Happy trails

Josh (In turquoise) and his buddy resting on the Lakelands Trail bridge in 1993

On our first trip: Covered Bridge near Centerville, MI

Josh and his buddy on  one of their many rest stops

I just signed up for the Michigander, a 6 day bike ride that features Rails to Trails. This year features two trails: The North Central State Trail, which I had rode on before running from Gaylord to Indian River to Cheboygan to Mackinaw City (our start and end point) and the newer North East State Trail which runs from Cheboygan to  Onaway to Alpena. Both trails could use spiffier names. The latter trail goes through total wilderness where we are promised elk sightings. It is also bear country.

I signed up for the organization's very first ride back in 1992. Josh was only 10 and I had a one year old at home. 300 miles in 6 days isn't too much for a 10 year old, right? I liked the idea it was off road as sometimes his attention span waned and put him in the path of cars on regular roads. He was tired and grumpy towards the end of some of of the days but the next year, he wanted to do it again but this time, we were to bring his best friend. He has fond memories of our biking times together. We did it for 5 years sometimes bringing 3 other boys with us. Spending a week with 4 teen aged boys is an experience in itself. I made sure they were athletic ones as not everyone has the capacity to do this. One of these boys (31 years now) is now 50 to 100 pounds overweight. I am sure he couldn't do this again.

To celebrate their joint 30th birthdays, Josh and some of his buddies are taking a week-long canoe trip in the Boundary waters of Minnesota next month, definitely bear country.

I also did it 3 times with Naomi, aged 12-14. She did surprisingly well. Her sports schedules put an end to our rides.

There are about 100 miles on this trip where there are no trails but I suspect, there is also no traffic. A work buddy is doing this with me. We did a ride together about 10 years ago touring the Upper Peninsula though on roads. He also did a 2 day canoe trip with Josh and me 15 years ago.

While in Massachusetts, I was on two of the organization's trails: The Minute Man and the Somerville Linear  Path. The latter is lined with fancy street lamps and art of various sorts along the route. It also has a lot of brick pavement, which is tough on my legs though pretty. (I was running, not biking). The Boston area is very bike friendly with numerous trails. Before Shanna moved there, I found myself there on several occasions and would run up and down the Esplanade on both sides of the Charles. Some idiot was attacking runners there though while I was there last time. It would have been a long run from Shanna's house to get there though I guess I could have taken a bus there. Near Shanna's old place, they had the Harborwalk which goes for miles along the sea. I loved it though it was all concrete excepting the causeway to Castle  Island.

My Massachusetts adventures might be coming to an end. They put their house on the market yesterday. On a very positive note, I might have all my grandbabies in one state.

Crossword Puzzle World

After we both lost our jobs, dealing effectively with our investments became much more important. But whom do we trust for advice? At the very least, the ideal person should know more than we do.Clairvoyance would be really useful too. We interviewed several people finding one that we both liked..and then he just disappeared. Steve found one person he liked but I wanted nothing to do with him and refused to go to joint meetings. Why? Steve told him I was busy packing to go to Italy and he told Steve to make sure that I visit the city that makes all the wine.

And what city would that be? If he lived in Crossworld Puzzle World, it would be Asti. As it was, he couldn't remember the name of this wonderful city. I suggested that we have no more dealings with him. Why? Just because he doesn't know geography doesn't mean he doesn't know investments.
I disagreed. In this person's defense, Steve let him play with a bit of what we have and he did well but now he is gone, probably blown away in that tornado (he lived in that neighborhood).

During my Mass. exile, we watched a lot of TV catching up on The Big C , Homeland, and Madmen (all I love). We also watched several On Demand movies including Wordplay. This is a movie about crossword puzzles: how they are edited, created and solved. I loved it. According to the movie, the best and the hardest crossword puzzles are the NY Times Sunday ones. (I think the London Times puzzles are much harder but maybe that is due to the different cultural references). Who creates these puzzles? Not English or history professors full of arcane knowledge at their fingertips as one might guess but mathematicians and musicians. They are more able to plan patterns. Indeed my neighbor and ex-co-coach of my soccer team creates crossword puzzles. He is a mathematician. He even has had some accepted by the NYTimes though for now, he is a Monday/Tuesday type of guy (puzzles are easier in the beginning of the week).

Who likes to solve these puzzles besides yours truly? Quite a diverse lot including people that you would think would not have the time  to tackle these. This was my favorite part: a group of people solving the same puzzle (which we saw created in an earlier scene) and thinking aloud. These people included a Yankee pitcher, Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart, the Indigo Girls and Ken Burns. Busy people all but they spoke to how puzzles relax them and help them tackle the problems in their jobs.
 They also showed a crossword solving championship. Most of the top people seemed to be Jewish middle aged men. No Asians at all. But usually this one woman comes in the top ten and even won it outright one year. The championship in the movie ended up being won by a college student. This was surprising to all. True, ability to make connections quickly has no age limit but he didn't have the years to build up a store of arcane knowledge like most of the contestants.

While I was hurriedly packing to go to Boston, I threw in a book of Sunday New York Times Puzzles rated Extra Difficult. What makes these particular ones hard for me was they were created all 30 years ago: different cultural references. I do pretty well with the current ones (a friend saves them up for me). I also like the WSJ ones. these are much easier than the NYT.

Over the years you learn the fill-in vocabulary around the central 'tricks'.
Swiss River: Aar
Italian wine city: Asti
Baseball brothers: Alou
NHL Rookie of the year: Orr
Chemical: enol
Common answers: Dies Irae; Jai Alai, esta, etre, nein, aloe, stet, ogee

Knowledge of French and Spanish: most useful. Sports questions I defer beyond the obvious to Steve. a recent puzzle had  the terms hot corner and suicide squeeze. I got them but had no idea what they meant.

I probably spend way too much time on these. I limit myself to one Killer suduko and one cross word a day...otherwise I would find myself doing these and nothing else. they do make me happy.

It is Easter. I am making the family dinner for Josh's and Naomi's family. Looking forward to the dinner though not the making. Yesterday was spent in part buying supplies..I think it is well under control.

To my dear readers: Happy Easter and Passover! This year, the two Easters (my SIL is Orthodox Christian) and Passover are all at the same time.

The menu:
Marinated Roast Pork with mustard sauce
Stir-fried Brussels sprouts with bacon and garlic
Cauliflower
Pear salad with butter lettuce, cherries, honey chevre, roasted pecans, shallots in a pear-chamgagne vinaigrette (already made it: tastes good)
Crescent rolls (for Naomi)
Orzo with mushrooms and shallots
Raspberry tart (not homemade but I was trying to go easy on myself..if I knew the pears were going to be good, I would have made a ginger-pear crisp.)

Zwischen Immer und Nie

I told myself, No blogging until you perform a modicum of work around the house!
Would you believe I still had dirty shot glasses laying around after the Elephant Liquor bender a few of the Moms had right before I rushed away to Boston? Elephant liquor is so-named because it is made from the marula fruit that elephants especially love in South Africa.

True Steve had been home a full 8 days before I was but due to 'the division of labor', he doesn't hand wash stuff. He did make a temporary exception when Taxol caused my fingernails to lift off their nailbeds though I only lost toenails, the fingernails, streaked with white and brown, stayed on. Yeah I know I could have done the washing with gloves on...

So I am getting back to normal. I am running alot and good news for me, I am running faster. There were many walkers on the Minuteman trail and I was embarrassed to notice that some actually walked the same speed as I 'run'. So I changed my form, put as much effort as possible to ensure that I would pass them. It has been cool here, good for running but tough on entertaining Maya outside. I had her for 7 hours yesterday. I took her to an indoor playground full of various bouncy castles. Unfortunately, school is on vacation so the place was full of wild, older kids. It will be more fun with them back in school. Ms. Maya still isn't saying much (Shanna at the same age had a vocab of 155 words) but she is adept at signing. She is so very cute.

Margarita night was fun with the Moms though I probably should have left that third pomegranate one alone.
I just returned from a nice lunch at our favorite sushi place with Josh. It has seemed forever since I have seen him though we had talked plenty on the phone.

In a few days, we are on the road again.

Twins separated by years

Tessa above  is 8 days old. Shanna on the right is 4 days old.
At birth, Tessa weighed 8#13 oz
At 2 weeks, she weighed 9#4oz

At birth, Shanna weighed 8#14oz
At 2 weeks, she weighed 9#3oz

Looks like they have the same ear lobe here.

A beautiful sunny day here in Michigan. We took Maya to the park. Outside my window I have dogwood blossoms although they look small and green. In a couple of hours, I will score some $2.50 margaritas with the Moms. Yum.

Sfogliatella, I tell ya italia

My last adventure in Boston was to pick up some sfogliatelle, the signature pastry of Naples. They are flaky pastries shaped like clamshells filled with an orange ricotta mix and are unavailable in Ann Arbor though the local Abbruzzese restaurant makes a version with a different pastry. Also available in the same bakery are lobstertails which are larger but filled with a sweeter creamier filling more to American tastes. I prefer the sfogliatelle filling. There are several bakeries in the North End but Shanna's new place isn't as close as her old place plus it is impossible to park there. Fortunately, one of the bakeries operate a satellite site in nearby Medford.
How to pronounce this? It is a tongue twister for this one but I got an A in Italian 110. In' standard' Italian as spoken in Tuscany, it sounds like sfo-ye-telly or tellah for just one. I ordered mine along with some cannoli. As the clerk went in the back room to fill my cannoli (should not be filled ahead of time as the shell quickly softens), another customer requested all the 'squee-delly' that were left. He appeared to be an Italian American. I asked him if that really is how they are pronounced. He and the woman helping him agreed that was what they were called. I then made sure my clerk had packaged mine before he cleaned the place out.

Later I looked up Italian-American pronunciation of this word. Lots of different ways including 'shvoyadell' but none corresponding to what I heard. Most Italian-Americans came from the south in which dialects are spoken.
Many from Sicily in which 'c's are replaced by 'g's and the last syllables are lopped off. So 'cannoli' sounds something like 'ga-knowl' and capicolla comes out 'gabuhgool' (at least on the Sopranos). I got many hits for NY and NJ Italian-American but none for MA Italian-American. I have to conclude they have their own language just like the weird version of English spoken locally in which 'r's are not pronounced in 'park the car' and their idea on how one pronounces a short 'a' is quite amusing.  I am well aware that some think the way Midwesterners pronounce a short 'a' particularly grating. Or maybe this guy just happened to mispronounce it and the clerk agreed with him as he seems to be a good customer.

And it was quite yummy as were the pignolli also purchased. The cannoli were for Shanna and Ramy.

Tessa

Should be titled: My life on a Boppy

Homecoming day. The hospital provided the hat with the bow

This was an outfit I bought in advance. It is big. I don't believe in buying NB sized clothes especially since my babies could only fit in them for a week and Josh, over 10 lbs, never could

This outfit I received from a good college friend in advance of Shanna's birth back in the 70s. Unisex as noone knew what they were having. Shanna had worn it home from the hospital years ago.

Daniel's size 4 diaper next to a size one next to a NB size

Day 2..with Daniel, age 2.5. He weighed more than a pound lighter

Daniel enjoying his Goldfish at Spy Pond

She isn't happy all the time..just 95% of it

Oliver digging per usual

View out of the hospital window looking southwest

Happy mother and child

The Long Road Home

I am back from being gone for more than a month. My forsythias and quince are in bloom although the latter has suffered a bit from the frost. All sorts of blooming trees: all were drab and gray when I left.

I came back to a locked door (and I really needed to pee!!!) and an empty house. The family was out celebrating Naomi's birthday. I was told about this while I was en route. If they just delayed things an hour or let me know ahead of time...They did stop by later. Maya looks so much older.

I did mean to leave earlier. I was going to wake up at the first sign of light (per usual). I awoke at 3 but I decided it was too early to drag my ginormous suitcase down 2 flights of narrow, tiny stairs without waking everyone up. I decided I should try to sleep more and ended up oversleeping.
The car was covered in frost for the first time in more than a month. Yet another delay. But I was out the door by 7. No traffic. It took 11 minutes to get to the spot that took more than an hour to the last time I left. The sun lighting up the frosty flowering trees was beautiful in Eastern Massachusetts. Further west before the Berkshires, I could see the damage from either a tornado or strong winds, many broken trees. Eventually the weather turned to drizzle and then an outright storm with sheets of rain and hail. It was difficult to see and the car was hydroplaning. I became drenched while getting gas even though I was under an overhang. The strong west wind drove the rain and hail horizontally. The west wind also messed up my mileage. But despite an hour of scary driving conditions and a mess-up I blame on that crappy Garmin, I got home in under 12 hours, a record. I got out of the car only twice on the way home. It was hard to move my legs after the last 6h stretch. The trip is mind numbing. This was the first time I was able to do it in total daylight.

So much to do here, I can't even begin.Although the tornado missed Ann Arbor, strong winds did a number on my stuff bending poles and knocking things over.

I went for a run this morning into 'cougar' territory. While I was gone, over the past 2 weeks there have been about 10 separate sightings of a cougar-like animal in my neck of the woods, the closest being a half mile from my house. I went running on my 'scenic beauty' road where at least there would be plenty of food for the alleged cougar (deer). The scenic beauty is somewhat less scenic no thanks to some clear cutting that has occurred in the last month. I thought there was to be no development in our so-called greenbelt. No cougar, quel surpris! I have run and biked in known cougar areas and have lived to tell about it (rural San Diego county). I remember 2 trips I made about a week apart. One to Yellowstone where the chief danger was grizzly bears. Advice: look meek and non-threatening. Next to San Diego: cougar country. Advice: look menacing and not like potential prey.

Plans: I've agreed to go on a 6 to 7 day bike trail ride in Northern Michigan with an old work buddy. We took a trip together about 10 years ago in the UP. Need to get in shape for that. My cardiovascular health is just fine but the specific muscles need some work.
We might be going to NY in 2 weeks unless Steve thinks he has traveled too much.
My poor yard is filled with unwanted growth..must clean up.Also I can not believe how much dust has accumulated in the past month. Steve is a very neat person and tries to keep things clean but he seems blind to dust.

I was happy to spend my month away. It is so precious sharing the first 10 days of Tessa's life.