News from NY, 02/19/2008

Hihi,

We traveled to Pittsburgh weekend before last. Noah did a fine job on his senior recital. This is he with his instructor, at the post-show reception, catered by the amazing H&B caterers:

I explored the CMU and PITs campuses and captured the not-so-elusive flu bug. Brought it home and cultivated it for about a week. Next time I run into a bug like that, I intend to slay it quickly with this nifty new old sword that Helen's friend Z sent us last week:



This is Helen skating with Z at the downtown rink when he came for a weekend visit a few weeks ago:



And this is our resident master chief having fun with a sea monster:



And here we have the same sea monster, cooked and ready for .... well, ready to have it's picture taken


Boy news. Zach is adapting to bachelorhood. He now has 2 friends staying with him in the house, in a paint for rent deal, free rent in exchange for some badly needed room re-painting. He had a fun weekend snowboarding in Utah with cousin Abby. Amazing powder on the slopes. He is considering a move to California this summer, doing a lateral transfer to a Discount Tires down there.

Nick took the graduate school exam, doing very well, but will probably give his company idea a go instead. He and his roomates finished their presentation to get funding for their startup. They will hear from that in about 2 weeks. If they get it, they plan on staying in their same place for a year, working on the program they would sell to help people learn Kanji.

News from NY, 01/15/2008

Greets,

Happy x&n years to all. We had a relaxed and quiet xmas here. Except for when Aya visitied us and came back from her Salsa dances all excited, at midnight, and would start demonstrating the new moves she learned in our kitchen, including loud floor stomping and entertaining body contortions, as picture here:

As is my habit, I bought myself a Dyson vacuum for xmas. This time a space age shooter hand vac:



We drove to NH for New Years. And found lots of snow! This is Helen just before she dives into the snow to make angels:

And this is A&I making the doorman snowman:

Here it may look like we are juggling snowballs, but in truth, we are pleading the invisible tree monkeys that nobody else sees not to poop on us:

Noah received a 3 inch Bach for New Years. That little Bach guy, famous for fathering 19 children, apparently also likes to drink the champaign bubbly:

Next we have random couple we found. They look happy. Don't worry, he does not rip her ear off, as it looks like he is about to here:

And I put on skates, I think for the first time since failing badly to skate with some oversized skates in the 'Bowl' skating ring when I must have been 3 or so:

We made it back to Syracuse after a knuckle whitening 10 your snowstorm drive. Last weekend we went to Helen's delayed department xmas party at a fancy English mansion that does parties. After MUCH cajoling, her co-workers got here to shoot a few rounds of pool in the billards room. This picture is just before she misses the white ball with the stick and gives up in a cuestick waving fury, I fear never to shoot again:

Nick spent xmas with roomy George and New Years with Chloe and is now in China for a few weeks, in Shang-Hi, I think, visiting relatives with Chloe. Zach has started running, with plans to run a Marathon later this year.

Helen passed the Neurology boards she took a few months ago. Also forgot to post this radio show she did last fall .

I got a couple of awards from IBM, one in Dec and one last week. The one last week was for the work I did on the 2nd generation chip we put into the BlueGene supercomputer last year, making it 3x faster at 1/2 the power of the previous chip, which already had 1/10 the mips/watt of other supercomputers. I'm gonna use the awards monies on a vacation with Nick, Zach, and their girls down in Saint Thomas during Nick's spring break end of March.

I'm out of news. I'll post again when I get good photos of the invisible tree monkeys.

Bruce

News from NY, 12/16/2007

Hey Hi,

Been a while. The only excuse I can come up with is to tell the truth. I was abducted by aliens a few months ago and they had 4 month a no-publish clause in my release papers.

So Fall came an went. I explored all parts of Syracuse within a 3 mile radius of our apartment. That is the limit of my daily running range. I do a daily run now as otherwise I would turn into one of those blob guys who never leave their apartment. Here I am decked out in full bright-and-not-run-overable running gear:

Helen and I are the same size in almost everything (my breasts are a bit smaller), so I borrow pretty much everything of hers, including the above clothing, which includes running shoes, pants, jacket, and hat. For our formal outings, I borrow her her dress shoes (I forgot mine in Minnesota), dress shirt and sweater. The underwear is mine.

Last month Helen presented a poster at the annual Epilepsy meeting, this year in Philadelphia. This shows the ONLY time I have gotten her to sit down in front of my most-amazingly-big 30" monitor. She needed to see the 6 foot poster she was creating:

While she attended lectures, I played, exploring most of downtown Philly. I found this boatload of Irish immigrants disembarking by the Ben Franklin Bridge:

I also walked in the footsteps of our founding fathers. This is a national park guy explain to about 40 Japaneses tourists that this is the room where they signed the Declaration of Independence. They had a translator, but somehow the translator didn't translate the park guys jokes very well, as I heard no appropriate chuckles from them, only the click of a billion simulated camera shutters.

This is me whooping it up with Helen's co-workers, pretending to be a pool shark:

And of course, I found the famous art museum steps where Rocky Balboa ran up during his training. I ran up, but for-went (past tense of for-go?) the Rocky Balboa dance (for those of you who didn't watch the Rocky movie, he dances like a little a little ballerina with thick arms and droopy eyes at the top of the steps). I can only imagine how many times that dance gets done there. Here is the metal facsimile of the dancing guy:

Today we are in our first 'nor-easter' storm. In theory 30 inches for the year so far, but we only have about 10 inches on the ground to show for it. We sent looking for the Yeti monster today, but only found hot chocolate. This is Aya, visiting for the xmas break, dancing in the snow with Helen:

We are here for xmas, and in NH for the New Years weekend. Will report back next year sometime, hopefully before Spring!


B

Montana vacation

We much enjoyed our week in Montana. It was great to see many of you!

Lots of photos to share. Helen upload some to here:

http://bloomiesphotoalbum.blogspot.com/

I picasa-ed some to here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/brucewinter/2007MontanaVacation

And a few more posted here. Lets start with one of me boys, Zach admiring Nick's daemon red eyes:




Nick talking to some not-so-random girl (Hi Chloe) whilst Dad's monster new plasma lurks:




Swister Sue tests out the cave hammock:







Shianna and Dad school me in Chess:




Johny admires Nicks monster caterpillar:



Helen is awed by Majestic Montana Mountains:




Zach works his way out of a rut in the rental car, millions of miles from nowhere:




One last thing to share, a 2 minute video of clips I've taken in the last 2 months. So this is a bit of Syracuse and a bit of Montana. 2 fit that into 2 minutes, Movie Maker Automovie made them into real little bits:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=oMQQGRhN0k0

Next weekend we are off to Helen's place in NH to celebrate her birthday with kids and friends.

Bruce

First post from NY!

Hi you Western people you,

I'm an Eastern people now. We said goodbye to Zach 1 week ago ..

We traveled through 7 states (was supposed to be 6, but I missed the I90 turn in Chicago, so we took I94 to Detroit) and arrived just in time for me to plug in my laptop and travel back to Rochester for a week of telecommuting. We wired in 10 mbs cable internets and so far work is going well. Helen is also getting aqainted with her new job (e.g. found out where the bathroom is) and is already seeing patients.

One week later, we are pretty much moved in. This includes the hanging of kitchen tile thingys who's purpose still eludes me:


And the setting up of kitchen table (complements of Zach and Jessy) and TV couch (complements of Laurie):



We have downsized a bit on the TV, leaving my 62 incher in Rochester, opting instead for Helen's 10 incher. Just as well, as we didn't sign up for cable TV, instead seeing if Bruce can feed on netflix and internet TVs (Helen feeds on the Sunday New York Times).

At the other end of 'the big room' we have my work area:



Complete with an awesome new desk that Helen got me for my birthday. She fretted that it was not a very romantic present, but I pointed out to her that I was an uber-geek, and for an uber-geek, you can not get much more romantic than an massive hi-tech computer desk.



In between unpacking, we did a little exploreing. Here we find we have a secret attic, with Helen pondering how many bats find their way through the broken glass:


A few blocks from our apartment have a 70's styled neighborhood, with lots of little shops. No hippies found yet, but this flag indicates they are hiding out somewhere nearby:


Helen found an herb garden:


And I a rose garden:


Today, Helen made me a wonderful birthday dinner. She found 49 candles and secretly tried standing them up using crazy glue. After an hour of serious candle standing effort, she calls me in and I see a magnificent bon fire of candles next to a woman with fingers crazy glued together.



Now it is time for raspberry birthday cake ... gotta go!

Bruce

Jessy's Marathon

Hi to the alls.

This was the Jessy marathon weekend, Grandma's marathon up in Duluth. She finished, along with her brother, in 4 hours, 10 minutes. Zach bought a new video camera and took a few photos. This one is Jessy, a bit sweaty, after the race:

This one shows her testing out the marathon metal she got to see if it was made of pure gold (alas, was not, but tasted good):

Now, those more astute of you (i.e. the woman folk) may have noticed something different in the previous 2 photos. Those of you who didn't, try clicking on them for a bigger version, then come back here ... I'll wait.



If by some impossibility, you didn't see it yet, here is one more photo. Note the position of the hand:

That rock on the finger was brought to her by this man:

although at the time he gave it to her, shortly after she crossed the marathon finish line, he had cleaned up some (above photo is pretty much what Zach looks like after an evening of wrestling with any of a number of cars that frequent our driveway).

Zach had picked out this ring several weeks ago. He typically is bad at keeping secrets, so amazed himself by not singing out loudly his intentions. This is a picture of him NOT singing out loudly his intentions (I think he was telling one of many bunny rabbit stories, try not to ask him about the most recent bunny story, as it ends badly):

So, somehow Jessy managed to not die in the marathon, and then not die again with the surprise proposal at the finish line. She was indeed surprised and they are both very happy. No plans formulated yet, figuring Jessy should probably catch her breath first. Helen and I bought them some pie and plan on a celebratory pie fest later tonight.

Speaking of Helen and I, we just got back from a week in Chicago and New Hampshire. Just 1.5 day's in New Hampshire, to celebrate her Dad's 70th birthday. But a good 4 days in Chicago. I switched between IBM work via the hotel internet and wondering around lost, bumping into tall buildings (it is what I do in big cities), whilst Helen attended and presented at a Brain Mapping conference.

Chicago is a very pretty city. Vibrant, with lots of activity and new buildings. This park has an open air orchestra pit with an amazing billion speaker system covering the park next to it:

And of course there are fountains:

Including this o-so-amazing one that has a meg-pixel color LED display built into it, with videos of various Chicago-ians smiling and blinking:

and periodically, it spits water out on suspecting little (and big) children:

The weekend we arrived, we lucked out and happened upon the world famous Chicago Blues festival, 2 blocks from our hotel! Largest free blues festival in the world.

This is the most amazing kidney bean I have ever seen. Mirrored stainless steel reflects people, buildings, and lots of cameras (click for the big picture and see if you can spot me).

We snuck Helen away from the conference for an afternoon and had a lovely bike ride along the lake. Chicago was voted the number one most bike able city in the country:

This last photo shows Helen trying out the kennel we bought to ship Toozik in. We thought it was plenty big, Helen claiming she could live in there, but Zach had to plead with the airport people when he dropped Toozik off, as it was 1 inch short of regulation size. Toozik survived his 2 hour plane ride just fine and is now cavorting with sheep on a small farm in New Hampshire.

T-minus 2 weeks before we hitch up the covered wagon and head East. Expect the next news missive to be from NY!

Bruce