Fallingwater

Saturday was a beautiful day here in Pennsylvania. A bright blue sky and warmer than usual temperatures. It was a great day full of fun activities for us. This was one of our more eventful weekends as far as events worth reporting on. Read on for a full review of our happening weekend.

Magee-Womens Hospital
We had our official tour of the hospital where our little munchkin will most probably be born. (how is that for decisive?) I have to say I was impressed. The labor, delivery, recovery rooms were the most impressive. They were big. They not only had a bed, but they also had a bench/couch, chairs, and a whole lot of equipment hidden inside beautiful wooden cabinets. The interior decorating was almost nicer than our apartment. As we left the tour guide said we were headed to the post delivery suite. I was thinking if what we just saw was a room, the suite would have to be really nice. I was disappointed. It was little and didn't feel as homey, just more hospital like. The food is supposed to be great though. Anyway, it was great to get familiar with the hospital. The one big take away I got was I need to prepare for the post birth part. Car seats for the ride home, a doctor for the kid, and how to be a dad. I tend to be falling into school mode for that, meaning I'm planning on cramming between when finals get out and the birth of the baby.

Fallingwater
Wow. That is all I can say. I didn't realize just how close we are, just a short 1 hour drive, I think I will want to go again in the spring. The weather was amazing. We were able to walk comfortably through the nature trails on the grounds and see some good views of the house and observe how it blended into the surrounding environment. The tour of the inside was really fun too. It made me want to learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright. Apparently he hated clutter and designed his houses so it would be hard for his clients to fill his space with junk. He was also all about 'breaking out of the box'. I thought of the Pete Seeger song "Little Boxes".

pete seeger songs
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Anyway, most of the rooms had a part that opened up to the outdoors and made you forget you were in four walls. I especially liked the windows on the corners of the house that could open and the whole corner was open with an unobstructed view. Some other things I liked were the natural swimming pool at the guest house, the stairs that descended into the river, and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.'s bedroom on the 3rd floor. He placed his bed in the part of the floor with the most windows positioned so when you were laying in bed you were looking out a window into the forest.

Candide
We were invited earlier this week by a couple in our ward to see the musical 'Candide'. Music by Leonard Bernstein, adapted from the book by Voltaire. I guess it is best described as a satire on the philosophies of optimism or the thought that this is the best of all worlds, created by a perfect God, and that everything that happens is the best of all possible things that could happen. There were some pretty funny parts. I found a good broadway version on youtube. You can watch the first part below. You probably want to fastforward to about 3 1/2 minutes in to get past the opening credits and overture.


The group that put on the version we saw is called Quantum Theatre. They are unique in that they don't have a regular theatre where they preform. Instead they move venues for every play they do, and they are usually in unusually places. We heard of them doing shows in cemeteries, out in the woods, and old warehouses. Last night they used an old abandoned car dealership building. They worked in a bunch of car props and references. It was fun. I liked the way they put the stage together. The orchestra (small) was in the middle of the stage like a 'pit crew' and all had on mechanic jumpers. I want to read the book now.

So that was our fun weekend. Now we are off to another fun and busy week. I will be doing some final round interviews and should be hearing back from some employers. Your prayers our welcomed.

Check out our photo album if you want more pictures.

Fall Fun

This fall has been rather enjoyable. This is the beautiful view on our back porch. Sharon has also written an update, so I will keep this short as we have a lot of overlap.

School: I survived the first half of the semester. I front loaded it, so I would have more time the last half to work on my capstone project. This has turned out to be a good thing because no one else on my team seems to have time to get things done, so it's good one of the six of us is thinking about it. That made it sound really bad, but it isn't that bad, it just feels that way some times. Tomorrow we have a major milestone due, that will be a good measure of how much effort everyone has been putting in. I've been enjoying my last classes, trying to get as much as I can out of school before I'm done.

Pregnancy: Sharon is doing well. I am amazed at how easy she makes being pregnant look. I always thought women got moody and cranky when they were pregnant, but so far life has been good. That could change as we enter the 3rd trimester. Everyone has been asking for a belly shot, so we came up with this idea on our walk.

Jobs: Sharon gave a good update on this. The job hunt has been taking a lot of time, about the equivalent to a whole other class. It could have been worse if I were traveling for more interviews; fortunately few companies are flying candidates out for on-site interviews. I guess that comes with difficult economic times. If the executives can't get flown around, why new hires? It's looking like Pittsburgh, Connecticut, or Boston could be potential landing spots for us right now. I've been reading about Connecticut the most and liking the possibility, except for the cost of living.

Fun: We did our annual pumpkin carving. As we were leaving DC we found we found ourselves wondering if they would be smashed when we got home. We took that as an omen. When we got back, they were gone. Down the street a ways we found remnants of pumpkin, but there was no way of identifying if they were ours, just the circumstantial evidence.











In my opinion this fall has been much better than last fall. I don't know if last year my head was down more or what, but fall this year has been spectacular. We've been able to get out and enjoy it more too. There is a great park near our house that drops into a ravine so you can't hear or see much of civilization. It was nice walking along the path and enjoying the trees. It was a nice calm day with little gusts of wind that would come and blow through the trees knocking dozens of leaves off the branches. The leaves would then slowly and peacefully float down to the ground. It reminded me of watching snow fall in the lamp light in front of our house when I was growing up. It made me happy.

Going back to DC was nice. I really liked Georgetown. The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal ride was fun. I liked when they filled the lock to bring the boat up to the next level. It was cool that they still had the original tow paths and had mules to pull us along for most of the tour. I wish they did longer tours. I liked learning about the history of the canal too. We were lucky to catch it on the last weekend of the year. If anyone is in DC when it is running I commend it.

I'm looking forward to the next few weekends. We are going to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and a ballet called Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project. So we should have some good updates/reviews coming up soon.

For more fun photos you can see our online photo album.