Categories
Life Photos

A look back at 2021

So we thought the pandemic would end in 2021? Did we? Oh well. However that goes (not well, at the time of writing this), we can at least recap the year in our usual end-of-year post, starting with a photo of a red-tailed hawk captured at the Pennypack Ecological Restoration area in January (with D’s Fujifilm X-T2, equipped with the long lens D got for Christmas 2020):

Red tailed hawk on tree
Red-tailed hawk on tree in Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust

January also marked the start of our second semester in which we taught completely online. It was to be just as challenging as in the fall of 2020, and not worth additional complaining about here.

We marked D’s birthday with a Zoom visit, which allowed far-flung friends Jelena and Rob to join in from Belfast, which normally would have been a very expensive proposition. It was a lovely virtual visit with lots of good friends, much appreciated.

D’s Gluten-free birthday cake

February started with a snow storm on February 2nd and snow stayed on the ground for weeks. Neighbors down the block built a giant snowman, seen below as it was being built, and then on February 8th and February 15th.

Giant snowman being built

We also made a trip with our cameras to the Morris Arboretum, where we saw a lovely snowpeople family.

Snow people at the Morris Arboretum, 2/6

Opportunities to use the long lens on the Fujifilm X-T2 were offered by birds on our bird feeders with snow in the background, like this cardinal.

Cardinal through a glass window pane with snow, 2/19

Early in March, we paid another visit to the Morris Arboretum, when D played with the long lens once more, capturing a red tailed hawk in flight and then nicely posing on a tree.

Flying red-tailed hawk, 3/7
Posing red-tailed hawk, 3/7

A couple of days after these photos were made, the sun was out at lunch time and we we had our lunch at the top of the stairs to the porch, not missing the opportunity to take a selfie. This incidentally documents how D looked after shaving his beard to ensure N95 masks fit his face as well as possible. (Later on, he allowed a tiny part of the beard to grow again, where it would be completely covered by the mask — picture later).

Selfie on porch steps, 3/9; M made this plate

A few days later, it was time for Marianne to get her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19; D followed in 8 days with his first dose of the Moderna vaccine.

M waiting to check for any allergic reaction after her Pfizer first dose, 3/16
D after getting his first dose of the Moderna vaccine, 3/24

April 4th was Easter. We got together outdoors in our yard with D’s former student Olena (the one was gave us outdoors broadsword lessons last summer — see our recap of 2020). We had a big, beautiful, and sturdy chocolate egg as something special for dessert. It was so sturdy that it came with a wooden hammer to break it open! It was well worth the trouble to break it open, as it was filled with candy and chocolates.

Our Easter chocolate egg, with the hammer it came with and M’s hand

Later in April, we had the chance to see some nice tulips at the Morris Arboretum.

Tulips at the Morris Arboretum, April 18

In early May we had our first dining out experience since March of 2020, in the outdoor “cabins” of Charlie Was A Sinner in Philadelphia. The occasion was to celebrate the birthday and make some engagement photos of D’s former student Sierra and her fiancé. Here’s us toasting them:

First outdoors restaurant dining since the pandemic started (photo credit: Sierra Arnold)

May also saw Arcadia University’s in-person graduation, and we hosted an outdoor party in our back yard for M’s department colleagues right after. M continued to get more settled in as department chair all year.

On the last day of May, we were delighted to be able to celebrate our dear friend Suzanne’s birthday with her, Kevin, Lily, and the latest canine family member, Talulah, in Suzanne and Kevin’s cabin in PA:

Talulah, Lily, Suzanne, and Kevin on May 31

In June we enjoyed a week-long driving vacation in Germantown, NY, in the Hudson Valley. We stayed at a wonderful AirBnB and had many opportunities to be in nature and hang out with M’s brother Anthony and his wife Barbara.

M in the garden of Montgomery Place
The wildflower garden of our AirBnB with the house itself in the background

Incidentally, as far as D was concerned, this was quite the year for bird photos. Here’s one that made D happy to have taken the long lens on this trip.

A bird on Poet’s Walk on 6/18

Near the end of June we had a quick but delightful visit by Jill who had traveled from California with her youngest son Owen to check out local colleges (he’s already at the age of college-hunting!). On one evening, we had an outdoors dinner with them and a friend of Owen’s and his mother at Tamarindo’s, and then took them to our back yard where the young people saw fireflies for the first time in their lives. It was a magical moment for all, especially when fireflies landed on them.

July started with a short staycation in Philadelphia. During these few days, we got to celebrate M’s birthday and the wedding of our friends Sierra and Jacob, and got to see the new wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

M in the new wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art on 7/1
M enjoying her birthday dinner at The Love in Philadelphia
M and D on Broad Street on the evening of 7/3 (photo credit: Jacob Arnold)

In July we also had our second of three driving vacations, this one to an AirBnB on the East shore of Cayuga Lake. The less said about the quality of this AirBnB the better (in future, we are only going to consider AirBnBs whose hosts are rated as Superhosts), but we did get a nice visit to NY wine country and M’s old haunts in Ithaca and Geneva, and got to hang out with our friend Eileen, who was able to join us for a few days of wine and spirits tasting and great eating surrounded by magnificent scenery.

M contemplates the sunset on Cayuga Lake, 7/10
In which we surround Eileen at a winery with a great view of the lake, 7/12
M and Eileen at Taughannock Falls, 7/14

In mid-August we spent a few days at a family reunion in New Hampshire, in M’s brother Jerry’s vacation rental, where we were treated to the famous Uncle Jerry breakfast, cooked on our porch at the crack of dawn. In accordance with global climate change, we were hit by an extreme heat wave. We did manage a nice outing on a not-too-stifling morning. Another way to cope with the heat was to buy two kiddie pools to put our feet into while sipping cold wine, to skip pebbles at a river, and to have ice cream for lunch.

Family outing at Franconia Notch, 8/10

On the way back from New Hampshire, we stayed in New Haven for a few days where we had a lovely time visiting Sierra’s family. Here’s us on a boat tour of the Thimble Islands.

D and M on a boat tour of the Thimble Islands, 8/15 (photo credit: Sierra Arnold)

Soon after our return home, it was time for us to start going to school for in-person, masked teaching. It was challenging but turned out to be less of a COVID-spreading activity than we were fearing, thanks to vaccine mandates and masking. M had to deal with including remote students via Zoom into her live classes, which proved to be an endless source of frustration. Here’s D’s first day back, waiting for the train to take him to Temple’s campus, donning the highest-quality N95 mask he could find.

D about to go to school for first in-person classes since March 2020, 8/23

September came in with a bang: a very severe storm that spawned a tornado that missed our house only by a couple of miles and that dumped a ridiculous amount of rain in the space of a couple of hours. We took our dinner to the basement to finish it, as we were under a tornado warning, and then we did a little work to help our sump pump deal with the water influx. Thankfully, we had no permanent damage, but we are well aware that our basement walls need some upgrading.

We enjoyed a weekend escape to Ocean City, NJ, on September 11-12, with Charlie and Nicki. D is partial to this photo he made of M on a boat tour of the Ocean City Bay.

M on a boat tour of Ocean City Bay, 9/12

Near the end of October, we took a short trip to a lovely AirBnB in Shawnee, PA, near the Delaware Water Gap. This also gave us the opportunity to visit Bushkill Falls for the first time.

At Bushkill Falls, 10/24. Note my minimized beard, for masks to fit better (I promised such a photo above)

We spend Halloween visiting with Suzanne and Kevin in Schnabel’s woods:

Kevin, Suzanne, M 10/31

In November we continued our outings in nature and we had a lovely, intimate Thanksgiving at Suzanne and Kevin’s, among fully vaccinated and boosted friends. I can’t not include this picture of M from Bowman’s Hill Wildflower preserve:

M at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, 11/6

In early December we went to see the Morris Arboretum’s Holiday Train display and to a wine tasting and outdoors hanging out by a fire event at Unionville winery in New Jersey. For Christmas, we took a short driving vacation to an AirBnB in the Rhinebeck, NY, where we were happy to be able to visit with Anthony, Barbara, their daughter and our niece April, and April’s sweet dog Cascade. Here’s a photo by M that shows the rest of the gang by Blithewood Mansion:

At Blithewood Mansion, Bard College, 12/27

It’s time to end this massively lengthy post. We wish all a healthy 2022, with the pandemic receding and life returning closer to what we had been considering normal!

Categories
Life Photos

A look back at 2020

Bah, humbug, you say? Granted, this was not the year anybody wanted, with a raging pandemic causing and exposing so many problems around the world. Yet here we are, M and D, your friends with the (normally) once-a-year blog update, carried to the end of the year in good health and decent spirits, thanks in no small part to our families and friends who have kept us connected, even if mostly via video conferencing.

The year started for us with our fantastic trip to Sweden. We have already written a post about that, so in this post we will update you on the rest of our year.

January

January 10th onwards, that is, since we returned from Sweden on the 9th. Right before classes started we had a nice opportunity to catch up in Philadelphia with our friend Sierra, D’s former student who is now a PhD student at the other end of Pennsylvania, which makes getting a chance to see her a rare, happy occasion. D was keen to wear his Christmas gift shirt from M for the occasion:

Both M and D started teaching as usual in January, which was the last teaching-related activity that went as usual in this most surprising and upsetting year.

February

On February 2nd, we had a nice gathering at home to celebrate D’s birthday a little late. It would be the last time we could have many people in our house for an unforeseeable length of time.

The middle of February found us visiting Longwood Gardens for their annual orchid exhibit, which was beautiful as ever and gave us plenty of good photo opportunities.

March

This was the month in which the pandemic’s effects started to be felt in our area. On March 11, Temple University announced a sudden shift to online instruction for the rest of the semester as of March 16. D had one more chance to meet face-to-face with his students on March 12, and then grabbed books and papers from his office and set up office at home. Arcadia University decided to switch to online instruction at the same time, but gave faculty and students a few days off to get ready. M also got books and papers from her office and we became prisoners of Zoom for our teaching for the rest of the year. Like so many other people, we did some last-minute buying at the time, with March 16 still being memorable as the last day we went to the local supermarket.

Lots and lots of online purchases were to ensue, not only for food but also for wine and spirits (and chocolate and chips), throughout the rest of the year. It had somehow escaped our notice until then that Pennsylvania had already in the pre-pandemic times allowed the shipping of wine from other US states, so now that we figured it out, we quickly became members of two wine clubs. As for spirits, it was legal to order for delivery from Pennsylvania-based distilleries, so we started doing that too. Eventually, we also found restaurants that were selling cocktails together with dinners for take out.

We also bought a bunch of gift certificates to support favorite restaurants and a local bookstore, and became members of Bookshop.org to be able to buy some books online while supporting indie bookstores.

During March and April, we also had a series of online video visits with friends and family, which were wonderful, if inadequate, substitutes for face-to-face visits.

To stay in sort-of-acceptable physical state, we started (almost-) daily walks, initially around the neighborhood, staying far away from others, as we should. In the first couple of weeks of the lockdown, neighbors wrote inspirational messages with chalk on the sidewalks and street pavement.

April

On the first Sunday of April, M used instructions from New York Times to make some masks; it was the first of at least two such sessions. The results look sharp:

M’s masks become popular with our friends and we gave some to them. They also helped M produce them, we should say gratefully, by sending along those metal strips from coffee bean bags that are so handy for limiting the fogging of eyeglasses when embedded into the top of the mask.

During April we also continued watching streaming plays from the National Theatre of London, something we started doing in March, if memory serves.

May

We continued the daily walks and photographed lots of flowers in neighbors’ yards. We did a lot of cooking at home and tried out some cocktail recipes. For an alternative to walking for outdoor exercise/amusement, we got a pickle ball game set that we played with a few times in our back yard. Here is M at it.

Our semesters ended reasonably well, both of us having managed to transition to online instruction without too many problems. It was a big disappointment for us and all our graduating seniors that graduation ceremonies were held in improvised, virtual ways, but there was no escaping the need for it.

June

In anticipation of a subdued celebration of M’s 60th birthday on July 1, with no visitors due to the pandemic, we ordered a Sacher torte online from the Hotel Sacher in Vienna with plenty of lead time, thinking that there might be a long delay in fulfillment and delivery due to the pandemic, but to our surprise it came almost immediately, in early June:

This month was momentous for M professionally speaking, as she became chair of her psychology department. It could not have happened at a more challenging time. She did have good support from her colleagues, though, and as of this writing, everything has gone fine, except for her being constantly busier than ever before.

We also started having visitors, at most two at a time, outdoors at a safe distance. Here are our dear friends Suzanne and Kevin:

A very pleasant activity we were able to resume was visiting the Morris Arboretum.

We can’t forget to mention that all through the summer we were reading several books and websites, as well as attending webinars, on how to prepare for a good hybrid or online-only class, as it looked more and more certain that this would be the way we’d teach in the Fall semester.

July

July month started with a quiet celebration of M’s birthday. On the 18th, we were lucky enough to have clear skies and access to a place with relatively low light pollution to photograph comet Neowise. Here is a photo M made of the comet.

Near the end of the month we spend a few days in Ocean City, NJ, very cautiously, avoiding the boardwalk and stores, where altogether too many people would be seen not caring to wear a mask even if they got near other people.

August

August went by like July, minus a trip to the shore but plus visits from various friends, taking advantage of the warm weather to sit in our back yard, enjoy some food and conversation, and, as was the case with Olena (another friend who’s D’s former student), give us a demonstration of historically accurate broadsword fighting.

The last week of August was also the first week of the Fall semester for D (M started a week later). We were thankful that our desire to teach fully online was accommodated. Temple University did try to start with some in-person classes, but that experiment was short-lived, as COVID-19 cases at Temple started spiking and the university moved all in-person classes online (except a small number of classes that can’t be done online, such as some nursing and medical school classes).

September

Amid the teaching (with its attendant constant making of short videos and grading of online quizzes, really kind of draining), we did continue with our escape routes, like photography, to blow off some steam. The following sunset panorama was a gift from the sky on the 4th of the month.

On the 7th we had a chance to visit the Morris Arboretum again, this time with friends. Here’s a green “fireworks” image from that visit:

We also took a weekend trip to Ocean City again, where we met a small “COVID pod” of friends cautiously in open air and did not visit stores (where it was common to see from the outside customers blithely shopping without masks on) or crowded beaches.

We also added a new destination for our walks, the Churchville Nature Preserve. It is a nice place for a Sunday morning walk:

October

October’s weather did allow some more outdoors visiting with friends. Early in the month we had a visit by Mike and Eva.

We also took advantage of good weather to attend an outdoors family gathering in New Jersey to mark our niece Avery’s first holy communion.

Leaf color this month was good, though we have had it even better in select past years. These two images from Alverthorpe Park in Jenkintown give a taste.

A little later in October, we had the opportunity to visit this park again with our friends Suzanne and Kevin. Here is Suzanne walking alongside M, followed by a photo of M and D taken by Suzanne.

On Halloween weekend, we stayed at an AirBnB in Kennett Square for a couple of nights, to be near Longwood Gardens to visit for the chrysanthemum exhibit. This also allowed us to have a nice stroll in Longwood Gardens with our friends Ellen and Jim, who live nearby. Here is a photo of M with Ellen and Jim and then a photo from our walk in the meadow.

November

Elections were the big starter of the month; this blog is hardly the place to discuss politics, but we did vote in person, wearing both masks and plastic shields over our faces.

Later in November we took some walks in the Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust. There D was lucky enough one day to capture a photo of a hawk with its lunch in its left talon, waiting to be consumed. This was taken with the regular lens of D’s Fujifilm X-T2 camera. If only Santa’s gift of a long lens for this camera had arrived already!

For Thanksgiving we ordered takeout from one of our favorite restaurants in Princeton, which had a complete Thanksgiving dinner ready to pick up in a box. It felt so very strange to drive to Princeton to get the food and drive right back, without doing any of the usual things we do in that town (buy books, take pictures, buy chocolates, buy clothes), but as mentioned already, we were trying to stay as far away from infection possibilities as we could. Here is M at our Thanksgiving table (just by ourselves, but the weather was good enough to start outside). Sadly, shortly after this photo was taken, we were chased inside the house by a persistent wasp, which also managed to come in after us undetected and sting M (painful, but with no bad allergic reaction, thankfully).

December

December started with a visit to Alverthorpe Park with our friends Reiko, Troy, Jordan, and Cooper. It was D’s first serious attempt to use the long lens Santa brought (very proactive Santa was on this occasion). Here is a sample photo (the goose was a good 30-40 feet away):

Later in December our first fully-online semester of teaching came to an end. Both of us felt that teaching online, especially under duress, instead of by choice, was a very difficult endeavor. Every class takes longer to prepare, you are endlessly making videos and slide sets for class when you are not endlessly grading assignments, the only exam format we felt made sense was open-book — which is very hard to write at the proper level, you are missing face-to-face contact with your students, they miss it too, it’s overall a sad necessity. However, we managed. Most impressively, M managed to reach the conclusion of her first semester as department chair in one piece and with her department functioning well, despite seriously diminished resources.

In the middle of the month we had a snow storm that was followed by several days cold enough for the snow to stay on the ground. We were lucky to be able to take advantage of a little free time that we made for ourselves in the middle of final exams to go to Alverthorpe Park and to the Morris Arboretum to make photos in the snowy conditions. We leave you with a photo of a deer from Alverthorpe Park and a gallery with some photos from the Morris Arboretum, including some from its holiday train display with miniatures of famous Philadelphia buildings made out of wood and other natural materials. Tip: for the gallery: clicking any one of the photos displays bigger version; this is important for some that can only be viewed uncropped in this fashion.

We leave you with the wish that the year 2021 will be massively better than 2020 was. We are so looking forward to being able to hug our friends and family and to visit them indoors without qualms, not to mention going to the opera, concerts, theater, and restaurants and our very own classrooms to teach our students face-to-face!

Categories
Life Photos

Trip to Sweden

In the 2019 retrospective post, we promised a postscript about the then upcoming trip to Sweden to see the Northern Lights. Here it is, finally. It took a while to pare down the thousands of photos we made to the small selection you see here.

We arrived in Stockholm on December 30th. We stayed in Gamla Stan, the oldest part of the city, until January 2nd, which gave us the opportunity to explore the city, including the great Vasa museum and the Viking museum, and have New Year’s Eve in a very nice restaurant there and to enjoy gifts from the sky that we did not expect, when both the sunrise and the sunset on New Year’s day were amazing.

New Year’s Day sunrise, seen from a window of our hotel room
New Year’s Day sunset, seen from near the Viking Museum

On January 2nd we flew to Kiruna, in the far north of Sweden, from where we were taken by bus to the Tourist Station in Abisko National Park, where we stayed for four nights and chased the Northern Lights.

The Kiruna airport is tiny and we had to walk on the ice-encrusted snow to the terminal upon arrival. Good thing they had gritted the snow well.
Portrait of the two of us with the Aurora, by our great photo guide, Sarah Skinner.
Aurora so bright it was reflecting on the lake
Dimitrios with his camera on the tripod ready for action to capture the Aurora
The Aurora, the warming tent our guides provided, and the Big Dipper
Aurora convolutions

As you see, we had great luck seeing the Aurora on two of the four nights. Even greater luck was being able to see polar stratospheric clouds, a much rarer phenomenon.

Polar Stratospheric Cloud from the bus on our way to Kiruna on January 6; iPhone 11XR photo

After our excursion to the Arctic (Abisko is a good 200 km inside the Arctic circle), we spent three more nights in Stockholm, seeing a few more sights (the Middle Ages museum, Stockholm City Hall, and the Nordic museum), making new friends, and celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary with a dinner at the Michelin rated restaurant of the Grand Hôtel. After that, it was time to fly back home and get ready to hit the ground running for the Spring semester. All in all, it was a great and memorable trip.

Categories
Life Photos

Looking back at 2019

Look at that, it’s time for another end-of-year blog post! This one will be followed in early January 2020 by a little postscript, as we will have returned by then from an exciting trip to see the Northern Lights (we’re hoping the weather will allow it) and we know you’ll not want to wait until December 2020 to read about that.

January started with a short trip to Mohonk Mountain House for our anniversary. We attended a wine class given by Kevin Zraly and took a guided walk up the mountain to the tower.

Work-wise, there were not big surprises in the Spring semester. The new item was that the course on economic inequality that D experimentally first offered in 2017 (see that year’s review on the blog) was now offered for the first time as an officially approved elective with writing credit.

Near the end of January we had a party at Estia restaurant to celebrate D’s 60th birthday. It was lovely to see so many friends and family come to break bread together and raise a toast to celebrate D’s newly round age.

In March, D’s brother Kostas and nephew Yannis, Kostas’s son, visited us for a week. Kostas came to participate in a workshop on Machine Learning at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, so we could visit with him on the two weekends that book-ended their visit, but Yannis stayed with us and we had several outings with him.

Kostas, Dimitrios, Marianne, Yannis in front of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton

In March we also took a short trip to Frederick, Maryland, as guests of our good friends Ellen and Jim. Frederick is a historic town, with many buildings that are a century or two old, good eateries, and a nice river park.

Frederick, Maryland

In April, D continued his streak of singing in the Meet Me @ The Music event organized by Honors music students at Temple University. This time, he performed the Song of Drunken People by Khrenikov, with a student accompanying him on the piano. For a top-notch performance (not by D!), and to get an idea of how fun this song is for a bass to sing, check out this YouTube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX4Jqabh1UI

M had a good Spring semester too, with the best, i.e., most hard-working and spirited, senior class ever. They made a deal with her that if they all got in their thesis papers she would go with them to the build-a-bear workshop at the local mall. Needless to say, the sight of twelve young people parading around with their newly made stuffed animals, a game of hangman, including a caricature of “Dr. Miz”, and pizza for all, made for a memorable celebration of the semester.

In late April, our good friend and D’s department chair (at the time) Mike Leeds surprised D with the Outstanding Service Award during the 2019 Economics department Award Luncheon.

D with his award and Mike Leeds

In May we made a day trip to Paxson Farms, which proved as photogenic as promised online, and a two-night trip with an AirBnB in Kennett Square as our base, to visit the Nemours Estate, Winterthur, the Hagley Museum, and Longwood Gardens (all properties of various DuPonts in the past) without much back-and-forth driving from home. It proved to be a very nice, relaxing trip.

In June we visited Ocean City, NJ, for a few days, and were joined by Charlie and Nicki, which gave M the chance to go sailing with Charlie in the bay.

In July we drove to Ithaca, NY, and Aurora, NY, for a nostalgic visit to Cornell University, where M studied for her PhD, and to the Inns of Aurora, where we had a lovely visit in 2018. Check out M standing at the entrance of Uris Hall at Cornell, where her office was when she was a graduate student, and then a lucky capture of two bees in Cornell Plantations.

M in front of Uris Hall
Bees and flowers at Cornell Plantations

In August we visited with our friends Troy, J, and C, the Goschenhoppen festival, a recreation of life in Pennsylvania a couple of centuries back. Lots of photo opportunities there, from which we selected this reenactment of building a house to show you here.

Cutting a log into planks for house construction in Goschenhoppen festival

In August we spent a few days in California, visiting our good friends Jill and Rick and their youngest son, Owen, in Morro Bay at the beach house and in Pasadena at their house, as well as spending a few days in Santa Barbara. The trip was so photogenic it was a big task to narrow down the photo selection for this post.

September brought us great sadness at the loss of our wonderful friend Phil Jones, who died a month or so after he turned 74 years old. Phil was a friend we met in Mendelssohn Club when we were singing in that group in the 1990s. He helped us to get together romantically with a well-timed email, he sang and did a reading at our wedding, and was generally always around when we needed help. We are just two of many, many people for whom Phil was a wonderfully positive presence. Phil and his wife Ann had been at the 60th birthday party at Estia, where our friend Suzanne snapped this lovely photo of them.

Phil and Ann Jones on January 27 at Estia Restaurant in Philadelphia
Program for Phil Jones’s celebration of life in Chestnut Hill Meetinghouse, September 28.

A much happier event in September was the completion of the big job of putting new siding on our house. The old siding was made of cedar tiles. It was put up when the house was built in 1928 (our contractor found pages from newspapers dated June 1928 under the siding, evidently put there as insulation) and over the many decades it became weather-worn and full of holes (certain woodpeckers also had a hand, er, beak in this, too). Here are before and after photos.

The Fall semester was good for both M and D. We’ll finish this post with some photos from our visits to the Morris Arboretum and Longwood Gardens to see holiday light displays, as well as some photos from a fun excursion in South Philly with M’s brother Anthony and his wife Barbara and daughter April on Christmas Eve — but remember to stay tuned for another post in January for, we hope, great photos of the natural light display called the Northern Lights, which we hope to catch during our upcoming trip to Sweden.

Categories
Life Photos

A look back at 2018

Another year has gone by. We have been posting annual retrospective posts here since 2009 and the post you are reading continues the tradition (which has developed into the one post that appears here every year, our “Christmas Letter”).

The year started with a cold snap. D attended the annual meetings of the American Social Science Associations, where he attended sessions that covered economic issues related to economic inequality, his new obsession.

After the conference was over, we paid a short visit to Jersey City to see Dominique, Steve, and their girls, and had the chance to see the girls in skating practice. D had a lucky shot of an incoming ship from our hotel room, in which a seagull paid a timely visit.

In February, we enjoyed a visit to Longwood Gardens with Phil and Ann for the annual orchid extravaganza, an excellent way to spend a few hours when the weather is cold.

This photo by D came out painterly, mostly thanks to the steam on the window.

In March, D sung for the third time in the Meet Me at the Music event organized by Music Honors students at Temple University. He performed the “measuring duet” from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro with a student soprano and a student accompanying on the piano. Here is a recording made on D’s phone by M.

We also went to Annapolis in March, on the weekend that was the bridge between our Spring breaks. We had a very nice visit with our niece Christina and her little daughter Violet.

In April, D was lucky enough to have a photo he took the previous December in Florida included in the annual John James Audubon Center exhibit (the photo is at the level of his hands in this snapshot):

Near the end of April we paid a visit to Longwood Gardens with our good friend, PhD advisee of D from some time ago, Emina. We saw the great tulip exhibit there and had an excellent lunch at the 1906 restaurant there. Check out that “flower pot” dessert, which is entirely edible:

M had two gorgeous photos of hers included in a curated exhibit in the Wayne Art Center in May.

Our big summer trip was to Paris. We timed it to surround M’s birthday. We encountered a ridiculously hot spell while in Paris, which was a bit of a problem without AC in our AirBnB studio apartment, but we survived the heat and accumulated many happy memories and nice photos.

Enjoying a Kir Royale near the Palais de Justice
A delighted M having lunch on her birthday in the Jules Verne restaurant, 135 meters above street level, in the Eiffel Tower
A photo D made in Monet’s garden at Giverny

For many more photos from our visit to Paris and vicinity, here is an album that we have curated from the hundreds of photos we each made.

We did manage two short trips to Ocean City, NJ. Here’s a photo of a radiant M from one of these trips.

In early August, we made a short road trip to Aurora, NY. We stayed in the Aurora Inn, right on the side of Cayuga lake. On the last full day of our visit, we had fun taking a winery tour by boat, visiting three wineries by the lake with our friend Rebecca, who lives near Aurora.

A nice sunset from Aurora (D)
On the boat to wineries (photo by Rebecca Carr)

In the fall, M joined a family reunion in New Hampshire and a high school reunion, while D stayed home to keep working on his teaching and projects.

For both M and D, school work all year went well and was unremarkable.

Near the end of December we had excellent news about M’s health from her latest tests and the doctor’s examination.

We are looking forward to whatever new adventures 2019 will bring!

Categories
Life Photos vacation

Retrospective 2015 Postscriptum

As mentioned at the end of the previous post, we paid a visit to Florida, namely Captiva Island, from December 23 to 28. It was really relaxing, and filled with beautiful sights. We were both happy to have our cameras with us. Without further ado, here are a couple of ways to view my album of “only” 74 photos I made and edited (if you think that’s too many, it is a small subset of the 889 photos I actually shot with my camera, and there were also a couple of dozen with my iPhone which are not in this album). Both links have the same photos, but the Dropbox one has my quirky names of the photos, too. Both links will let you download photos if you want to. Oh, and enjoy this little animation of a jumping dolphin.

In Google Photos

On Dropbox

Categories
Life Photos

Retrospective 2015

January

We celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary with a great dinner at La Croix.

2015-01-08 19.27.43

The weather was snowy for much of the month.

2015-01-24 17.04.37

2015-01-28 13.16.44
This photo became the core of our holiday card for 2015

Our semesters started uneventfully this time, in contrast to the weather disaster that greeted the first day of school for Dimitrios last year.

We celebrated Dimitrios’s birthday both with an intimate dinner at Suzanne and Kevin’s and then a small gathering of good friend at our house. The following mirthful “selfie^2” from the latter gathering makes us smile every time we see it again.

2015-02-01 14.55.33

February – March

We finally took the plunge and arranged with a travel agent the longest and most expensive vacation trip of our lives so far. In the spirit of seizing the day and overcoming inhibitions (D’s dread of long airplane flights), we planned a trip to Sonoma, CA, Oahu, HI, and Bali, Indonesia, with short stops at Narita, Japan, on the way to and from Bali. We coordinated with our photographer friend, Novita Listyani, who lives in Bali via the Web, and were hoping we would not be too much of a burden to her and her family when we arrived in Bali. Although we had been considering her a good friend for some time, we still had never met face to face.

Another important event happened in late March: a young man Dimitrios knows since he was a baby had his graduation recital at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, where Marianne was an undergraduate and Dimitrios was a PhD student. We flew to Rochester for a couple of days and had an excellent time reconnecting with good friends, attending the recital, and also visiting for the first time ever (!) the Eastman Kodak museum. Oh, and we had a little snow storm there too, naturally.

Evan graduation recital photo 2015-03-27 18.45.20

Not exactly a compact camera!
Not exactly a compact camera!

Marianne in front of the George Eastman House (now a museum about photography)
Marianne in front of the George Eastman House (now a museum about photography)

April

April’s notable events included a nice Easter celebration at Suzanne’s, but then a stomach virus attack on Dimitrios. The weekend after Easter we were able to spend a few days with our good friends in Ocean City.

May

The latter half of May and the first 10 days of June are when our big trip happened. Brace yourself: this section of the retrospective is long!

Dimitrios’s digestion was giving him trouble, usually in the form of pain in the middle of the night, but also frequently after meals. There was a veritable paroxysm of this right before we left on our grand vacation, but the GI specialist gave Dimitrios just the right medicine the day before departure. To this day, the medicine is doing its job and Dimitrios’s health is back to a good steady state.

On May 17, very early in the morning, we got on a plane to San Francisco at the Philadelphia airport. Although we had packed everything (!) in carry-on bags, the flight was so full that the airline asked for volunteers to check bags free of charge, so we did that.

Once in Sonoma, we started the process of unwinding from the stress of the academic year that just ended and Dimitrios’s GI troubles (which we were not quite sure yet were ending). Scenery like this helped:

2015-05-20 17.21.10

Visits to various wineries and excellent restaurants also helped us unwind.

2015-05-20 12.09.24

After Sonoma, we flew to Oahu for a week in Waikiki Beach in the Royal Hawaiian hotel. We had an excellent time in Oahu, starting with a sobering visit to the Pearl Harbor memorial.

At the Pearl Harbor memorial
At the Pearl Harbor memorial

The oil still seeping from the submerged USS Arizona gives a special somber note to the memorial.

2015-05-22 15.06.12

We took part in two tours of note while in Oahu. The first was a photography tour. The second was a food tour. Both were great, but the photo tour gave us more opportunities for photo-taking, naturally, so here is a tiny sample of the ones we made on that tour.

View of Oahu and Diamond Head
View of Oahu and Diamond Head

This bee was too fast for anyone on the photo tour but Marianne to capture; she captured it using her special clip-on macro lens for her iPhone.
This bee was too fast for anyone on the photo tour but Marianne to capture; she captured it using her special clip-on macro lens for her iPhone.

HDR version of a mountain vista
HDR version of a mountain vista

Volcanic beach panorama
Volcanic beach panorama

This pig, when younger, was a star in surfing videos on YouTube, we were told
This pig, when younger, was a star in surfing videos on YouTube, we were told

Panorama of Hanauma Bay
Panorama of Hanauma Bay

In the rest of our stay in Waikiki beach we had some fabulous dinners, walks on the beach and a some swimming, and a nice sunset cruise on a catamaran.

Last sunset we saw on Waikiki Beach, May 28
Last sunset we saw on Waikiki Beach, May 28

After that sunset, we got on a plane to Narita, the large airport near Tokyo. Our friend Mike Leeds met us there, which was a great comfort especially given the culture shock. We went to visit a shrine in Narita and spent the night at the Narita Hilton, where we also experienced an earthquake, which was not severe, but was large enough to wake us at 2 am. The next morning, we boarded a Garuda Indonesia flight to Bali, and discovered that Garuda’s economy class richly deserves the international accolades it has received.

Mike and Marianne in Narita
Mike and Marianne in Narita

First morning in Bali. View from the main pool of the Fairmont hotel in Sanur.
First morning in Bali. View from the main pool of the Fairmont hotel in Sanur.

The second morning in Sanur we were picked up by our friend Novita and her daughter Seraphine for a sunrise photo shoot in Serangan Island, a short drive from our hotel. Seraphine, Novita and later her hubby were extremely nice to us and we can honestly say we fell in love with that family during our trip to Bali, where they drove us everywhere and endured all sorts of hardships like very early mornings and traffic jams to show us Bali from the eyes of artistically super-talented insiders. We have now a lingering nostalgia for those days of bonding with them.

Sunrise in Serangan Island. Getting up at 4 am was made easy by the big time zone shift from Oahu.
Sunrise in Serangan Island. Getting up at 4 am was made easy by the big time zone shift from Oahu.

Heron in tranquil waters. Serangan Island at dawn.
Heron in tranquil waters. Serangan Island at dawn.

And here is the lovely welcoming post by Novita, with her version of this very sunrise: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+NovitaListyani/posts/HPupvddRyZA

June

Sanur sunrise the next morning.
Sanur sunrise on the first day of June.

Dogs are free to roam everywhere in Bali, and are quite nice to strangers. Here is a photo of a horse rider with horse and curious dogs in Kuta Beach:

Horse and dogs on beach 2015-06-03 16.51.16

On the next day, we were in Kuta beach for an afternoon swim and sunset photography. That was one spectacular sunset. Here are only two views of it; it was really hard to select only two.

This zoomed in intense scene from the sunset on Kuta beach was begging for the title I gave it: Vulcan's Fire.
This zoomed in intense scene from the sunset on Kuta beach was begging for the title I gave it: Vulcan’s Fire.

Sunrise was often stunning when viewed from our hotel balcony, too:

The banner image of this blog is also taken from a photo of the same sunrise.

Our visit to Bali came at the end of the Durian season. This famously ill-smelling fruit (although we did not think it smelled all that badly) is a surprisingly delicious treat, with the texture of soft-serve ice cream, once you get inside its prickly, hard shell. Where do you find it? At roadside, in the evening. Novita’s hubby drove up and down Denpasar, the capital of Bali, several times until he spotted this vendor’s truck and we all split one Durian. Here is a photo of us that Novita took with my iPhone, which clearly had some focusing issues in the low light.

2015-06-03 20.08.33

And here is Marianne with an expression of sheer delight doing some body surfing:

Body surfing. Photo by Novita Listyani
Body surfing. Photo by Novita Listyani

After five nights in the Fairmount Sanur hotel, we went to Ubud and checked in at the Maya resort for four nights. Here is a photo of us Novita took in front of the rice terraces of Ubud.

In front of Ubud rice terraces 2015-06-04 03.13.01

Later that same afternoon, we went to a rice field to see the arrival of thousands of white cattle herons to net on the treetops after a long day of flying all over the island in search of food. Novita let me use her camera and instructed me on the use of the servo auto-focus mode so I could capture the birds flying overhead. Here is one of the hundreds of photos of herons I made that afternoon.

Heron DD with NL camera cropped good _MG_0479

And here is Dimitrios ready for action:

Photo by Novita Listyani, whose camera Dimitrios is holding
Photo by Novita Listyani, whose camera Dimitrios is holding

During our wait in the field for the arrival of the herons, Novita made some fabulous portraits of Marianne. Example:

MM by NL cropped _MG_0389

And when I was photographing herons flying overhead, Marianne was photographing two charming boys who were playing with a kite that was bigger than themselves.

Kite flying boys

The next day our indefatigable hosts drove us to Bedugul Botanical Gardens, a gigantic garden at the top of a mountain.

Pink orchid at Bedugul 2015-06-05 00.24.25

The gardens have an extensive orchid exhibit and Seraphine, being a big fan of orchids and an avid learner of anything nature-related, taught us a lot of things about orchids we did not know.

Before we left the gardens, we had a picnic on a grassy slope overlooking one of the three lakes in the immediate area where we saw a monkey cavorting in the trees in the distance. Even though there were clouds over the lake, it still was quite the sight to behold.

2015-06-05 01.49

The next day was a Saturday. Our hosts took a break from driving us around Bali and we took the hotel shuttle to the town of Ubud where we wandered about, had a nice dinner, and attended a classical dance performance accompanied by a gamelan orchestra, before taking a cab back to the hotel.

Ubud dance 2015-06-06 20.21.14

The next day we visited Tulamben for snorkeling and, on the way back, stopped at a tourist attraction built about 50 years ago, the Water Castle.

Novita's photo of us getting ready for snorkeling.
Novita’s photo of us getting ready for snorkeling.

Seraphine made several short videos of the snorkeling adventure with a GoPro camera. Here is one of them: Seraphine’s snorkeling video clip

Marianne at the Water Palace.
Marianne at the Water Castle.

The next day we all went to Tanah Lot, where Novita had booked a double suite for all of us for our last night in Bali.

Marianne and Seraphine try out some gamelan music-making in the Nirwana resort in Tanah Lot.
Marianne and Seraphine try out some gamelan music-making in the Nirwana resort in Tanah Lot.

Tanah Lot_1
A great portrait of Marianne by Seraphine, made while Novita, Y, and I were photographing the sunset.

Another great portrait of Marianne by Seraphine.
Another great portrait of Marianne by Seraphine.

Sunset in Tanah Lot, June 8.
Sunset in Tanah Lot, June 8.

A daytime view of the Tanah Lot temple.
A daytime view of the Tanah Lot temple.

With our fantastic guides to all things fascinating in Bali, right before we departed the Nirwana resort in Tanah Lot.
With our fantastic guides to all things fascinating in Bali, right before we departed the Nirwana resort in Tanah Lot.

Our last day in Bali was June 9th. We spent the morning at the Tanah Lot resort, with Marianne and Seraphine having fun in the pool and water slide, and Dimitrios and Novita taking it easy but also making photos and videos. We caught one more sunset in the Club 66 area of the long beach that contains Kuta beach and Seminyak. Here is Novita’s capture of that sunset and warm words of farewell: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+NovitaListyani/posts/LLXtqJxGmFS

Our flight to Tokyo left at 12:30 am (!) on June 10. It was hard to stay awake at the airport but we managed. On arrival we were greeted by our friend Eva, Mike’s wife, who had by now joined Mike in Tokyo. She guided us to Tokyo on the train, we visited their apartment for a quick lunch, and then we visited the Mori tower and the Imperial Gardens, had a light dinner nearby, and managed (after some trouble; Japanese addresses are practically indecipherable to anyone who is not a trained Japanese postal service worker) to find Yuga Kurita‘s photo exhibit at the Island Gallery, where we admired the amazing photos of Fuji and nightscape this photographer has created and bought a small print to bring home. If it were not for Novita’s notice to us via Google+ which we read on arrival in Narita, we would not have known about this exhibit at all.

Marianne in the Mori tower with an iconic view of Tokyo.
Marianne in the Mori tower with an iconic view of Tokyo.

Shortly after returning home, we bought a new car, about a year ahead of schedule. Our old car was involved in an accident while parked (nobody was hurt) the day before we left on our big trip, so it was time to replace it.

We are Forester people now.
We are Forester people now.

July

At the end of June we started a two-week stay at a big rental beach house in Ocean City, NJ, with many friends, continuing a tradition we started in 2007. A great time was had by all and our eyes and cameras feasted on some more good views.

Great sky during a speedboat ride on the bay of Ocean City.
Great sky during a speedboat ride on the bay of Ocean City.

On the morning of Marianne's birthday.
On the morning of Marianne’s birthday.

View from the Music Pier in Ocean City.
View from the Music Pier in Ocean City.

As a belated birthday present, I got Marianne a big girl camera. Here she is on our first photography excursion with the new camera.

M the photographer 2015-07-25 14.49.23

August-September-October

During August and also September and October, we kept doing excursions for photography to hone our skills, and we also took photography classes. Since this post is already photo-heavy, here are some of our social media posts with our photography from this period. The one from August 7 is special: our first photo walk, in Philadelphia, organized by Trey Ratcliff, a very successful globe-trotting photographer.

D’s photos from the Philly photo walk

D’s photos from a visit to the Morris Arboretum

One of D’s photos from the photo walk, after some editing

M’s evening photos from Arcadia University

D’s photo from Meadowbrook Farms

M’s photos from Bryn Athyn

D’s photos from Bryn Athyn

October started with a very nice event for Dimitrios. His first doctoral student, Jeff Coons, has succeeded very well in finance, having become president of a successful financial institution. Temple University honored Jeff in its annual Gallery of Success event that honors alumni that make the university proud.

November

The big event every November is the Thanksgiving dinner at Suzanne and Kevin’s. This year was no different, but on November 15 there was a new kind of happy event involving Suzanne: she had her first solo exhibit of her oil paintings at the Jenkins Arboretum and Gardens. We were delighted to attend and to be able to buy some of her beautiful artwork. We also took the opportunity to make some photos in the arboretum, and some of them turned out OK, despite the lateness of the season.

Marianne at the Jenkins Arboretum

Some photos by Dimitrios at the Jenkins Arboretum

After Thanksgiving, we were again able to go for a long weekend in Ocean City with good friends. Some photos from this follow. The deserted beach and boardwalk are quite strikingly different from what we normally see in Ocean City.

Empty boardwalk.
Empty boardwalk.

From the music pier. Compare and contrast with the photo a couple of screenfuls up.
From the music pier. Compare and contrast with the photo a couple of screenfuls up.

December

December came with exceptionally warm weather, as did November as a matter of fact. We finally wrapped up our courses for the semester and, as I am writing these words, Marianne is doing some final grading. Tomorrow we are scheduled to fly to Florida for a first for us: a Christmas in a warm place, just the two of us. I expect to make another post here before the year is out with some photos from this trip.

For now, I leave you with this photo of a tree decorated with beautiful light spheres in Longwood Gardens, taken a couple of weeks ago.

Tree of light.
Tree of light.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Categories
Life Photos vacation

A random memory from 2004

Starting a series of nostalgic posts — this blog has been neglected long enough!

(C) 2003 Gateway,Inc.
Marianne dancing with the captain of the boat. Not to worry: he had locked the steering wheel so the boat was making circles in the big lake at Mondsee, Austria. March 7, 2004.

In March of 2004 Marianne and I went to Austria for a week in Spring Break. Marianne was taking a group of her students on a tour of Vienna, as part of her course on the Viennese psychologists Freud, Adler, and Frankl. Near the end of the week, we had a quick excursion to Salzburg. The day we were to return to Vienna we had some time to kill and we wandered with a few students to the shore of the lake at Mondsee. We saw a sign for lake tours. There was snow on the ground, but Marianne sought out the guy dressed as a captain and asked if tours were offered. He said yes, and we hopped on the boat. Once safely far from the shore, he locked the steering wheel at a fairly steep left turn angle, put on some waltzes on the audio system, and came up on the deck to dance with people! Here he is, dancing with Marianne. Photo taken with the Gateway (!) digital camera we owned at the time.

Categories
Life Photos

Looking back on 2013

Wow! An entire year has gone by without a post here. This post then had better be good — and it will be long, but fun.

New Year’s fun

Before we get started in earnest, let’s recapture the end of 2012, which we celebrated by attending a great Philadelphia Orchestra concert led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin and then having a celebratory dinner at Estia restaurant. You won’t believe what music they played at this Greek restaurant around midnight.

M gives a toast before the concert
M gives a toast before the concert at the Kimmel Center

Going to New Year's Eve dinner
Going to New Year’s Eve dinner

Kitchen remodeling

Last December’s end-of-year post ended by looking forward to a kitchen remodeling and a trip down the Rhône. The first of these did come to pass. After a few weeks of making coffee and washing dishes in the bathroom, not to mention eating meals in the living room, we started enjoying a beautiful new kitchen from the middle of March onwards. Here’s a view from December 14:

Kitchen 2013-12-14
Kitchen 2013-12-14

But our vacation plans for the summer were altered, because of unexpected opportunities for Marianne to present her work at two conferences. More on this in a while.

D’s birthday and new course

January saw D celebrate his 54th birthday at Ann and Phil’s house, who generously hosted the celebration since we had no functioning kitchen and our house was a mess with the ongoing kitchen work. Much fun was had with our hosts and R, T, Q and C and J, J, M and S. One of the gifts was this portrait by Quinlan:

Q's portrait of D from memory
Q’s portrait of D from memory

The start of the year also found D teaching a new undergraduate course, the Economic Theory of Networks.  That was exciting, even if it meant a lot of extra work preparing lectures and grading the course blog written by the students (for the curious, the blog is here, but be warned that the quality of the posts and comments is variable, as can be expected.) D is gearing up to teach this course again in Spring 2014, and by now he knows how to do a few things better.

Matilda on Broadway

Ellen organized two trips to NYC to see Matilda before it officially opened. We joined in on March 23 and had a great time (despite D’s almost overwhelming feeling of being crushed by the rushing crowds and slow traffic every time he is in Manhattan).

After the show: Look up at the mirror under the marquee!
After the show: Look up at the mirror under the marquee!

Visit by Kostas

D’s brother, Kostas, visited the US for four weeks, from mid-April to mid-May. He came on a short sabbatical from his polytechnic to collaborate on a book proposal with his former dissertation advisor in Princeton. While there, he also started two research papers with current graduate students in the Electrical Engineering department. Meanwhile, we were able to do fun things with him every weekend while he was around, ranging from dinners with friends and family to a Lyric Fest concert to celebrating Greek Easter at Estia restaurant in Philly on May 5.

DSCN0174
Kostas in front of Einstein’s house 2013-04-27

D honored by his department

One fine day in May, Marianne finagled her way into the economics department award luncheon, or so D thought, only to find that she was in on the surprise the whole time. He only realized what the program said about Outstanding Graduate Teacher of the Year the second time he looked at it. Truly an honor (the selection is made jointly by the graduate students and the department)!

D is honored for his graduate teaching
D is honored for his graduate teaching at the economics department’s honor luncheon in May

Trip to Rochester, NY

Marianne got invited to participate in two conferences in the summer. The first was in our old stomping grounds, Rochester, NY, where she studied at the University of Rochester for her BA and I studied for my PhD a few years later. The conference was held at a hotel by the Genesee river, so we did not get a chance to visit the campus. But it was a good venue for Marianne to present, and I got a chance to have lunch with my doctoral dissertation advisor, which was extra nice.

Ocean City vacation(s)

We managed to visit Ocean City four times in 2013, in February, June, July, and September. The July visit was the longest one by far, two weeks, with lots of friend and family visiting. The February visit was the most unusual, since it snowed. It’s not every day that one can make snow angels on the Ocean City boardwalk!

M makes a snow angel on the Ocean City boardwalk
M makes a snow angel on the Ocean City boardwalk

In case this photo was just a bit too chilly, here’s a cat basking in the sun from our visit to Cape May (yes, one more shore visit in the year) in March for Spring Break.

2013-03-14 16.02.15
Cat in the Sun; Sunset Beach, Cape May, NJ

But for a really warm photo, here’s one from July, when a whole big group of us took a “pirate cruise” in one scorching afternoon and had lots of fun.

Pirate cruise in OC NJ Bay 2013-07-13
Pirate cruise in OC NJ Bay 2013-07-13

Canada in August

The second conference Marianne participated in was in Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada. Bracebridge is a small town about two and a half hours’s drive north of Toronto, in an area called cottage country because of the many summer homes well-to-do Canadians and others have in that area, among the many lakes. Bracebridge is by a river and lake Muskoka. Although we had not heard of this place at all, it proved to be charming and it also proved to contain a formidable coffee shop and a couple of first-class restaurants.

Plaque with the story of Bracebridge's founding
Plaque with the story of Bracebridge’s founding

Marianne by the river in Bracebridge
Marianne by the river in Bracebridge

Bracebridge's main street
Bracebridge’s main street

Lake Muskoka from a cruise on the "Lady Muskoka"
Lake Muskoka from a cruise on the “Lady Muskoka”

After the conference was over, we spent a few more days in Bracebridge and then drove to Toronto, where we spent five days. We had a centrally located hotel, so we walked around a lot. We had some fabulous meals and had a very pleasant visit to the island right across from Toronto on Lake Ontario.

Toronto City Hall
Toronto City Hall

Toronto's waterfront from Lake Ontario
Toronto’s waterfront from Lake Ontario

After Toronto, we visited (all too briefly) Niagara Falls. After sampling the winery offerings (Ravine Winery and Reif Estate Winery), we determined that a repeat visit in the Niagara area of Ontario is warranted.

Lunch at Ravine Vineyard Estates winery
Lunch at Ravine Vineyard Estates winery

Short video of Niagara Falls

SuperMarianne! (Her idea---there was an array of strong colored lights aimed at the falls, and if you positioned yourself just right in front of the camera, you could get this effect)
SuperMarianne! (Her idea—there was an array of strong colored lights aimed at the falls, and if you positioned yourself just right in front of the camera, you could get this effect)

Marianne’s last injection in October

The vaccination study (please refer to our 2012 retrospective post, the previous post on this blog) is now over! Marianne had the last injection in the chemo suite in October. Now she will continue to be closely monitored for a long time, which is an important benefit from participating in the study. So far, all blood tests and CT scans have been clear! We are immensely happy about this.

M's last injection for the ovarian cancer vaccine study; at Abington Memorial Hospital
M’s last injection for the ovarian cancer vaccine study; at Abington Memorial Hospital

Small trips

We kept taking short, weekend trips by car in the fall. Two memorable ones were: to Gettysburg in late September and to Woodloch Pines in mid October. Then we took an unusual day trip to New York City to see Twelfth Night, with Stephen Fry as Malvolio, as part of a two-production Shakespeare on Broadway, imported from London. It was an authenticity-minded performance, with male actors in all roles and Elizabethan music performed by a live band (which included two Piffaro musicians, Priscilla Herreid and Greg Ingles). This was so much fun (and the same goes for the excellent dinner we had at our favorite New York restaurant, Molyvos), that we decided to do it again, this time for both productions, Twelfth Night and Richard III. The second time we found Twelfth Night a little better even, which we could hardly believe. We were a little puzzled by the vaudeville quality of some moments in Richard III, however; presumably, this artistic choice of the excellent Mark Rylance was made to keep an American audience engaged and/or to differentiate from previous performances.

Off to celebrate holidays with merriment and good cheer. See you in the new year!

Categories
Life Photos vacation

Another nice photo of us

Continuing this narcissistic streak for a moment more, here is a photo of us on a glass-bottom boat tour out of the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. Photo credit: Rob Gilles.

IMG 0479