So, Spring is here! The weather has been getting warm and the trees and plant life have been exploding all over the place (as my allergies can attest). Though the semester has been keeping us hella busy, we've managed to turn some of our attention to gardening and built our first raised bed in the back yard. Bet you didn't know I could handle power tools! Either did I but all fingers and toes are still accounted for so...success! Now we can put that huge pile of horse poop we had delivered to use! But before we actually can grow anything in that bed, we need soil that actually grows stuff. The soil around here is so full of clay you could pretty much make pots from it straight out of the ground. That's why we went with the raised bed in the first place, you need some serious muscle to till this soil. It gives one a new appreciation for what the pioneers must have gone through. And we are not that tough.

We're moving into the home stretch of the

semester now. One or two more projects to go in each class and then

we'll be done. In drawing I wanted to do my landscape assignment in the

format of a Chinese landscape scroll painting. The style as it turned out

isn't really Chinese and though it's hard to tell from the picture, I gave it a little bit of a 3-D look by putting the different parts on different panels separated by foam board. I still have some issues with it but it was a fun experiment. The title, written in Chinese at the bottom says

"Central New York State." Also completed for my Typography class, a funky calender page. Obviously it didn't have to be functional as a calender, just an interesting design. By the way, this one was rendered on the computer, not by hand. Next assignments include designing a wine label and I have a couple abstract self portraits to whip up also.

Last weekend, Newman held its annual Literary Festival. This year's theme was Sci-Fi, and the main topic was about the future of literature in a digital world. I divided my time between my projects and the festival but Sue ended up having to introduce and manage most of the panels so she was there all weekend. I thought the keynote speakers were very interesting but there were some issues with turnout a

nd ideas are already being tossed around about how to make next years event more exciting.

Bryan, the english faculty who usually throws the fest will be

on sabbatical next year which means Sue and her fellow faculty will be taking a more

active role in planning it.

We were also happy to have our friends Deborah and Neil out for a visit so that Deborah could present some of her fantastic poetry at the festival. Though the fest dominated our time, we did get to hang out with them a little and show them the house when it was over.

We're excited that our good friends Sonja and Michael (Sonja shown here cuddling Kirk) have bought a home right here in College Hill, just on the other side of the park from us, practically neighbors! Our evil plans are coming to fruition, one by one we will lure them all here! Hmmahahaah! From all appearances they too found themselves a pretty sweet deal, a lovely house and the closing process appeared to go quickly with no major snags.

A few weeks ago we celebrated our friend Kelly's birthday at a place just around the corner from us, called Margarita's. It's a mexican restaurant and dance club that looks a little run down though festive, from the outside but is a popular local spot, packed on the weekends mainly because of the fun atmosphere and the live cover bands that play Friday and Saturday night. Its popularity probably isn't because of the food, which is pretty bland as mexicana goes. And yes, cover bands play a pretty prominent roll in the local music scene, but it was a fun evening

with friends listening to the greatest hits of the 70's, 80's, 90's and today!

Oooh, speaking of cool music, we did discover a great local joint just a little further down Douglas Ave from us called Let's be Frank, or Get Franked, or whatever the name is this week. It's a specialty hot dog shop that serves a crazy array a wacky dogs ranging from the traditional New York and Coney Island dogs to the bizarre caramel and other desert dogs. They load these puppies up with so

much toping that rest assured you'll be wearing half of it, but mmmm, it's sloppy good! The atmosphere is urban and hip, the walls covered in neat graffiti and stencil art and it may be the only place in town were you can chill listening to cool indie music. The word on the street is they're moving soon, noooooo! Just to Old Town a little further down Douglas, yaaaay!

I hate to end this blog on a sad note, but it seemed the most appropriate place to bring this up. This weekend I received word that my grandpa who lives in Puerto Rico has been taken to the hospital for a kidney infection. He was diagnosed a few years back with Parkinson's and has been getting progressively worse since. They don't expect him to last very long so I'm hoping to catch a flight to PR for at least a couple days this week. The last few times I'd seen him, he wasn't himself. First of all he could hardly speak, and the man loved to talk. He loved to tell stories and laugh about them, always good natured and fun. It was hard to watch him deteriorate and I'm sure it was especially hard for grandma who cared for him day and night, staying up all night with him if he couldn't sleep. He was born and raised in Cabo Rojo PR, and worked on a cane plantation when he was a teen. After highschool he moved to New York where he met grandma. She was ten

years younger than him, not even a teen yet when they first met but obviously they didn't get together until later on, after grandpa had spent some time in California trying to break into acting and then joining the military. World War II ended before he could be deployed and he returned to New York, married grandma and lived in Spanish Harlem where my dad and aunt Nancy were born. They moved to Long Island when my Dad was in his early teens around the time that Maryann and Ruby, my younger aunts, were born. In their later years they moved back to Cabo and I'm glad that I got to visit them a couple times there. I'm sure that grandpa, Roger Laracuente Rodriguez, will be content to pass on in the place where he was born. I already miss him.

Hello peoples. It's been a little while but that's how goes the schizophrenic blur known as the college semester. Since I just managed to wrap up a five page art history paper, I figured I'd celebrate by dusting off this here blog. So far it's

been another whirlwind for Sue and I, but I, for one, have been

enjoying getting my hands dirty in drawing class

dusting off those extremely rusty skillz of mine.

First assignment: some drapes. Second: a still

life. Having never tried my luck with pastels

before, I was a little frustrated at first but things

came together somewhat. Of course, splashes of

mysterious color are turning up all over the

place: on the carpet in my room, on my bag, on my forehead without me noticing it until a few hours later. Good times.

This semester Sue was excited to get the chance to teach a one credit origami class, part of the

Freshmen Interest Groups, fun classes

designed to make the new students' first year more enjoyable. The origami class actually enjoyed the highest

enrollment out of all the classes included in the program. Go Sue!

Sue and I teamed up to contribute to High Tea, the yearly English-style tea event that the sisters at Newman throw. Sue recruited her origami class to help her make beautiful paper flower bouquets and assorted cranes and other animals for the table center pieces and I designed twenty unique table tents containing various fun facts about the history of tea.

This past weekend, Sue and I drove about an hour north of Kansas

City, a four plus hour drive from Wichita, to attend a Medievalist conference that Sue was presenting at. First of all, once you go more than an hour north of here, everything's covered in snow. While we get hit every once in a while, we are lucky enough to live just below the snow line. The conference was just over the boarder in Missouri, where the plains are folded into an almost repetitive undulation of hills. It was held at a Benedictine Monastery called Conception Abbey built in the 1870's. As we drove into the

night on ever more rural and isolated roads, I had to wonder why in the world they held this thing so far away from... everything. But when we came over that last rise

and saw the massive old buildings of the campus looming over the barren white landscape, I understood. It was an awesome sight and a peaceful place for contemplation...ya know, if that's your bag. And the fields surrounding it are dotted with giant wind-turbines, a cool view.

Though she was nervous, Sue presented her riddle, and fielded her questions like a pro. I sat in on part of the days activities and then it was time to cloister myself (get it, teehee) in the library and work on that friggin art history paper. It's a neat place, though.

We plan on staying there again sometime.

Geeze, so much happening I can't remember it

all...don't...know...what...day...it...is...

Well, anyhow, I'll finish with a little road trip I took back in January when Sue visited Nan and Pop for a week after

the holidays. The destination: Independence, Kansas, a little over an hour due east-southeast from Wichita. The purpose: to find the actual site of the Little House on the Prairie!

Come on, like you didn't watch that show throughout most of your childhood! How could I live an hour away and not check it out? So, more accurately, it's probably the site of Laura Ingalls' log cabin as

determined by the state of Kansas based on information in Ingalls' book, other records and archeological evidence. Local volunteers rebuilt the cabin based on the description from the book and ya know what? It's damn tiny. Imagine living on the windy plains in a cabin so small you have to hunch down so's not to bang your head. They built a post office and general store on the site as well. Anyway, it was interesting and Independence is a pretty nice small town too.

Sue and I will be visiting New York this summer, so stay tuned. We hope to see as many of youz as possible. Love you guys, we'll talk to you soon.

um...don't ask.

Germanate08 - Around Again by Germanate08

Germanate08 - Around Again  by  Germanate08

Happy Holidays to all y'all, we hope you've had plenty of good food and good company. Sue and I have had a slightly low-key holiday season, a little strange to be celebrating away from everyone, but we've had the company of some of our good Wichitain friends to help us celebrate. About a week before New Years, Susan found out about The Flaming Lips New Years Eve Freakout! The third annual NYE party/concert that the band has in their hometown of Oklahoma City. I've liked the Flaming Lips for some time but have never seen them live and I've heard that their shows are pretty outrageous. We were able to get tickets at short notice for pretty cheap along with a sweet deal on a room at the Crown Plaza for the night (ah, the wonders of celebrating New Years anywhere but New York). OKC is only two and half hours away due south, a little closer than KC. We ate at a

swanky tapas bar in their Brick Town area (similar to Wichita's Old Town, the renovated warehouse district) and managed to visit the memorial for the bombing on New Years Day before leaving. We even stopped by a local Macy's to use up a little more of the gift cards we received for our wedding. The concert was fun and crazy. The stage was full of people dressed as flowers, bumble bees and butterflies and so was the audience. They dropped about a bazzillion balloons at midnight and then proceeded to play the entirety of Pink Floyd's the Dark Side of the Moon. We plan on returning to OKC some time in the

future to check out more of what there is to do there.

Christmas was low-key. We had a delicious Indian feast with our friends Marguerite and David Christmas Eve and have otherwise been enjoying the extra free time to hang out and see movies and relax. A couple weeks ago

we visited a town about forty-five minutes north called Lindsborg, a Swedish town where we enjoyed yummy Swedish pastries and crafts (the pastries were yummy, the crafts we just looked at) and learned how to say Velcomen and God Yule. It's a cute little town guarded by rows of wild Dala (large wood carved horses of traditional Swedish design).

Well, after months of the sporting activity I like to call

Exxxxtreme Sedentary Lifestyle, I've decided to sign

up with a local Taekwondo school, Grandmaster Kim's Academy. I stopped training at Grace Wu's Kung Fu before we went to Guatemala and haven't moved my ass further than the distance from the house to the car since then, so I've felt in pretty awful shape, and since I do have a blackbelt in Taekwondo, I decided to return to my roots. Of course, I had to suffer through the "walking like an old man" phase which follows the first class but I'm hitting my stride now.

Sue and I continue to learn about cool places to go here in Wichita, like N&J's Bakery an authentic middle eastern restaurant with good Shawarma and Gyros and belly dancers on Saturday nights. Then there is the hard to describe C Major's, literally around the corner from our house, which isn't a bar (they don't serve drinks) and isn't a cafe (they don't serve food). Basically it's just an old storefront that from the outside looks like it's been closed for decades, stuffed full of eclectic musical items like old acoustic guitars and country western band posters and tubas hanging from the ceiling and those old wooden cable spools that the phone companies used to use here converted for use as tables. There's just enough room in the corner for a band

to set up and play and if you want drinks or food it's BYO whatever.

We hope you're all surviving the cold and the snow (we finally got ours, though not as bad as back east) and the post holiday blues. Here's to the new decade! (Holy crap, where did the past ten years go?) Oh and the pigs say hi, at least I think that's what they're saying, it's all squeaks to me.

BwBB (Born with the Boom Bap) by Germanate08

BwBB (Born with the Boom Bap)  by  Germanate08

So the semester is almost over, this coming week is finals week and I don't have too much going on so I'm starting to relax a little. Sue on the other hand is hip deep in student papers, but good thing she luuuuuvs reading student papers or she might be kind of annoyed at the moment. Here you can see a little of what I've been working on, some of my design projects and final prints for photography and Saracat helping me with my philosophy homework. It's been fun and I'm looking forward to diving into next semester, but first: a nice relaxing winter break!

I seem to have a new song done every time I post one of these blogs, and the more I think about it, it's probably the main reason I post them (just kidding, sort of). So check out new tune BwBB when you get a chance. I kind of like www.Soundcloud.com, as my new go-to music posting sight but I still post on MySpace, Garageband and others.

We're settling nicely into our new house. The break will provide us more opportunity to do some of the work we need to do on the place and to at least put away some of the piles of crap that have been sitting upstairs waiting for a home. We even had our first party, thrown for members of the latin and greek class that Sue attends every other Saturday at Eighth Day Books a

block or so down the road. Hanging out with that wacky bunch has made me want to study latin or greek or both with them, but I must stay focused.

Pigs! Pigs pigs pigs! Guinea, that is! That's right, we have ourselves some new pigs, names: Kirk and Spock. They are youngins but getting big and fat quickly. Sue is in love. Sara is terrified.

We hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving and we're sorry we didn't get to see more of you over the holiday. We did manage to visit New York for a whirlwind few days to attend Sue's friends Mary and Greg's wedding. We even got into the city to check out the awesome Tim Burton

exhibit at the MOMA. Normally I would never go to an event like that on the day after

Thanksgiving or any other special touristy day of the year, so standing shoulder to shoulder with a million other museum goers and shuffling like cattle through the exhibit detracted slightly from the experience, but it's a great show (open through April 26, so go see it if you haven't yet!). The wedding was very nice, the reception held at Lands End in Sayville, right on the water, beautiful setting. Sorry, I forgot my camera so

I don't have any images but we had fun and thanks to TJ and

Shannon for hanging with us and letting us stay at their place. As always, one of the most exciting things we did while we were in New York was eat: gyros, bagels, pizza, sushi, soulfood, we covered most of it. I wanted to eat at a Puerto Rican restaurant that I liked on 51st and 9th but it's gone now. Apparently all the Boricua have left New York and been replaced by Dominicans. Oh well, same food

basically. Now I just need to re-calibrate my internal GPS to

take me to all the DR restaurants.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season with friends and family and that we'll get a chance to see you soon!

The cat is packed and ready to go. Go where you ask? Hmmmm? Oh did I not mention..? Did I neglect to tell you..? Sue and I now own a friggin house! If you can't believe it, I double dog can't believe it. I thought I'd be living upstairs or downstairs from total strangers my entire life but here we are, an entire dwelling to ourselves...crazy! I've posted a few pics on my Flickr page, but not many. Better to check out the virtual tour I put together of our new home above or here on my YouTube channel.

The house is located in College Hill one of the oldest and most desirable neighborhoods in Wichita. It's full of big beautiful old homes just a couple miles east of downtown and a short

five minute commute from Newman. We knew that old houses meant more repairs but we managed to find a place that's been pretty well taken care of. The biggest problem is that it needs a new paint job desperately and we're hoping we won't have to replace any of the siding once we've peeled away the old paint, but we will see and we brought the price down low enough that we think it will be worth it. It's a 1930's bungalow, two stories

and a half basement which isn't finished but is sealed and dry and contains the washer and

dryer that the sellers very nicely left for us! There are three bedrooms and two baths and a breakfast nook. The backyard is small, taken up mostly by the fairly new two car garage the sellers had built but it's good to have the garage too and Sue is already planning out her

extraordinary medieval herb garden and other landscaping projects. We've been told by several people how nice our neighbors on both sides are so we're looking forward to meeting them. A couple blocks away is a small but nice park and a public pool. We live on English St, a fitting address for the professor and it's a lovely red brick cobblestone street. The pics show the sellers furniture, so it's considerably more empty at this moment.

We've just started moving all our stuff over one car load at a time but luckily we still have the apartment for two more weeks so we don't have to move everything over at once. We don't have much furniture to fill it yet but hopefully that will change soon and then we are open for visitors! (Hint hint)

The house buying process went remarkably smooth and quick compared to most people's experiences on the coasts from what we've heard. The benefits of a relatively stable housing market. But it was still a stressful experience since neither of us had much experience with a purchase like this. But it all worked out alright.

What else has happened...the house buying experience has made me forget pretty much everything else going on in our lives. Oh yeah,

the semester has been going well. We're both busy but making it work. I won't mention any names but someone you know may in fact be getting straight A's in all his classes. I know, he must be, like, crazy smart. Anyway, a couple weeks ago we went back to KC to visit the greatest haunted houses ever with Sue's colleague in the English dept, Bryan, who organizes this trip for the students and anyone else

interested every Halloween season. Those boys (or girls) know how to put together a scary haunted house. I mentioned them last year but this year we went to two different places, one modeled after Poe, the other after classic horror movies. The setting, one of KC's derelict industrial districts full of big broken down warehouses, is half the fun and you get more boo for your buck then any haunted houses I've been to. The late night drive back, arriving in Wichita at 4 or 5 in morning, was brutal, but it was a good time.

Anyway, that really is pretty much all that has been going on for the last couple weeks, so I'll sign off now but we hope to see or hear from you all soon. I'm not posting the address on this blog but I have included it in the e-mail reminder to you all. Be well and talk to you soon!