Niagara

We had a couple of road trips this month.   First we met with some friends on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  First time I had seen the awesomeness:

It was strange to compare nature’s amazing creation with man’s creation a few blocks away.   Several blocks of tourist trap spectacles, like wax museums and haunted maze houses.   After a few minutes of wondering about the neon coated jungle listening to streetside talking mummies, we escaped back to nature’s creation, much more impressive:

 

Our host was the area’s head Jewish Rabbi, an amazing guy who knows a bit about everything and can do just about anything.  Including cook.  Helen picked up a few  tips:

    

The north escarpment of Lake Erie has a mild climate, good for growing fruits, so we toured a few wineries.  Here the daughter of one of our friends is explaining to me how wine is made (it had something to do with horses and dancing):

And here their other daughter is serving me up a freshly baked cake made from chocolate butter and M&Ms (those without imagination will claim it looks more like wet Canadian dirt):

Last weekend we went to NH to celebrate Helen’s Mom’s birthday.  We met up with Noah (here practicing for one of many upcoming concerts at Bolder) and Aya, doing some acrobatic French braiding of Casey’s hair (a college friend she brought along from RISID):

A charcoal Casey did of Aya:

 

There were lots of Russian friends, and that led to lots of Russian music, which led to lots of dancing, although I’m not sure this was Russian:

 

We brought Vira, a family friend who was visiting from Moscow,  back to Syracuse for a few days.   Inspired by the jeans blankets that Judy Adams made Nick/Zach when they were little, Helen and Vira attacked some worn out jeans to give them a 2nd life:

In this last picture you witness Helen with 2 of the neurology residents studying a palm reading book:

I admire their willingness to keep an open mind about alternate medical diagnostic procedures, but come on, palm reading??   Astrology was next.    It was a close call for Western Medicine, but fortunately before they got subsumed, a nearby IBM engineer eventually talked some sense into them.   One of them, anyway.

Bruce

St Thomas, 2009

I pronounce myself as the Sun master.  On my 3rd trip to St Thomas, we had 10 days of fun in the sun and I didn’t get a single sun burn.   And, I did it without putting any lotion on it’s skin.   This is my master of the Sun pose:

The secret?  It is a 3 part plan:

•   Sunbath only on sharp pokey rocks (limits exposure time).  
•   When swimming midday, use fully body armor (i.e. a shirt).   
•   When Helen tries to coax you out from underneath the sun beach umbrella, defend yourself by slapping her on her sunburn to remind her of her foolish ways. 

I had a work project that wasn’t quite done, so I called in to the daily team meetings. 

To not make my teammates feel too jealous, I told them it was raining, but I think they saw through my ruse after 5 straight days of rain. 

We actually had wonderful weather, with enough sun for 3 different wedding photo shoots.    And plenty of lizard sunbathing:

 

We had great visits with Helens parents on the first weekend and Mom an Dad on the 2nd weekend. 

No fish photos this time.  I dropped my underwater camera in the deepest part of the bay on day 2, so it now swims with the turtles.  

I did get pretty sunset photos though.  This is Helen on her last evening swim:

 

 

And this is us on our way out.  Based on his expression, I’m guessing our fellow passenger did not have as good a time as we did.