If you're going to paint, man, then do it

...those are Patrick's famous words, commenting on our color selection. Yes, we have started to paint the house. The first room was painted late Friday night and after finding some yummy quiche on our doorsteps on Saturday (homemade from our neighbors a few houses down the road to welcome us to the neighborhood), we were ready to put some color on number two. Two down, two to go. Luckily, the last two rooms are relatively small (bedroom and office/guest bedroom). We took the day off from painting today and went on an 8 mile hike in the Smokies. It was beautiful - we were alone on the trail the whole time and climbing up to a waterfall along the river was just right on a hot day like today. On the way back we saw something I totally want to do now: tubing. Probably the kiddy version of white water rafting, but it still looks like lots of fun. Seems like a great thing to do in a larger group...so maybe we can get some folks together some time and be silly (might have to wait a summer, till we know some people).

Before we get to the pictures, I feel I just have to share this story that just happened: The house to our left is an older duplex that is being rented out. Apparently, everybody just moved and now the whole house is back up for rent. To our surprise, tons of people have stopped to look at it in the week the sign has been up (it's not like this is the hottest spot in town). Tonight was showing-people-around-night and so it happened that the owner came over when I watered the plants to introduce herself. May I quote from hereon: "I'm soandso and I will find you some good neighbors. Now, don't worry, I'm pretty discriminating." This was as a family of 8 Hispanics was looking at the house... need I say anything else? I almost dropped. I don't think I have been confronted with such outright racism before, especially in a tone of voice so sure of itself, so righteous and "normal". Wow...

While I let that set, here are some before-and-after pictures of the two rooms that are done. Again... the choice of colors is somewhat drastic, but be reminded of Patrick's quote here ;-) And...the other two rooms will even be more daring...I think... stay tuned!

Number one, the living room:

and number two, the dining room:

(I should add that these were taken at dawn and turned out very dark...it doesn't really look like a dungeon in the living room ;-))

Long weekends

Thanks to the long weekend I get to have so soon after returning from Christmas break (I'm off for MLK Day tomorrow), I actually got to enjoy taking two full days off as I don't have to worry about grading and preparing until tomorrow. It's been a good weekend, too. I just read and relaxed yesterday, cleaned up a little bit, baked some lemon bars and then we went out for sushi with friends of Patrick's at night. Since we didn't have any obligations for today, we decided to go to a late movie and watched "Children of Men". People had raved about it and we were curious. It's a rough one, that's for sure. Good, but tough. I don't think I am joining the group of people going nuts about it, but it was a pretty good movie making many good points (rather dramatically). I think my main issue is that I've never been a big fan of movies set in the future and I have never liked violent, doom-and-gloom movies much either. I like hopeful, empowering, encouraging movies (although Patrick reminds me it did have this message, too, and he is right).

Today we woke up to 20 degree weather (Celsius, so about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, I suppose?) and as happy as warm weather makes me, I have to agree with Patrick who said this morning he was now officially worried, not merely concerned anymore, about climate change. I know that one day or even one winter is a small sample, that outliers exist, etc. ...but seriously, this is January in the Northern hemisphere. It is by far the warmest winter I can remember (granted, not difficult considering that I grew up in what felt like Antarctica some winters) and I wonder if it really is some regular fluctuation or if this isn't yet another sign that we might want to consider being a little more friendly to our environment!?

Regardless, we decided spontaneously to take the drive to Fall Creek Falls State Park (about 2 hours from Nashville) to go hiking. It is one of the places showing up on every calendar of Tennessee and locals say it's a hiking highlight. We had been wanting to go there for a long time and today was the day. After a nice drive through rural Tennessee (felt like traveling back in time), we went on a beautiful hike to the falls overlook and then down to the bottom of the falls (see photos) before returning to Nashville early this evening. The weather was perfect for this little road-and-hiking-trip and I think we're both really glad that we did it. Attached are some pictures...
















<-- at the bottom of the falls