Val is a PhD candidate!

Val had his qualifying exam this morning. He sat in the conference room with his entire committee (except for Jamie who got stuck in Cincinnati) and they asked him tough questions for 2 hours. He passed, as we knew he would. And then he got to eat cupcakes and cheese.

CONGRATULATIONS VAL!

Croquet game with Sydney

Last night John and I babysat Sydney and we played indoor croquet - according to Sydney's rules. She won. Here's a picture of us after the game.
We watched the Grinch, and we watched the first few minutes of The Little Mermaid, and we watched some of Monsters Inc. We ate popsicles, and Kraft Dinner, and orange peppers. We went outside and looked for squirrels and for the groundhog that lives under the deck by Mike and Kim's place. We played instruments including guitar, tambourine, triangle, and morrocas. It was fun!

Sunday BBQ

We had a barbeque/lawn games party at our house yesterday. It was a lot of fun. Here's a picture of Kurt catching a frisbee. It was one of my favorite shots of the day. Action shot! I took a lot of bad, blurry pictures, which is a shame because I was trying to be good about capturing the day in photos.

We ate lots of delicious pulled pork barbeque and chips and pies between games of bocce, volleyball, badminton and croquet. Although John actually planned the whole barbeque because of a hankering for a croquet game, he didn't even play. Well I suppose he was probably worn out from playing Bocce.



Val took the time to explain to me the difference between the types of barbeque sauces. I hadn't realised there were different kinds, but apparently he wasn't kidding when he asked whether it was going to be Carolina, Texas, Tennesee or Fredericton, NB barbeque sauce. I guess that John's recipe (which is from his mom, Carol) is a vinegar-based Carolina type sauce. Which makes sense, because Carol lives in Durham, North Carolina.

To check out the other pictures, just click on either of the pictures above and it will link you to my picasa site. I didn't put all of the photos up because (a) there were 95 or so and (b) there were a lot of blurry ones that didn't turn out.

Dad's coming to Durham!

Dad is flying in to Boston on Monday, June 18th, the day after Father's Day. It'll be fun to take him around and show him CCOM, and go to Portsmouth, and maybe go up to the mountains. And then we're going to drive up to Fredericton, and I'll stay there and visit for a few days. I can't wait! Home sweet home...Freddy Beach here I come!

Tornado watch in NH!!

The weather here is wild today. We saw the craziest clouds outside of CCOM this afternoon, there was rain, hail, thunder and lightning, and even a tornado watch. In case you're wondering - the above image is not a picture of today's weather in Durham. There was definitely a lot of green sky going on before and during the storm. For some reason I always thought that green sky meant there was going to be a tornado. I think I saw it on tornado documentary a long time ago. I just googled it again and I guess that there's no specific rule - sometimes green sky happens with no tornoado, and sometimes tornados happen with no green sky warning. In any case, it's fun to watch - until there's a brownout and your computer loses power and turns off. And then ten minutes later after the power comes back on, and the computer is restarted, we lose power again.

Saturday in Boston

John and I went to Boston yesterday and saw the Blue Man group. It's a show that has a lot of audience participation. Before we went John was expressing concern about getting singled out (he tends to get singled out for thigns like this, I don't know why) - and sure enough, he got picked. He had to throw pieces of chocolate at one of the Blue Man guys who was standing about 10 feet away and catching the chocolate in his mouth. And it was all broadcast onto a big screen at the front. I think they're just really good at picking people who really don't want to be picked.

The weather was okay in Boston, a bit muggy but not too bad. But once we got on the highway, and were just past Newburyport, the sky turned that scary greenish colour and got really dark and ominous. And before we really realised what happened, it starting raining and hailing. It turned into a complete white-out and all the cars were pulled over to the side of the road. It brought traffic on the I-95 to a complete standstill - well except for a few crazy people that kept driving anyway. There were bits of debris and leaves flying everywhere, it was very strange and unexpected.