Grand Illumination

Last week Larry (one of the other OR professors) told us something soon would be happening in Williamsburg (finally). Today was the day.



This event is called the "Grand Illumination".



Some famous buildings in Colonial Williamsburg are introduced by a speaker, after which a firing squad fires their guns towards that particular house.



This house actually has occupants who were looking out the window. The gunmen got the order not to shoot at the windows --- surprisingly I am not joking.



That is actually the reason that the guy in front is shooting a little to the right in the picture below.





And then...



... the moment supreme.



Boom.



Ladies and gentlemen...



... THIS is Colonial Williamsburg.

Out of practice

I guess F has not been taking enough food photos recently.

They may not look it, but these baked beans and pulled pork he made in our slow cookers (gotta love them -- they cook while we are at work) were amazing!

Hard Work

We've finished giving our final exams, and there are huge piles of paper waiting for us to grade them. A also has a (part of a) grant proposal to write. But we are expecting guests! Time to get the house in order.

Last weekend, we bought a leaf blower and sucker, since it turns out our street is named after a very leafy  tree for a reason. This week, we bought a lawnmower as well.

F is really taking to working in the garden. This morning, he worked his hands to a pulp chopping wood for the fire place, reporting that "It is like golf, but more fun!"

 In the mean time, A assembled the dining room furniture, and our guest room is ready too! (It is most unfortunate that we did not buy our own bed yet, so our guests will be more comfortable than we are).

We don't have time or energy to cook, but fortunately Costco sells really good frozen pizza, hummus, mini quiches etc.

The last serious cooking we did was last weekend, when we made this:

 

Making a First Impression

Today I played hooky, and spent the day trying to make a good first impression on our neighbors, by chopping up the crate. This really turned out to be a smart move: neighbor after neighbor pulled up or over and introduced themselves. I think one of them submitted me to a Christianity test, that I probably failed miserably as godless communist muslim from Yerp.

This is also a good time to introduce our new car, finally: meet Helga Moonbeam.

It took a while before we figured out her name (thanks in part to Tuncay's friends). We think we bought a transvestite car, even though she really sucks at drag racing.

We made the wrong choice :(

I bet the grandmas are disappointed too that we don't live somewhere where they have a national holiday for making babies.

Finally!

I don't know why this always has to take so much longer than promised, but our stuff got here at last...

I had pretty much given up by now. After sitting in a warehouse in Germany for months, it finally made it to the US where it seemed to have gotten lost. We arranged a date for delivery three times. The first two times, I was told the shipment was in Richmond, the last time it was all of a sudden in Atlanta!?

But apparently, third time really is a charm, and here it is!

Clearly, the contents of this crate will not go very far in filling up our house.

 

But look how neat it all looks! Surprisingly however, (or maybe not, given what a comedy of errors this shipment has gone through) more has gotten damaged than ever before, but we had completely forgotten about all of these things anyway, so I guess we will survive...

Thanksgiving part 2

After the thanksgiving lunch at our secretary's house, we joined a colleague for Thanksgiving dinner.

Apart from more Turkey and homemade Romanian wine, we were treated to five children holding fashion shows, performing circus acts, and god-knows-what-else.

Giving Thanks

Yesterday, we gave thanks for the fact that we don't have to live in Germany anymore (hopefully, no Germans read this blog :)

We were invited by our department's secretary, who celebrates Thanksgiving with three of her grand sons, and her three cats.







Frans spent most of his time sprawled on the floor to take cat pics, but also managed to get up at some point to take a few photos of our secretary's snowman collection.

She has about 400 of them, but apparently this one is her favorite.

We moved!

Last weekend, we left Qat-har, and moved to our new home. As you may recall, it has a whopping 7 rooms for us to fill. We assembled a Jokkmokk, which did not help much. It looks ridiculously small in our dining room... Oh well, we meant to put it outside on the porch anyway.

But the flowers that our landlords gave us are beautiful!

Apart from the badly put together Jokkmokk, we managed to haul a sofa into one of our two living rooms. We then assembled a coffee table and a lamp, lit the fire place and called it a day.



Our stuff from Germany was supposed to arrive today, but did not, and it is unclear when it will get here. But whatever, we have a sofa, a jokkmokk, a kitchen, internetz, and a mattress on the floor, so we are already at the level we reached in two years in Germany!

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Apologies for the lightposting. Soon a photo of our new car, and our new home. We are picking up the keys for the home today.

We got a free sweater today!!!

We are so excited!

Collard Greens and Potatoes Casserole

Life is busy, so we stick to simple foodz.

Simple, but extremely enjoyable!

Richmond Foodz

Richmond is supposed to have good foodz. We did not find it yet.



Still we enjoyed this restaurant's home cooking.

DC --- non food edition

The Pig!

No, I am not talking about Tuncay. It's the name of the restaurant he took us to for brunch!



They make their own cured meatz, and they do it well! Another recommendation.

Dinner

Tuncay knows the awesomest restaurants in DC. We knew the Ethiopian restaurant from a previous visit, and this time he took us to a Thai restaurant.



It was like being in Thailand, maybe even better. These first two pictures are the appetizers: chicken salad and cucumber soup.

Then another four dishes were served:



Beef salad.



Fish.



And pumpkin curry. I am missing a picture of the slow cooked pork. Each dish was simply awesome.



As a "filler" there was some Pad Thai, and for dessert sticky rice with mango.

Highly recommended: Thai X-ing in Washington DC.