It's been a very long time since we've added anything to this blog & probably no one is reading it, but we finally moved into our house in Wickford, Rhode Island and here are a few pictures.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Rhode Island House
It's been a very long time since we've added anything to this blog & probably no one is reading it, but we finally moved into our house in Wickford, Rhode Island and here are a few pictures.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Happy New Year 2008
Well, here it is, 2008, and we have entered life in cyberspace. We have started this with no idea where it will go. For the moment, it is a convenient way to send out a Christmas letter. As our first act in this new land (think planting our flag) we want to wish you all a very merry Christmas. (Actually, we are finishing this in January, so we wish you a very happy 2008!)
If you are reading this, you have gotten our Christmas card and the insert with this address. The insert also answered four frequently asked questions and that is as good a place to start as any.
Bob’s Health: A boring topic but, as you probably know, Bob had cancer in 2004. Now, a frequent greeting is a "How are you doing?", with an emphasis to mean "Are you still free and clear?" The answer is always yes. They said they could get it all and it looks like they did. There are still tests every six months, but everything looks good and the body is back to normal. We were hoping the hair would come back thick, black and curly, but you can’t have everything.
James’ Residence and Job: In January 2006, James’ boss in Washington retired and they asked him to be acting chief. In March, he came home and all indications were that he would be named chief and the move would be permanent. He had enjoyed Cairo and the job there was wonderful, but he was ready to come home. Things being as they are at the Library of Congress, the move from acting chief to chief went about as smoothly and speedily as the development of a national health care policy. In September 2006, still acting but decidedly not moving back to Cairo, James went back, packed up his household, and moved home. Over the summer of 2007, James applied (twice since they neglected to put the paperwork through in time the first time) for the position and at Thanksgiving, his appointment as chief of the Library’s Overseas Operations was announced
Us: We are happy and well. Since James returned from Cairo, we have stayed pretty close to home. Aside from James having spent more than a lifetimes worth of hours in planes, the issue of non-permanence of the job and the remote possibility of a choice between a return to Cairo or early retirement dampened our enthusiasm for extended travel. We have made short trips along the east coast, seeing relatives and friends. Mostly, we are content here in Washington, seeing friends, getting to the theater and concerts and just enjoying home.
Well, not always enjoying. A long-neglected water damaged wall turned into a flooded basement and destroyed floor and walls of our small bathroom. Did you know that in the 1920's, it was the practice to lay down pipes, cover them with concrete and set the floor tiles into the concrete? It only took a day to jackhammer out a trench the entire length of the bathroom. Our 30-year plan to convert the half bath to a full bath with shower was now inevitable. By January, our architect was drawing up plans for an easy, inexpensive renovation. By June, we had a contractor stating a 2-week job to do it. By November, the contractors were finally out of the house and we were a lot poorer. But the results were great, just what we envisioned. We love it.
(Note: The rest of this is a rather long travelog. You can skip to “Home Again” to bypass it.)
Travel: Although we think we have stayed close to home, we have had a few trips. In April of 2006, James had a conference in in San Francisco. We both went and got to spend some time with our long-time friends Bob Glavin, in San Francisco, and Larry Millsap & David Kirk in Santa Cruz. We also took a ski trip in February 2007 and met up with another old friend, Bob Meglen, to go to our favorite ski lodge in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Our one big trip was to Austria and Italy in the summer of 2007. We had not been to Vienna together for about 9 years and started thinking of a fall trip back there. Then Jessica, the daughter of our friends Anne & Gordon Linsley, invited us to her wedding in Rugolo, Italy, just north of Venice. James was organizing a meeting in Cairo, tentatively scheduled for the same time as the wedding. He moved the meeting by a week and flew to Cairo in mid-July. Bob flew to Vienna the next week and James met him there. We stayed with our friends Lars and Jürgen for a few days and then rented a car and hit the road.
First stop, Sacile. The Linsley’s house and the wedding were in Rugolo, due north of Venice, a named place that even "village" makes sound more than it is. In town, other than some houses along the street, there is a church and a small municipal building that looks like it might be a church hall, though a church hall dating back to 1489, built at the same time as the church. Sacile is the train station for Rugolo and closest town with a real hotel. We took Anne’s recommendation to stay there and we were delighted. The town is small, with rivers running through it and arcaded buildings dating back to the Renaissance. With all the bridges and the buildings, it was like a mini-Venice. And they had the best pizza!
The wedding was wonderful. Jessica was a beautiful bride. The church was old Italian spare and contemplative. The reception lasted from 6pm until 1am, with courses of food that kept coming like the Eveready bunny. It was everything you would expect a wedding in Italy to be. We had a delightful time, including a Sunday lunch at Anne & Gordon’s house on the mountainside and a traditional Sunday evening pizza in Vittorio Veneto with a large group of the wedding guests.
On Monday, we headed north, into the Alps and back to Austria. Bob insisted that we spend some time driving in the Alps on this vacation. Drives like that were the source of some of our most pleasant memories of our time in Austria. The Dolomites were stunning, but our enthusiasm was a bit dampened on the first day by anxiety. Our calls to recommended hotels made us realiz
e that we were in the middle of European vacation time and we hit the road not knowing where we would spend the night. Our stop for gas made us realize that we had neglected to inform our credit card company of our travels to Egypt, Austria and Italy and they stopped accepting our charges. We already knew that our Austrian bank card would work only in money machines in Austria. And we speak no Italian. Visions of our sleeping in the car with an empty tank of gas on some mountainside provided a bit of static in the beautiful mountain scenes that were passing before our eyes. We eased our fears with a decision to head to Lienz, the capital of East Tirol. They were sure to have a tourist bureau that would find us a room and branch of our bank that could give us cash and a language we could use to get a connection to our credit card company. They did, and we were happy to have spent a day in a lovely little town we might never have seen.
The next day, we went 40 miles up the valley to Heiligenblut, a town we had stayed in 20 years ago and really enjoyed. We got a room at Haus Sänger, the Penzion we had stayed in the last time. The teen-aged son we remembered as the errand-boy from the first trip was now the 30-something proprietor. The spectacular valley view and the 
hike to the tallest waterfall in Austria made us feel we were really back in the Alps. The next morning, we drove over the Großglockner Highway, a national park centered on a highway the goes by the highest mountain in Austria, built in the 1930's. We spent the night in the Dachstein area, in a small hotel that had been a 14th century castle. We has lunch in Schladming, our favorite ski resort, and found Loden Walker, where we bought identical loden coats, as we did 20 years ago. This time, we at least got different colors.
Thursday brought us back to Vienna. One night there and then it was off to Pöllauberg in Styria for a weekend at Lars and Jürgen’s house in the country. It was a delightful stay in the countryside. Back to Vienna on Sunday and a round of seeing many old friends we hadn’t seen in years. Though we got to try some of our old favorite restaurants, dinners organized by Farzi and Rolli and by Barbara and Pauli leave us with some of our fondest memories. And on the nights we did not go out, Jürgen entertained us with spectacular repasts. It was a heartwarming vacation.
Home Again: On our return from the vacation, work and the bathroom renovation kept us involved here in Washington. We planned a November trip to see the McDermott family in New York and Rhode Island. The trip was moved up to mid-October when we got the news that Bob’s brother, Gene, had lost his 12-year battle with cancer. It was a loss to us all, but we were happy that he had those twelve years with us in as-good-as-could-be-expected health.
After that trip, we have gone outside the beltway a handful of times. Thanksgiving brought the Linsleys – Anne, Gordon, their son Benjamin and his wife Laura Redman – to stay with us. Benj and Laura live in Brooklyn. We have had many Thanksgivings with the Linsleys and were happy to have yet another. We took care of the after effects of the feast with a proper hike in the Shenandoah National Park.
From then until Christmas was the usual round of parties and holiday events. A quiet Christmas day at home with a goose-chestnut-pudding dinner, joined by James’ cousin Pat and friends Liz and Mike. Both of us were off work until January 7, expecting to be doing almost nothing. Between getting back to the gym on a daily basis and entertaining/seeing friends almost every night, the time has flown by. Thus, all this time to putter around the house and get our Christmas cards done is gone. It is Saturday night and this letter is finally complete. We still have to get it into the blog and address the cards and notes before we go back to work on Monday. It was a great two weeks off, but now we need to get back to our routine and rest a bit.
Have a wonderful new year!
If you are reading this, you have gotten our Christmas card and the insert with this address. The insert also answered four frequently asked questions and that is as good a place to start as any.
Bob’s Health: A boring topic but, as you probably know, Bob had cancer in 2004. Now, a frequent greeting is a "How are you doing?", with an emphasis to mean "Are you still free and clear?" The answer is always yes. They said they could get it all and it looks like they did. There are still tests every six months, but everything looks good and the body is back to normal. We were hoping the hair would come back thick, black and curly, but you can’t have everything.
James’ Residence and Job: In January 2006, James’ boss in Washington retired and they asked him to be acting chief. In March, he came home and all indications were that he would be named chief and the move would be permanent. He had enjoyed Cairo and the job there was wonderful, but he was ready to come home. Things being as they are at the Library of Congress, the move from acting chief to chief went about as smoothly and speedily as the development of a national health care policy. In September 2006, still acting but decidedly not moving back to Cairo, James went back, packed up his household, and moved home. Over the summer of 2007, James applied (twice since they neglected to put the paperwork through in time the first time) for the position and at Thanksgiving, his appointment as chief of the Library’s Overseas Operations was announced
Us: We are happy and well. Since James returned from Cairo, we have stayed pretty close to home. Aside from James having spent more than a lifetimes worth of hours in planes, the issue of non-permanence of the job and the remote possibility of a choice between a return to Cairo or early retirement dampened our enthusiasm for extended travel. We have made short trips along the east coast, seeing relatives and friends. Mostly, we are content here in Washington, seeing friends, getting to the theater and concerts and just enjoying home.
Well, not always enjoying. A long-neglected water damaged wall turned into a flooded basement and destroyed floor and walls of our small bathroom. Did you know that in the 1920's, it was the practice to lay down pipes, cover them with concrete and set the floor tiles into the concrete? It only took a day to jackhammer out a trench the entire length of the bathroom. Our 30-year plan to convert the half bath to a full bath with shower was now inevitable. By January, our architect was drawing up plans for an easy, inexpensive renovation. By June, we had a contractor stating a 2-week job to do it. By November, the contractors were finally out of the house and we were a lot poorer. But the results were great, just what we envisioned. We love it.(Note: The rest of this is a rather long travelog. You can skip to “Home Again” to bypass it.)
Travel: Although we think we have stayed close to home, we have had a few trips. In April of 2006, James had a conference in in San Francisco. We both went and got to spend some time with our long-time friends Bob Glavin, in San Francisco, and Larry Millsap & David Kirk in Santa Cruz. We also took a ski trip in February 2007 and met up with another old friend, Bob Meglen, to go to our favorite ski lodge in Breckenridge, Colorado.
Our one big trip was to Austria and Italy in the summer of 2007. We had not been to Vienna together for about 9 years and started thinking of a fall trip back there. Then Jessica, the daughter of our friends Anne & Gordon Linsley, invited us to her wedding in Rugolo, Italy, just north of Venice. James was organizing a meeting in Cairo, tentatively scheduled for the same time as the wedding. He moved the meeting by a week and flew to Cairo in mid-July. Bob flew to Vienna the next week and James met him there. We stayed with our friends Lars and Jürgen for a few days and then rented a car and hit the road.
First stop, Sacile. The Linsley’s house and the wedding were in Rugolo, due north of Venice, a named place that even "village" makes sound more than it is. In town, other than some houses along the street, there is a church and a small municipal building that looks like it might be a church hall, though a church hall dating back to 1489, built at the same time as the church. Sacile is the train station for Rugolo and closest town with a real hotel. We took Anne’s recommendation to stay there and we were delighted. The town is small, with rivers running through it and arcaded buildings dating back to the Renaissance. With all the bridges and the buildings, it was like a mini-Venice. And they had the best pizza!
The wedding was wonderful. Jessica was a beautiful bride. The church was old Italian spare and contemplative. The reception lasted from 6pm until 1am, with courses of food that kept coming like the Eveready bunny. It was everything you would expect a wedding in Italy to be. We had a delightful time, including a Sunday lunch at Anne & Gordon’s house on the mountainside and a traditional Sunday evening pizza in Vittorio Veneto with a large group of the wedding guests.On Monday, we headed north, into the Alps and back to Austria. Bob insisted that we spend some time driving in the Alps on this vacation. Drives like that were the source of some of our most pleasant memories of our time in Austria. The Dolomites were stunning, but our enthusiasm was a bit dampened on the first day by anxiety. Our calls to recommended hotels made us realiz
e that we were in the middle of European vacation time and we hit the road not knowing where we would spend the night. Our stop for gas made us realize that we had neglected to inform our credit card company of our travels to Egypt, Austria and Italy and they stopped accepting our charges. We already knew that our Austrian bank card would work only in money machines in Austria. And we speak no Italian. Visions of our sleeping in the car with an empty tank of gas on some mountainside provided a bit of static in the beautiful mountain scenes that were passing before our eyes. We eased our fears with a decision to head to Lienz, the capital of East Tirol. They were sure to have a tourist bureau that would find us a room and branch of our bank that could give us cash and a language we could use to get a connection to our credit card company. They did, and we were happy to have spent a day in a lovely little town we might never have seen.
The next day, we went 40 miles up the valley to Heiligenblut, a town we had stayed in 20 years ago and really enjoyed. We got a room at Haus Sänger, the Penzion we had stayed in the last time. The teen-aged son we remembered as the errand-boy from the first trip was now the 30-something proprietor. The spectacular valley view and the 
hike to the tallest waterfall in Austria made us feel we were really back in the Alps. The next morning, we drove over the Großglockner Highway, a national park centered on a highway the goes by the highest mountain in Austria, built in the 1930's. We spent the night in the Dachstein area, in a small hotel that had been a 14th century castle. We has lunch in Schladming, our favorite ski resort, and found Loden Walker, where we bought identical loden coats, as we did 20 years ago. This time, we at least got different colors.
Thursday brought us back to Vienna. One night there and then it was off to Pöllauberg in Styria for a weekend at Lars and Jürgen’s house in the country. It was a delightful stay in the countryside. Back to Vienna on Sunday and a round of seeing many old friends we hadn’t seen in years. Though we got to try some of our old favorite restaurants, dinners organized by Farzi and Rolli and by Barbara and Pauli leave us with some of our fondest memories. And on the nights we did not go out, Jürgen entertained us with spectacular repasts. It was a heartwarming vacation.Home Again: On our return from the vacation, work and the bathroom renovation kept us involved here in Washington. We planned a November trip to see the McDermott family in New York and Rhode Island. The trip was moved up to mid-October when we got the news that Bob’s brother, Gene, had lost his 12-year battle with cancer. It was a loss to us all, but we were happy that he had those twelve years with us in as-good-as-could-be-expected health.
After that trip, we have gone outside the beltway a handful of times. Thanksgiving brought the Linsleys – Anne, Gordon, their son Benjamin and his wife Laura Redman – to stay with us. Benj and Laura live in Brooklyn. We have had many Thanksgivings with the Linsleys and were happy to have yet another. We took care of the after effects of the feast with a proper hike in the Shenandoah National Park.From then until Christmas was the usual round of parties and holiday events. A quiet Christmas day at home with a goose-chestnut-pudding dinner, joined by James’ cousin Pat and friends Liz and Mike. Both of us were off work until January 7, expecting to be doing almost nothing. Between getting back to the gym on a daily basis and entertaining/seeing friends almost every night, the time has flown by. Thus, all this time to putter around the house and get our Christmas cards done is gone. It is Saturday night and this letter is finally complete. We still have to get it into the blog and address the cards and notes before we go back to work on Monday. It was a great two weeks off, but now we need to get back to our routine and rest a bit.
Have a wonderful new year!
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