Back to Thanksgiving, after a little opening rant. We had a wonderful one, and hope you did too. Our brainy idea was to go back to the DC area for the holiday, sparing Joe and Margaret the headache of holiday travel, since we had more flexibility in our schedules. And, that actually proved true, since we encountered very little problems on the road - in fact, I made it down to DC on Wednesday morning in record time, pulling up to Mary's old school by noon. Don't ask when I started.
The only challenge with our plan was: where to stay and where to have the big meal. Details. Both Joe and Margaret extended generous and welcome offers of hospitality, but Mary backed into an invitation from Gerry, her friend from the 1970s and Annie's godmother for both a bunk and a meal for all of us! So, off to the races.
Mary went down by plane on Monday, to connect with her Peru friends and with her old school colleagues and students. I joined a couple days later and we had a traditional pre-Thanksgiving dinner in Chinatown with Joe, Margaret and Andrew.
Traditions have to start somewhere. We had a terrific Thursday with everyone pitching in to prepare, purchase, arrange etc. for the meal. Annie called during the meal, and we all shouted into the speaker phone at once. And, the football on TV was even good! Go Pats.
Friday, we got an insider's tour of the Treasury Department from Joe (very impressive) and met up with Margaret and Andrew for the new Bond movie (fun). In between, we joined our Peace Corps friends in town at the only bar in central DC that was open (also fun).
It was only a few days later that we received the really big news for the family, from a different kind of season. CLAIRE GOT INTO COLLEGE! She received two acceptances, from Ripon and from Knox. With even a nice chunk of scholarship money. Way to go! She is still applying to a bunch of other colleges, so we expect her list of acceptances to grow. Other news from Dundee is that Daniel made the freshman basketball team, and is on pace to become the tallest Dickson ever!
Other Thanksgiving nuggets we picked up: Jeffrey and Melodie braved the traffic to go to Fairport and joined Matthew, Tina and Oliver and Tina's parents for Thanksgiving at David and Paula's. Andrew and Lur had the Knaak gang over. And Annie was going to have Thanksgiving on Sunday with her friends. Dannie went out to Denver to spend Thanksgiving with Patrick, who was in a local theater production! And, we saw a couple of photos of John and Marilyn's Thanksgiving with their whole gang!
We spoke to Annie a few times, and she is in the process of applying to grad schools, in New York and Boston. She's hoping to leave Beijing in her final few months and go to the province of Yunnan and get a different China experience. Maybe teach English to get a little cash as well.
The weekend before Thanksgiving, Mary's niece Maura and her two-year old daughter Elsie descended on us. Oh how we forget the gear and the food and the energy of young children. Elsie's a cutie, who loved our kitty, but it was unrequited love. Our kitty didn't love being chased around HIS house so much.
And, the weekend before that we headed to Princeton to check in on Peter and Janet. Janet was in the early days without her cast and was just starting to put full weight on her leg. She's doing well. We got a first-hand glimpse of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, an hour's drive from the shore. Debris that people had been cleaning up were lining the streets of Princeton; just down the road from Peter and Janet's house dozens of trees had come down.
Mary and I then went to Philadelphia to meet up with a friend from Peace Corps who lives in Hawaii, and we did the historic tour of central Philadelphia. It's a worthwhile visit.
This weekend, we actually are home. Phew. But not next weekend or the week after. Back to DC and then to New York. Frequent driving miles?
Mary has started tutoring an adult man who never learned to read and can't really write his own name. I am in the final throes of the semester, which means two big papers and a bunch of other things. Churning them out.
With all this news we have a couple of photos.
And we're off to December. Love from over here!
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