Christmas and Staten Island

After leaving Cleveland, we headed for New York. After the massive snowstorm, road conditions were not too bad, although there were giant snowdrifts everywhere.
The kids had a great time playing in the snow. We all made a massive snowman at the park. All of us except Sam, who erected a series of shrunken snowman heads on posts.



We went to Olde Historic Richmondtownville. The kids enjoyed parts of the toy exhibit, but I don't think that they were that interested in the historic hand-tooled nail collection.

Christmas! Much chaos and presents!
Mike and Karen resting after presents.

Victoria and Joseph playing with the little dogs.

The cousins. Yes, that is Joseph's butt. I cannot tell you how many of our family photos feature Joseph's butt.

Chanukah and Cleveland

This year Chanukah was so early that it came and went before winter break. And what can be more fun than children lighting things on fire!

This year we started our trip in Cleveland. We had a great time at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. We enjoyed many taxidermied animals and miniature dioramas, which are pretty much the same as when I was a kid.

The kids got to hang out with the otters again. It looks like the otters get bored during the winter and have figured out how to keep kids at their enclosure with a seemingly endless array of tricks.

We met Michelle and Rich for dinner at Lopez (no y Gonzalez. I wonder what ever happened to Gonzales, anyway).

Not too bad a visit. Danny and I found a new regular bar within walking distance of my Mom's house. I did some shopping and got sweaters and various and sundry things (Chanukah decorations!) not to be found in Normal, IL. Argos and I had a bunch of good runs around Shaker lakes (and I didn't get lost once!).

Halloween, halloween and more halloween

This was the cheapest Halloween ever, luckily for us. Sam wanted to be a scarecrow (from Batman, not the Wizard of Oz), and Joseph was Count Olaf from A Series of Unfortunate Events. I sewed Sam's costume out of burlap and raffia, and Sam sewed on the patches and stitching. For Joseph's costume, we already had this tiny little evening jacket that Sam picked out at the Goodwill in Riverside when he was 3. I have no idea how it survived our massive purge of possessions, but apparently it was too cute to give away. Joseph insisted that Olaf wore blue striped pants, so he helped me pick out the fabric. Under $20 for both costumes together!

The kids had a great time Trick or Treating in our neighborhood. They got about 10 lbs of candy from all the nice senior citizens.

After trick-or-treating, the kids went to the TaeKwonDo Halloween party where they played games, and spun out their sugar high until bedtime. Sam won the costume contest!

And we got a lot of use out of both costumes. We went to the Uptown Treatfest to visit all the Uptown Normal stores.

Joseph participated in the Mulberry School Halloween parade. (Sam was in a parade in his school, but we don't have pictures of it.)

Joseph displaying Count Olaf's most distinguishing feature: the eye tattoo on his ankle.

And last week we went to the Haunted Trail, where Joseph wore Sam's Iron Man constume from last year. He insisted that he needed a Tony Stark mustache under his mask. He later used said mustache to scare rabbits.

Sigh...

Windy chap

Joseph got to play "the man" in his class play. For some unknown reason, he chose to play his part with a British accent.

Lung worms: the 5 part series

Back from Cornwall

At the end of August I went to The University of Exeter in Cornwall to do some work with a colleague. I have actually never been to the UK before. It was a rather difficult trip with two connecting flights in addition to the international flight. (Who knew that they have internal flights within England?) Cornwall was very scenic. It was kind of like Seattle in terms of weather and coastliness. However it was kind of like Cape Cod in terms of sea-side touristy cutesiness. (Both Cornish and corny). Here are some pictures of the trip.

People drive seriously crazy in Cornwall. And the streets are bound by hedgerows, so there is nowhere for pedestrians to go. On the first day I almost got run over and got stung by stinging nettles in the hedgerows. So after that I cut through the cemetery to get to work.



There aren't really hotels in Corwall, so I stayed in two bed and breakfasts. One of them had loads of blackberries growing nearby, so I got to pick fresh blackberries on the way to and from work each day.


We went to Falmouth for dinner and saw The Red Arrows performing. Apparently, in England, these dudes are allowed to perform feats of derring-do over heavily populated areas. Everyone all around town was hanging out of their windows to watch.

My hosts John and Clarissa took me to visit Trebah Gardens. The gardens had awesome plantings, including monstrous rhubarb. There was a lovely beach with a Cornish ice cream shack.


Here are some pictures of Penryn, where the University is. The streets were old and twisty with many little shops.

And there was plenty of sea-side kitsch. Including the shell toilet at the B&B. Also, while eating my English breakfast I read a very interesting book that was (really) about the history of toast and toast racks. What is a toast rack? Well, the British are very particular that their toast (whether white or "granary") not get soggy by touching a plate or other pieces of toast. Mr. B&B owner had a very complete collection of historic toast racks.

This is a very blurry picture of John and his lab. There was a geology museum in the hallway, which was about 1000x better than either UCR or ISU's geology museum. It had both a robot and charismatic fossils.

Final thoughts about England? First, the work went pretty well--mission accomplished. However, I would have enjoyed the trip more if I wasn't so preoccupied with my imminent unemployment and lack of health coverage. Also, I would have liked the kids to be there, although it will be a long time before we can afford to take the kids to Europe. Second, the exchange rate was awful: two dollars to the English pound. Thus even the smallest purchase was crazy expensive. Third, although it was really lovely there, every time I opened my mouth out in public, people looked at me oddly. I suspect that no matter how long I was there it would still be that way--kind of like when Danny and I were living in France.

Alyn visits

O.K. I have lost most of my motivation to post to my blog. Is anybody reading this anyway? Last month Danny's aunt Alyn came to visit us in Normal. Alyn is our third (and first!) visitor in Normal. I can't help but notice that we had more visitors when we were living in sunny California...
The kids were delighted to see Alyn. Everyone had many delicious meals, and the kids had someone to play Clue with!
The kids really loved that they got to sleep in sleeping bags on the couch. Argos was also very happy--he would sleep with the kids every night, but we don't let him into their room.

Other weekend highlights included the McLean County fair. Last year we missed the Banana Derby, where monkeys jockeys race dogs. This year we checked the fair schedule to make sure that we caught it. Truly bizarre. All animals involved seemed happy to do their thing and get their treats.

The races are free to watch, but the dude with all the pets makes his cash by letting people take pictures with one of the monkeys. Sam was entranced, and decided to spend his allowance to get a picture with the monkey. (This is not the picture--there is a better one that I haven't gotten around to scanning). Sam was so proud of his picture that he carried it around with him for a week, showing it to anyone who would look. (You can actually see it propped up next to Sam sleeping in the picture above.)

The monkey guy also lets people give the monkey a quarter for luck. The monkey will run over, grab your quarter and put it in a can. Joseph had many esoteric questions for the monkey guy about how giving a monkey a quarter could result in good luck, and the three of us had a good chat about the nature of luck and the role of monkeys.