Saturday, August 01, 2009

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:

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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:

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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:

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

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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:

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

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

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

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

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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:

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

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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:

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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: 

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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!

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