News from MN, 12/28/2006

Merryies and happy new thingies to one and all,

40 and dry here. We DID have some snow for a week or 2. Gave us a
chance to try out Helen's x-country skies, as is evidenced by the over
excited skier in the 1st photo.

Helen's son Noah (a Junior at CMU music school in Pittsburgh) and
daughter Aya (a sophomore Road Island School of Design) and her
boyfriend Julian (a Junior in film studies at Emerson in Boston) came to
visit over xmas. 2nd photo shows Noah on the right testing Julian with
a card trick. The 2 eyed terrorist in the newly crocheted ski mask
eyeing the cameraman with suspicion is Aya.

We somehow managed only 1 dress up xmas party (ok by us, as I don't have
many dresses), a Mayo neurology department party. Pic 3 is we 2
lounging around in the Kahler Hotel lobby.

And then there was xmas! Presents were opened and a turkey was cooked
(and eaten!). Zach decided to upgrade Jessy's 13" bedroom TV to a 36"
LCD (4th pic). Helen gave me a a Lego Mindstorm robot and a fine
Burton jacket. Aya gave Julian a Nerf gun (5th pic), but I think,
judging from her expression, she wishes she had gotten something safer
like DVD (Julian had much fun with that gun).

Mom and Dad the wireless indoor helicopter you gave us boys (6th pic) is
amazing. Small, relatively save, well made, and runs for 4+ minutes
between recharges. And has 2 glowing red eyes, looks like a dragonfly.
At least it would if dragonflies had glowing red eyes. The 20
something question machine is fun also. The snowboard video game is a
bit too tricky for us bigger folk to balance on, but might work well
with smaller elf like people with amazing agility.

The almost last pic is an upside down Zach installing a security system
in his Miata. His car was broke for a week, and causing much
frustration, but on one miraculous looong day, he fixed it, along with
the big red car that has been in our driveway all summer. AND he
cleaned the garage!

Today was the day we were going to deposit Nick on a airplane heading to
China, but turns out his visa/passport got sent to his college address,
rather than here. So he re-scheduled for next Friday and sweet talked a
Oberlin postmaster into re-directing his priority mail to here, so he
should be good to go in a week.

The last photo is this months mystery photo. Seems last months duck
butt photo was too easy, so no hints this time.

B

ps. every try pan flipping 4 pancakes at once? It CAN be done ... kind of.

[Fwd: Spiral bookshelf]

One more photo (Zach admiring Jessy's new dew that she got on her
birthday a few days ago) and a letter from Nick!

------------

Hi yo,

So I'm going to China this January. That is going to be totally unreal
right up until the moment I eat some dumplings, I think. Having never
significantly traveled alone before, or been to a truly foreign country,
or done volunteer work, or taught English, I think that this will
probably be the hardest thing I've yet tried to do. Especially since my
Chinese is still so weak, the dialect there is very different, and there
will probably only be a few English-speakers Chinese in the village. I
am very nervous.

George and I shot what will become a panda-lickin' good short movie on
the ping pong table in the dorm basement. It will be called Chin Pong,
and in a couple months when George is done editing it, watch for it to
crawl eagerly into your electromailbox and into your unsuspecting mind,
where it will wreak all sorts of dreams and permanently twist up the
cosmic microwave background radiation in there. We also played some ping
pong upon it. No chess, though.

George and I also have begun another commando art project. Not so major
as the Mario Boxes this time: we're making stencils and chalking them
all over campus. We haven't done very many yet; yesterday was the test
run (we made some dogs and some babies with bombs on their backs).
Instead of using spraypaint, we spray some weak adhesive and then use a
paintroller to spread powdered chalk on it (which makes it really
bright), so it's non-permanent and legal. Not as exciting as spraypaint,
but more responsible. We're going to make some really big ones and it's
going to be awesome.

I spent Thanksgiving break at George's house, which is about four hours'
drive to the south in a small Ohio town. It was pretty cool, got to see
some stomping grounds and got to run around some old cemeteries. Went on
some hikes, ate some food, talked philosophy with George's parents. They
also had a huge LAN party at their house while I was there, with about
fourteen people in the basement playing games and yelling at each other
and repeating absurd catchphrases ("How does it feel to be noobed?!")
all night. It was great. Afterwards, though, I didn't want to make any
noise for about two weeks.

Emily played a show at one of the school venues this week that was
pretty cool; she rounded up a pianist, a cellist, a bassist, a drummer,
a mandolinist, another singer and another guitarist and played a bunch
of indie rock and folk favorites that she rearranged for her crazy band.
A lot of people came, it sounded great, and the peasants rejoiced in the
village. Next semester, she's going to study abroad in Scotland at the
University of Aberdeen, which is going to be both awesome and tragic,
for we will miss each other so. I can hardly bear to think of not seeing
her for perhaps up to eight months. She's got an internship at a music
agency in New York that picks songs for ads, and neither of us knows
what we'll be doing in the summer yet. Messy cake.

George turned 21 this month, so a bunch of us took him out to dinner at
the Mandarin. The night before, he and a few friends bought some wine
and he had a few drinks to try it out, so naturally we all said how
drunk he was and how he only thought he was "a little tipsy" because he
couldn't remember anything. This very much amused his parents during
Thanksgiving and embarrassed George, who has of course never been drunk
and is very straight-laced.

My cheap sandals finally finished breaking yesterday, the ones that I
leave on a bike lock on a bench in front of the dining hall all the time
so that I can walk around barefoot and not have to go back to my room to
get shoes to go in and eat. It was a wonderful friendship while they
lasted, though. My Chinese professor thinks I'm terribly strange, but
barefoot is just more comfortable, pure and simple. You'd have to be
crazy to wear shoes when you don't have to. 'Sides, feeling the vastly
various feelings to be felt when stepping on different kinds of ground
is one of life's great pleasures.

I'ma go throw this superball down the hallway until I lose it.
Love 'n ink,
--Nick