We . . . Are . . . HOMEOWNERS!!!

Wow, it's been a while! We've been in a whirlwind for the past few weeks - and failing on our promise to deliver an update - til now!

We officially closed on our first home together last Wednesday, with BIG/HUGE help from our real estate agent at Keller Williams, Jeff Roney, and our attorney Jim Casazza (aka Uncle Jim!). Everything went smoothly - and our hands didn't even get tired from signing our names over and over and over . . . When it was all done, we shook hands with all the lawyers and bank representatives present, took our manilla envelope of keys, and immediately drove over to our new (to us) house on Fellows Ave. It was pretty amazing to open the door on our own for the first time and scamper upstairs and down as if we hadn't already explored every inch of the house on our multiple previous visits with Jeff acting as chaperone :)

The house is so cool!!! Most of you have already seen lots of 'before' pictures - don't worry, by the end of all this we will have hundreds (thousands?) of 'before' AND 'after' pictures to thrust upon you all for years on end.

On our first night as homeowners, we honored a little tradition we had unsuspectingly started with our very first visit to Syracuse - on that day we had been looking at apartments in preparation for my move in May to start my DPT program at Upstate, and after spending a few hours driving up and down the streets of the University neighborhood, we were at a bit of a stalemate with which apartment we wanted to rent: I was ensnared by the hardwood floors, checker-tiled kitchen, cosy sunporch, and the "woman-of-independent-means-and-mentality" factor of our landlady. Jesse was leaning towards the cheaper apartment with the saggy porch.

(Let me just insert here, the cheaper apartment burned down at some point this year, so who had the better instincts, huh? Huh?? Plus, if we'd moved into that place, you all would have been tragically deprived of all the adorableness of 203 Hawthorne. Am I wrong?)

In order to sit down and really hammer out the pro's and con's of each place (yes, we live to make lists - a bit of the Rory Gilmore in us) - and to banish any cranky's with some food - we went into Alto Cinco's on Westcott St FOR THE FIRST TIME. It was a fortuitous start to a long love-affair with Alto Cinco's (insert here: catfish burrito, jalapeno cornbread, tofu BBQ burrito, spinach enchilada, etc) - we scribbled our notes regarding size and location and price and vibe-factor over a basket of sweet-potato fries and loaded nachos. The bartenders put in their 2-cents which quickly became 63-cents when they heard that the Hawthorne place had laundry machines on-site. They both liked the neighborhood too, and Alto Cinco's was, afterall, only about 3 blocks from the Hawthorne place.

Sooo - ever since then, we seem to find ourselves making plans, making decisions, dreaming about houses while perched over the copper-covered bar at Alto Cinco's, sharing a beer (a small but good and changing selection), a cheese plate, more sweet potato fries, whatever. We thought it only right that we celebrate our first night as homeowners with takeout from Alto Cinco's and a bottle of Herman Wiemer wine while sitting on blankets on the floor of our future bedroom.

This has already turned into a long post - and there's so much more to tell! Stay tuned for more pictures, more stories, the gory details of our whole-house clean-up!

Love to you all
Caitlin and Jesse

My Big Girl Crush on Garrison Keillor

Yes, that sultry, robust voice has made my little heart go all a-flutter. The website for 'A Prairie Home Companion' is amazingly extensive and organized. I believe you can listen to every past show they've had, rifle through Garrison Keillor's weekly column writings, see pictures and video clips of live performances . . .

The inspiration, however, for this particular post of mine is the ditty in Segment 1 written and performed by Garrison Keillor and 'The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band' in honor of our new President. It's a tribute to the tune of "You're The Top" and it is sweetly joyful, slightly bawdy, and a perfect example of why President Obama is, as GK puts it (and I may be paraphrasing here), "a man half the country believes they have a personal relationship with."

Check it out - and enjoy!

Holiday Extravaganza

Wow - so we have a LOT to share about our activities over the past month and a half! We've got Christmas, New Years, the whole month of January . . . . yipes!

Jesse and I were fortunate enough to both have a good chunk of time around the holidays to travel (thank you syracuse city school district and suny upstate!). While we didn't get to see ABSOLUTELY everyone we wanted to, we did manage to traverse to North Jersey, South Jersey, relatives in New York, friends (and fam!) in Brooklyn, the catskills . . .Wally got quite a workout! (Which reminds me, I believe we are due YET AGAIN for an oil change . . .)

Christmas Eve we got to spend time with Margaret and Stevo down in Barnegat, NJ. It was pretty wild going from freezing temperatures in Syracuse to balmy South Jersey sweater weather! We had a great time seeing Margaret's twin sister's kids - Rachel, David, and Mariah. I believe they all whooped me at air hockey, though Jess and I did reign supreme at Taboo (that whole telepathy thing we've got going on was helpful). We were even there long enough for me to go for a 'run' with Rachel and Jesse's sister, Lauren. I say "run" because mine was more of a lop-sided, wheezy jog and only about half as long as the loop Lauren and Rachel did! Ah well . . . the DPT needs to start livin what she's preachin!

Post Christmas activities included going up to spend the day with Jesse's dad in Saddlebrook, NJ. We stuffed ourselves silly on drink, his famous holiday salmon, and boardgames. We also visited Montclair for the first time - to see Jilly and Tom in their carriage house of wedded bliss! The morning after an evening of good wine, Rock Band, and looking through wedding albums, Jill and Tom took us to a great breakfast/brunch place down the road - I can't remember the name of it now (Jill you're going to have to post the name in our comments section here!). I had a gi-normous arugala, goat cheese, cranberry salad that I had to wolfishly protect from wandering forks on all sides. Big portions of sweet potato fries and homefries made my morning :)

We also got to go into Brooklyn for a couple days! We were soo excited to catch up with the Roomie at 12 Parkside Court (aka Johnny Love) via an excursion to Barcade (think Pacman+beer or Frogger+beer or Galaga+beer). The next night we even had a crew hoppin around Park Slope where we terrorized Georgie's lovely lady friend Ana (anna?) at her bar and then Nally and Amanda trounced several pairs of surly hipster boys at Bocci ball at Union Hall. It was very entertaining to watch.

One of my favorite parts of the trip to Brooklyn was just walking across Prospect Park again. It really is a beautiful public space - I appreciate it even more now that we are in Syracuse. The parks near us are nice - Thornden and Barry - but they are just not used in the same way as an NYC park. They lack the athletic trails, old trees, concert groves, and PEOPLE. Oh well. I guess it will be up to us to help improve Syracuse city park awareness! And I am grateful to get to walk across Thornden to school every day.

Though we had missed to annual extravaganza that is Christmas at Grammie and Grandpa Steeves, we did get to have a smaller, less chaotic dinner date with them a few days later. Of course, the fact that it was almost New Years didn't stop Grammie from putting on a full turkey dinner :) I got to carve the turkey!!! The guys and gals who may have had a few things to say regarding my methods of attack were gentleman and lady-like enough to keep mum and applaud my enthusiastic efforts. Cousin Margaret even helped me find the wishbone :) Speaking of! We were glad that Margaret, David, James and Mary were also able to join Grammie, Grandpa, Uncle Bill, Jesse and I for dinner - David was just a day or so away from jetting back to Europe, I believe for a sojourn in Spain before heading back to Oxford where he's been studying abroad. I can't remember if he actually HAD elbow patches on his sportsjacket or if I was just remembering it that way ;)

After Washingtonville, NY it was up to Lew Beach for New Years! And though we had a lovely time at New Years (despite my catching something nasty the last day or so), the Lew Beach gathering I want to tell you about was the Lew Beach Bridal Reunion 09 two weeks later!!!!!!

We had such a great time at Lew Beach a couple weeks before our wedding, we wanted to try and gather up the bridal party again for round 2. Snow+woodstove+good food+drink+Stover family love+house full of friends and fam=Good Times at Lew Beach!~ We've got a shutterfly picture site up with photos from the weekend - I think there may even be some from the original Lew Beach Bridal gathering of 2007 as well. Well worth checking out would also be Ellie's facebook page where she has posted a rather fabulous video of me eating it off a ski ramp while tubing in the snow. You can hear Nally shrieking in the background, Jesse shouting instructions, and Johnny laughing maniacally as my face meets tube, then plows four feet of snow. Of course, you do have to be Facebook friends with Ellie or any of the rest of the bridal party to view it ;)

It was the first time in a while we'd had so many of our far-flung friends together and we even had Jan and Don and my parents come up for a bit as well. As usual, we brought too much food - gastronomical highlights would include Renee's sausage and biscuits, hot tomato soup and grilled cheese after a full morning of sledding and tubing, homemade (store-bought crust) pizza, Renee's sausage and biscuits again (sorry guys, that's what you get for leaving early! no second helping of sausage and biscuits for you!) . . . .we ate well that weekend.

It's been about two weeks since the Lew Beach Weekend - Jess and I have been working hard back home - he for his 3rd grade classroom, me for my own PT classes. For my part, the semester is going really well. Neuroscience is about the most intense class I've ever taken in terms of content volume and complexity. However, our professor is amazing at teasing out the best ways people learn material and caters to all our learning styles during her lectures and lab sessions. We also just had a teleconference with two military PT's from Fort Drum (where I'll be doing my first clinical experience in the Fall!) today in our Differential Diagnosis class. The military model of physical therapy is particularly interesting because PT's there have much more autonomy than civilian PT's. They get to order imaging tests such as Xrays and can prescribe certain meds like anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxants. Because they are the first health care professionals that a lot of people go to on the base, they have to be really good at differential diagnosis, ie be able to tell when a neuromusculoskeletal (NMS) condition really IS NMS as opposed to something that could have similar signs and symptoms (systemic diseases such as heart problems, infections, cancer, etc). I did manage to make a slight fool of myself in front of these PT's (who I may be soon working with!eep!) during the teleconference, but I came out of it being more excited for my first clinical experience than ever! It's going to be a unique and valuable chance to make mistakes, learn, make mistakes, etc. I have a feeling it's also going to help me develop a bit of a tougher skin (if the ball-busting I received today was any indication)!

Well, what else is going on with us . . . .oh, yeah, we're buying a house too . . . .

!!!??!!!

Yep, Jesse and I have found a single-family house in the University area that we're hoping to close on by the end of March. It's a house that needs a lot of cosmetic (and not so cosmetic) fix-up work, but with a little help from our family and friends (you guys all want to come up and help paint a 1900sqft house, right?), it will be B-E-A-UTIFUL. We love that its in the University/Westcott area and still close enough for me to walk to and from Upstate. We'll keep you all updated and let you know when ALL IS OFFICIAL, but for now, just keep your fingers crossed for us.

That might just do it for this post. It's 7pm on a Friday. I've been puttering around with this post over the course of a couple hours while Jesse's been alternating between talking with our broker, our mortgage guy, and playing Rise of Nations on the computer. We may have an evening of well-deserved laziness at home (Iron Man on netflix!!) or we may venture downtown to our favorite bar, The Blue Tusk, to try out another of their draft beers (we may make it through all 100+ of them by the time I'm done with school, maybe not). Love to you all - goodbye to January and Happy February!!!

besos
Caitlin and Jesse

(Belated!)Ladies Night Out in Brooklyn

Can you think back to the middle of December? Where you were? What you were doing? Good. Because that's when this post was actually written - enjoy!

I am writing this perched on Liz's big-girl bed in the Ditmas Park area of Brooklyn. She and her lovely roommate Julia have just moved in a couple weeks ago, so the whole apartment right now looks much like Liz's room - boxes, clothes, appliances galore! Even in their semi-unpacked state, the two of them have already managed to make things homey. The kitchen is probably the most complete with a new microwave that looks like a spaceship, the spices lined up over the stove, Julia's German espresso cups peeping from the top of the fridge, and a creative storage system that gives a fun minimalist-like, ladies'-in-the-city vibe to the decor.

Hey Tiz - hope you don't mind I snapped a few pictures while you were at work!

Some other nice tidbits of Lizzie's new apartment:

- the bathroom is nicely long with a heating pipe right next to the toilet to keep your knees warm on cold December mornings (a definite bonus in my book!)

- being located on the 3rd floor, it is a nice daily climb for a bit of exercise but not too grueling for the stagger home from the pub (tho Liz never staggers - she's been known to waltz!)

I'll leave the rest for Liz to reveal. Nally and I had a nice time with her and Julia out at the Grill. Johnny was behind the bar, making us giggle, making us drinks. I don't miss the close quarters and noise of Brooklyn, but I do miss being near my favorite people, living with family. I think Jesse and I occillate back and forth between enjoying playing 'House' on our own and wanting to live in a big old house with all our sisters and roomies :) Who knows what the future will bring? Syracuse probably won't be forever - tho if the past few months are any indication, I do believe we will be enjoying Upstate for the next couple years.

Don't know if we'll be posting before we get back up into Syracuse after the holidays - we'll see, we may be inspired.

Have a wonderful holiday season everyone. We love you!

Caitlin and Jesse

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

On this shortest day of the year, I lay in bed watching a blizzard blanket Hawthorne Street of Syracuse, wondering at what point do I begin the shoveling. You clear the sidewalk at the end of the storm, not in the middle. I've shoveled more snow in the past month than I have in the previous 10 years combined, even having lived in the northeast that whole time.

We'll get exactly 9 hours of sunlight today. Not including the dim visibility of dawn and dusk, we'll have 9 hours for outdoor daylight activities. Our schedules have adapted so they don't rely on the sun to tell us when to wake up and when to go to sleep. But my poor indoor plants that I move around the house to get as much light as possible will be starved today with only 9 hours to feed them.

They don't like this frigid cold either. Syracuse lies just southeast of Lake Ontario, and winds from the northwest bring cold Canadian air across the lake, picking up its water, and dumping it in snow form in the Onondaga Valley. We average about 12 feet of snow each season and just below the freezing point for well over the next month. Tonight those winds are supposed to reach gusts of 50 mph.

When Percy Shelly wrote his Ode to the West Wind he was embracing seasonal changes.

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!"

We loved our open air farmer's markets of October and November; choosing between 8 varieties of local tomatoes rocks! But on this first day of winter, I'm looking forward to pulling on my winter boots and gloves. I can't wait to get a really good snow tube to try out in Thornden Park.

I'm also excited about the return of the sun, as on Thursday my plants will have 1 more minute of light than they do today.

Happy Winter Solstice everyone!

Sunday Funday

Howdy folks - we're glad Sunday Funday has come 'round again. Jesse has managed to roll his way into the semi's (Lebowski shout-out) of our fantasy football league - as have Damian, Lauren's boyfriend Dan's boss Dean, and - to everyone's consternation - Nally. May the best motley crew of hand-picked NFL players and teams win!

And yes, if you were wondering, Plaxico Burress (who shot himself in the leg with his own gun at a nightclub a few weeks ago), was on MY fantasy team.

I am COMPLETELY shocked that my team - HungryHungryHippos/Maude - has put-putted sadly into 8th place in our league. My players did, however, give a stunning performance on their way out last week - 120 points! Ironically, the most my team has gotten all season and one of the highest league scores as well. So, I went out with a bang (no pun intended) and had the satisfaction of crushing Jesse. Once, just once.

We had a decent covering of snow this past Friday (sorry to everyone else who got ice!) and I couldn't help but go out and take some pretty pictures of the winter wonderland scene. My LLBean boots have been serving me well - I've been wearing them in pretty nicely on the tramp back and forth between my finals! 6 Down - one to go! They will ALL BE DONE as of tomorrow at noon - and I will be rejoicing in the streets. Seriously, there may be some jigging and some high-stepping.

Also! I recently visited Food Democracy Now and signed a petition asking President-Elect Obama to appoint a Secretary of Agriculture who would be committed to moving our nation's food and agriculture policy towards more sustainable practices, ie less harmful pesticides, local/regional food, supporting CSA's (community supported agriculture) and small-business farmers.

Lots of Americans (not to mention farmers and consumers around the world) have jumped onto the local/organic/slow food bandwagon - but it shouldn't be a luxury reserved for the few who can afford to farm in safer, healthier ways or to keep up with organic prices at the supermarket. Jesse and I are fortunate enough to be living in a region of Upstate New York that boasts lots of small, family-owned and run farms, markets, stands, orchards, and vineyards. There's a lot going on up here and in other rural and urban settings - hopefully this focus on good quality, healthy, DE-licious food can spread to the rest of the nation!

Can't wait to see a lot of you during this Holiday Season! For those that we'll be missing this year, I refer you to the wise words of Buddy, The Elf:


The best way to spread Christmas cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.


(by the way, this advice works for the holiday season in general - not just christmas!)

Lotsa love everyone,
Caitlin

Addendum to Previous Post

Ok, ok - so I promise this is the last post today. I just couldn't help myself - I am completely running with the idea that you are all positively fascinated, need-to-know riled up about what we are eating on a regular basis, sooooo . . .

a big beautiful bowl of chili! This is what my desk looks like right now:

We actually made the chili a couple weeks ago - we've been freezing a good amount to dole out in small batches for those nights (like last night) when neither of us has the energy or mental focus to prepare anything other than left over chili or maybe mac and cheese. We wanted to make a turkey chili but at the groccers we ran into a lovely, lonely little package of beautiful "all natural" ground lamb. So the chili turned out 2lbs turkey and 1lb lamb - the perfect proportion to get that lamb flavor in the backround without totally overwhelming that good chili taste. Success!

And now, really this time guys, BACK TO WORK!

-the student DPT