacos i've ever had in my life. and we got yummy/fancy margaritas. yum!!

after drinks and food, we wander around times square more. we located one of my favorite things in the world, which was a tim horton's coffee shop. i learned about tim horton's when i was in montreal for a conference and was really glad we found one in NYC. i got a coffee and actually shelley paid for it because they wouldn't take my $20 bill because it was too large. um...

then, in our wanderings we located a cupcake shop that was featured on sex in the city. it's called magnolia and i will say it was worth waiting in drizzly rain to get a cupcake. plus it went perfectly with my latte!

our next stop was bourbon street bar and grill, which is a restaurant that claimed to have the spiciest bloody marys in the city. we tried them out and they were, in fact, quite spicy. i would say spicy enough that it was necessary to imbibe a hurricane afterwards. :)

we then walked back towards our hotel, stopping along the way to shop for souveneirs. our destination was actually a bar called cactus jacks. we were on a quest to see the texas a&m football game, and cactus jacks is the NYC aggie hub apparently. it wasn't exactly easy to find, but we did eventually get there. we had a fun time despite the fact that NYC aggies weren't very friendly to us and that the ags played a sucktastic game. we coped with both situations by drinking beer. (at one point NYC aggies were mistakenly drinking our beer as well...which i guess was inadvertently generous of us, though it would have been nice if they would have bought us a beer to make up for that. whatever.) aggies lost the game and shelley and i got a bit loopy on beer and shots. fortunately our hotel was not far away. we weren't quite partied out though so we went back to stag's head, got some food, got another beer, and then made our way back to the Pod so we could get some sleep. it was a really full and fun day!

the next morning we had to pack up and say goodbye to each other and to NYC. i jumped on the subway and headed back to JFK...realizing at one point that i wasn't on the train that i needed to be on, but luckily i rectified that situation without issue. :)

i'm so glad that i had this opportunity. i declared 2009 "the year of kate" back in january, and in so many ways it has been a phenomenal year. this trip was definitely a part of what has made this one of the best years i've had in a while. :) and 2009 isn't over quite yet, so who knows what else to come!

p.s.- thanks shelley for an awesome time. love you lots. are you the maid?