On the verge of spring

Happy birthday David!  And belated happy March birthdays to Daniel and Lur.  It's our favorite month - we have the windows open here, the first flowers are blooming and the buds are starting to give the empty branches some added form.  Granted this may not be the case for friends in Illinois or Rochester or Pittsfield, but it's coming.  Hang in there!

Our big news is we bit the bullet and made reservations for China!  End of June.  Now all we have to do is get our visas, rob a bank to pay for the tickets and then learn Chinese before June.  Not impossible.  This time we will approach travel a little differently and do a modicum of research about what to do there before we go.  Luckily, Annie is doing a little for us, and John and Marilyn are also heading to China at the end of the month, to advance and scout out for us.  

This month, I have been attending a retirement course, which means getting up every day and commuting down to Northern Virginia for the day.  I miss retirement.  But, apparently I wasn't doing the whole retirement thing right, so I had to go back to school to learn how to retire.  Not exactly, but the previous times they offered the course, I backed out and this was my last chance.  It has mostly  been helpful and both opened up prospects and narrowed my focus a little.  Speaking of focus, I learned that the University of Massachusetts has made a big mistake and accepted me as a graduate student in their Public History Program. 

And, we learned that Sean was accepted into Rutgers Law School, the first of the schools he heard from.  Congratulations!

Margaret called last night from New Orleans where she is taking care of a group of Iraqi university English teachers, who are here attending the TESOL convention (teaching English to speakers of other languages.)  She loves New Orleans, but worries that it is too risque for this group of Muslims.  She comes home next Friday.

Earlier in the week, we met up with Joe and his friend Tamara for a book signing by David Brooks, the NYT columnist who has written a book about emotional intelligence called the Social Animal.  It was at a famous lefty bookstore called Politics and Prose, and Brooks, a moderate conservative, admitted he was in the wrong crowd, saying he knew people came not so much "to hear him speak, but to listen to themselves."  He was funnier and more insightful than he usually is in his columns and on the News Hour, and was well-receSpring ived.  

Spring also means the end of hibernating, meaning we have even been a little social.  We hosted a couple of Canadian Embassy colleagues who were on their way back after spending a month in Florida.  And we've had dinners with friends from Peru and Arlington, Charlie came up from NC, and this week a colleague from Mexico is staying with us.    

We haven't seen the Pittsfield house since early March, but understand they have put up the sheetrock inside.  I'll drive up this weekend to check it out (and write checks) and maybe even paint a little, if I don't break my leg on my second day of skiing!  

Well, that's all for now.  Hope you all are well.  Love from down here.  

We made it!

To March.  The temperature is going to hit 60 degrees in Maryland today, and flowers are pushing through the garden.  But when I left Pittsfield a week ago, temps had been in the teens and the snow fall was wet and heavy.  I wonder why I have decided to stay down here for most of the month of March.  Actually, I will be taking a class, and we have a pretty regular list of visitors, which is always nice.

A lot has happened since I last wrote.  Seared in our memory was our attempt to get to Ottawa over Presidents' Day Weekend.  The weather (again) had called for light snow tapering off mid-day.  John and Marilyn and I were to drive to Syracuse to pick up Mary who was flying in and then proceed on to our old haunts.  Half way there, we were forced off the Thruway by white-out conditions, and Mary's flight was canceled.  With the benefit of cell phones and mobile weather apps, we saw it wasn't going to get better so we turned around, Mary got her flight changed to Albany and we returned to Pittsfield.  And, while we didn't skate on the canal, we did get a taste of winter with skiing and snow!

On the way back to Albany to drop off Mary for her return flight, we got a call from David who was in ...... Albany!  So we had a nice dinner together in a downtown haunt where David seemed to know all the customers and the bartender!  Hmm.  (Just kidding)

In the mail this week came invitations!  To a wedding!  (Actually, elegant hold-the-date bookmarks!)  October 16 it is!  Congratulations Jeff and Melodie!

Grandma seems to have recovered from her bout with pneumonia.  Enough to go down to eat in the cafeteria, which is where we went last Saturday for a cheese steak and a cheesecake.  Grandma was more sensible with a salad.  She had an eye doctor's appointment that Peter said showed stability, not deterioration.

Annie has started her new job, at Burston-Marsellers, and she sounds happy and excited and eager to learn so much. (She modeled her anti-pollution mask last week on Skype; there's another one on her blog: http://3rdculturekidinthe3rdworld.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/beyond-index).  Joe has moved to a new place, a nice apartment in downtown DC where he can walk to work and to school.  He has mid-terms this week.  Good luck.  And Margaret starts a three week trip to Amman Jordan and then to New Orleans on Monday.  She'll be in Jordan for Mardi Gras and in Louisiana for Lent.  (Shouldn't it be the other way around?)  

Work on our house in Pittsfield continues fast and furious.  While my work consists mostly of writing checks, I did do a little painting and dry wall taping/sanding last week.  It's a dirty, dusty place, but our heat bills fell by over $100 the first month we got insulation, and stopped heating Berkshire County!  And we found out we definitely need a cat.  Or two.  

Mary has been busy at school and keeping up with visitors, including two from Ottawa who spent a couple of days with us on their way back from a month in Florida.  It will be 2 degrees up there this week.

Here, maybe a bike ride, today.  That's progress.  Love from down here.