Saturday, February 16, 2013

Happy Valentine's Day, weekend

A warm spell, coinciding with the warmth of Valentine's Day.  Still, when the temperature reaches in the 40s, why are there trucks on the lake?  Are they trying get their own entry into the annual Darwin awards?

Anyway, momentarily we head out to Rochester to visit David and Paula, and then over to Ithaca to give a talk at Cornell, at the invitation of a former colleague who is a neuroscientist there.  Hmmm.  This looks like it will be another chapter in my long book, Way out of my League.  Still, it will be wonderful to see the Fairport gang again.

On Valentine's Day, we joined John and Marilyn at MassMOCA, the modern art museum up the road, for dinner and tour through the exhibit space.  They had an exhibit from Canada we'd thought we'd like, and an amazing exhibit from China which was overpowering in size and audacity.  Sounds like China.  Look up Xu Bing for more, and hopefully my pathetic phone picture attached will entice you.  There is a rug is made out of 500,000 cigarettes!  Those are two birds giant birds which John, Marilyn and Mary are looking up at, made out of all kinds of salvaged metal materials.

But, last week was the big storm.  Even though we got about a foot, we were saved from those east and west of us who got much more.  We went to bed Friday night, and there was not much on the ground, but woke up to a healthy snowfall, requiring two plows and a little digging.  We did not have to go anywhere, fortunately, but did get out for snow-shoeing and then really great cross-country skiing the next day.  It could have been much worse, were it not for the good Samaritan who found my car keys and put them in the door of the car for me!

We are plugging away on our new diet, following a week of strict cleansing.  We have re-introduced slowly meat and alcohol, caffeine and small dairy and, of course pizza.  Still the results are rewarding, but we seem to have reached a plateau after fast weight loss initially.  And, after the first couple of irritable days, we find ourselves not really missing things.

We've talked to everyone it seems the last couple of weeks:

The Dundee crowd previewed the storm for the rest of us, a day or more ahead of time.  Thanks!  Peter and Janet got about half a foot in the storm and David says they got over a foot out there.  Nothing in DC, as usual, but we did see a photo of Margaret and Andrew trying out the skating rink near the archives on the mall.  Fun. Margaret went to my old office, as she signed up to help out an upcoming meeting.  Joe is busy, taking classes and learning his new job, which opens a new region for him: East Asia.  They might have some Treasury related matters there.  Annie had a week off for Chinese New Year, but stayed in Beijing, while I think everyone else in the city left.  Smart.  And, Danny is off to Baja California to visit with Timmy.

We are busy and getting busier.  School work and projects there are interesting.  I will be doing a research project on the old woolen mill which is our neighbor here.  Mary has been researching food and the health impact (for our new regimen) as well as keeping up with swimming and yoga and guitar and photo classes.  

Oh, and thanks for all your birthday wishes.  On the last lap before the big 6-0.  Why am I running so fast?  Can't it slow down a little?

Love from snowy New England.  Hope you all are well.  

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