Brrrr

The other day I heard on the radio that we're having the coldest month in the past 40 years.  I believe it.  It was -1 this morning, and last night with windchill temperatures it sunk to -20.  Those numbers sent us right to Amazon Prime to rent Dr. Zhivago.  And we made it through the whole movie without falling asleep.  It still holds up.

We have been busy, or I should say Mary has.  She's out right now doing her annual "hour swim" where the team members swim an hour and see how many laps they can do without stopping.  I wonder how many laps I can do in 6 minutes without stopping.  Okay, three minutes.

A lot of news from Dundee way, and not all of it good.  Lur's mother passed away on Friday night, after a couple of days of end-of-life struggle. They had been alerted by hospice that this might happen, so Lur was able to spend a lot of time with her.  It has been a long road for Lur and family taking care of her parents these past few years.  But what a gift they gave her parents to enable them to stay in their house close to their children and grandchildren.

Happier news from out Midwest includes Auden's enthusiastic participation in the play Godspell.  Watch out Broadway.  Claire has taken on faculty advising for the student council and for the upcoming homecoming event in the high school.  And Daniel has a new part-time job with "Getir", a grocery delivery service that Daniel is using to double as cycling exercise.  His mother says the company's uniform colors remind her of Barney, a show they used to watch together.  A long time ago, I might add.

Snow was in the news this past weekend, and it looks like those of us in DC,  Massachusetts and New Jersey missed the worst dumps.  My kind of snow – four to five inches, enough for a good skiing ground cover but not so much that it takes hours to shovel out.  Peter says he got about 8 inches while the coast was hit hard.  I bet Johanna saw a lot in New York City.

It did allow me to put on the snow shoes for the first time this year.  I probably didn't need them, but it was fun to be in the woods.  We had taken advantage of earlier snowfalls to go cross-country skiing a couple of times this past week.  And, one of our hikes had the added excitement of coming across a porcupine.  Fortunately, the two dogs with us were well-behaved and stayed far away.  Mary's cousin told us a while back that he had to take his dog to the vet to have 170 needles removed.

Down in Brazil, Joe is out of quarantine, which was roundly applauded, most loudly from Leonor.  The boys were able to go back to day camp, which is so full of activities they fall asleep in the car on the way home.

We see photos and videos of Simon picking up new words and playing new games.  We're going to have to watch the movie Encanto to keep up.  Who knew there was even a movie called Encanto?  What happened to Dr. Zhivago? 

Out in Oakland, they're gearing up for our visit, as we bought our plane tickets for the end of February.  Sankar and Annie are heading out to Taos for a week, while we go south to Mexico to San Miguel de Allende.  Where would rather go?  They both sound great, but you can only ski in one of those places.

We talked to John and Marilyn, and they are hunkered down, still taking more precautions than just about anyone in that great state.  But they're healthy and happy.

One of our latest gigs here is teaching English to a couple of Afghan refugees who landed in Pittsfield, part of the 175 more relocated here. Mary has had a couple of sessions with her student a young mother whose husband worked at the Embassy in Kabul.  I just met my student, who was a soldier, and just relocated here this week from Wisconsin.  We've been told not to bring up the past with them because of the trauma, but the soldier was keen to show me photos, of his truck, his truck after it had been bombed and others.  Quite an ordeal.  We want to help them, but I think they are helping us and teaching us so much.

With that, love from up here.