Merry!

Ah, what a lovely Christmas season this has been so far… Starting Thursday after work, I’ve been in RELAX mode, and trust me when I say: I needed this.

On Friday Amy, the beasts, and I headed to Maine for the celebration with her family there. Everyone showed up on Friday - sister and her family (including 2 dogs and the 2-week-old new niece), brother and his dog, cousin and wife (from California, so no dogs), and us (with two dogs) added to the two humans and 2 dogs who already lived there. For those keeping count, that makes 7 dogs, 3 kids under 4 years old, and 9 adults. Needless to say, we had a blast - much better than last year when brother didn’t come and one kid was exceedingly sick and moaned for 4 days solid.

The only real disaster this year happened at the very beginning of the annual Christmas Tree Hunt on Christmas Eve. (To set the background here, keep in mind that global warming is doing its best to keep Maine from getting any snow this year, and as a result it is extremely muddy in the woods.) We were about 30 yards into the woods when all of a sudden the dogs (all 7 of them) got into a game of chase. Our big galumphous, Otter, ended up being the chaser, while the others were the chased. So he’s flying by everyone at a dead sprint, which for a 90-pound dog, is pretty fast. Unfortunately for the 3-year-old, he’s also not very good with knowing exactly WHERE in space he is, and the hip-checking flying-child mud-puddle disaster was about as awful (and awfully funny) as you can imagine. After a trip back to the house (yes, I carried her the whole way out of a horrible sense of guilt), a change into clean clothes, and a mad dash back into the woods, all was better in the world. It’s neat to see her figure out a lot of self-control - she was done crying by the time I hauled her to the road, was laughing halfway back to the house, and was 100% sure she wanted to go help get the tree about 3 steps after that. Last year… well, 2 and 3 are very different ages. That’s all.

The rest of our time in Maine was great. We played card games, we ate lots of food, we went to a caroling party, I helped Amy’s brother finish his Christmas shopping, we went to a Christmas Eve honest-to-goodness smorgasbord dinner, and we slept a lot. Christmas morning was fun - Smartwools (cute ones!) in the stockings from Santa, books and DVDs and other nice presents from the family… And this year I finally figured out that how Amy’s family opens presents (all at once, en masse) and the way my family opens presents (one at a time, with oooohing and ahhhing) are just different - neither is better or worse, they’re just different. What a dumb thing to realize, I know, but how much more fun both present-opening experiences were for me after having the realization!

Christmas afternoon we left the dogs in Maine and drove back home to prep for our flight to MN the next day. I finished wrapping out-of-town presents (Amy mailed them the next morning), we did laundry, and we packed. Our flights to Minneapolis were good - I’m a huge fan of Midwest Airlines now, thanks to their incredibly comfortable seats! When we fly back here, we’ll definitely try them first, even if we do have to change planes, simply because they’re not as …. wretched? overpacked? dreadful? … as the other airlines who fly direct.

So we got here and an hour later my brother and his family showed up. We had our traditional meal of chili and fixins’ for dinner, then opened stockings and one present. Big stocking score: hand-dyed cashmere yarn, enough for a scarf, from School Products! Go Santa! And the present is wonderful - a print by Katsuyuki Nishijima of several umbrellas outside a shop. Today we opened the rest of our presents, which was a lot of fun. I think everyone liked the presents Amy and I got for them; my dad’s been reading the bird feeding books Amy got for him non-stop, and my mom already put in the earrings from Lawrence Nelson of Global Odyssey Designs. The big hit present of today from my folks was a red hooded sweatshirt from the Duluth Pack company. I’ve had it on since I opened it. Who knew? My other favorite gift is Domiknitrix: Whip Your Knitting Into Shape. As soon as I finish the very wholesome Janda I’m going to make something a little more on the wild side!

The very exciting event of the afternoon was meeting my godcousin’s new daughter (he’s my godparents’ son, so “godcousin” is the term I use to describe him and his sister). He and his wife adopted a little girl from Colombia and they only came home a few days before Christmas. She is one cute kid, and I can’t wait to get to know her as she grows up!
We’ve also played lots of games - Littlest Pet Shop, spoons, and pool are among the big winners this year. Tomorrow I’ve got a few errands to run, but think the rest of the day should be more of the same as today (without all the opening of gifts and meeting of new kids).

So to those of you who celebrate it, a belated Merry Christmas to you all. My wish to all of you this season (besides SNOW) is for good health, family and friends by your side, and love in your hearts.

A Year in Cities

One or more nights spent in each place. Those cities marked with an * were visited multiple times on non-consecutive days. Those with a + are family visits.  Those with a # are my home(s).

• Philadelphia, PA * #
• Woodlyn, PA * #
• San Antonio, TX
• Jamaica Plain, MA #
• Natick, MA #
• Golden Valley, MN * +
• New Orleans, LA
• Walpole, ME * +
• York, ME * +
• Various towns, Nova Scotia

It’s been a light year, travel-wise. Next year I hope to travel more. Conference visits next year include Seattle, Baltimore, and DC.  I’d like to go someplace this summer with Amy where neither of us have been before. Maybe some sort of grand geocaching adventure…  And a fall trip would be incredibly lovely.  I’m going to try to see if I can get her to agree on heading someplace European (like London, where I think some friends might be moving!)

What did YOUR year in cities look like?

Some of my favorite photos

Like most folks, I love my digital camera. I’m only on my second one so far, but it makes me just as happy as my first one did. From a Fujifilm Finepix 2700 to a Canon Powershot SD630… life is good. Here are some of my recent favorite photos:

There are more after the cut, or you can check out my photos at Flickr (2005-present) or Fotolog (2003-2005).
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S is for… SOX!

Back to the alphabet theme (I’d stopped doing it a long time ago - whoops!)

So this afternoon someone at work posted about two tickets she had for sale for tonight’s Red Sox/Twins game. I jumped at them, since she was selling them for half-price. Amy and I took the train to Fenway, had some horrid nachos at a “mexican” restaurant, and headed in to the park to find our seats.

First inning, third batter is David Ortiz. Earlier this week, he’d tied a Red Sox record of 50 home runs in a single season. Would this be the night he broke the record set in 1938?

The windup - Santana delivers - and Big Papi launches one to right-center field, deep into the stands! 51!!!! The crowd goes wild!

Fifth inning - Ortiz is up again - and nails another one out of the park. The crowd starts chanting “M-V-P! M-V-P!”

So much fun to see history in the making. I’ll not forget the goosebumps of those moments for a long time. I think I’m a newly converted Red Sox fan. After being in Fenway tonight, I get it.

So S?  It stands for Sox!

More photos in the series from tonight are here.

Nova Scotia Musings

I realized a couple of days ago that I never posted about the honeymoon we took in Nova Scotia last month! Crazy! This post is pretty much everything - Sunday is before the cut and the rest of the week is after it. Sorry Bloglines readers - you’ll get the whole thing!

Sunday July 23

After leaving Clarks Cove Farm, Amy, Nan, and I went to say goodbye to our families. Headed to Portland to catch the CAT ferry at 2:30. Spent a long time in line (we got there latish) and were some of the last cars on the boat. Parked and found a place to sit in the CAT - unfortunately nearly the casino. Due to Hurricane Beryl, the waters were r-o-u-g-h and both of us got pretty ill. Lucky Amy had to take care of me, since not only was I trying not to throw up, but also got a wicked migraine. Thank goodness for Imitrex, which deals with both nausea and headaches. Spent most of the trip curled up in a little ball on the floor of the boat. Every time I got up to go to the bathroom or wander around I ended up sicker.

The boat landed an hour and a half late, and we still had a 3.5 hour drive ahead of us. It was pretty foggy, which made things challenging. I drove the first 90 miles and Amy took over for the final 90. Once we got off 103, we made a few wrongish turns, but finally got to the Riversong B&B in Seabright, NS around 2:15 a.m. Beth, the owner, got up and greeted us (seriously!) and we made arrangements for a 9 a.m. breakfast rather than the typical 8:15 a.m. one.

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