Tag: park

Product Image: TiBR Pro

My rating: 5 out of 5

I recently finished reading the last of my unread stack of books, took a look at my bank account and realized that continuing to buy more at the current time would be… unwise. So I started looking around the apartment for something else to read, but nothing really sparked my interest.

It probably wasn’t helping that a good friend of mine kept writing in her journal about how much she was enjoying rereading The Count of Monte Cristo. Then it occured to me that story is most likely in the public domain, so a quick jaunt over to Project Gutenberg and I’d confirmed that it was in fact in the public domain. Then I started downloading a copy of this and a few other stories when I realized that I didn’t have a book reader on my PDA any more. So I looked around at some review sites and ran across TiBR Pro by inDev Software. Niiiiiiiiice.

TiBR Pro supports reading eBooks off my PDA’s memory stick and even cooler; it allows me to rotate the screen sideways for a much more natural viewing area. They also had a free version, but the description didn’t mention reading from a memory stick and I’ve got enough stuff on my PDA that I really wanted that feature. So I coughed up the measly $9.951 and I’m most pleased with my purchase. So far I’ve worked my way through ~50% of The Count of Monte Cristo and I’ve already downloaded several other books that I look forward to reading using this great new tool!

As a side note while I was searching for eBook readers to load on my PDA; I ran across the ManyBooks website. ManyBooks takes etexts from places like Project Gutenberg and converts them into popular eBook formats. This makes it easier for lazy people like myself to quickly get the stories onto our PDAs for reading whenever we have a spare moment (e.g. during boring meetings).

1 I’ve seen other readers for my PDA costing twice that, which would definitly be out of my budget for the moment.

After we finally left town for our honey-night1, Ariesna nodded off and went to sleep for most of the drive. Once we got to Davenport, I got a bit too caught up in looking for street names and went past the place we were staying… a couple of times. *sigh* I’m convinced I’ve got less direction sense than a rock. I can learn an area so I know where I’m going but it takes me a fairly long time and even after years of living in this area; I tend to turn down a street only to be surprised when it joins up with a different street I’m already familiar with. All this is building up to say that I ended up having to tell Ariesna where we were staying before we found the place2. I did so want it to be a complete surprise. *sigh*

Any hoo, the place we stayed at is called Fulton’s Landing. It’s a late 19th century house that has been beautifully maintained and is decorated with many a wonderful antique. When we finally arrived, Ariesna & I walked inside but found ourselves faced with a small problem. There was no sign of the proprietor! After a bit of shouting hello and ringing the doorbell, I went back outside and started walking around the grounds to see if I could find somebody. Later Ariesna confided in me that just after I’d gone searching that she found a small note saying that our hostess could be found painting the front porch.

After locating Pat, our gracious and charming host, we headed back to where Ariesna was waiting and then up to our room. Ariesna was thrilled and while I did find it to be a lovely room; it was a bit pink for me. We freshened ourselves up a bit and then went to a nearby Japanese restaurant that we are familiar with from previous visits to the area. Their yummy rolls weren’t as good as the ones we’d had back in Kansas City once upon a time, but the Hawaiian rolls were fantastic3! Then she had the Shrimp Tempura and I had the Chicken Katsu. Both dishes were delicious and much larger than I remembered from previous visits. After eaching our fill, we headed back to Fulton’s Landing.

Just a brief side note for the single folks who read this blog: when you get married some day; make sure to eat a good breakfast and/or hide some sort of energy bar in your pocket/purse for later. That way you don’t starve as your wedding guests are likely to keep you so busy that the serving staff will remove your food before you get a chance to eat any of it!

We did get back to Fulton’s Landing without any troubles and had a very pleasant evening relaxing… and doing those things that newlyweds do. The next morning, we had a marvelous breakfast with the other guests: a couple from Nebraska with their daughter from Brazil and a writer from England. Apparently, he writes a column called “The Best…” for The European; this has him gaunting around the world finding the best places to stay, best foods to eat and writing all about it for his clientelle. After listening to him talk for a few minutes, I’m became convinced that I’m in the wrong profession. 🙂 After breakfast, we checked out but Pat allowed us to leave our car parked there so we could go for a walk around the area. There are many gorgeous houses over there, a few of them for sale –and quite undoubtably out of my price range–. It ended up being a longer walk than we had really thought we were in for, with a good chunk leading us up-hill but it also very enjoyable. Particularly once we left the housing area and got back down by the river with the cool breeze coming in off the water. Hmm, that was soo nice.

Then it was time to retrieve the car and head for home, which we spent just quietly enjoying the day & each other’s company. Later in the evening, Ariesna’s parents came up and we unwrapped all the wedding loot. It was a good haul. Heck, there were even gifts in there that were aimed more towards me than they were towards the bride. Don’t misunderstand me, there were plenty of gifts that were definitely picked with the bride in mind! And of course, there was also a nice selection of checks and cold, hard cash as well. All in all, I think Ariesna & I should get married more often if it’s going to bring in this kind of loot.

1 Due to time & financial constraints, we didn’t get to do a full honeymoon right now but we hope to do one later. Since it was just a night away from home, I’m calling it our honey-night. 🙂
2 For the record, she’d already noticed the sign for the place a couple of times before I broke down and told her.
3 For those unfamiliar with Japanese cuisine, these rolls are actually types of sushi.

Wet Leaf

Ariesna and I went out walking today. Partly because I have a couple dozen rolls of unused film collecting dust, but mostly because AWelkin will get a chance to see Iwahara-san & Keki-san at a conference this month. Why is that important? Well, they were fabulous to all of us who went on the trip to Japan last summer that I feel the need to extract some hospitality vengeance upon them. 😀

Around 1pm, we headed out and started today’s walking/photography adventures. We went over to the Iowa River & Power Company’s parking lot and I started taking pictures of the river, some trees the remains of the dam1. However the main reason we were there is I’d heard from a co-worker that there’s a big nest of eagles in that area. We’d probably been there about half an hour without seeing anything when some other people came up with binoculars. From what we could overhear them saying; they were coming to try and see the eagles too. So I asked them about the eagles and they pointed the nest out to us2. We chatted with them for a couple of minutes and they mentioned some other areas around town we could go to look for eagles. Then we started walking away and spotted an eagle a bit further up the river. I probably shot 15-20 pictures using my 35mm camera and I know some of them weren’t focused that well. Hopefully, at least one or two will turn out nicely. We left shortly after that and went to a couple of the parks over in Iowa City and then down by the Iowa River and the UofI’s Art museum. It was a lot more walking than we usually do, but it was a good time.

I only ended up using about 2 rolls of film (~50 total photos) but I also took some shots with my digital camera. The image attached to this post (and now added to the Gallery) was the last photo I took today, as we walked back to the car. I’m starting to feel a bit tired, so that’s all for now.

1 They’ve torn a good chunk of it down, but I’m pretty sure the plan is to rebuild it.
2 To give credit where credit is due, Ariesna had spotted it but from the description I’d gotten; I told her that was too small to be it. Besides, we hadn’t seen any eagles near it or anywhere on the river.