Visitors...

Our visitors are arriving on the heels of each other. We said goodbye to Erika on Wednesday morning, and Trevor arrived with his bike in tow the same afternoon.


Erika's last day in our lovely apartment.


Hello Trevor...with Saturday afternoon oysters. (In case you're wondering what you're missing)


then a nap...


Late afternoon in Parc Blossac


Moules Frites and Muscadet


After all that relaxing, it's time for a trip to the bottle depository.

Stay tuned for more photos and info from the recent adventures and possibly some guest-authored posts.

Storage Space...How to get rid of your stuff.

Here's a picture of our storage space in Urbana just moments before it was locked for the next year. We had to throw away all of our unnecessary stuff and we still managed to fill the storage space to the brim.

I think the final count was 7 pickup loads of just trash that were distributed discretely among dumpsters throughout Urbana. There were extra couches (much the worse for wear), poorly constructed shelving (thanks Target), most of the stuff that was in the basement when it flooded earlier this year, and many boxes of stuff that had somehow been moved one too many times from one house to the next without ever getting used.

My parents were trying to adapt the principles of Feng Shui to our moving process. I don't think we needed any prodding to realize how much extra stuff we had. Luckily, we got started on this moving/garbage ordeal long before we had to leave. The day we left for North Carolina there was only one pickup-load of stuff left to get rid of. Thanks to Russell and Kathy for taking care of that load.

Au Revoir, Urbana

the house is cleared out (relatively speaking)

the storage space is filled up

the car is packed up

and the bikes are loaded onto the back rack.

goodbye Urbana.