Summer's over

Not really since it doesn't officially end until September 21.  But, Mary's back to school and we understand so are a few people in Dundee and other parts. 
 
Still, it doesn't feel like it.  Hot and muggy.
 
Looking back, we hope you all enjoyed the past three months as much as we did.  The best part of summer is being outside, and getting to the outside without gloves and boots, and the extra daylight hours, and the nighttime noises. 
 
The big project of the last couple of weeks was getting Annie settled.  John flew up to Albany and helped Mary load up the van with one more load of stuff.  We drove over and spent a Sunday with Annie in her new abode, which looks real nice.  Natick is a nice town, and she's just a couple of blocks off the main square, where there are shops and arts workshops and ice cream stores!  All you need.
 
Annie's started work, after a couple of weeks of orientation.  She's going through all the details of getting transferred to Mass - car registration and insurance and all that fun paperwork stuff. 
 
We spent a few more days back in Pittsfield doing odd job chores.  A story - John dug out a little firepit in the yard, and one night we lit a fire and when it got darl, we treated ourselves to smores.  After we ate way too many of those, we heard a loud snorting and grunting noise from the bushes nearby.  Fight or flight?  We were packed up and outtathere in seconds before we became some one else's treat.
 
Our project still hasn't started as we're waiting on the paperwork from our contractor.  Seems like a pattern here.   We saw John and Marilyn a few times.
 
On the way back, we stopped and had lunch with Grandma who looks good.  She was in the middle of visits to eye doctors and dentists and lung doctors, but things seem to be stable.  By the way, she is no longer with a computer, so will need regular old postage to keep connected.
 
Last Sunday, Joe, Margaret and Adam came by for brunch.  We heard about Joe's trip to Frisco and Margaret and Adam's trip to Chicago.  Sounds very enjoyable.  Joe was out of sorts a bit, thinking he caught something in California, and sure enough a couple of days later he called and said he had mono.  He's still working, but at least he knows now.
 
On the social scene, we were out with friends from Peru two times this week, and Mary joined her friend Gerry on Constitution Ave, waiting for the Kennedy procession to roll by.  John took a nap.

Next weekend's a long one.  We've got baseball tickets!  So, that's the news from here! Hope you're all well!

Clunkers

We're one of the 690,000 people who traded in under the clunker program.  And we did it almost on the last day of the program.  And we almost didn't make it, because in our typical fashion, we didn't do enough research, didn't know you had to buy a car off the lot, and you had to have all the paperwork with you for the clunker.
 
Anyway, we went hybrid but not the one we originally wanted.  There were no Prius' to be found on any lots.  We went American, and we went big, in terms of size.  So there's a Saturn Vue parked in front.
 
It was a bit of an indignity for our van, which we had had since 2000, when we bought it used from a colleague in Mexico.  Calling this car a clunker, which had served us well, had more than paid for itself and had helped just the previous week move all of Annie's "stuff" twice to Natick, Mass, was not a fair way to end its life.
 
Mary drove back on Monday to retrieve the EZ Pass from the finside windhsield (which we forgot, again in our typical fashion) and saw the van in the lot with all the other clunkers.  Sad.  But even in its decline it continued to help out, with a nice government rebate.

On the road

It's Friday!  I should only write on Friday since it means we made it to another weekend and we're happy!
 
Seems like everyone's on the road.  Somewhere in this city is Janet who is down here for a conference on theater for the blind.  Somewhere in this city is not Peter, who decided at the last minute to come. 
 
Somewhere in Chicago is Margaret, with strict instructions to call Andrew and Lur.  She went there with her friend and roommate Adam, leaving behind their two dogs, with specific instructions, I understand.
 
And somewhere in western Mass is Mary, who has been gone for two weeks; and somewhere in eastern Mass is Annie, who moved up to her new job and home last weekend.  She's leaving home.  I think there's a song by that title.  On her way up north, Annie stopped over at Grandma's for a break in the drive.  We got an e-mail from Annie after her first day on the job - "loving it."
 
Joe came over last weekend, to get a good night's sleep before he took the GREs.  He had a great time in San Francisco with some St. Andrews buddies who had flown over and were doing a Las Vegas-Grand Canyon-California-Seattle tour.  Why didn't we think of that?
 
His buddies were coming east and Joe rented a pick-up truck for the weekend.  Zip Cars.
 
Speaking of cars, we're toying with taking advantage of the cash-for-clunkers deal.  Because we do have a clunker.  Hope the program doesn't run out of money before we make up our mind.
 
And our big news is it looks like our big project may finally be getting underway.  The contractor says he will tear down the old parts of the house in a couple of weeks.  Yikes.
 
Tomorrow, I am back on the road, going up to Pittsfield (via Southwest Airlines.)  I had gone up with Mary two weeks ago when we played host to our friend from Seattle, Valerie.  We had a grand time, showing her the sites and sounds (Tanglewood), and all the area offers.
 
So, we're back here on Wednesday, and then poor Mary has to go to work the following week.  Vacation's over.  Only ten weeks off.
 
I'm jealous.  So, all the news.  Hope everyone is having a great summer.  Love from down here. .

(no subject)

The MOVE

On Sunday, we moved Johanna into her apartment in lower Manhattan.  It's a nice place, three bedrooms and two roomies, quite small, but big windows give it an airy feel, and it's near a huge Whole Foods and the subway among other things.  Lots of people were out and about and I don't think I saw anyone over the age of 30.  Sean came down to help, which was much appreciated on the larger items (it's a third floor walk-up).

But.  It RAINED the whole time.  We all got soaked.

Many streets are blocked off on Sunday, making getting in and out of the neighborhood tough, and her stretch of Orchard Street was one of those blocked off.  So we drove around the barrels, no problem parking right at the door!

199 Orchard Street, Apt. 3B, NY NY 10002.


The TRIP

We had a lovely time in Vancouver and Vancouver Island, an unusual vacation, to say the least.

A bit of background here: a few years ago I had a sophomore named Mariesa Mason from Vancouver in class, and she came twice to our Byrne Thanksgiving reunion, taught me a lot about varsity women's hockey (although she left the team her junior year), and over the years we got to know her parents Bob and Merri and younger sister Rebecca when they came to town.  John met her and her mother on one trip.  (I finally met older brother Mike at Mariesa's graduation in May.)  They live on a farm outside Vancouver, and Mariesa and her parents were always asking us to come out and visit with them.  A few weeks ago Bob got tickets to several of next winter's Olympics events, so we are going out next February.  A really cheap fare popped on a fare-watcher, so we made the decision to go this time, too.

We spent a few days in the City of Vancouver, a grand city.  On the night we arrived there was a huge annual fireworks off the waterfront right next to our hotel, an unexpected extra.  It came with an expected extra, rowdy partiers in the building behind the hotel who kept us awake until they gave us a room on the other side of the hotel for the remainder of that night.  The city has a first class aquarium with Janet's favorites, sea otters.  It also has a great art museum, a museum of First Nations artifacts (what Canadians call Native Americans), loads of parks and great restaurants.  Nearly everything was in walking distance of our hotel.  The only down was that for our entire visit, the region was suffering a heat wave of such historical proportion that it was the hottest since records have been kept (1880); it went over 100 F five straight days.  (And we still haven't turned on our air conditioning in New Jersey!)  While we were there, the big comical/sad/incredible 44-indictment New Jersey corruption-money laundering-body-part-brokering scandal broke and we spent a long time in a Starbucks reading the NYTimes account.  My favorite two details (and in this scandal, that's saying a LOT): the man who gathered all the details of the misbehavior became a government informant after he was charged with passing a $25 million bad check – which he had deposited at a drive-in window!  And one of the mayors accused of taking bribes did that  – by accepting a donation to his legal defense fund for another offense! 

The Masons had not clued us in to what they had planned for the rest of the trip other than that we were going to their farm and then family places on Vancouver Island.  The Island is off the west coast of British Columbia and is the only part of western Canada that is below the 49th parallel.

We spent a day and night at the farm, about 150 acres, on which the Masons grow a few pigs and lambs for their own consumption (we had some of their lamb and ham for dinners), turkeys to give away in the fall, some cows, and several thoroughbred horses.  Bob had once competed for the Canadian national team in show, now he rides every day for fun.  The house is very small and modestly furnished, and for the first and probably last time I slept in the bedroom of a former student.  Mariesa is in East Timor -- go look it up -- working for Land O' Lakes on a US AID program for a year.  It's a very pleasant place and a reminder that farms are hard work.

We then headed off to the Island, an hour and a half ferry ride through spectacular smaller islands, first to Victoria, the very picturesque and pleasant provincial capital of BC.  During our walk around Mariesa called her parents from East Timor.  We also visited Craigdarroch Castle, a gloomy stone pile of a house built by Robert Dunsmuir, who came to Vancouver asa penniless Scottish immigrant and ended up owning about half the island.  As we drove out of the city, Bob went into the tiny Esquimalt First Nation reserve; he is a development consultant for them in addition to his real estate development business.  It's a much cheated and deeply troubled band.  A few years ago the Canadian federal government settled a large sum on them to compensate for having taken most of their lands, which includes the land on which the provincial capital buildings now sit.

Then it was to Bob's mother Nancy's house on Fanny Bay on the east side of the Island, with mountains behind us.  His parents bought this house 30 years ago, then a modest affair but right on the bay.  Bob's younger brother Matt has made a lot of money -- a really lot -- and has spent a fortune adding to the house and the property.  The guest quarters are over one of the garages and that's where we stayed for the next three nights, in a room about the size of a gymnasium, complete with sitting areas, yes, plural, a kitchen and dining table.  The compound, which is what it has become, includes several barns, many immaculate flower beds, a very large covered sitting area with barbecues and ovens -- it and everything else are right out of Architectural Digest -- a tennis court, a small harbor with pricey boats, more kayaks that I could count, and on and on.  There is also a large hangar in which Matt keeps a Lamborghini, a Porsche, an antique Beetle,  numerous ATVs, motorcycles (a couple of high end Harleys he has never ridden), and -- his own four seat helicopter.  After taking Matt back to Victoria the next day, his pilot came back and took Janet and Merri and Rebecca up for a 20 minute ride around the area.  I have pictures to prove it, yes, Janet did go up of her own free will and did not have to be prodded, either.  We also went out kayaking several times, once at night under the stars and another time Bob and I went all the way across the bay and back.  It's a beautiful island, it looks just like what you think of when you envision the Pacific Northwest, and I doubt we will ever set foot in as luxurious a house and compound again.

On one day we took another ferry over to Denman Island, a smaller island off Vancouver Island, where Merri's family and all sorts of cousins (never did get it all sorted out) have homes in a 400 acre wooded site along the shore.  The house reminded us of a typical Jersey Shore house in season: people sleeping everywhere including outside on the deck (it rarely rains in the area in July and August), casual meal routines and an acceptable sense of mild chaos.  I had a fascinating conversation with Rebecca, who is headed to St. Lawrence in a few weeks, and one of her cousins about the South Asians (mostly from India) who make up a large proportion of the Vancouver area population -- nearly half of her high school.

It was then back to the ferry for the gorgeous ride back to the mainland, and back to the farm for our last night.  Our cheap fare had us fly out of Seattle, so Bob drove us down to Seattle-Tacoma Airport, through lots of scenery.  We had three hours so we had a nice slow sit-down meal at the airport branch of Anthony's, a very nice seafood restaurant.  Although we were given two middle seats when I had booked the flight, we were able to change to an aisle and window for this trip.  Johanna was kind enough to pick us up at the terminal after midnight and we went home relaxed and feeling as if we had been away for a month.

We'll send a few pics along.