Summer Update

Okay, okay...

I know it's been awhile since we put up anything remotely resembling a significant blog post. So, you'll get the works...long narratives, pictures, and--well, I guess that's about all I can offer in this online medium. In any case, I (Dan) am back from my "sans Katie" travels and adventures. The first of which, some of you know was to the exotic locale of Canada--Halifax, Nova Scotia to be exact--for a two-week music festival at the beginning of June.

My woodwind quintet, whose picture you can find (here and maybe here, this link is for the quintet's Myspace page), was invited to be one of the ensembles-in-residence. They flew us up and quartered us in the tiny, but clean, Dalhousie University dorms. We played several concerts, including a live-to-air CBC broadcast from which I received a nice one-time royalty check. Below I include a description of the lobster dinner to which we were treated by the festival.

On Saturday afternoon, all 60 something people piled onto two old yellow school buses and drove about 45 minutes south and east to the coast of Nova Scotia. There, we unloaded at the seaside home (on about a 10-foot bluff overlooking a small cove) of the former contrabassoonist of the N.S. symphony. They had an outdoor fire pit in which they had a vast cauldron full of boiling water and lobsters. Since they had been preparing for our arrival, they already had a big blue laundry tub full of cooked lobsters and we all grabbed one (pictures to follow!) and, crossing over to another part of the lawn, went to a narrow, 30-foot long table, really just two long boards perched on wooden barrels. Daniel, our bassoonist who has attended this festival before, ran a "lobster-eating masterclass," and walked us through the eventual dismemberment and consumption of the red critters. There was also free beer. I ate two whole lobsters, a very yummy charred hot dog, several cookies, cheese and crackers, and probably some other stuff. Did I mention there was free beer? Daniel ate three lobsters and many other people ate at least two. So you can imagine the scene of carnage with all the torn-apart carapaces of the lobsters littering the table and the surrounding grass. It was wonderful. Lobster is very tasty (I sometimes dipped it in liquified butter) and I imagine I will now have to go find some in New York (probably Chinatown) and indoctrinate Katie into the lofty world of lobsterfeasts. After all this, we went for a walk down to the tide pools and crashing surf. All in all, it was very fun.

Of course, you need not only imagine this in your mind's eye, you can visit our pictures page to see the carnage first hand.

The second big trip I took these last two weeks before returning yesterday was to Oregon and Washington where I had 1) a week-long family reunion and 2) a week's visit to Seattle environs and then to Portland environs. The reunion is on Mom's side and a (mostly) triennial event for which about 20 relatives show up (see above picture) from all over the USA, more specifically: NY, TN, WA, OR, SC, TX, and CO. The reunion was actually capped by an even larger reunion in Tacoma of Mom's extended family (over 200 people were there) to celebrate my great uncle's 50-year anniversary as a Jesuit priest. Some relatives came who hadn't seen each other since 1937! Needless to say, I didn't know many of the relatives there so the great ice-breaker was "So, how are we related?" After this big party, it was off to Seattle to see my Dad's parents and visit with my college friends from the University of Puget Sound. I played many hours of video games, caught a Mariners game at Safeco field (they won! yes!) and visited with my grandparents again.

My father-in-law just happened to be visiting the Seattle area also, so I caught a ride back to Portland with him. Time was spent during my stint there mostly with my parents and in-laws, but also with a few select friends from high school with whom I am still close. During the entire two weeks I played a ton of cards (pinochle mostly), outdoor sports, board games, and, yes, video games. I ate a ton of great food and drank copious amounts of wine and beer. I visited extensively with most of my family and many of my friends. (Of course, during all this, I missed Katie terribly and am very happy to be back in Brooklyn, if only to be with her.) Finally, I was able to parry the spate of questions about my dissertation with polite deftness and a calm, serene demeanor. Now that I am refreshed and relaxed, I must get back to work on the cussed beast, by which I mean the dissertation.

So check out some of the new pictures (click here) I posted and we'll try to be better about blogging more frequently. Katie has only 20 days left of her coursework and is survival mode. She is studying like crazy. Once her coursework ends, she goes through a "white coat ceremony" where she is given, strangely and counterintuitively, a white coat of all things, but also the go-ahead to practice medicine. Then then one-year clinical portion of her degree begins. In her white coat ceremony and the commencement of her first clinical, we are going to visit our friends in Buffalo and, from there, take a little trip to Niagara Falls and then on up to Toronto. It should be fun. We'll try to blog it when we return.