Labor Day Weekend

SooAnn and I spent Labor Day weekend visiting my friends Aaron and Joy in Sterling, IL. They were some of my best friends in Connecticut, and after a year of living so far away they missed me so much that they decided to move closer :) Or maybe they just missed the Midwest and wanted to be closer to family... Whatever the reason, it's great to have them closer and I look forward to having them visit Lafayette sometime and introduce them to some of you.

One of the highlights of the visit was a trip to the Reagan boyhood home in Dixon, IL (from 1920-1923). Actually he lived in 5 different homes in Dixon, but this is the one that has been preserved. It is a pretty normal home... nothing fancy. In fact, he shared a small room with his brother.

I think that I especially enjoyed visiting the home because President Reagan is the first president I remember and he was president during my growing up years. I find it interesting that he was the 4th president during my lifetime, and I was only a few weeks shy of 7 when he took office. One of my earliest national event memories was of the assassination attempt on March 30, 1981.

A question for my readers... What is your earliest nation event memory? I'm almost afraid to ask because it might make me feel old.

Great Horned Owl

You never know what you might see when you work outdoors in nature, and yesterday was a great example of why I have my camera along almost all the time! My coworker Scott and I were driving back the lane to the hog lagoon we are monitoring when a big bird flew out of the corn along the lane. I had no idea what it was... it didn't fly like any of the more common large birds. When we got back to the lagoon, it was standing guard over one of our instruments. It was a good distance away, and I didn't realize what it was until I zoomed in and took some photos. The owl apparently roosts on our 60 foot tower to hunt and has been around for a while, since a few weeks ago Scott had found an owl pellet (which he thought was a very large animal dropping until today) near the top of the tower. If you don't know what an owl pellet is check out this link: http://www.kidwings.com/owlpellets/index.htm

Tippecanoe County Fair

SooAnn and I went to the fair Saturday evening, but things were not really in full swing yet. Anybody interested in joining me there some evening this week to check it out?

July

It's been nearly 2 months since my last post, so I decided it was time for a quick update. We've had some big deadlines at work and equipment that has been uncooperative at times, so my weeks have been very busy. I've kept busy on the weekends spending time with SooAnn, career class friends, and my family.

Speaking of my family, I'm excited that we'll be heading to Ohio on Thursday to visit my parents for an extended weekend. I'm hoping to pick some wild black raspberries next to some of my dad's fields, but they've had an extremely dry summer so the raspberry supply has been low. Black raspberries are one of my favorites, especially fresh ones over vanilla ice cream.

This upcoming weekend is also the 1-year anniversary of my first visit to Lafayette. I stayed with my sister in Indianapolis and she rode up with me to check out the area and find a place to live. God has been so faithful over this past year! Thanks to all of you for your friendship!

Here's a picture of a budding meteorologist (my nephew) looking even more excited about anemometers than I am (it that's possible).

It's official....

we're dating!!

Happy Hollow Tree Photos

By popular demand (from Dana), here are a couple of photos from the Happy Hollow hike of March 31. Kind of reminds me of Treebeard from Lord of the Rings.

Stowaway and a couple of stickerings that might have been

These photos were taken on a walk in Armstrong Park (and surrounding neighborhood) last Sunday. The first photo shows a stowaway we came across (does anybody recognize him?) and the others show simulated stickerings that, although they didn't actually happen, would have been classic.