Indoor Climbing

Lydia's birthday party outing this year was to an indoor rock climbing gym. There is a sizeable one up in Woburn; she invited five of her friends to come climb for a couple of hours this past Saturday. Amy and I tagged along but didn't climb; I brought my camera and took some pictures. The light was not great, meaning a large fraction of the photos didn't turn out, but I did get a few good shots.

We had two instructors for our group to help out with the belaying, plus a bunch of so-called "AutoBelay" gadgets that allow you to climb on your own without an instructor.

 Here is the gang getting the first of many safety lectures:

Lydia on the climbing walls. In the second shot you can see the Auto-Belay thingy, which is basically a sort of mechanized reel thing that will lower you gently if you fall off the climbing wall.

Lydia reaching the top:

More photos:

There was also a free-climbing wall where you could climb without a rope (only a short ways, of course) with padding below.

In addition to the usual colored plastic hand grips, they had a few more whimsical ones bolted to the wall:

One of Lydia's super-speedy friends (the photo is blurry because she's moving so quickly...)

The gang watching someone climb:

On this particular pitch you get to climb with your back to the wall, which was interesting to watch:

I think everyone had a good time. We reserved for two hours, but after about an hour and a half the girls had started to slow down (all the gripping/holding muscles in the hands were starting to get tired).

After that it was back home for pizza and cupcakes; Lydia had made a big batch of chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing earlier in the day -- they were delicious.

What Happens in Meetings

I confess to being an avid doodler during work meetings. Today's output (part of it):

Some may say that you can't concentrate completely on the meeting if you are busy drawing, but I've found that it's not hard to doodle on the side while still staying focused.  This particular set of drawings appeared during a portion of the meeting in which a colleague was presenting material that I'd already listened to before, in a previous meeting... 

Braces

Now that Ethan's braces are finally off (after 3+ years), it's Lydia's turn. The before and after photos:

The evil torture devices were attached this past Thursday. She has been a good sport about it so far, although not especially enjoying the experience. Amy and I have been cooking to suit; bean thread noodles to start (not too hard or chewy) and tonight I'm going to see if I can make chicken noodle soup.

Cheese!

One of Lydia's presents from her grandparents was a cheese-making kit; she tried it out this past weekend. The two options suggested were Ricotta and Mozzarella-- the former recipe seemed a good deal simpler, but Lydia couldn't actually think of anything we could make with Ricotta that she wanted to eat, so we opted for the Mozzarella one. It worked out pretty well-- everything did was it was supposed to do, and she finished the process with a nice small brick of cheese. Photos:

Making the curds:

The (mostly) finished product. Lydia's reaction: "I can't believe that you need that much milk to make a cheese this size!".

Amy used it to make chicken "Saltimbocca" this evening, which was delicious (in addition to the mozzarella it has prosciutto and fresh sage, yum).

New Old Bike

Ethan's bike was stolen this past December, alas. A bike is just a bike, I suppose, but this particular bike was the one that I rode the whole time we were in England, so I am sorry to see it gone.

As a replacement I bought him another one second-hand from CraigsList.com.  This particular bike used to belong to a post-doc in neuroscience at Harvard who was moving to another country. I hope Ethan can hold onto this one a little longer than the previous one. It does have the advantage that it is fairly heavily scratched and beat-up, meaning that it will not make an inviting target (I hope).

The "weird" factor for CraigsList is still just as high as it ever was, but in spite of this I always feel as though I wind up meeting interesting people that I would not ordinarily encounter.

I can still remember the experience of selling my Toyota Corolla wagon back when we were living on Withrow Place in CA. After weeks of strange email and telephone exchanges, the guy who eventually bought it drove down from the east bay in a borrowed car with his wife and his baby daughter, who was barely six weeks old. The van he had been driving before had no place for a car seat, so he really needed a "real" car. At our dining room table, instead of a check he handed over a bag of cash -- he claimed that when he sold his van, the guy who bought it paid him that way, so he was just passing it along.... ok then :-).

[Postscript: new bike was also stolen, after a couple of months. Then weirdly the old old bike was recovered... had to be rehabilitated, however.]

New Years in Tyringham

We flew back from TN on Thursday night, then Amy and I both worked on Friday, and then on Saturday it was everyone into the car and off to Tyringham to see my dad and Joanie and other assorted relatives. The drive out was uneventful, thank goodness. Once we arrived it started to snow-- hurray!

Saturday afternoon we all decided to take advantage of the weather and do some cross-country skiing and/or snow-shoeing. The snow was coming down pretty fast at this point, but the conditions were excellent. Ethan has boot and skis that fit him, but Lydia's feet are now way too big for the boots that we bought her last season... luckily her uncle Rustin brought along another extra pair of boots, and her feet managed to fit those (although she had to use my skis, since Rustin's boots aren't compatible with the bindings on hers). Anyhow, we all managed to make do. Photos-- here is my dad:

Joanie and Michele snowshoeing:

Lydia skiing:

My brother:

Michele:

Lydia and Ethan:

My dad again:

... and some more of the kids:

At this point it was snowing hard enough that I had to turn off the camera for a bit.

Lydia is now in this weird phase where she doesn't want to be photographed. Any time I turn on my camera and point it in her direction she immediately puts her arm up to block the shot -- makes me feel as though I am a sleazy celebrity photographer trying to take a picture of Justin Bieber getting a speeding ticket. When I am lucky enough to get a photo of Lydia without anything blocking the shot, half the time she is rolling her eyes or scowling.... oh well.

Michele brought along a fiendishly difficult jigsaw puzzle; we had fun trying to piece it together.  When I saw the cover I thought it would be an easy one, but it actually took quite a while to put together.

The living room was nice and warm with the wood stove going:

This is a shot of the game that Lydia's aunt Lucy gave her for Christmas; we tried it out and it was a lot of fun. It's a combination between "Pictionary" and the "Telephone" game, called "Telestrations".

Photo of Lydia reading her grandfather's latest joke book.

This particular book has an entire chapter devoted to "dumb blonde" jokes. A sample:

  Dumb blonde #1, holding up a hand mirror from her pocketbook:
     "Gosh, this looks like someone I know!"
  Dumb blonde #2 (her friend), looks at the mirror and then responds:
     "Well of course, silly -- it's a picture of me!"

For New Years Day dinner Joanie decided to make a "Turducken" -- a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey (yikes). Constructing this beasty was quite a complicated task, requiring a number of extra hands:

It's a fine dish to make if you have a big crowd, which we certainly did.

New Years Day afternoon we spent time visiting with my cousins Kate and Janet, along with their kids. Kate's kids are a couple of years younger than Ethan and Lydia, and Janet's are younger yet. Ethan and Lydia and I walked down to their house-- we had a big snowball fight, then we spent a while trying to build a wall out of snow "bricks", and then we moved inside-- the adults sat at the kitchen table and yakked, while the kids had a marathon "Hide and Seek" session.

... and of course, you can't have a good conversation without having your inflatable chicken on hand-- you never know when you'll need one of these things:

I think everyone had a good visit. Ethan is now large enough that you would think he'd have a hard time playing hide and seek, but in fact he seemed to hold his own pretty well.

Lots of chamber music (as always with houseparties). Ethan and Joanie playing:

Tuesday morning I had another most excellent session cross-country skiing -- the conditions were wonderful. If you start from my dad's place and head up into the woods behind his house, there is a path that runs by the side of a stream a long way up into the mountains. You get a lot of good exercise on the way up, then on the way down there are a whole series of good downhill runs (steep enough so that it is fun without being life-threatening). Self-photo:

Skiing through this part of the woods is also kind of interesting since sometimes you run into bits of stonework that make you realize that at one point, this was not just empty woods but land actively being used for agriculture. Here is a bit of stonework by the brook-- maybe leftovers from a bridge?

Tuesday we got in the car and drove back to Lexington... and Wed it was off to work again, whew. It took me until the next weekend to get back on track with laundry, etc.   It was a fine visit, though.