Jake home for Spring Break

Most excellent to have Jacob home for a week!

He had a late night flight Friday and will be here until after the Bataan Death March next Sunday. Concert today, Spring Break at NMSU next week, and I plan some annual leave to compensate for no vacation.

Lots to do around the house!

A springtime Midsummer

LCHS finished its production of A Midsummer Night's Dream last night to a standing ovation from an audience of about 250. Quincy played Starvling (she is pretty skinny) and looked like a very comely boy. I also saw the production on opening night, and the cast really grew in comfort with every production. Stu and Quin also helped with the set.

I ordered mass quantities of red chile for when Jake comes home for spring break. Will spend a day making mole, a favorite of Jacob's.

Jake says he is learning a lot at Willamette. For example, after the swim season finished, his swim team formed an intermural basketball team, and Jake says he has learned just how well swimmers play basketball. (Especially him: not so well!) Classes are going well for him this semester and he will come home on March 20 for a week. Quin and NMSU have Spring Break at the same time, and I hope to also take time off.

Stu, Jake, and I are also all getting ready for the Bataan Memorial March on March 29. This will be our second year. We will have our greatest success when we persuade the Q to do it with us.

Walking by dung heaps on a snowy morning

Dung heaps, about a mile from my parent's home in Delaware. Steam is coming off this one from the exothermic decomposition process.

I am visiting again, which means more snow in Delaware. I now really want to visit in June to see if I really can make it snow every time I visit. Cool!

The night and day after I took this, it snowed about 10 inches more. I would have enjoyed it more if I was not trying to make a plane out that day to come home. Didn't make the plane, or home, but got to spend the night in the luxurious Sleep Inn accommodations at the Dallas airport. Beat the hell out of airport chairs...

Mom has much more energy that she did during my December visit and seems to be improving. She will start radiation therapy the week of March 17, which will, we hope, eliminate an annoying and persistent spot she on her lung that was found in September.

Dad and Kent are both well.



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Getting ready for solo and ensemble.

I was instructed: No pictures!

Quincy was in Solo and Ensemble at LCHS today. She played a brief (intentionally) solo unaccompanied (unintentionally; her accompanist could not make it at the last minute). She has not checked her score and, I suspect, will not do so. The young man in the striped shirt is Chris, a friend of Quincy's.

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Hiking the Boyd

Gorgeous morning for a hike. We started out a little after 9 and were at the saddle just south of the Boyd about 10:30. Then the weather started to change -- temperature dropped, wind started kicking up, and we watched the weather roll in from the west. Hike home was much easier and we made it before the rain passed us over. (it is raining not as I write this)

Hikers were Miley, Phillip, Annie (black spot Phillip has his hand on), Stu, Belle, and Rosie off to the right. This is a Bataan prep hike -- Only about 6 weeks from Bataan! Must get registered soon and see if we will hike with 2 or 3 this year.

Other news: Jake has started his semester well, Q is working hard here. Stu will travel to see Jake swim next week in Seattle for conference swim -- he has been instructed to bring back crab. I am heading to Delaware at the end of the month to visit the parents. Will bring back crab? Not exactly the same thing.

I am 7.5 months into my year cycling challenge. The ride home feels easier all the time, and I am learning to avoid the places where tire-shredding glass lives. I made it through the worst of the cold and the shortest days, but the windy times lie ahead!

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2008 in Review

2008: we hiked our first marathon, climbed mountains, built things, tore others down, found more ways to eat local, learned new technology, made new friends.
Greetings to all, near and far.

2008 was an eventful year in the neighborhood, what with two visits from the local SWAT team, one massive conflagration, and a house-leveling explosion. Family news happily cannot match that, but we had our share of milestones.

Quincy continued her involvement with theatre onstage in Talk Radio (she and Stu also constructed the set) and as a techie in Beauty and the Beast (no photos were allowed...). She was also in the LCHS Showcase Marching Band, which had a very long season since the football team won the state championship! Other Quincy highlights are here, and include a month-long trip to Germany to visit her GAPP partner (her blog about that travel is here). We sadly come to the end of our era of exchange students: the ones we hosted were great kids.

Jacob continued swimming last winter, spring, and summer and filled the spring with academics and preparing for college. He graduated from Las Cruces High School in May and celebrated with two weeks in Thailand. In August, Jacob started college at Willamette University: he enjoyed his first semester and learned, importantly, that kids from small-town New Mexico can hold their own with kids from top high schools from around the country. He really liked his courses, and next semester he will be a teaching assistant for the biology course he just completed. He is also on the Willamette swim team.

Because of Quincy and Jacob's travel plans, this was the first year in many that we had no family summer travel. But Stu and Mel did get away to Cozumel, Mexico, to celebrate 25 years of marriage. Of course, while we were away, a wildfire came within a mile of the house and kept Jacob awake and on watch. Our December travel to Florida (picture, above, in the Everglades) was excellent -- warm and relaxed, with excellent food and beautiful scenery.

As for Stu and Mel? We are still both at NMSU and active in the community. Stu continues his research and service but is best known on campus as the Beer Guy. He is a local soccer ref, the go-to guy for stage and marching band set pieces, and the brewmaster for the Erasmus B. Dragon hiking club (no hiking club should be without one). Melody has colleagues who are experts in the uses of social media and keep trying to drag her into millennial forms of technology (see most amusing example here). In July, she started commuting to work on her reliable Fuji (older than some of her colleagues) and has enjoyed getting to know the local cycling landscape. If the ride home is an uphill grind, the ride in is a downhill thing of joy!

We have lots of room and invite anybody wanting an escape from the cold to come visit. Or gain foreign relations experience: You can see Mexico from our front yard!

Best wishes to all for a great 2009.

Sweet spot

Black vulture in photo.

Along highway 41 in south Florida, species list from a 30-minute stop:
Great blue heron, snowy egret, great egret, white ibis, tri-colored heron, double-crested cormorant, green heron, wood stork, black vulture, turkey vulture, northern mockingbird, anhinga, gators, little blue heron, kingfisher, turtles.

One identified bittern-ish heron and perhaps a great white heron.

Excellent!
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