Windy City!!!

JP and I (AM) went to Evanston and Chicago, Illinois for the Science trip during Spring Break, March 17 - 20. JP was one of twelve local kids chosen for all expense paid trip. As you can see on the picture, Southwest Airlines provided for the free round trip. I celebrated my birthday in the Windy City. El train and lots of walking were our main transportation in Chicago. We were able to have campus tour of Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

Leaving for the Windy City

Arrived in Midway Airport

Illinois Institute of Technology.....we saw a lot of this recycling container all over campus

University of Chicago

Millenium Park



Northwestern University

Engineering Lab

Deep Dish Pizza

MYX Performance Juggling Group at Evanston Ecology Center

Juggling Group consisted of families that are Filipinos

Northwestern University Library

Catching the el train to Midway Airport...heading back home

On Top of Ole Smoky

While AM and JP went to the Windy City, ME, SD, and JA went to the Smokies to visit Aunt and Uncle RS2. Aunt Bee picked up the girls Monday and then I drove down Wednesday morning. They had rented a cabin near Pigeon Forge overlooking the National Park. (I mean literally overlooking, we were way high up on a mountain side.) I opened all the shutters at night so that I awakened to a beautiful sunrise of mountains sticky out of the clouds (where the smokies get their name.)

Some highlights:
Wednesday:





Laurel Falls hike. This is a popular day hike on a paved trail to these falls. It was way too crowded for my taste, but the falls were okay, and climbing down below the falls allowed us to get away from the crowds a little bit. I can't imagine being here in the summer time.




Chimney Tops Picnic Area. This is a great little place with an awesome river view and massive boulders to climb on.

Wednesday ended with a Billards Tournament finally won by SD and Aunt Bee after Uncle RS and JA had trouble keeping the 8 ball out of the pockets.

Thursday:

Roaring River Auto Tour-excellent sight seeing, way better than Cades Cove for scenery (but no bears.)

Stop 1 for us was Ogle's Place. This was an awesome little nature trail on the old farmland of Mr. Ogle. Why anyone would choose to farm here is beyond me, but as a summer cabin, the place would be second to none. The bouldering was excellent as well, with Uncle RS pioneering the straight up the face route.

Stop 2 was Grotto Falls.





Grotto Falls-this is a beautiful family hike, (which could be continued into a really advanced backpacking trip by continuing on to the top of Mt. LeConte). Moss covered rocks everywhere, nice uphill climb next to a river most of the way, and the falls area is spectacular. JP and I will definitely want to use this as an awesome descent from Mt. LeConte after ascending from the Rainbow Falls side. ME and I took it very slow, which was good because JA started out really whiny but once she got ahead and didn't have a parent to complain to, she really started to enjoy it. The falls has a bit of a grotto behind it, and really is a series of falls that were just really cool. Because it took ME and I so long to get there, everyone else was ready to go once we arrived, but we still got to do a little playing around the falls. It started to rain as we were descending and we made it back to the parking lot just as it started to pour.

Thursday night finished off with some March Madness.

Roofing Project

JP, JA, and EM picking up shingles early in the morning

EM trying to push the wheel barrow

Monday morning the long awaited re-roofing project began. We had had lots of people lined up either as volunteers or paid labor for Friday and Saturday, but of course it poured rain and snow on those days, so we had to wait until Monday when we would have at least 72 hours of clear weather.

The goal for Monday was to complete tear-off and start felting. Two of us started the tear-off at 7 am with the temperature around 21 degrees, hoping the neighbors wouldn't mind too much (although tear-off doesn't make that much noise compared to pneumatic nailing guns and compressors!). An hour and a half in, I thought I was going to die from exhaustion (cold was no longer an issue!). CK, who was helping me, was a professional roofer, and he probably cleared twice the area I did in the same time. I kept on eye on his technique and by the end was making much better progress for the same energy expended, but still was struggling to keep up. Fortunately at that time, backup in the form of CP, CK, BH, and the E family began to arrive and things began to progress even more quickly. By noon all the old shingles and felt had been cleared off the roof and were sitting on the ground.

With the shingles gone, some other problems with the roof, not related to the tree falling down became apparent. For instance the wood sheathing below the two dormer vents in the back were beginning to rot, as was the area near the chimney. Both of these areas had been improperly flashed when the roof was built forty years ago. After about one minute of discussion, I decided to just tear out the dormers, as I always thought they kind of looked ugly, they were a major source of potential leaks to a roof, and they were providing essentially no ventilation flow, which was their only reason for existing. After tearing out the dormers, we needed to replace the rotted areas and the small ventilation holes in the main decking. We also cut the peak of the roof to install a ridge vent.

At this time I had to go into work to interview someone for a position that had been scheduled weeks before. Fortunately, CP, CK, BH, and the E family continued working while I was gone. Unfortunately, they found that the rolls of felt we had purchased had a major problem, with edges sticking as they were being rolled out and tearing. We thought this was because of cold temperatures, so decided to call it a day at 5 pm, bring the rolls of felt into the house to get them warmed up, and start again the next day.
I had high hopes that we would complete the roof by the end of Tuesday.

Tuesday we started at 8 am. Unfortunately, we found that the felt was still tearing as it was rolled. The rolling went slowly, mostly because it took a while for me to get the hang of what CK needed me to do to make the felt lay tight against the roof. It also became problematic that our roof has so many valleys and ridges, all which require more care and present problems for getting tight fits of the felt. I also found that I had a hard time walking or standing on the already laid felt in a way that wouldn't cause signficant bubbling. I had to leave to go into the lab by 11 am, and from the report I got back from my foreman, CP, progress was slow the entire day and I admit I was deeply discouraged. Less than half the roof had been felted, and only 1/4 of the roof shingled. So much for finishing in two days.

Wednesday we began work at 7:30 am, but I had to leave by 10 am. Felting continued to go slowly but with CK working on it, we had at least completed 2/3rd of it before I left, as well as having shingled close to half the roof. CP, CK, BH, and the E. family continued work throughout the day. By the end of the day, felt had been laid down on all but the peak areas of the roof, and shingles on 3/4 the of the roof.

Because I was staying in late at the lab each day to try to make up for the time I was spending on the roof, by Thursday morning I was dreading another day and hoping that this was finally the day we finished. We began work again at 7:30 am, but I absolutely had to stop at 9 am because I had a talk I had to give that morning. By the time I had left, we had finished shingling all but the ridge areas which we had kept until last so we had a place to put shingles, tools, and such. By the end of the day CP called to say that they had finished. Thank goodness. It rained a little bit Friday night and Saturday night. I haven't had a chance to get up in the attic during a rain storm to make sure there are no leaks, but I feel pretty confident we actually have a stronger and better ventilated roof without any leaks.

Would I do it again this way? Probably not, but give me a few months to recover and maybe I would consider it.

Live Music

We live in a region renowned for its country music and our capital city uses the moniker "Music City". I'm not a music junkie like so many of my friends then and now are. When I was growing up, one of the speakers on our family's stereo was out most of the time, and I'm not sure I really noticed that mono was not as rich as stereo until it got fixed . Even today in our house we don't really have a stereo system, just portable CD players. So it may seem strange that one as ignorant as I would write in praise of live music, but I am becoming a real convert.

While growing up, I went to a total of one live concert. Tears for Fears, which was at the Marriott Center on the BYU campus. I enjoyed the concert, but realized that there were lots of songs that the group did that I did not know, but most of the crowd did. So I realized I was a pretty fair weather fan. The one group I was really passionate about was U2, but they never played Utah in those days.

It wasn't until I was married that I really went to very many live concerts and that was sort of a fluke. AM worked for the parking service at the U, and when she did the parking for concerts, she could sometimes get in free after the start. So I got in for free to see the Moody Blues, Howard Jones, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (my first, and I assumed last country music concert). And by that time, U2 put Salt Lake back on the touring map and brought its Pop Mart tour to Rice-Eccles stadium. (We didn't get in free to that one!) But mostly, I just listened to the radio. The U's NPR station devoted the evenings to jazz and that really got me hooked on jazz. Enough so that when I went to New Orleans for a conference a friend and I walked all the way from our conference hotel to Snug Harbor and paid the cover to listen.

In some ways, moving to Tennessee hasn't changed things much in terms of how often I buy music, but it has greatly increased the opportunities to listen to live music of all varieties. For instance, our local park has live bands every weekend for free in the summer, and from my department I've gotten free tickets to Stevie Wonder and Carrie Underwood. As part of the after-event concerts for the CM 1/2 marathon I've got to listen to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Sara Evans, and unfortunately Phil Vasser. And I've gone to the smaller, more intimate live venues for gigs by some of my friends.

But this past couple weeks probably sets a personal record for me in the live music department.

I took Jonathan with me to see the BlueNote 7, a touring group from the Blue Note record label out celebrating the 70th anniversary of this iconic jazz label. The concert was simply fabulous. The venue was a compromise between wanting as large an auditorium as possible for a highly desired show, while still retaining the intimate club-like experience you need for great jazz. We had great seats, just in front of the sound booth in the center of the auditorium. These were seven outstanding musicians (Peter Bernstein, Bill Charlap, Ravi Coltrane, Lewis Nash, Nicholas Payton, Peter Washington, and Steve Wilson) who clearly enjoyed what they were doing, were some of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the best music in the world, and feeding off the performance of each other. The crowd was into it and appreciative, and that is a big part of live music is the opportunity to have that interaction between audience and performer. It just put a big smile on my face the whole time.

Switching genres and venues, SheDaisy sung for our ward's sacrament meeting. I think our new music director, who is a country music artist herself, has been trying to make sure we have musicians perform the rest hymn, rather than simply have the congregation sing, which has been fantastic. We have some great singers in our region and the Osborne sisters are great vocalists.

Sticking with the country theme, (ironic for one who came to Nashville disliking most country music), AM and I went to the Bluebird Cafe. For those of you as ignorant as I was of country music lore, and like me before moving to TN, don't know about the Bluebird Cafe, its a place that country artists go to get found. But even more, its the place for songs to be found. Unlike most rock groups who write and perform their own songs, the older genres of country and gospel have stuck with the tradition of song writing and performance being separate functions. So for instance, Elvis, coming out of the country tradition, didn't write many (perhaps any) of the songs he performed, although many of his songs were probably written particularly for him by songwriters. So the aspiration of a songwriter at Bluebird is not necessarily to be the performer who gets a #1 hit on the chart, but rather writes the song heard by others who choose to perform it, which then becomes a #1 on the chart.

The cafe itself is in a little strip mall and seems sort of out of place for such a famous venue. It probably seats about 50 people or so total, with the table cleared in the middle for the musicians to sit in the round. So it is extremely intimate, which is what makes it such a fantastic venue. There is no cover charge for the early set, which is what we went to, but there is a $7 per person food and drink requirement, so you are paying for the music that way.
Last night the early set was four well-established country songwriters: Jimmy Payne, Don Wayne, Glen Douglas Tubbs, and Bill Carlisle Jr. Don Wayne is in the Songwriters hall of fame and wrote "Saginaw Michigan", "Belles of Southern Belle", and "Country Bumpkin"; Glen Douglas Tubbs wrote "The House of Blues" that the immortal man in black made famous (its in the movie Walk the Line about half way through), as well as "Skip A Rope", and "Two Story House"; Bill Carlisle Jr is the son of Bill carlisle and did mostly blues tunes, and Jimmy Payne wrote "Women, Women, (have you got cheating on your mind...)", "When Mama prayed", "My Eyes can only see as far as you," and "Don't Say Love." I am not a country music fan, but I really enjoyed the show and the performance. I love music that is just the human voice and a lone guitar, and that was what this show was all about.