Today is Diane’s birthday. Happy birthday to my wonderful fun and loving partner. Best friend and love I could ever hope for.
here she is on her 2nd birthday back in 1962.. She is still such a cutie !
We took it as hike up to near Herrington’s view… It was snowing pretty hard today… By the time we got to the top we were post holing into sometimes the deep snow… Which was hard going… But it was beautiful to be out in the snow… The snow will be gone soon so it was great to have at least one last day in deep beautiful white snow
Debra and Jen surprised Diane this morning by bringing over makings for “Buddha Bowls” one of Diane’s favorites. Kyle and I did all the chipping shop to make them happen. We got to eat them in ‘Diane’s present for herself which was an extension to our fiesta ware collection… I really love how bright these things are . They remind me of pottery we used to have when we were kids.
we then had a Great birthday zoom meeting with the kids… Great to see them
I had a very moving experience today… My very good friend Scott is working his way through pancreatic cancer. It’s been a very tough road. Scott and I have been friends for about 30 years. We’re tied by a common love of science. He’s taught me more than any other human about how to make things to help other folks share our love of science. One of those passions is chemistry. Both of us have significant collections of chemicals… Most of the “somewhat safe” as I used to label the three bins of chemicals I had when the boys were young. (“Safe”, “somewhat safe”, and “ask Dad”).
Scott has decided to move the chemicals out of his house… So he doesn’t have to think about them. Especially the ones that are in the “ask Dad” category. It’s surprisingly difficult to get rid of “Ask Dad” chemicals. Anyway through the help of several organizations I’ve managed to find homes for most of the stuff. A good portion of the chemicals are going to help encourage university students and their love of chemistry. Some of them have to be placed a bit more carefully. I spent two hours working with Scott today which was really wonderful. I had previously categorized everything there and then worked with some of the recipients to categorize them into different groups… acids, Flammable, oxidizer, toxic, alkaline, somewhat safe. Today we sorted all of the chemicals into protective buckets lined with absorb the material and I move them to their new homes. It was really cathartic. It was fun working together on this and it was fun actually remembering all the cool fun that we’ve had with some of them. I also learned some new stuff in the process.
Scott’s always been an inspiration to me and this was an honor to help him with this
Just got off of a very fun Zoom reunion with the members of my 1979-80 IES classmates in Vienna. I hadn’t seen most of them in 41 years.I only knew 4 of them.. but it was so great hearing everyones stories. I even dressed up in my 1979 lederhosen for the occasion
We shared stories of friends and food and bars teachers travel… It was so great.
My find James was on .. We shared stories about spending part of a night in jail in southern Yugoslavia
Was good getting back in touch… It turns out that quite a few of us have connections to Boston. I’m hoping we could all get together at some point to share a stein of good Austrian beer
ugh.. I got the Pfizer vaccine yesterday and today I feel pretty cruddy … I got a little bit of aches and pains like the flu coming on…but It never felt so good.
long day.. with not much to report..
more tomorrow
