Mountain climbing and reunions

This weekend I climbed two Adirondack mountains and attended JK^2's 10-year college reunion. It was a lot of fun! We went with our friends Nate and Jess.

We left Boston Thursday afternoon and got to Keene Valley before dinner. We were staying at a very restful, red cottage with an old upright piano. I played a little Scott Joplin and then we headed to dinner at the Noon Mark Diner. This is a little restaurant that sells fabulous pie. Also, when I first moved to Boston and JK^2 was still in college, I used to drive up after work and meet him in the parking lot at the Noon Mark Diner. We would then continue the drive up to Clarkson. So it has sentimental meaning. The food there isn't fabulous, but their pie is. I had strawberry rhubarb and Jim had raspberry rhubarb.

We then went back to the cottage and played a game called San Juan. It was fun. After that, it was time for bed.

The next day, we got a few groceries at a little store, and then started our hike up Cascade Mountain, one of the 46 Adirondack High Peaks. JK^2 and Nate are trying to climb all 46 of them, and they have done 16 so far. They already hiked Cascade once, but it's an easy hike and good for beginners (like me). It is about 2.5 miles each way. The hike was pretty hard and I'm not in fabulous shape, but I got into a groove after a while and it was OK. The weather was cool and cloudy.

We got to the top of Cascade around 12:30. Here's me at the summit:


Here are Nate, JK^2, and Jess:



You'll note that we're all wearing rain gear. It started raining just as we were getting to the top, and it completely clouded over. We couldn't see a THING from the top. Ugh. It was really disappointing!

After that, we hiked down to a place where we wouldn't get wet and ate our lunch - bread, cheese and trail mix. There was another High Peak nearby, called Porter. It was just another 20 minutes to that peak, so JK^2 talked me into doing that one too. :) I was feeling OK and thought that since I had already hiked up there, I might as well do the other peak. Jim said it would take us another 4 hours, because we would hike down the other side of Porter, but I didn't quite believe him, I think. He also said that it wouldn't be as hard because it was downhill and not so steep. Nate and Jess decided to not continue on (smart move). They went back to the car, and agreed to meet us at the other side of Porter with the car.

Then JK^2 and I did Porter and the view was better, because by then it had stopped raining.



Then we started the 4 mile hike back to the "Garden" which is some old lady's garden that she donated to the Adirondack Mountain Club and is now a parking lot at the end of several of the High Peak trails. Well that hike was crazy. First, it seemed like no one had been on our trail in quite some time. It was a bushwhack for about 2 miles. Parts of the trail were covered in water-logged ferns, which made our pants look like we had just taken a shower with our clothes on. There were rocks we couldn't see until after we had tripped over them. It was nuts. We got to Little Porter, which is sort of a look-out point on Porter with a view. We stopped there for a little while to take a break, and then hiked on. The rest of the trail was much better.

On the way, we saw what I think are trillium and orchids:


At the end of the trail was a bridge over Johns Brook, and then we were done. We were both in a lot of pain!! I'm still sore now. Plus, a bug seemed to take a liking to the back of my neck. I had a whole slew of bites back there.

Nate and Jess picked us up from the parking lot and took us back to the cottage for showers. We went to Lake Placid for dinner, and went to the Noon Mark Diner again for pie. (I had raspberry-peach-cheese pie). Then we played another game, Citadel, that night at the cottage before bed. We didn't like Citadel as much as we liked San Juan.

The next morning, we got up (miraculously) and drove to Clarkson for the reunion. We stayed in the dorms on Saturday night, which was interesting. How did we sleep on those beds for 4 years? I could feel the springs in my back! I must be getting old or something. Some highlights from the reunion:

Going to a "Chemistry Magic Show" in which one of the exhibits was Dr. Jim Peplowski (JK^2's freshman chemistry teacher) with a nerf gun, shooting fire out of it:


Going to the WCKN dinner, followed by a viewing of "Casual News 1998," produced by Nate. Jim and Nate had to clean the head of the VTR machine before playing it:


Then we watched the excruciating hour of Casual News. We didn't realize how bad it really was. :) The only redeeming part of it was Dave's "I'm just an old woman" sketch, which was just as goofy as it was in 1998.

Today, we had breakfast at Cheel (the student union) and then hit the road. We took the ferry from Plattsburg, NY to South Hero, VT:


Then we met Dave and Sandra for lunch in Burlington. Their new house is really coming along! And Burlington is a really neat city, especially when it doesn't have as much snow as the last time we saw it. We got home around 6:30pm. New Hampshire always seems bigger than it looks on the map.

A fun weekend! Although I felt old going to a 10-year college reunion, it was a nice excuse to get away for the weekend. We got to be outside, we got a lot of exercise, and we got to hang out with Nate and Jess. Wish we could do it more often.

Some random thoughts

Tomorrow we leave for Buffalo for the weekend. I think we're going to leave Boston around 1pm, which will hopefully get us out of town before the rush-hour traffic and Cape traffic clogs up all the roads. We're driving my mom's van this time, since we have to drop it back off with my mom. Then we fly out of Buffalo on Sunday evening.

Our trips to Buffalo are always such whirlwind events. It's this bizarre thing where you get to see everyone, but don't actually get to visit with anyone or get caught up. Most of the time we're worried about whether we're spending equal time with each family, and it never seems to even out quite right. People always say that we're lucky that we have both families in the same place, and they're right, we are lucky ... in a way. But it seems like people who have families in different cities at least get substantial visiting time with that part of the family when they do go into town, even if it's less frequent.

We've had some amazing thunderstorms over the past couple of weeks. They usually happen while I'm at work. I'll glance out the window, and suddenly it's as dark as night and the trees in the little square across from my office are swaying in the wind. Then you hear the crack of thunder, and suddenly, the rain is pouring from the sky. There is an old building across the square with an old, green copper roof. You can just see the water pouring off of it, like a water fall. It's quite amazing. I don't remember ever really getting this kind of weather here in Boston.

I'm always happy that I'm inside - it is not fun to be caught outside in this kind of storm. That happened to me about a week ago. Horizontal rain as you're walking to the T is not much fun. It looked like someone had poured a bucket of water over my head. The other people in the T, who had been underground for the last 10 minutes, were giving me funny looks because they didn't realize that it was raining outside!

I'm looking forward to the weekend. Wish we could leave now and start it sooner.

Gratuitous Flower Photos

Today was a perfect day for planting, since it was cool, overcast, with a chance of rain later. JK^2 and I have been planning to redo our front flowerbeds for a while, so today was the day to get a start on it. We pulled out a sickly azalea to the left of our front stairs, and replaced it with a lace cap hydrangea, a variety called "Blue Bird." Here's how it looks:

And if you click on this link, you'll see what it will look like when it blooms. It should be great. Our goal was to give it a lot of space to spread out. We didn't do that with our other hydrangea, and now it has outgrown its space:

(And this is after I cut it back all the way to the ground a year ago). We are going to dig it up and move it out next spring. With the new hydrangea, we have a lot of excess space, so we planted impatiens and marigolds, and then put a good layer of mulch over the top.

And while I'm at it, I thought I would throw in a couple of other photos of my beautiful flowers. Here is a close up of the blooms on my other hydrangea bush:


And here is a closeup of a gerbera daisy I have growing in a pot on our front stairs.

And my tomato plants have flowers. So everything is right in the world. :)

Love in the Time of Cholera

We saw the movie, Love in the Time of Cholera, last night on DVD. I had read the book and was curious to see the movie. The movie was just as tedious as the book, unfortunately.

It's basically about a man and a woman, Florentino and Fermina, who fall in love when they are teenagers through letters (they only meet a couple of times). Fermina's father doesn't like Florentino because he's not upper class, and Fermina eventually loses interest in him. Florentino never loses interest in Fermina, for over fifty years. Fermina marries pompous Dr. Urbino instead, and when he dies, years later, Florentino comes to her after the wake. They are now both in their 70's. He tells her that he's never forgotten her, wants to be with her even now, etc. etc. I won't spoil the ending.

While the book started out well, and I was impressed with the quality of the writing, I lost interest in it when I began to dislike the characters. Florentino seems to be nothing more than a stalker. He also turns into a womanizer who sleeps with his fourteen-year-old ward (He was entrusted to be her guardian, but instead, he picked her up from school breaks to seduce her - yuck!). Fermina is just boring. I just didn't care what happened to them, so the book grew very tedious for me.

The book began with an intriguing story about Dr. Urbino, whose friend, Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, is found dead. It turns out that it's a suicide, and that Saint-Amour had made a pact with himself that he would kill himself when he turned 60 because he did not want to grow old. He leaves a long letter for Dr. Urbino, which explains about various scandals in his life, including the existence of a scandalous love affair.

I was intrigued by the letter and the story behind Saint-Amour. I figured that the author would come back to this story and connect it with the rest of the book. But it never happened, and I still don't understand the point of starting the story this way. We never hear about Saint-Amour again.

The movie had some serious problems. One big problem was how it dealt with age progression. Giovanna Mezzogiorno, the actress who played Fermina, could not play an old woman. They slapped on some makeup, and she still looked like she was 25. Javier Bardem, who played Florentino, was not much better. They tried to shuffle around, like they thought old people would do, and it just didn't work. Mezzogiorno was not very convincing as a 17-year-old either.

Another annoying part of the movie was the fact that they all spoke with Spanish accents, since the movie took place in Colombia. (And actually, Mezzogiorno had an Italian accent). I hate movies that do this. Either do the movie in Spanish with subtitles, or have the people speak English fluently and natively. They would've spoken Spanish fluently and natively, without a foreign accent. I suppose you could argue that they did the accents to emphasize that the movie took place in a foreign country. But that's stupid. There was no question that the movie happened in Colombia, because it was such an important component of the story. And for Mezzogiorno, she needs to either speak with a Spanish accent, or no accent at all.

And while I won't spoil the ending, I will say that I thought it was dumb. Before we got to the ending, JK2 asked me if it was a happy ending or a sad ending. I said that that depends on whether you like the characters. :)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the author of the book, has gotten rave reviews from everyone, especially in Latin America. I understand that he's a hero in Colombia, but I'm not convinced about him yet. I want to read 100 Years of Solitude before I make my judgment.

Toastmasters and thunderstorms

Tonight JK2 and I decided to try out a Toastmasters meeting. It was pretty interesting. I was envisioning going to a meeting full of very self-confident orators who gave great, inspiring, Kennedy-esque speeches ("Ask not what your country can do for you ..."). Instead, there were just a few people there. They were normal people who were getting over their fear of public speaking. They gave normal speeches about normal life. JK2 would like to join because he wants to become a better public speaker. It wouldn't do me any harm either, especially since public speaking is an important part of my job. :) We'll see. It seems like most of the Toastmaster clubs close up shop for the summer.

Tonight we're having a thunderstorm! We don't get very many of them here, compared to Buffalo, so it's nice when they come. Here is what Zeusy does during thunderstorms:

She hides! :) In my closet. And her pupils get really big. She hates thunderstorms. But I generally like them, unless they wake me up in the middle of the night. Then I'm scared too, just like Zeus. There was a huge, spooky thunderstorm in the night before my dad died. I'll never forget that. Anyway, I'm mostly happy about my garden getting some rain tonight. I guess it rained this weekend, but a little more won't hurt and it means I won't have to water for a day or more.

Father's Day

We made it back home after a busy weekend. We made it in less than 8 hours, which is pretty good considering the trailer. The traffic was great until we got beyond Boston and were heading south to Quincy. The highway was backed up and 2 out of 4 lanes were closed for repaving. Lovely. We knew we were back home at that point.

Today is Father's Day so I would like to take a moment to reflect on my dad. We always had a good time on Father's Day because we'd usually go boating and then have steaks out on the grill. One year, Dad got a ticket on Father's Day because we had taken a short-cut through a parking lot, and the police stopped him. He was pretty mad about that, especially the fact that the police officer had pulled him over on Father's Day.

Father's Day seems a little cruel to people who don't have their dads in their life. I'm glad it's a holiday because I have a lot of happy memories of my dad, but it would've been nice to have had it postponed this year. I suppose that eventually I will think of my dad and not feel so sad, but that day hasn't come yet.

Buffalo News

We're back in Buffalo for the weekend. We flew in last night and go back tomorrow. I'm exhausted. It's been a really full day. We had to run a lot of errands and get a lot of things accomplished.

Tonight we had dinner at a little Italian restaurant in Black Rock that is in a 3-story Victorian house that is 3-toned: red, white and green for the Italian flag. :) We've gone there before and it's the sort of place that we haven't found in Boston yet. A place for locals, good food, good price, no frills. I don't know why we haven't found a place like it in Boston yet, except that I think Buffalo is more blue-collar than Boston is getting to be. Either that, or we really qualify as "locals" in Buffalo, because our families have lived here for generations and know all the cheap spaghetti joints, while we still have a short history in Boston.

I was shocked to see that Tim Russert died yesterday. He was a big Buffalo ex-pat. JK2's high school was his high school too, and they made a big deal of him. He even has his own page at the high school's website. I've read his books, and he seemed like a nice guy. It's sad and shocking when someone dies so quickly, even someone that I don't know, although I felt like I knew him through his books. There are so many things that he had in life and the world that will be forever unfinished or accomplished. This, as well as my reflections on my dad's life as Father's Day nears, makes me think about how much time each of us has left - are we spending it in a way that creates happiness and beauty? Is it too much of a goal to try to change the world, or should we just focus on enjoying life? Is it possible to do both?