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!

It's been a long time since I've updated this here blog but that's what student life will do to you. Too many frat-parties and all night wii golf marathons to keep up with. When you go back to school, you simply have to spend a little more time upside-down with a spigot of stale Bud going up yer nose. Themz the rules, I didn't write 'em.

Anyhow, we hope you all are doing well, keepin on keepin on and whatnot. We've been pretty busy now that school has started up again. I have my share of work to do now that I have a full time schedule and I'm still trying to work as many hours as I can on top of it. Personally, I'm

having a blast, though. Friends U canceled my Mandarin class (the bastards) but I slipped into a computer graphics class instead, which does advance my major, so it's all good. But it feels great to be working out the ol' noggin, dusting off the cobwebs, learning how to text without Teach seeing, even though he/she isn't an idiot and it's obvious anyway. As for Sue, judging by the weight of the bag 'o crap (student's papers, same thing, ooooooh) that we lug back and forth from school everyday, has her hands full as usual. She reads, she mutters obscenities, she gives up and bakes something, gives them all a B - , the usual. But we're good and thinking about y'all.

Oh! Before I go on: new tune, new video, check them out please please please. Watch the new vid for my track My Thang here or above. This blog doesn't allow for wide screen format though, so if you want to see it in all its pirated glory, you gotta go to YouTube. Also! Go to any of the following pages (Myspace, Garageband, Soundcloud)to hear a brand spanking new tune, Around Again, and if you don't feel like dancing, then nod your head politely for a few seconds before you go back to check out

whether your Farmville corn crop is ready for harvest.

We were happy to have a visitor late this summer when our good buddy Erika (one of the super-duper photography team at our wedding, to some of you), came to stay a weekend with us. We got to take her around to Final Friday and a Maxfield Parish exhibit that happened to be at the WAM (Wichita Art Museum) during her

stay. We showed her the sights and, by the time she flew home, she was exhausted from the sheer crushing weight of all the fun she'd had.

A million years ago, before classes started, Sue and I got to enjoy one of the local camp sites when we drove a half hour east to El Dorado lake and

park. The lake, (like pretty much all lakes in Kansas) is man-made, created by the Army Corp of Engineers and the half submerged dead trees that dot the water make for an interesting view. We had fun but learned how difficult tent camping can be on the plains.

It took some searching before we found a spot where our tent wouldn't be flattened by the

relentless winds and even then, the sound of the wind through the trees was roughly equivalent to sleeping on the shoulder of the Brooklyn

Queens Expressway, just

without the honking and bad words. I'm sure the sound must be pleasant to a Kansan, but to me, lying in our little flimsy tent, it sounded something like eight hours of the world coming to an end with just a thin

sheet of nylon between us and the apocalypse. For Sue it was slightly worse, since she picked the windward side of our abode and was attacked by the tent wall pretty much all night. We didn't sleep a whole lot but it was a fun experience and the park and nearby town are very nice.

A couple weekends ago, Sue and I made it back to the Kansas State Fair! Yes, it's that time again and we were there bright and early. Sue had volunteered to work the Newman booth for a morning shift but we both received free entry and some (deep fried) eats on Newman, sweet! However, we were horrified to realize that, after a year of thinking about it, regretting not having it when we were there last year, and impatiently waiting for the fair to come around again so we could finally try it, the Hot Beef Sunday had been discontinued! Noooooo! Sue was especially broken up about it, drowning her sorrows in a couple helpings of deep fried bacon but we assume it wasn't the same.

Last weekend Sue and volunteered to work a big Newman fundraising event called the Party on the Ponderosa. One of the wealthy local families, the Stecklines (whom the art gallery at Newman is named after) held the big western-themed hootnanny (spelling? anyone?) at their ranch outside of town. On display were a collection of genuine frontier era covered wagons, an auction, live

music and fireworks. Sister Charlotte (real-life Newman nun) even got into the act during a western themed shoot out skit and blew up a

building with a tommy gun. No joke. You had to be there.

Anyway, I will only briefly imply that Sue and I may be looking for a house, and we may have made some progress on a particular

house that we want, but that's all I'm saying! You don't want to jinx it do ya? You'll just have to wait for the next update to find out if anything amazing and wonderful has happened in our lives. Wish us luck!