Our Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas Everyone.

Here is our Christmas Letter that we sent to some, and posted here for others.

Dear Friends and Family,

Holiday Greetings from Brooklyn! This year Katie and I have decided to send a Christmas letter since we’ve been swamped with work and/or school and, impersonal as it is, a quick note is the best way to avoid hand cramps from writing all this down over and over.

The year in review: In April, we moved into a 2-bedroom apartment across the hall from our old one. Our neighbors had been evicted (sad for them, good for us); the landlords re-sanded and re-varnished the floors and put in new kitchen appliances and cabinets. We are happy to be in a bigger space (with more closets!) that is on the back corner of the building, off the busy parkway, and so much quieter.

At the end of last January Dan took all three days’ worth of his doctoral exams (including orals), and is now ABD (“all but dissertation”). His PhD dissertation, on which he is now hard at work, explores the music of the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. Beginning in the Fall Semester, he was offered an exapnded role teaching at the Mannes (pronounced MAN-ess) College of Music; he had already been teaching elementary through high-school kids in the Mannes Prep division on Saturdays, but is now teaching an additional five classes in the College division during the week. He also was offered a job teaching an evening course in music at Hunter College, part of the CUNY (City University of New York) system. All this in addition to his continuing work at Hofstra University out on Long Island. He also stays busy playing his French horn in various free-lance orchestras around the NY metro area.

In the Spring, Katie was accepted to the Physician Assistant (PA) program at SUNY Downstate here in Brooklyn. Only 34 people were admitted out of an applicant pool of over 500. Yay Katie! She proceeded to spend the summer taking Gross Anatomy and some other courses, the “highlight” of which was working in a cadaver lab and dissecting (with 3 other students) a gentleman they named “Pall.” That’s right, not Paul—Pall. She just completed her second semester (of six) and Dan thinks he may finally get to see her again. She has been spending upwards of 80 hours a week at school, either in class or studying (which means Dan has been doing lots of the housework and cooking—look out!). This doesn’t count weekends, on which she works at New York Methodist hospital as a phlebotomist (the person who draws blood for donations or lab tests). Under her tender care and expert needle-sticking Dan has donated about a quart of blood this year. She has two more semesters of classwork before embarking on the clinical portion of her program.

If you wish, you can keep tabs on us if you check our blog (unfortuately infrequently updated) at http://www.danandbird.blogspot.com/(it does have links to more pictures). We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

Love,

Dan and Bird

Christmas eve blog

Katie is working here on Christmas eve morning so I am trying to get caught up on the blogging. She is FINALLY done with this semester. She says if anything, it was harder than the summer semester (which she and her colleagues already refer to as "last year" although it wasn't even more than about 6 months ago). I am also working Christmans eve--tonight, playing a Christmas eve service at the giant St. Paul's Catholic church in Manhattan. It has been nice to finally spend some time with Katie again. All my teaching wrapped up on Dec. 22, so now I just have to grade final papers and enter grades. We are going to travel to Washington, D.C. after New Year's to visit our friends Rachel and Sean who moved there recently from Oregon. We'll blog that when we get back.

The real reason for this post is to boast about our very first Christmas tree. Our apartment had really been too small for a tree in past years, but this year, with our new, larger digs (see previous posts), we have space for a tree. No tree stands sold Christmas trees in our neighborhood though, so we got this 7 foot tree at church lot in Park Slope and carried it back (2o minute walk) to our place. I think I smelled like a Balsalm Fir for about two days after that. My muscles were a bit tired too, but it was lighter than you might expect, and it was all wrapped up at that point, so it wasn't as bushy as it is in the photo. Although it's our first tree, we weren't at a loss for ornaments, since we get some as gifts every year and had bought some on our European vacation in 2005, as well as acquired some along the way during our 5 years together already. Enjoy the picture, and we'll send out an email on Christmas Day with a picture of us and the tree (plus post it here on the Blog with our Christmas letter).

Belated Thanksgiving Update

So it seems that after a massive silence every 2 months there is a flurry of activity on the blog. Sorry about that, things just get a little crazy. We're going to break up this weekend's post into several smaller, more easily readable ones.

So here's the first one, involving our Turkey Day. Katie’s Dad, Mike, came out to visit from Portland, Oregon (pronounced "orygun" to all you East Coast readers). As you can see, Mike brought with him, a very yellow jacket, we took a picture of him in front of a cool yellow mural in Park Slope, Brooklyn to achieve this little picture we like to call "Sunburst." That crazy Mike. He also got the crazy idea to rent a car and drive 4 hours upstate to Cooperstown, NY to see the Baseball Hall of Fame. Why Cooperstown? It is where baseball's rules were officially codified, according to legend. Anyway, Katie had to be at school, so it was just Mike and me. We had a great drive up, very picturesque. We are both big baseball fans and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at the museum (click here for more pictures). It was pretty neat to see all the memorabilia from 100 years of baseball. One of my favorite parts was the wall of baseball cards where they had some legendary cards: Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, and a rare Honus Wagner tobacco card from 1909. My brother and I both collected baseball cards in elementary school, and some of those cards enjoy a status of mythical proportions in my memory.

On Thanksgiving itself, I cooked a 17-lb. turkey (4^th year running) and the stuffing and Katie did all the other fixin’s, her famous green bean casserole, for example, among others. We had lots of great food, some good beer on hand (including Brooklyn Lager, of course!) and good company, including our neighbors Keith and Katia who came over for dessert. It was really great to have some family here, especially since no one from Katie’s side has visited for about three years. While Katie was in school, Mike and I hit some museums, walked the Brooklyn Promenade, ate the best pizza in New York (in Brooklyn!) according to the Zagat survey, and probably watched parts of a million football games. The three of us played monopoly Thanksgiving morning, and also went to the Brooklyn museum and Botanic garden. With all the walking everywhere while he was here, he said it was like an "excercise vacation." In spite of all the walking, it was nice to relax a bit before Katie started the final push of her semester.