SWIMMING NEWS: IU swim meet coming up this weekend vs. Ohio State and University of Iowa, news and photos next week. In the meantime, here's a fun photo of just some of the old CSC Swim Club crowd home for the Christmas holidays and enjoying catching up with one another. I can't help it, I look at this photo and I still see them as 7-8 year olds from years gone by...they have been friends for a long long time: all grown up now.
Photo: Back Row: Matt (Indiana University), Kiernan (Xavier University), Daniel (Princeton), Elliot (Tulane); Middle Row: Rhiannon (Purdue University), Elizabeth (Dennison), Scott (University of Tampa), Nik (Boston University); Front Row: Devon (Indiana University), Stephanie (Pepperdine), Logan (Ball State), and Michael (George Washington University).
COOKING BYTES: Received some new cookbooks for Christmas: Ina's new Foolproof; Deb Perelman's The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook; Donna Hay's Modern Classics I; Donna Hay's Fruit; Donna Hay's Chicken. Received Nick Malgieri's Bread earlier as I didn't want to wait until Christmas. Always fun to have new recipes to try.
FAV NEW FIND: I received a Nook for Christmas and it is fast becoming a favorite. I know, I know, you all already have a Nook or a Kindle, and I am way late to the party. A very large part of me wanted to protect the booksellers as we know them...I'm afraid that soon the average books will disappear, so I wasn't certain
that I wanted one actually, I love the feel of opening a new book, the
feel of a book in my hand, carrying around a book, the smell of a new
book, etc. And I do still love all that and have no intention of going
completely the Nook route and being bookless. The deciding factor was
the size of the print in books. I love to read history books and am finding lately that the publishers seem to be decreasing the size of the print, which is not a lot of fun for me when I am reading several hundred pages of tiny tiny print. With the Nook I can make my print larger, bolder, etc. The other much-appreciated benefit is that it has a backlight so that I can read in the middle of a sleepless night without turning on the bedside lamp and waking Mark (this might be, in fact, why he gave it to me). It's great for travel, easier to carry around than say four or five books (all nicely stored inside the Nook). A strange thing I really like is that one just reads one side of the page, i.e. the right side, and for some reason, I just love that. I was hesitate originally because I thought I would need to spend a lot of money downloading books for it, but the libraries I have borrowing privileges from all have extensive collections of free downloads for countless history books and I can be happily reading within minutes of logging on and downloading from those collections. Definitely my favorite new find.
FAV THIS PAST WEEK: We had a couple days of 60+ temperatures and for this non-loving winter gal, it was just wonderful. January weather of the norm, however, returned today and will be hanging around for the foreseeable future. Sigh.
WEEK IN REVIEW: Doing my New Year sorting of this and that and trying to gift things we no longer use or need that others could be using, visiting Mark's parents (his mother continues to experience concerning health issues, his father is doing very well after an autumn of not), warm enough to get all the outdoor holiday lights down, packed up, and put away, and possibly trying to get back into blogging food groups as truly, it makes for more interesting eating around here...left to my own devices I am not dependably creative or exciting when it comes to planning meals. It's also very helpful when I think "what was that recipe I made with the...." as I can look it up on the blog.
WEEK IN REVIEW: Doing my New Year sorting of this and that and trying to gift things we no longer use or need that others could be using, visiting Mark's parents (his mother continues to experience concerning health issues, his father is doing very well after an autumn of not), warm enough to get all the outdoor holiday lights down, packed up, and put away, and possibly trying to get back into blogging food groups as truly, it makes for more interesting eating around here...left to my own devices I am not dependably creative or exciting when it comes to planning meals. It's also very helpful when I think "what was that recipe I made with the...." as I can look it up on the blog.
LOOKING FORWARD TO: At the IMA...Graphite, click here for details. At the ISO: Bruckner's Symphony No. 4, click here for details.