Twenty Ten

Repeat after me … Twenty Ten, not Two Thousand and Ten.   Fewer syllables.   According to my calculations, given the number of years left in this century, times the growing number of English speakers, times PI**42, we collectively save enough energy in auditory output to slow the rate of thermodynamic entropic decay and we delay the ultimate heat death of the universe by at least 7 attoseconds.   Twenty Ten … pass it on.

I had a relaxed holiday.   Helen bought a couple of bongo drums last summer, which mostly served to scare away buffalo (at least I think that is what they did, as I never saw a single buffalo since we got them), so over the holidays I started hitting them:

 

After Helen’s 2 weeks of call duty, she relaxed a bit also.  Here she is partying with some residents, flower-power style:

 

Just before xmas, the green-eyed monster returned, this time bringing with him his normal man-servant Zach, but also Zach’s girlfriend Tiffany:

But Tiffany discovered a way to tame the wild green-eyed monsters:

And so now Zach can sleep soundly, happily ever after:

 

We also had a nice visit from Noah and his girlfriend Jen.  Jen plays sax, clarinet, and flute.   We got a nice recital: 

 

This is Noah concentrating during one of our chess games:

This is Noah not concentrating during one of our chess games.  Jen was moving the pieces for him, using his hands (I won): 

We also had a visit from our Physic professor friends from Philadelphia.   We went on a walk:

Helen attempted to lead us onto a frozen lake, one of those deep meromictic lakes with scary pre-historic things at the bottom of them, but we didn’t feel like becoming a scary pre-historic thing:

 

The final picture is of me examining Helen’s “final bag”:

She claims this one is perfect, and will be the last bag she will ever need to buy.   Can you detect a slightly skeptical look on my face?

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