We celebrated my dad’s birthday last week. Eighty-eight years young!
Happy Birthday, Dad!
- Category Archives day by day
This is the category closest to just being a plain diary. Places I go, things I do, people I see, what’s happening in my life.
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Mom and Dad and Birthday Cheesecake
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More Iris Photos
Here is a quick photo dump, some of my recent Iris pictures.
Reading With Oma 
At The Creek 
With Her New Bunny 
Scooter Time These are from about a month ago. We had her over maybe two weeks ago and I took these:
On The Porch 
On The Porch 
Chalk 
Sleeping at the Park Finally, some pictures from just last week, when we rode the Bob trailer over to yet another park, and also visited friends who had chickens:
At The Playground 
Feeding Chickens 
Asleep Our little lady tends to seize her days…
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I Feel The Earth Move
We had an earthquake today. Anne and I were watching Iris, and hanging out in the living room when there was a sort of whump! against the house, and a low rumble. Anne thought it was a really crazy wind gust, while I thought it might have been a truck rolling by outside. I started suspecting something else when I looked out the window: no wind, no trucks, and the rumble continued for a few seconds longer…
I looked it up on the USGS site (no mean feat when Iris is around, and really into our electronic gadgets — we usually keep them hidden), and sure enough there was an earthquake, 4.8 on the Richter scale, out near Whitehouse Station NJ. Meanwhile, our phones lit up with messages: neighbors, friends, and Anne’s siblings too, from nearby and from as far away as Connecticut. (Her brother lives near the epicenter, and they had pictures fall off the walls.) We were listening to WXPN out of Philadelphia when it happened, and they played “Whole Lotta Shaking Going On” (and other songs like that), so I guess they felt it down there too.
So that makes five earthquakes I’ve experienced, all on the East coast:
- In high school, probably junior year, we had one during school hours. No one knew it at the time, I was in class and I remember glancing at the door — it sounded like one of those wheeled carts they used in school, rolling down the hall just outside.
- Not long after high school, my brothers and I were hanging out in the front yard, and there came a weird groaning from the cement porch. I looked at the porch, and I must have looked like I thought I was losing my mind, because my brother said “yeah I heard it too.” It turned out to be another earthquake.
- Early Eighties, I was living in Boston and I was awakened in the middle of the night by what I thought was a passing subway (Boston has subways, but I didn’t live anywhere near one). The next day it was all over the newspapers — we’d had an earthquake.
- We had one while I was at work maybe twenty years ago, the first of the bunch that was recognizable as an earthquake while it was happening. It was small and pretty close to my office, which was close to the epicenter of today’s.
Anyway, we just finished a pizza dinner with Emmi & Kyle (and Iris). Tomorrow is a ride to the farmer’s market in Easton.
UPDATE: WE had an aftershock about 6:00 last night, but I didn’t notice it. Also, there was another earthquake here, maybe 2010, strong enough to require repairs to the Fahy Bridge (which TBH may have already needed repairs).
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More Travels
We just got back from a visit with Ben and Jenny in Los Angeles, or rather Altadena, just north of Pasadena. We stayed in an AirBnB (meh, or maybe even “meh minus,” but it was someone’s entire house to ourselves, and it was close to their place in Altadena), and we got in some biking, hiking, cooking, and even a nice dinner with Jenny’s folks at a Persian restaurant. I’ll have more to say I’m sure, but for now here are some pictures:
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
Ben & jenny’s front Yard and Cat 
Giant Fig Tree At The Library 
In The Forest 
Local Flowers 
Stream Crossing 
Do You See The Lizard? 
Lizard Close Up 
Angeles Mountains 
Berries On The Trail 
Berries Close Up 
Angeles Mountains 
Hiking 
Angeles Mountains 
Ben, Jenny and Anne 
At The Diner It was good to see those guys.
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Traveler
We were supposed to go to Connecticut today, but when we got up this morning Anne was sick, either something she ate or (more likely) some stomach bug, which she may have caught from Iris, who has been “pukey” and out-of-sorts lately.
I’m currently at the Essentials Cafe, a new place in the old Moravian Church parsonage on 3rd Avenue. This is probably run (maybe not directly) by the Moravian Church, as a “pay what you can” breakfast/lunch spot. Pretty decent, quiet, it just opened a few weeks ago. They have food, but I just got a cup of coffee; my ultimate destination is Bitty & Beau’s, the coffee place catty-corner from the Brew Works.
If Anne feels better tomorrow we’ll probably still head up — her sister’s mother-in-law passed away and the funeral is Monday. Long drives with a stomach bug are not fun, and nobody wants to be the super-spreader of anything at a funeral, so we’ll see.
We’ll be heading to LA to visit Ben & Jenny on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, I was down visiting my parents last week, and we also drove up to a bike shop in Alfred NY for Anne to buy a new recumbent bike. (Alfred is just past Corning, so on the way home we stopped at the Museum of Glass.) We finished the week with a visit to her Aunt Kay in Jim Thorpe. Lots of traveling going on!
The Sporting Life: We’ve been getting a lot of hiking practice in lately, getting ready for our New Jersey section hike on the AT with Julie. (There’s also been a lot of research, and some buying/borrowing of equipment we’ll need but don’t have, thanks to neighbors Ed & Jan and Matt & Diet.) The weather may go back to “winter mode” soon, but we’ve been enjoying the warmer weather with a bunch of bike rides. Spring is coming.
And finally, even the slowest horse crosses the finish line — Anne and I are both done with all the Slow Horses novels and novellas. We don’t know what to do with ourselves now… I’m currently reading “Great Feuds in Mathematics,” which is kind of meh but it keeps me occupied.
So that’s my story!
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Another One In The Book
The sun, if we could see it for all the clouds, is slowly going down on the last day of the year, 12-31-23, 123123…
We’ll be going out to the Grover Cleveland Democratic Club (where we are members, thank you very much) for some early karaoke before going out on the town with John & Donna to help ring in the new year.
Anne and I did a walk over to Nisky Hill Cemetery this afternoon, and we’ll probably do a hike tomorrow, to walk in the New Year.
…speaking of which, Happy New Year, Everybody!
By the way, this and this are what I wrote 10 years ago. It feels like just yesterday, and it feels like a different world.
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Monday
Happy Birthday to my brother Chris!
Today is another Iris day. She’s taking a nap right now, so we’re chilling and getting a few things done, like blogging…
Saturday was our CAT Holiday party. Great crowd, tons of food, and our beer choice (Sam Smith’s Winter Ale) was a hit. Yesterday was Christmas Cookie Bake Day for Emmi and Anne, so Kyle and Emmi were over with Iris for much of the afternoon, then we went over to John & Donna’s later in the evening, to watch Christmas shows with them and Diet. It was a busy, social weekend!
Up next: I have my cello lesson in a few hours, and tomorrow Donna H and I are playing duets.
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Saturday
It’s not quite the countdown to Christmas here yet, but today is the CAT board’s annual holiday party at our house. We’re getting the place ready this morning.
Yesterday was an Iris day, and we also had a few visitors: next-door neighbor Jim came over with a gift loaf of of bread, and Lisa from Cutters picked up my touring bike — she was borrowing it as a sizing demo for another customer.
Anne was out on some errands, so Iris and I were on our own when our visitors arrived. We’d just spent some time in the neighborhood, and also in the backyard where we’d walked all over some fallen persimmons — it was all in our shoes like dog poop. We came inside and I took our shoes off, and that’s when I noticed that Iris’s hat was missing. Uh-oh, it could be anywhere in the neighborhood, but hopefully it was just out back — we went outside and it was right in the wet grass, and now my socks were wet from the rescue so I took them off too.
I got Iris’s shoes cleaned and back on her feet, but still hadn’t dealt with my footwear when our visitors arrived. So there I was, barefoot outside in December, holding Iris and a loaf of bread and chatting like it was the most normal thing ever. At this point, I guess it kind of is…
(Lisa texted later– they got the sale!)
Not much else going on.
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Scenes From A Wedding
Extra! Extra!Our nephew’s wedding was the big November event in our extended family. Greg and Emily had their wedding just outside Boston, the central location for the extended families and also near where they live. Anne and I drove up with her sister Lorraine on Friday, and met parents-of-the-groom Joe & Laura and a few others for a tour of the Samuel Adams Brewery. After that, and after checking into the hotel and meeting up with more people, a big group of us went out to dinner before walking over to the pre-game party at a nearby pub.
Samuel Adams Brewery Tour 
Samuel Adams Taste Tet 
Boston: An Evening Dragon 
Mustaches: Anne and Adelle 
Mustaches: Bill and Valerie 
Mustaches: Jenny Much shenanigans ensued, and a good time was had by all…
The wedding was Saturday, at a venue just outside Boston proper. I did not get many pictures of the ceremony itself, but I did get a few sweet shots of the family at the reception.
Kyle, Emmi, and Ben 
Emily: Here Comes The Bride 
Emily and Greg: The Ceremony 
Anne and Me 
The Crew 
Anne And Her Siblings 
Father-Daughter Dance 
Mother-Son Dance I put the camera away after the the eating and dancing started in earnest, but rest assured another good time was had.
Congratulations, Emily and Greg!
The next morning we — us, Ben & Jenni, Lorraine, and Joe & Laura and Alex — took a walk over to the Italian section in Boston’s North End for cannolis and pizza, and then it was time for all our long trips home.
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And The Days Go By
Wow, it’s been a month; all of November I was running silent. Plenty has happened, which I’ll I’ll write about in other posts, but here as an icebreaker is an Iris photo update:
This was at our rescheduled Halloween Parade, one week after the original parade was rained out. No photos, but she enjoyed watching Trick or Treat from our porch, and she liked the parade too, especially the school bands, and especially especially the percussion sections…
I watched her one morning about a week ago, and this is how we spent the time, at least until it was time to go to the playground. Snacktime, and some time with her “drumset” — the mixing bowls, which she likes to bang around and also stack and unstack.
We watched her yesterday, and we had fun playing with her and her makeshift “toys.” Friends visited later in the day and the weather turned unexpectedly nice, so we all took a walk over to the playground. She and her personality are both getting so big!
