Stillborn daughter

Whatever it may be - blessing, curse, strange and
terrible gift. We carry this treasure, this deep
sadness, in jars of clay. Already
cracking and held together by
grace.

QOTW: American Movies

Okay, so I need some help coming up with a list of classic/quintessential American movies. Our friend Vittorio, who is Italian but did all his school in England, is coming to teach at Notre Dame, and he asked me if I could think of American movies he should watch before coming so he can start to acculturate himself to the US, especially the Midwest. Europeans probably are already familiar with the "great" cinematic films and the major Hollywood releases, so I'm trying to think of films that are somehow particularly American that he might not have run across. Here's my list so far - can you add to it?

1. Field of Dreams
2. Gone with the Wind
3. Dances with Wolves
4. Hoosiers
5. It's a Wonderful Life
6. Forrest Gump

Dublin

In Dublin - St. Patrick's Cathedral, at the Guinness factory tour, an interesting public notice concerning dogs, a historical marker

Apartment Update

We got it!!!!!!!!!!!! (Please note that I use multiple exclamation marks very rarely.)

Final price: 237.5K - we are very happy with that. Mortgage rates are also around 4.7 right now, so it's an amazing time to get a mortgage too.

Anyway - it's all just happened so quickly, yet we feel very peaceful about it. Christian goes and attends the home inspection tomorrow morning while I do my last day in the lab, and then we fly off for Dublin on Saturday. Pretty wild.

We're very much looking forward to showing it off once we move in! Closing date is April 30. We're probably going to keep our Hyde Park apartment through the end of June. I do my radiation oncology rotation in May, so we don't want to be doing all the work of moving at that time. This way we can be relaxed & hopefully do it with less stress.

Belated St Pat's Day Video (hilarious)

Muppets do "Danny Boy"

More real estate news

Christian and I just made a bid on an apartment tonight. It's been an interesting ride the past week or two. Many of you know we had been looking at places in Hyde Park. There were a couple that we were thinking seriously of buying, but we never got the feeling of a place being 100% right. Then we got the idea of looking in Printer's Row, a fabulous little historic neighborhood that borders directly on the Loop to the south of old printing house buildings from the 1890's and 1900's converted into lofts . It's near a stop on the train from South Bend, and is positioned within a couple blocks of every single El/Subway line in Chicago, and many buses, including great bus connection to Hyde Park. It's really right at the center of everything. So, we started looking just this past weekend at places there.

So we found a wonderful place that felt completely right to both of us, and we're going to try to buy it, and probably move at the end of April. Here are some links if you want to check it out:
Virtual tour
Listing information

Liverpool Station dance

Slumdog Millionaire doesn't have the only train station dance. This commercial was shot at the Liverpool Street Subway Station in London on 15 Jan 2009. Only the dancers knew what was happening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM

A little piece of cool news...

The article that I was working on in the fall and presented as a poster at the radiation oncology conference has been accepted by the best-known radiation oncology journal!

Jakie-pie

Our exciting news: Jake slept through the night last night -- 9:30 p.m. to 6 a.m.!

House Update

OK, so we heard back today that we've been approved for our home equity line of credit on our current house - which means that we have enough dough now to put down a 20% downpayment on our new house -- thanks in large part to parental figures on both sides of the Mississippi floating us temp. loans. The loan approval also means that we can now put our current house on the market. The sign is in the yard starting today. The economy is terrible, but our Oakley neighborhood is apparently the best one in Cincy for real estate, so we're hopeful it won't sit on the market for too long. If you know anybody who wants to buy a sweet house in a cool neighborhood in Cincy send them our way. The new house is pretty cool. A good mixture of things done nicely, ready to move in, and future projects to make it more personalized and homey. Blowing in insulation in the walls, re-siding the house, and finishing the basement will be some of the major projects over the next few years. A big basement playroom and sleep over area! There's lots of room, and lots of bedrooms (5), so come visit often and bring a friend, or your children. We're pretty sure we aint having any more of those anytime soon, except for this September. We close on the new house March 16th. We're moving on the 17th. Abbie leaves for Dominican on the 18th. I'm taking vacation starting the 19th and going to do some work on the house to help us move in (needs lots of shelves in different places). The new address is 4321 Brownway. This whole experience feels like 4-3-2-1 Blastoff. Quite a ride.

Oscar night...

Jai ho! (click here to watch)

Overheard

Sam: Grandma, let's play Fierce Dinosaurs. Ollie and me are the daddy T. Rexes, and you're the mama T. Rex. The daddies are going to go hunt for meat.

Grandma Beth: Okay ... So what does the mama T. Rex do?

Sam: You stay home and clean the house.

Question of the week #3

Two questions for this week:

1.) Did you make any New Year's resolutions or something along those lines (or in general start anything new recently)? How have they been going?

2.) What are/were your Valentine's Day weekend plans? (whether related to Valentine's Day or not)

Questions for this week #2

It's so frickin' cold here in Chicago and winter seems so endless, I thought I'd put in winter-related questions (answer any or all):

1.) Favorite way to warm up/cozy up when it's really cold.
2.) Your escaping-winter fantasy
3.) Funny/fun winter-related anecdote.

(My answers in the comments)

Grand Canyon

Karen, Diana and I arrived at the Grand Canyon a few days after a major snow storm. It was a good time to be there because there was snow on the ground and the air was clear. We stayed two days and made a point of being at the rim of the canyon to watch sunrises and sunsets. We stayed at the Katchina Lodge which is next door to the big, expensive, historic, rustic hotel the El Tovar. There was a huge Christmas tree in the El Tovar lobby and the mounted animal heads on the walls all wore Santa caps. I don't approve of mounted animal heads on the wall, but they do look festive with Santa caps.

seasons of the crib

The 2 winter scenes are from today - this morning from the sunroom while it was snowing and this evening after clearing snow. The other 2 are from this last summer and spring. Thought they would complete the seasonal set with Luca's fall shot in the logo. 1471ers

Question of the week #1

(Since my baby is actually taking a nap while not physically connected to me, I'm a little giddy with the freedom. Sorry about the multiple posts.)

Since we haven't had much traffic on here recently, how about having a question of the week every week? I like Luke's about Millerisms. I am also experiencing winter wanderlust -- feel like I should be going to the tropics somehow. Instead I am enjoying the book set in Sri Lanka that Martha gave me for Christmas and reading old travel magazines. So how about creating your own Top 5/Top 10 travel lists, on any topic you choose. Examples -- My 5 Favorite Cities, 10 Best Meals I've Had While Traveling, 5 Most Breathtaking Spots in the U.S., Top 10 Crazy People I've Met on Public Transportation While Traveling -- you get the idea. I have my own idea for a list and promise to return to post it soon!

Boys

Martha requested some photos, so I thought I'd post a couple here. The one above is from last week -- sorry the picture quality on our camera when the flash isn't in use seems to be deteriorating. The one below is from Jan. 1, so not very recent. But very sweet.