As of today, all four varieties of tomato in our garden are changing color! We may only have two weeks left here, but they should be two very delicious weeks!

I probably won't be posting much till after we move (Aug. 14-15), but expect some pictures and updates afterwards...

I had no idea squash plants were evil creatures bent on taking over the world!



But I guess that shows how little I know. These squash plants are probably around 10 feet long, and when I tried to rearrange them this morning, I found that they were encroaching upon the road, most of the way through the next community garden plot (which fortunately is also one we're taking care of), and even climbing almost all the way down into the 6 or so foot creekbed behind.

There are even a few beautiful little squashies that might be big enough to harvest by the time we have to move:



And tons of tomatoes, growing in bunches like grapes on the vine (and starting to turn red):



And a few little peppers:



Plus tons of green beans every couple of days. Just a few things to be excited about before we leave!

I got a job offer last week, and took it.

Looking ahead to leaving Bloomington, I suddenly see very clearly the many wonderful things here, and how deeply I have become involved in certain aspects of this community over the past 6 years. There are of course the university and our colleagues, but there's much more as well: going to church this morning, I realized that I was going to have to say farewell to the church where we got married (and the pastor who married us) and where I was able to help with the winter homeless shelter. Then there are our immediate surroundings--our house, imperfect but comfortable; the garden(s), where we'll miss what look to be bumper crops of squash and fall raspberries; and the neighborhood that we've gone on so many walks through. There are also the broader benefits of living here: proximity to my grandparents, wonderful state parks and forests, an unbeatable (I'm pretty convinced that term should be used literally) concert schedule, and even cheap flights out of Indianapolis.

Several things will make moving easier. First, the knowledge that we'd have to in a year anyway. Also the little unfortunate things here: perhaps I won't find such a thoughtful pastor where we're moving, but at least the services are probably less ridiculously long, and perhaps we'll have to downgrade to a smaller apartment or longer commute, but at least the kitchen floor probably won't give me splinters or be almost impossible to sweep.

So we'll move to Amherst, MA sometime in August, and I start my one-year contract at UMass September 6. The salary dwarfs our combined income here, Sara will be able to work on her dissertation full time, and I'll get to teach some really fun-looking classes and get some great experience. We're also told that the 5 colleges area is beautiful, and it sounds like there are more interesting shops and things to do than perhaps one can find in Indiana. And hey, it's a kind of homecoming for me: I was born in Boston a little over 28 years ago. I didn't get to live there long then--but now I get my chance!

Here are those panoramic pictures, presented with minimal text interference. I reduced the file size to get them uploaded more easily, so you can't zoom in very much, but they'll give you the idea!

First, a view on our backpacking trip in Zion National Park:



Some views of Bryce "Canyon":





And a view of the nearby Red Canyon:

We're back!

The garden had rabbit damage when we returned, which initially I was very upset about. The rabbit ate all of our backyard garden's beets, spinach, and peppers, and a few of our peas, leeks, lettuce, and tomatoes, and a kind of flea beetle has been munching on our eggplants. Since then I've been coming to terms with this. It helps that our community garden plot has some incredible-looking beets and a few surviving peppers. In addition, the beans and squash in the plot are incredibly happy. But the high point is this:



This is the image of perfection.

I imagine Nate's blog is going to take care of the trip report, as his pictures always do the best at capturing scenery and scope. But f I can figure out how, I'll share a few of the panoramic photos I stitched together. Hopefully soon...

In a few days, we leave for a Chenette vacation camping in Utah. Upon our return, we'll almost immediately leave for Canada to celebrate Oma and Opa Bakker's 60th anniversary. This will be a period of changes!

Even by the time we get back from Utah, I imagine our garden will be pretty different. The lettuce may have gone to seed and gotten bitter from this incredible heat; the arugula, spinach, and herbs will certainly run to seed. There probably won't be too many strawberries left. But the the peas should still be going, the raspberries should be in full swing, and we might even be able to harvest a few early beets when we get back from Canada. And if they keep growing as they have been the past week, the squash plants will be huge!

My summer schedule will also have changed. The day after we get back from Canada, I start teaching 90 minutes 5 days a week. I absolutely cannot wait to teach this class again, because I love the music so much, but I have been relishing the past two weeks. I've been teaching myself more web design and coding skills (CSS and HTML5, currently working on Javascript), doing a lot of weeding, and making (I think) some real progress on dissertation-related research. I'm not sure how much of that will be able to continue. But a few raspberries would make up for a lot....

It's hard to believe that it was ever this cold in Bloomington:



It's getting up to 93 today, and above 90 most of the week. At least our plants like the sun! (Especially after last week's tornadoes...) We've been eating giant salads every day. This one has some beet "greens" added:



And by the time we return from our upcoming camping trip to Utah, we should have a surfeit of raspberries (on the right):

Summer can finally start now! We just got back (last night) from a rather long trip: we visited Grinnell briefly (actually, twice), each delivered a paper at a conference, and visited some really good friends in Colorado. Parts of this trip were certainly vacation, but for the most part, they didn't quite qualify as "summer" because the days were rainy and cool. We did a lot of fun things in Denver, though, some of which are pictured below:

We went to Red Rocks, where there is an incredible amphitheater and a nice hike:



We saw dinosaur tracks at Dinosaur Ridge:



We saw some awesome rocks at the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum:




And we toured an old-fashioned candy factory:



Upon arriving home, we found that some garden plants have exceeded our expectations, while others are a bit disappointing. In the positive category:

spinach
beets
arugula
lettuce (tons!)
strawberries
raspberries (getting there, anyway)
leeks
peas

In the disappointing category:

tomatoes
peppers
eggplants

Next year, we'll have to try out some different methods of starting those last three...

Yesterday Sara and I sang in a fundraising concert for our local choir, Voces Novae at the Stone Age Institute. What a cool place! It's a beautiful building--most of the stone, we were told, is about 330 million years old (though there was a piece of flint over every doorway that was a paltry 80 million years old), and some of the stones had fossils in them.

The directors (seen in this video about the Institute) talked about two kinds of "experimental archaeology" that they have been doing lately. One is teaching a group of bonobos (in Des Moines!) to make and use stone tools--apparently, they have also taught the bonobos to play instruments, and Paul McCartney and Peter Gabriel jammed with them for a few hours. The other experiments they've been doing were butchering elephants and wildebeest with stone hand axes. We got to see one of the directors make just such a hand axe: he's really good.

In addition, the directors have a rock band that records (apparently at the rate of about one song a year) educational rock songs, one of which we performed in arrangement. They said that soon they will upload these songs to their website (fromthebigbang.org), so I urge you to check that site in about a week or so and listen to "From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web," which gives you the highlights of known history, and their other song, which apparently goes through human origins (imagine singing "Australopithecus" in a laid-back reggae-flavored sort of way).

I don't know what happened today. There was some sort of yellow thing up in the sky, with some blue stuff around it, and it was all very shiny. What happened to the grey we've become used to, and the water continuously falling? Surely 9 inches of rain for this month (plus more coming) is not enough?

I completed several important tasks today. One was selling the logic board of my old computer. It's hard to believe, but I've only sold about 2/3 of the parts and already the total income (for a broken, 6-year-old computer!) has been well over $150 (of course, before shipping and ebay fees, the former of which in particular has been expensive).

Second was spending money--on a new bike! The axle on the old one broke, and the people at the bike shop said they just kept finding rusted-out parts and problems, and suggested I get a new one. Here's the sweet new ride (and the other sweet, well, still somewhat new, gas-powered ride):




The third was to complete a draft of my paper for the Music Theory Midwest conference. For once, I'm actually quite happy with the paper in its early stages, but as usual, it's far too long. There's a lot of example-making to do still, which is bad because it's time-consuming but good because I think some of the text will end up in examples, freeing up space. This was actually the second big project for the semester, the first (and more important) being becoming ABD, and the third and yet to come being preparing for teaching this summer. Obviously, I've still got some time on that last one. It'll feel good to get this paper into almost-done shape, which I plan to do by the end of the week--it'll be a big load off.

Okay, the cat who bullies his sister (just look at the difference between their tails!)...



...conks out on the couch...



...always jumps up on the island to help us when we make yogurt...



...and is just so cute and fuzzy...



...needs his food. Time to go!

Happy Easter!

Here's what our garden looked like almost exactly a year ago, April 16, 2010:



And here's what our garden looks like today, April 19, 2011:



(the tarp is holding some mulch that will go around the tiny plants in the back when they're bigger.)

The biggest difference is the strawberries, which are much healthier this year! But even the rhubarb seems larger. I don't know if it's because we had an earlier spring or because they are more established--probably a combination.

Even more exciting is a raspberry comparison. Last year, we had six plants, most of which looked about like this on May 1, 2010:



Today, we have over 20 plants. Here's most of the patch:



Let's get a few more of this year's highlights so far. Here's a close-up of the rhubarb, just because it's so big, beautiful, and green (and potentially tasty):



Some of our lettuce that survived the winter:



Some peas, which are planted all around the garden and in pots such as this one along the fence:



A close-up of a small portion of our large patch of lily-of-the-valleys at the back corner of the house, which are just starting to open with their intoxicating smell:



And the tail end of the tulips in the front:



We hope to plant most of the rest of our seedlings--basil, cilantro, three kinds of tomatoes, and eggplant (only leaving three kinds of peppers, which don't like the cold)--this weekend. That is, of course, if it ever stops raining.

Fortunately, there's always something to do inside when it's raining, like read a good book.



Or, if you prefer, collapse behind one.

It's spring, and things are growing everywhere. A week and a half ago, we transplanted our seedlings of lettuce, arugula, and leek, and planted beet, snap pea, and spinach seeds that have just sprouted in the last day or two. We also took the plants that lived over the winter--a lot of lettuce and parsley, a few cilantro plants, and two oregano plants--and put them in rows, and they are all getting quite big! The rhubarb has exploded, the raspberries are full of leaves and sending up new stalks all over the place, and over half the strawberry plants have flowers already. Our daffodils in the front are already done blooming, and the tulips started taking over a few days ago. The redbuds and magnolias have been in bloom: in fact, we noticed one magnolia yesterday that had already lost almost all of its flowers. It's all so exciting, but at the same time, there's just a little bit of teasing annoyance: when will we finally get to *eat* things from the garden? We're hoping the (overwintered) lettuce and strawberries will be within the next two weeks, but most everything else will be at the end of May or later.

I think (I hope!) that my health problems are improving. There's never really all that much to say on this front, as any improvement usually seems fleeting. But my knees are clearly better (though not yet pain-free), and I'm pretty sure the same is true of my shoulder and stomach. Healing just takes so much time! It seems like it will still be a long time till I can go running and freely drink tea and wine, eat oranges and spicy food, and relax on my left arm. We'll see. Hopefully all these restrictions on what I can do will pay off.

And I've become a computer parts seller! After months of not wanting to deal with it, I finally took apart my old, destroyed computer and listed all the parts on eBay. I looked up what similar parts had sold for, and tried to list for a little under that, since most people with the patience to take apart laptops are certified computer parts dealers with really good methods of testing. Even so, the total list price was unimaginably high. I'm sure not everything will sell at what I have it listed for--some things may not sell at all. But two sold today--my first two--and it's kind of exciting to finally be getting rid of my old computer (and at a profit).

Finally, I need to write my paper for the conference in May. Somehow, writing conference papers is always agonizing: something about the combination of the spoken format, the limited time period, and the inevitably speculative nature of music theory make putting ideas together difficult. First, I agonize over what exactly the thrust of the paper will be; then, I write (probably the easiest part); then, I spend hours and hours tediously cutting material because inevitably it's too long; and finally, I agonize over it until the last minute, editing right down to the wire. And all for a 20 minute speech to an audience that won't know much about 16th-century music, and a brief line on my resume. Is it really worth it? Who knows.

Off to post my computer parts and write my paper...

Snow White thought for a moment. In protest against agribusiness conglomerates, she had a personal rule against buying food from middlepersons. But her heart went out to the economically marginalized woman, so she said yes. What Snow White didn't know was that this was really the queen in disguise and that the apple had been chemically and genetically altered so that whoever bit it would sleep forever.

When Snow White handed over the money for the apple, you would have expected the queen to be gleeful that her plan for revenge was working. Instead, as she looked at Snow White's fine complexion and slim, taut body, she felt alternating waves of envy and self revulsion. Finally, she burst into tears.

"Why, whatever is the matter?" asked Snow White.

"You're so young and beautiful," sobbed the disguised queen, "and I'm horrible to look at and getting worse."

"You shouldn't say that. After all, beauty comes from inside a person."

"I've been telling myself that for years," said the queen, "and I still don't believe it. How do you stay in such perfect shape?"

"Well, I meditate, work out in step aerobics three hours a day, and eat only half-portions of anything placed in front of me. Would you like me to show you?"

"Oh yes, yes, please," said the queen. So they started out with 30 minutes of simple hatha yoga meditation, then worked out on the step for another hour. As they relaxed afterward, Snow White cut her apple in half and gave a piece to the queen. Without thinking, the queen bit into it, and both of them fell into a deep sleep.

-Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times by James Finn Garner, which I just got at the library booksale for $1

I'm ABD!

I'll admit: I was fooled. We had beautiful weather for so long I thought it was here for good. This happens every year. Two days ago, we had a high of mid-70s. Then all of a sudden, yesterday, we had a high of just over 40, and that will continue for the foreseeable future. We still go on walks, but less than before, and our plans to plant our leek, lettuce, and arugula seedlings out in the garden have been put off a few days until we can acclimatize them to the new normal. The beautiful daffodils out front, and the spring flowers everywhere, now seem a little out of place.

My best guess is that Mother Nature saw I scheduled my oral qualifying exam for Tuesday April 5, and didn't want me to be too distracted before then. Then, as soon as I am done and ABD, she will jack up the temperature again, and I will happily go spend time in the garden...

Actually, gardens! Yesterday we met with a representative of the local neighborhood association, and agreed to take care of 3 (!) (very small) plots at the nearby community garden! It's about 3 blocks away, which will be annoying for watering purposes but not a bad distance in general. We plan to grow some squash over there, and to put in our extra tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants (we always manage to start too many). I'm not sure that will fill 3 plots, but we will be imaginative. And we'll have our work cut out for us.

But that's good, because again, the temperature's going up after I finish the qualifying process. Right?

I passed my major field exam! My committee chair says it was strong, and he'd recommend I schedule my orals very soon. Onward....

Here's what I did on my Spring Break.

We went to visit Sara's family on a whim, without telling them. It was really nice to see them, although I am sad to say they had a lot of snow on the ground. (We hadn't had snow for several weeks.)

Having played a bit of crokinole with the Bakkers, we decided to get out our old carroms/crokinole board and repair it. While we haven't gotten around to the "repair" part yet, we did a bit of research on it. It turns out it was made in 1937--pretty cool!

And I wrote a program to help teach my summer students about pitch-class set labels. The program is here. It's in, let's say, public beta, which means I'm open to comments/suggestions from anyone! I recognize that I made it way too small, but if you download the swf file (right-click/control-click here and download the file) and open it from your computer, your computer will allow you to make the window bigger, which should resize all the elements within.

It's spring break!

Things are really growing around here. As I cleared some of the fall leaves from the garden, I discovered the strange sight of newly-emerged rhubarb.



We have lots of seedlings under our little grow-light: eggplants, tomatoes, peppers; and just today we started hardening off our leek, lettuce, and arugula outside.



Furthest along, of course, are the bulbs. The daffodils Sara painstakingly redistributed last year are going to be beautiful.



We've also done some cleaning--the oven, the basement. And I've been spending some time with coding (as in for computers)--creating a website for Trillium Waterworks (an excellent Canadian company that probably doesn't know I'm making a website for them) and writing some pedagogical tools for the class I'll be teaching this summer. It's sure nice to be able to take time for some things that usually get short shrift.

And a whole week of no obligations ahead! With mid-60s projected this week, we may have to go camping....