Green eyed monster

We had many travels to and from Syracuse in November.  We started with a visit to the Billings Clinic.  An impressive facility and nice folks:

 

Then we visited the University Hospital in Salt Lake City:

Beautiful mountain views

And this city comes with a built in cousin (Abbey):

Finally we visited Casper Wyoming.  About 50k people, Casper is tied with Cheyenne for being the biggest city in Wyoming, the least populated state in the nation!   It has it’s own little mountain on the north side:

And the trout filled North Plate river on the South side: 

These cities offer very different job opportunities for Helen.  so we are ruminating our options.   

Speaking of ruminating, we finished November with  Thanksgiving.   This time the travel was done by a fleet of children (Aya, Zach, Cheeze, Nick, Chloe) and parents (Boris and Irene). 

Much to Helen’s chagrin, Aya cut and died her hair.  Helen always proclaimed instant death to any Aya hair cutting, but after much glaring, she managed to live (the rest of us thought it looked nice):

 

This is me, encouraging Nick to get closer to Chloe:

 

My cupid arrows worked pretty well:

 

Cheese needed no encouragement to get close to Zach:

Cheeze (not knowing his proper spelling, I’m mixing it up), was kind of like that mutant kid in ‘Total Recall’ that lived on that rebel guy’s chest, except Cheez is much better looking:

 

Zach can say ‘up’ and Cheze becomes an instant neck scarf.   His favorite driving position:

The boys had a marathon arm wrestling match.  Despite Nick’s cheering session, Zach won.   He also easily beat me … the boy has massive forearms from his tire slinging days:

Here we see the crazy boys racing down my exercise stairs …. 178 steps (trust me, I’ve counted them many times).   They mostly survived the race up them, but the race down almost killed them:  

 

And this is what happens after arm wrestling and stair exercises:

   

I’ll close with a few more cheezy photos.   This is cheezz dominating Helen’s stuffed bear:

   

And this is Cheze about to get punched in the butt by a guy we found on the campus quad:

Which was a bad idea.   Punch him in the butt and he hulks out into a sharp tooth, muscle bound, green eyed monster!

Bruce

Adirondack Railroad

Today, I boast of 3 skills.

1:  I can juggle 6 lbs (3 x 2lb balls) 500 times.  And then my forearms fall off:

2: I can rep a 20 lb weight 100 times, then my entire arm falls off:

3: We can host a 1500 lb party (10 of Helen’s co-workers) on our little 2nd floor porch, with lots of good food and wine, and amazingly, especially considering the wine, nobody falls off:

 

The new hospital extension that was started when we got here 2 years ago is finished.   I think they can do ballroom dancing in the patient rooms, but I suspect no one will:

 

That green thing on Helen’s back is a purse, in Helen backpack mode:

 

Word of warning to any of you who have semi-public apple trees.  This woman has been known to fill her pockets with unauthorized apply pluckings:

Last weekend we visited the famous Adirondacks.  We took a 5 hour round trip train ride, which got is about 1/5 of the way into the park (it is a BIG park):

 

It is an interesting park in they way they share public and private land.   Lots of cabins:

And lakes:

 

The best place to view the scenery is from the tail car, where there are open windows, right next to do no loitering signs:

 

I climbed up to the top of the train, like James Bond, and then crawled onto front bumper of the engine to take this photo:

 

One of the above captions is not quite truthful, but its a secret as to which one.

Speaking of secrets, Helen and I are considering a move West.  We have 2 interview trips lined up, first one in at the Billings Clinic, 10/17 –> 10/20, the 2nd one at the Salt Lake University Hospital, 11/15 –> 11/18.    We are excitedapprehensive.

Lake Vacation

Vacation time!  We spent 2 lovely weeks at the lake.

My goal this trip was to learn how to swim freestyle (aka ‘the crawl’) better.  Like many people, I could swim it clumsily for 10 seconds or so, then my lungs would stop me, complaining about either not enough air or too much water, or both.   A few months ago I saw a TED talk  from Tim Ferris  about a few simple tips that helped him swim better, so I was excited to try them out.   My first few days were un-impressive, but after about a week, I finally got the breathing figured out, and after 2 weeks, I could swim indefinitely!   Indefinitely being defined as to the island and back.   I didn’t get any pictures to prove it, but I got one of  Helen taking on a couple of kayakers: 

We has lots of visitors (I counted 26, but not all at once).   Alex was our meat specialist:

This is Boris giving Noah a few tips on a piece he is practicing for an upcoming concert:

I took 2 big monitors and did part-time tele-commuting from the porch.   I also brought my electric keyboard which was fun.  More in tune than the upright, and the headphones let whoever wanted to escape into their own music land without disturbing others. 

We also spent 4 days at a Neurofeedback conference in Indianapolis.  A pretty state capitol town exactly in the middle of Indiana.

 

Helen learned about various stimulator and feedback devices and programs.  She took me down to the demo room and we both got to make a on-screen robot go down a slide using just our brains,  monitored with a sensor strapped to our forehead.   Here she is trying out some feedback software from a single channel EEG lead:

I touristed the city with a 1/2 gallon of orange juice:

They had an impressive 3 straight blocks of war memorials (American Legion is headquartered there):

They guy, Pan,  is not a war memorial:

Because he is little and low to the ground, they have  a hard time keeping him around.   This is the 5th one they put there, the other 4 have wandered off.   Did I mention there are a couple of colleges nearby?

Lastly, a mystery photo:

Backward hint 1:   derewop ralos is

Backward answer:  thgil klaw nedrag a

Waterfalls

I flew back to Rochester for the first time in a year a few weeks ago.   Met up with Laurie (on her way to visit MT) and Zach (came back to pick up a car that he forgot), and Zach’s now ex-girlfriend Emily.   I slept in the nice comfy bean bag bed, and L, Z, and C(heese) shared the couch:

Zach decided NJ was not the place for a MN girlfriend so they are officially split, with Emily keeping Cheese.  After visiting with Emily, I decided she would make for a responsible renter.    She found another nursing student to split the rent who moves in next month.   They get a nice low rent and I get some low impact and responsible renters.  That is the theory anyway.

This is Laurie showing Emily some rare money that she had inherited and was retrieving from our house safe:

I started sorting thru stuff, cleaned out the garage and part of the study.   Some of the piles in the study were pretty scary, like this pile of old remotes:

Laurie and I also had dinner with the Mungers, so got to see Clark and George.

 

George is of to college in WI next fall, and Clark to grad school in VT.   Clark just got back from a year teaching English in China.  Had an interesting tale about getting his earnings out of the country.   Is illegal for a non-citizen to convert money to dollars, so it involved shady characters in vans and cash money transfers.  

After I got back, we had a visit from Helen’s friend Z.  We tried to help some girls fly a kite in the park with no wind:

      

And we visited some of the beautiful parks in upstate.  Lots of waterfalls, like this one in Fillmore Glenn:

This one right in the middle of the Cornel University campus in Ithaca:

This one, Taughannock Falls, is one of the tallest east of the Rockies at 215 feet:

On the trail we found this wasp sucking the life out of dragonfly.  Helen was not impressed:

Last weekend we had a meetup with 17 Russian friends at the lake.  These were mostly people who Helen met on an online forum, most of who did know each other.   Here we see our shish kabob expert at work, with Helen’s dad Boris immersing himself in the mouth watering aroma:

Helen was given a hula hoop.   She is much better at it than I:

We visited a local farm and fed the various animals.  This goat seemed to be living the life until we learned this farm has a special tradition each xmas involving goat:

And for my last picture, I present to you a challenge.   Who can tell me what the 2 plastic green things I found on Helen’s dresser do?   I confess, I was stumped: 

   

Bruce

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Ok, one more.   Helen has always claimed that she has red in her brown hair.   Being red/green color blind, I had to take her word for it.  But in this recently published spy satellite photo, I think I can almost see it!