News from MN, 11/10/2006

Greets from the land of Geeks,

Heard from Nick today. He is finalizing his winter break China trip
plans in January. After a week here at xmas, he will travel to Beijing,
then to Chengdu in the Sichuan province. Chengdu is China's 5th biggest
city, with only 10 million people. Still a bit too many for Nick, so he
will travel from there to a remote mountainish village and give some
sort of aid for 2.5 weeks. Probably teach English aid, although kool
aid would be cool if he could talk that chubby singing red koolaid guy
to come with him. But his plans are the moment to go solo in china land.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there have been a hunter spotted. Those
who don't like guns had best shut your eyes for a bit. Jessy tried
some deer hunting this season with her Dad and brothers. That would be
she in the 1st photo, sporting here new shotgun. I hadn't realized that
shotguns slugs are the only gun they allow deer hunting with here.
Those big slugs get the job done quick, and they don't travel too far.

So Zach got in the gun mood and bought himself a 22 something. I would
make up a number, but he would scold me, like he did in that last letter
when I said his friend Travis was snorting a V6 engine, when in fact it
was a Honda something. So Zach has a 22 something rife in that 2nd
photo, with a massive scope. On his first run out, he was shooting a 6
inch pattern at 200 yards. After shooting a box of shells, you quickly
figure out you would rather shoot reloaded shells, so the 3rd photo
shows him reloading shells with newly bought and borrowed equipment.

The next photo shows us doing rigorous tests with 3 types of eggs. 2
flavors of organic and one in-organic (must have come from one of those
plastic chickens). Lab results are not complete yet (that was this
morning's breakfast, so we are still testing for 2 day morbidity rates),
but no strong differentiators, other than the fact that the organic
chickens are probably more happy then plastic chickens.

I have a dept thanksgiving lunch tomorrow, and I was in charge of a pie.
So Helen and I cooked up 2 this weekend. Picture shows her having her
first spin on the amazing apple coring, peeling, and slicing machine.
The other pie we made was a pineapple upsidedown cake. That way I can
drop it upsidedown on my way to work and still have it work. Maybe kind of.

That is me in the next photo, sporting my newly knitted hat. Helen is a
master knitter, although she humbly only claims rudimentary skills. I
have scored 2 aweome hats and 1.5 scarfs (the .5 scarf is will likely be
a 1.0 scarf in a week).

Last photo is Jessy's Mia acting camera shy. She does not freak out
nearly as much as Helen's Toosie, who will run to the nearest bomb
shelter at the site of a camera. I will get a good photo of him
someday and show him I am not stealing is sole.

Looking forward to our Thanksgiving visit to Bozeman this week!

Bruce

[Fwd: Temporary Art Installation Permit]

Forwarding a letter from Nickmaster.

As a post-halloween treat, am attaching a picture of a brain that Helen
and I made. A milk gelatin desert, with a bit too much gelitan, so was
a pretty solid brain. But it sure looked the part, as might be expected
when a neurologist builds a brain treat. It scared off food radiers
from my fridge for a week!

B

-----

From Nick:

Hi guys!

Three weeks ago saw the wonderful world of Asheville united at last with
its feverish appreciators, Emily and me. What a rock'em sock'em place!
Mom showed us around and we counted every beautiful thing we saw, and
ate well. And as we rushed back to Oberlin on the wind, the trees
quiesced around us like conquered peoples. It is much harder to muster
homeworking grit when you're feeling treelordish; that first week back
was floaty indeed. I've been wrangling much more of late, though.

I'm excited! My math class is so great: my final project is going to be
using linear programming to create crazy pictures. That's way better
than calculus! Stupid calculus. I'm in talks with a Chinese professor
who's got the hookup on non-governmental organizations in China and so
maaaaybe will be able to go and do volunteer work this winter term with
Emily, if everything jumps into place. Computer science is going well;
I'm on the programming competition team this year, so we're practicing
for next weekend's algorithm showdown, at which we will be creamed. The
Oberlin team has in past years tended to solve 0 of 8 problems, but this
year I think we will at least get 1 or 2, based on preliminary
practices. Oh yeah.

This weekend was parent's weekend, and Emily's parents both came this
year, which meant lots of being driven around to unfamiliar restaurants.
Tonight's was Buffalo Wild Wings, which apparently exists in Rochester
as well. I'm middlingly-slowly accustomizing to spicy foods! Still, I'd
rather eat a pear and some tomatoes than nachos. Emily's mom tripped
coming out of an acapella concert, injuring her ankle (it was swelling
thiiis big), but Emily's dad has hotshot podiatry skills and he wrapped
it with some medical stuff like pow! So handy. George also sprained his
ankle on Thursday, and he still doesn't want to play Ping Pong yet. Man,
sprained ankles must suck. Good thing I can never get hurt!

So George and I were going to do this awesome balloon arch over Wilder
Bowl, but the helium shipment kept getting delayed, so we finally
blargh'd it and are going to wait until spring. Maybe we'll think of
something else to do this winter, or maybe the Chin Pong movie that
we're making will have to do.

I gotta go because I made a list of missions to accomplish for this
weekend and one of them is to wake up really, really early. Loved the
yummy birthday treats from Grandparents! Thanks!

Love and full moons,
--Nick