News from NY, 8/10/2008

HiYo,

I had a good trip back to the Rochester a couple of weeks ago. Had lots of productive visits with the Beemers (IBM guys) as well as a nice visit with Zach and friends.

Zach and I arm wrestled to see who would get the upstairs bedroom and who would get the living room couch. I had the bed last time, so I was insisting it was my turn for the couch, but he would have none of that, so he proposed we settle it with an arm wrestling match. No problem, I thought, I've been keeping in pretty good shape and I beat him last time. But I neglected to take into effect that flinging thousands of tires would have on his now bulging arms, so he humbled my handily. Or maybe more precisely , arm-ily. So I got the bed.

Here is is cooking me breakfast:


which was so nummy that it distracted me enough that he beat me in a game of breakfast chess. But then I got my feet back on the ground and won the next 2 games, so the worlds was right again.

For the last few months, the shop has had mysterious water on the floor, mildewing and rusting things. I figured it was the sump pump, but after cleaning the shop out and getting the nasty gook off the floor, I found it was actually a slow drip from a humidifier tap in a water pipe. One drop every 4 seconds is enough to fill a 5 gallon bucket in a few days, which is enough to keep an unventilated shop really nasty after a few months.

The mower had broken, so Zach was behind on the yard work. There was a field of 3 foot weeks where the hole of 2 summers ago had been:




And an the end of the deck had been grown over. This picture shows a 4 foot thorn that was putting up a fight with the ivy:


I joined the frey, and the thorn eventually lost. I also trimmed a bunch of trees and arranged for a tree guy to take out 3 or the dead or un-desirable trees.

This is the car Z had driven up from Florida this spring:

He keeps it spotless. I suggested we go for a quick trip to the grocery store to get some milk, so I could get a ride in it. After an elaborate procedure to get me buckled into the 5 point racing harness, we took the long way to the grocery store, so Zach could demonstrate why he likes this car so much. Fortunately for me he did not have his 'sticky' tires on, so he limited the 40 mph curve to 100 mph. Next time I think I'll walk to the grocery store.

Zach still has way too many fires cooking. Here he is putting new springs on the neighbors GTO. That is his friend Brie giving him moral support, and making sure someone is on hand in case the car jacks slip:


I also did a bunch of house cleaning (don't worry Zach, I'm not posting pictures). Here is a collection of Nick computer games. I left them on the table for a few days, as they brought back many fun memories for those passing through:


Speaking of the Nick, they recently posted a fun video of he and his 2 partners explaining what there Skritter software is going to do:

http://www.oberlin.edu/creativity/projects-fellowships.html

Helen was glad to get me back from Minnesota. Apparently the bear had been getting into the food supplies and gaining so much weight he no longer fits in the rocking chair:


This morning we had a collection of 5 police cars in out our window:


One of the cars was, literally, in our front yard. No, not a drug bust (although I did hide the chocolate covered raisins, as I'm pretty sure they are a drug, as addicting as they are!). One car was in pursuit of a bad guy when he was accelerating around the corner in front of our apartment. His left front tire blew, causing him to careen out of control into our yard, crashing into a tree. He was OK, but his buddies had a good time giving him a hard time. The first guy, as he pulled up, spoke into his car megaphone "Sir, please stay in your vehicle".


One last picture, from a bike ride I took yesterday. Lets see if any of you can figure out what is unusual about this picture (click the picture for a larger version):


Don't see it yet? I'll give you one hint (is backwards so you don't accidentally read it):

doohroobhgien hsirI duorp a ni nekat saw

Bruce

News from NY, 7/20/2008

HiHi,

I turnified 50 a few weeks ago. Much to Helen's dismay, I managed to keep my 50th a low key event. 'Big round number birthdays' are a bigger deal in Helen's thinking. I'm thinking 100 would be something worth celebrating, so we made a party date for that.

To avoid the Bruce 50th birthday paparazzi, we snuck off to the lake for a long weekend. We met up with Aya for a few days. Here she is chauffeuring me around the lake:




Helen's parents live there full time, so they know how to handle the wildlife. This bear for example:


Lots of rain there this summer, so mushroom hunting resulted in a bountiful harvest:



We stayed a few days beyond the weekend, so I did the tele-commuting thing from there. I didn't bring my nice headset, so Helen hooked me up with this hands free unit:



Thank you me Mom and Dad for the birthday shirts and snorkle gear! I'm taking the mask with us when we go back to NH month to see what secretes are the bottom of the lake hold. Testing it out here:


Last weekend we had a trip to DC. Helen attended a conference whilst I ran about and saw all the sites. Yep, ALL of them. On Sunday, for 9+ hours I walked/ran to many awe inspiring sites around 'the mall'. I was testing my tourism endurance, a marathoner with a camera. I'll spare you most of the photos, but must prove I was there with a few, like this one, where I was measuring the size of the capital building:



I spent the most time at the Air and Space museum. They have ALL of the most historic flying things there. Here I found Lindbergh's plane trying to catch up to SpaceShip 1:


I could show photos of all kinds of other amazing things, like the Wright Brother's plane, or me touching rocks from the Moon and Mars (Mars?? yep, they had a slice of one of those metorites from Mars), but instead, I choose a photo of a toilet. People, for maybe obvious reasons, have an interest in toilets, so here is one the Soviets used in their space stations (this was the male version):


The last day we freed up Helen for a few hours. A scene from Ms Smith goes to Washington:


We spent a few hours in the Art Museum. We saw lots of good stuff, and a few not-so-good. Her Helen is trying hard not o look at a painting of what I would best describe as the inside of a marshmallow:


I'm off to Rochester next week for a week to say hi to Z and work buddies.

Bruce

News from NY, 6/30/2008

Hey peoples,

It has been a month, so here I am, dutifully recording New York happenings. Actually, not a lot of happenings to record. We have had a few weeks off from traveling, so it has been pleasantly relaxing.

Not that traveling to Seattle was not fun! (double negative, I think that means it WAS fun). I have a bunch of photos to show how much fun we had, although reporting them to mostly the people who were there seems a bit redundant. But it is such a handsome family, I must report them anyway.

This one I title:

"Family on the Beach"

And this one:

"The Crooked Family"

These photos are a bit out of order, but is the way I think sometimes. I'm titleing this one after the pretty woman on the right whom we found wondering the streets of Seattle:

"The rare straight haired Austrialian"

The flowers to help resuscitate Dad, who we figured had a pretty good chance of fainting upon seeing his other 3 missing children appear out of no where to surprise him on his 80th birthday. He didn't faint, but I hear 'Oh my Gosh!' about 5 times.

Cousin Paul and Mika took us on a lovely tour of Seattle:

"Red thing on a Needle"

This one has the grown up Paul looking at a family photo:

"Big Paul, Little Paul"

And we found some sunshine! Helen school the youngsters, but I then took a paddle and reminder her of her proper place in the ping pong kingdom.

"Outdoor Tennis on a Table"

Finally, we found some monsters:

"Little Critters"

"Big Critter"

Paul and Criag, thanks for picking us up and giving us the fun tours.

MKCM, thanks for hosting the party and great hospitalities.

We are off to NH on the 4th, then to DC the following weekend. Then I'm back to MN for the last week of July to visit the homestead.

Bruce

News from NY, 06/01/2008

HeyHi,

Got this pic from Zach last week. His car is looking great!


We did 2 graduation trips the last 2 weekends. First was to CMU in Pittsburgh for Noah's graduation from the school of music (piano). Al Gore gave a good commencement speech. You can guess the topic. He didn't mention it, but I read something interesting recently. The number 2 source of carbon emissions (behind generation of electricity) is not transportation (that is number 3), but rather cows and friends. More than all transportation (planes, ships, cars) combined! In the US alone, we consume 10 billion livestocked guys each year. Stacked head to tail, that is enough to go to the moon and back 5 times. If my meat swallowing disordered had not already turned me into a mostly vegetarian, that probably would.

Sorry, got off topic. Back to graduation, here is Noah with proud mother:


We celebrated with a trip to a famous beer place built in an old church. Here we see Helen's Mom trying to convince us that sour cream can make any beer taste good. Helen thought it did but I thought it made the sour cream taste bad.


Last weekend we went to Oberlin to visit the Nick in his natural habitat. He and his roomies have a large Fresnel lens they like to melt things with. Here Chloe is cooking marshmallows:


They also have one of those not-quite-legal-so-keep-it-a-secret green lasers. Very bright, so we make sure we only point it out into outer space so only aliens get blinded. Here Helen waves it about into some flour dust.


This next procedure is to be done only in wide open spaces without burnables nearby. We discovered burnables includes Helen's hair. Take a chunk of steel wool, wrap in onto a rope, light it on fire, then spin it around. Nick is a master burning-wool-twirler:

We also went to a lovely night time Oberlin orchestra concert in college greens with about 1000 candle lamps floating about. The conductor's mettle was tested when a dancing blue bunny hopped in and delivered him a cream pie to the face during the opening piece. He didn't miss a beat, but did say after that piece he would like to have a talk with the bunny. Something about making him eat the pie backwards.


One of Nick's hobbies is to do unusual art around the campus. In the last few years he has done enough of it that he has formed a club where he and his secret art ninjas sneak out at night and set up fun art thingies. One of their recent ones was to create a bunch of tape people, made with miles of packing tape. Take a volunteer, wrap them in tape, carefully cut the tape off and re-assemble it and dress it with cheap good will cloths.

Early one morning they set up a bunch of these tape people in the lobby of a popular school building. The tape people looked pretty realistic, so students were a little freaked out at first. When they realized they were dummies, they smiled, sat and studied with them, occasionally patted them on the head. But what they didn't realize was that one of them was Nick, well covered so you couldn't see his face. You can imagine the shrieks that ensued when someone would sit next to a dummy tape person, only to have it slowly move its head and stare at her. Or to have one grunt when patted. Nick had a good time and much discussion ensued on the local school chat board about the mysterious sometimes live manikins.

Eventually the students took the tape people and distributed them to various places. We found the bottom half of one of this one thrown up high onto a stairway overhang:



We also played guitar hero, ate Indian food, met with professors from Nick's majors (Math, CS, and Eastern Studies). Oh yeah, we also found Nick at a graduation thingy. This amusing photo shows me admiring Nick's diploma, perched on his head, Nick looking like he needs to pee, and Chloe being the only one who knows how to give a proper smile for the camera.


Yes, Nick did go barefoot thru the whole proceedings. I think he was the only one, but graduation these days is a bit less formal. One guy walked onstage while smoking a cigarette, another while holding a (well behaved) dog, and a woman proudly carried her baby.

News from NY, 05/15/2008

Nick's grant got interneted:

http://www.oberlin.edu/news-info/08apr/CLFellowship.html

He gets graduated weekend after next (Memorial day). Helen's son Noah gets his hat from CMU music school next weekend. He is off to grad school in Bolder this fall.

Those how don't like daring car stories will want to skip the next 5 paragraphs.

Zach found a great 2000 Honda civic. Affordable, nice performance parts, nice body/paint, working airbags, and no screwdrivers required to start it or run the windshield wipers. Unlike his previous $400 car, this one would pass California emissions and safety checks. The only problem was it was in Florida.

Soooo, he hatched a plan. He didn't have enough vacation to fly down and drive back, so his plan was to have a buddy in Arizona fly down to Florida, verify the car was ok, buy it and drive it Chicago. Zach would drive out after work with another buddy then buddy 1 flies back to Arizona and Z and buddy 2 drive both cars back to Rochester.

A simple plan. Except the car owner will only take cash ($8.5k!), and will not leave the plates on the car for transport. So buddy 1 makes it to Florida with pockets full of cash and a freshly emailed insurance card. No mugging occured and and the car checks out, so he makes a plateless run for the border. That lasts about 5 minutes, then he get major busted. They figured he was a criminal, so had lots of police, handcuffs, and drug dogs.

He finally gets out of there with a $150 fine, but then DMV lady will not give him temp plates, since he is not the owner of the car. Much pleading ensues and he gets temp plates that will be valid only to Chicago. The drive to Chicago works and he mets up with Zach and buddy 2 early Sunday morning. Buddy 1 flies back, mumbling something about not doing that again. Zach drives back carefully to not attract attention to his invalid plates, makes it to Madison, then the car quits.

The quick fixes don't work, so a call goes out to buddy 3, who knows a buddy 4 with a truck and a car trailer. Those arrive about midnight and he makes it back to Rochester before sunup. A little sleep later, he throws a few tools and parts at the engine and it comes back to life and Zach is happy. Tired, but happy.

Turns out Helen and I were also in Chicago last weekend (Helen had a meeting there). I was going to show Zack the town, but the weather was bad on Sunday, which was good since it took him longer to get home then expected.

But I had a nice sunny day on Monday, so I took the afternoon off (was tele-commuting from the hotel room) and ran/walked the city and lake shore. This was the famous Hilton Chicago we stayed at:


It was the worlds biggest hotel when built in 1927 at 3000 rooms. It has visited all of the last 20 last presidents, filmed 5+ big movies, and the roof is the set of the ER tv show helicopter pad.

Many trees were in bloom:


As were 1 millions tulips:


As was the fun, shiny sculpture in Millenium park:


And the beautiful video fountains:


I ran out to the tip of the Navy Pier, then back along the shore and out to the tip of the planetarium peninsula, where the magic camera caught me in a photo:


I also visited the future home of the 150 floor, 2000 foot Chicago Spire. Will be the worlds 2nd tallest building when finished in 2011: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Spire



You think that was big, check out this skyscraper sized seagull I found:



This happy woman was freshly fed a big steak at the 'number one in the world steak house', the Chicago Chop House:


I'm told the steak was delicious, but I'm sure my shrimp were better.

B

HiAll,

Life is good, the world still exists. At least till we all implode when they turn on the supercolider in Europe this summer and we all become a black hole.

Helen's parents came for a visit a few weeks ago. Here I am showing them something I forgot about on the internets ... probably porn.


Last week I got back from my 2nd trip back to visit Rochester. Zach is doing well. This is his he in his current 'beater' car. 200k miles, but 'runs like a champ'. Notice the 2 screwdrivers. The top one controls the windshield wiper, the bottom the ignition.




He lent me the car a few times ("dad take the car, the 'key' (aka screwdriver) is in the ignition"). I was ok until it rained. At that time I didn't know there was a 2nd screwdriver needed for the windshield wipers.

He did a great job on refinishing the basement. Here is the new family room:


And Nick, probably don't recognize it, but this is your room, currently rented out to a guy named Dustin:


How did he find time to redo the basement? While working full time at Discount and working on his car and helping his multitude of friends with multitude-of-friends issues (he drove to Chicago the other week to rescue a stranded friend)? He became Borg:


Borg, for those non-trekies out there, are computerized humans who are unstoppable. Oh yeah, another Zach activity is he started running. Bought himself some fancy running shoes and a 24 hour health club membership, which he does indeed use at all hours of the day. Last Sunday he and 40ish other Discount Tire employees from around the state had a 3 mile race up in the cities. He kept right on the tail of a crazy guy runner and the 2 of them finished over a minute ahead of everyone else! About 5.5 minute miles.

Helen just bought me a new pair of running shoes yesterday. Beaut of a day today, so gonna go try them out.

B