San Diego Trip - Sept /Oct 2010

I had a wonderful time in San Diego last week. Greg had to work and couldn't come with me, but we'll be back between Christmas and New Year's. Here are some pictures from my trip:

http://picasaweb.google.com/genoa76/SanDiegoTripSeptOct2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJiBjuzEgrGTQA&feat=directlink

More of the New Apartment

Above, Greg and Billy are enjoying our new wool blanket, from Massachusetts sheep. We bought the blanket directly from one of the shepherds.

Below is the living room looking into the kitchen. We still have some unpacking to do, and we have to figure out what to do with the bikes...

The Big E and Moving In

Greg and I went with friends to the Big E, the Eastern States Exposition. We ate fair food and saw the farm animals. They didn't have the delicious Vermont milk I had last year, but we did see and eat lots of great stuff. The photo above is of our friend Dave showing us new lace tying techniques. If your shoelace bow is more vertical down your foot than horizontal across your ankle, it's more likely to come untied. I didn't expect to learn that at the Big E!

The photo below is of Greg getting a Vitamix, a powerful blending machine. Greg has gone to the Big E and sat through the Vitamix presentation for at least 15 years, and this year, we bought one. It's powerful engine can liquefy strawberry seeds so your body can make use of those nutrients, rather than just passing them through. That's just one of the amazing things about a Vitamix. Another thing is that it's encouraging us to cook more and eat more produce. It's fun, easy, and nutritious.
From the machine below, you can buy a Charlie card (for public transit) or add more money to your card. This particular machine is, as you can see, only for debit or credit cards. But the screen reads, "Sorry, no credit or debit cards accepted." Dumb system if you ask me. I used a different machine.
Greg and I moved in together! We traded our two studio apartments for a two-bedroom. There's so much more space, and Greg and I are really enjoying living together. Greg and Billy get along swimmingly, too.

Greg is red-green colorblind. This is how he paired my socks when we did laundry. I cracked up.
There aren't too many pics of the new apartment yet because we're still unpacking and haven't started decorating yet. But here's our hall as Billy helps Greg tie his shoes.
My last apartment faced the air shaft, so the only view was of other apartment windows. Now Billy can look out the window at trees, people walking down the street, birds, etc.
Here's our bedroom.
And here's part of the living room where Billy is about to help Greg with his homework. Greg's taking a class for fun through the Harvard extension school on Artificial Intelligence.
I'll post more apartment pics once we're a little more pulled together...

Whale Watching

Greg and I went whale watching with our friends Britt and Lauren.

We saw humpback whales, minke whales, fin whales, sei whales, right whales, pacific white-sided dolphins, and a seal. We also saw hunting tuna. Smaller schooling fish jumped out of the water in groups as they were pursued by the tuna. It was incredible.

Turkeys on the Harvard Medical School Quad

Buzz Buzz

This small neighborhood park is just down the street from my apartment. Also nearby are some community gardens, an athletic park with a multipurpose field and basketball courts, and the Muddy River park. I love being around so much green open space.

Lake Cottage Weekend

Logan, Marie, Greg, and I spent the weekend at a lake cottage in Sturbridge, about an hour west of Boston.
The weather was perfect, sunny then cloudy then sunny again, and a very nice temperature. On Saturday afternoon (after we'd swam and canoed), we got a terrific thunderstorm. We watched it for awhile, then took naps (a great thing to do during a storm).

Marie and Greg look for frogs

We went to Yankee Spirits, New England's largest liquor store, and found really interesting craft beers for our own beer tasting. (We didn't drink all of these that night; we took most of them home.)

The water was perfect too, not too cold.

On Saturday, Marie and Logan took out the canoe, then Greg and I did. Here we are about to take off. We canoed around the whole lake, looking at all of the houses. On Sunday, the four of us went out in kayaks together. The house had everything we needed. Greg found a fishing pole and he and Logan did some catch and release.
There's Greg swimming.
See the slide that goes into the water?
It was an awesome place; I'm glad we got to spend the weekend there.