Dog Days of Summer

It's been many months since I've posted an update here, but not for lack of interesting things happening.  My term as an administrator was fairly all-consuming and generally awful, and then it took some time to recover.  A few other spring events, and then summer travels kept me from getting back to you.

But I'm back.  Here's the February - July 2014 News Roundup for 83 Durant:

February

• Meryl Streep was supposed to come hang out.  Instead, we got a bad snowstorm (one of several this winter) and a postponed event.  This essentially doubled the work for the event.  Not a great start to the semester.
• Lucy started taking swimming lessons.  Despite her insistence that she knows how to swim, she does not.
• Lucy continued with ice hockey, becoming a better skater than both her parents (not too difficult).
• We went to Lowell's WinterFest and had a great time.
• Lucy lost some teeth! https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakeb/12580076933/

March

• We had an awesome Rock of Ages Reunion with Elizabeth, Ian, Christy, and Eric: 

• We skipped our usual large-scale St. Patrick's Day party, much to the sadness of many of our long-time guests.  The kids were just fine about it:

• Bridget started going to a chiropractor!  (Signifying the general awfulness of her job *and* the impending doom of turning 40).
•  Bridget turned 40.  The world did not end, despite the depiction of the day by Lucy:

Jake and Lucy made me a cake in honor of Three Mile Island (the disaster that happened on my Birthday), including dry ice smoke and a blinking red light from the cooling tower, which was awesome:

April: This was a month of radical highs and lows:
I should note that in recent history for us, April has been THE WORST. As evidence, see my post from last year here.

• Meryl Streep finally came.

• Oh, and she brought Chris Cooper with her:

• Bridget flew to Harrisburg for a conference and had all kinds of flashbacks from her misspent central Pennsylvania youth.  Also, her return flight was cancelled, creating all kinds of additional chaos.
• We went to see The Book of Mormon with Elizabeth, Ian, and Mike.  It was awesome!
• We visited the Peabody-Essex Museum and walked around Salem.
• We had a wonderful Easter with Matt & Mary and the rest of the fabulous Christian Hill Cocktail Society gang: 

 

 

• But the very worst part of April, and indeed the very worst part of our year, was April 21st, when our dear, wonderful dog, Mr. Carter Stephen Bridge passed away.  We're all doing a lot better now, but it was a very difficult time for all of us, especially Lucy.

April was just pretty much crazy.  The cruelest month and all that.  We're glad it's over.

May

• Lucy was Star Student in her class again! She did a lot of writing about dogs at school.
• I attended, organized, and/or spoke at a lot of end-of-semester events.
• Some people went really crazy at the end of the semester and I dealt with it.
• Graduation happened.  I photobombed my students a lot.
• I don't think I have any photos from this entire month, which may indicate that it was even worse than April, but I don't have enough evidence (lacking the photos) to prove it. 

June

• We went to see The Kids in the Hall live in Boston with Elizabeth and Ian.  It was such a great show!
• I went to see Morrissey with Elizabeth.  Again, awesome.  Also, we felt pretty lucky because he cancelled most of the other shows on that leg of the tour.
• We went to a Spinners game for Father's Day.
• Lucy had her last day of Kindgergarden! Here she is with BFF Ruth:
  
• We vacationed in Northampton!  Yeah!  To get all the details, you should just look at the Flickr pictures from then: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakeb/14298508769/ But to sum up, we stayed in an AirBnB apartment around the corner from the apartment where we lived in grad school.  We hung out at Look Park, went to the Mutton and Mead Festival (where Lucy tried out archery, made her own jump rope, and we all watched jousting!), and visited the Eric Carle Museum (where we saw a film about and got to see Norton Juster, author of The Phantom Tollbooth).  We continued the literary tourism with a visit to Emily Dickinson's house, which Lucy loved.  She even took notes during the tour.  She also blew my mind when she corrected the tour guide in his reading of a Dickinson poem: the version we had read was different, and she had correctly remembered one of the variants (Dickinson's editors really butchered her poems).  We rode the tandem all over the place, visited the Bridge of Flowers and saw the glacial potholes in Shelburne Falls, and ate very, very well at all our favorite spots in the valley (Hungry Ghost for pizza & bread, Herrell's for ice cream, and a bunch of other places for drinks & snacks).  It was a perfect vacation, and we hope to do it again soon.

July

• The Livingstons came to visit!  John & Rose & Jessamy & Megan & Jamie came to hang out with us in Lowell, including a visit to the Western Ave Artists Studios.  We did a little trip to Salem, where we visited the Peabody Essex Museum again, and ate at our favorite bakery, A&J King.  We also stopped by Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, bought some candy at the Ye Olde Pepper Candy Companie (the oldest candy company in the US), and visited the S.S. Friendship, a very cool old ship.   It was great!  

There are a ton of pictures on Flickr if you want all the visuals: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakeb/14588889061/

• We went to Rehoboth, Delaware with all of the family.  There was a wedding shower for Abby, a visit to Funland, trips to the Farmer's Market, lots of time in the ocean, and all sorts of other fun.  We also acquired a new pet, a hermit cab named Ned (as well as his companion, Ted):
  
  It was a great week.  All the photos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakeb/14677708343/
• We visited at Grandma's house in Carlisle along with the Maryland Marshalls.  Check us out in this charmingly terrible family portrait: 

• During our visit, we went to Hersheypark.  We were there from 10 in the morning to 10 at night, and it was amazing. The kids were great, and we all got to ride a ton of amazing things.  Lucy and Luke got on very well and enjoyed a ton of rides.  Lucy did her first roller coaster, the Cocoa Cruiser.  Luke went from Cocoa Cruiser to the Trailblazer (which he rode repeatedly), so it seems he's on track to follow his dad's roller coaster thrill-seeking.  Jake got to ride the SooperDooperLooper for the first time. We did the Chocolate World tour, and got to meet the various chocolate-based characters.  It was a great, nostalgic time.
• When we finally returned to Lowell, it was time to get busy with an important task: finding a new family member, in the form of a dog.  After many tries, we finally got to meet and then bring home the charming, roughly 5-month-old Alice:
  
• The fun continued when we got home, with Ruth's 7th Birthday Party! 
  
  We even brought Alice for a bit of it:
  
  
• We also went to the Folk Festival, which was awesome. We even brought Alice, who did really, really well with meeting a ton of people and other dogs.  She was remarkably placid when faced with people eating food, and with all the craziness around her.  She's fitting right in.
• For the last week of July, Lucy had day camp at RecKids (at the rec center on campus).  She has LOVED it. She swam every day. This afternoon, we get to attend her end-of-camp celebration with her.
• And now it's August.  I can hardly believe it.  It's been a busy six months.  I hope to continue with more regular updates.  Is anyone still even reading this?

Happy Dog Days of Summer!

Storytelling and Writing and Celebrity Sighting

The semester is heating up despite the super-cold weather, and there's not much time to take a breath. This may be the last post for a while, since my new boss job is pretty draining. But of late, there's been a lot of story-telling going on in our house, and much of it seemed worthy of documentation.

Lucy's reading has been moving ahead at a surprising pace.  Every day she's reading and writing more and more words.  She and her BFF Ruth together are quite a menace.  The other day, they created this protest sign, directed at Ruth's brother, Woody:

Don't you love the positive reinforcement there?

In addition, Lucy has been writing book after book.  It's a bit intimidating for other authors who live in the same house.  Recently, she's been doing these adorable little accordion fold books; they look like this:

Here's a closer view of the one on birds:

And here's the one on "Hot," which she has targeted at audiences age 2 & up:

And now that she can read and all, apparently she's writing a new book explaining to others how to read:

She's really onto something here.  The more kids she can teach to read, the more readers she'll have, and the more books she'll sell! Genius!

In other exciting Lucy-reading news, the other morning, she read me part of my own book (no not the academic one, the children's one).  It was a tear-inducing moment, I will confess.

Also, just because I wouldn't want you to hear this from someone else first, I thought I should let you know that I'm soon going to have another brush with a famous person.  That person is:

I am not going to type her name because I don't want it to be googled with "Lowell" and end up having my students find my blog.  Ahem.

Anyway, you may recall, that a while back, this happened:

And I wrote about it here: http://thischarmingoldhouse.blogspot.com/2012/12/on-meeting-literary-heroes-part-2.html 
Also, if you want to see me terrified and excited and living the dream, you can watch me introduce King on the official video of the event here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8TkQvdJVbc&list=PLD91T9qx40vrwAuWOj0Rq5ysPBikIkgAo&index=2

Well, it seems we have a reprise, this Wednesday afternoon. I will be introducing our esteemed visitor (photo above).  So, as you can imagine, all I can think about now is: WHAT am I going to wear????  Also, I am hoping she will sign my clipboard.  In my new job as boss, I have a clip-board-based organization system that pleases me and terrorizes others.  There's a wall with project/problem-based clipboards, with appropriate labels.  The famous person has her own personally named clipboard.  I am looking forward to finishing that event (and retiring that clipboard) so that I can tend to the other, less glamourous, but nontheless pressing clipboards.

Perhaps you would like to see?

There you go.  Also, all the clipboards are full now (that was a photo from Day 1).  Now you know why my faculty are now calling me "Dread Chair Marshall," and cowering under my clip-board-based reign of terror.

So if I ever emerge from the impending week of celebrity-induced madness here on campus, I'll try to update you on our household's ever-growing web of celebrity connections.

Skip to ma Lu(cy)!

Tonight we have a guest post from Lucy! Lucy has been very busy and has been developing lots of new skills.  You'll be glad to know that she now knows how to SKIP and SNAP.  These two activities have been very challenging for a LONG time, so we are all very happy.  Sometimes Lucy just skips and snaps all around the house.  If she needs to walk somewhere, why not skip?  And snap while she's at it?  Also, Lucy has been doing a lot of journaling.  She draws and writes about what she's done for the day.  I'm helping her by typing what she tells me, and uploading the photos she'd like.  Here she is:

This is a picture I drew in Free Art Class today:

It is for a show called "I Love Good!" It is a super hero show that I am going to put on for my mom's Birthday (3-28-14).  On the left is Turkey Man! He is the archvillain.  I am Wind Girl with the blue cape and Ruth is Sun Girl with the yellow cape.  We have our Super Pets, Carter (the dog) and Owl (the cat) with us.  Turkey Man is bleeding because Sun Girl shot him with a ray of sun.  He is trying to bite my hand off!

This is how I looked today:

It is funny because I am wearing my Mom's kilt.  It is very short because my Mom was shorter than me.  Look how awesome my hair looks:

I am being funny.

I went to the dentist on Friday.  I got a rubber slug for a prize.  It actually looked like a slug.  I love it.  Mommy does not like it.  I put it on her bed last night.  She yelled.  "He's not that bad!" I said.  I laughed a lot.  My Dad laughed too.  And Mommy said "Lucy do not do that."  I am going to do it again.

[WHAT!!!!!! says the typist, aka Mommy.]

I am Carter:

My little sister made this costume for me.  I do not like the hat.  But I guess the collar is OK.  Woof Woof!  I don't really woof that much.  Love, Carter

The End.

This bubble is frozen:

When you squish these, they turn into something like plastic.  Pa sent Dad an e-mail about how you can freeze bubbles, so of course we had to try it.  It is fun to blow bubbles in the cold.  Here are some better photos that other people took of frozen bubbles.  It was VERY cold outside.  Even though we don't have a picture of this, Dad took some hot water and threw it on a very cold day and it turned to snow.  That is awesome.

On Sunday, we went to the zoo.  We saw these wolves:

Awwwoooooooooo!!!!!  We saw them howling.  We saw their shadows coming around the corner.  There is a cave which has a statue of wolves with their babies.  Watch the movie Wild Kratts and there is one episode of it where at the beginning of it, the very very beginning you can see a real baby wolf cub.

The End.

Merry Christmas!

Hope you're having a lovely day, wherever you are.  We're here:

Edmonds, Washington (waiting for the ferry to Kingston).

Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings, etc.

Cheers!

Best Books of 2013*

* meaning, best books that I actually read in 2013.

Funny, funny, I am writing this post while I am *supposed* to be grading final papers.  Yup.  Which is *exactly* the situation that led to my previous best books post (of 2011) right here.

I just finished -- just this morning in fact, while I should have been grading -- Joyce Carol Oates' The Accursed.



Loved it!  It's a big huge old-fashioned Gothic novel/vampire story, set in Princeton with this terrific "historian" narrator who is an interesting figure in his own right and is assembling a history of a purported real Curse in Princeton surrounding its most prominent families.  Characters include Jack London, Woodrow Wilson, and Upton Sinclair.  Note to my close personal friend, JCO (see here for proof): cut the Upton Sinclair parts.  They are definitely the weak link.  But otherwise, seriously, terrific.  Unexpected stuff cropping up, all kinds of curious historical-ish footnotes, and fun with naughty vamps.

Next up, following up on the gothic and ghostly, Vera Brosgol: Anya's Ghost

I stumbled onto this book while Jake and I were shopping at Million Year Picnic, the best comics store in Cambridge.   It grabbed my attention, reminding me of David B's work (see the terrific Epileptic, which I have taught before) and also Marjane Satrapi (see Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, which was a Common Text for all our First Year students a few years back).  Anya's story surprised me, with a ghost that at first appears knowable and benign, but turns out to be more menacing.  It's a story about a teenage daughter of Russian immigrants, and is filled with all those 1.5-gen immigrant issues.  The book came out through First Second Press (I see now, upon checking, back in 2011), one of my favorite publishers of beautiful graphic work.  Lovely and charming in images and story.  And also creepy.

Continuing with the theme of the creepy and the curious, I give you Michelle Tea: Mermaid in Chelsea Creek


I had no idea what I was getting into when I picked up this one.  It actually showed up at the house due to our subscription to McMullens, which is McSweeney's publication line for children's books.  This was the first of their Young Adult offerings, and it's terrific.  There are serious curiosities, a couple of girls trying to figure out the world, and pigeons.  Someone compared the strange world of Chelsea (an actual town here in Massachusetts) to Narnia, and I thought that was apt; I felt the same kind of curiosity and fascination with Tea's Chelsea as I remember having with Lewis's Narnia when I was a kid. I don't want to spoil one moment of the delightful surprises here, so I won't say more, except for this: expect the unexpected.  Also, this is book one of a trilogy.  I had *no idea* that was the case when I started this, and I was somewhat furious when I realized, about 10 pages from the end "whaaa?  There is no way she's gonna resolve all this....ah! she's NOT going to resolve all this!"  I hate when this happens.  So if you start this, know that it's a trilogy and that the next installment won't be out until sometime in 2014.  I cannot wait.

And speaking of trilogies that have left me hanging for the next installment, I enjoyed Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.



I picked this up on my visit to Powells in Portland last summer, as it was on someone's favorites list. One look at that creepy cover and it ought to be obvious to you why I went for it.  But it's more than the cover -- the whole book is filled with weird old black and white photos, some found, some created, that illustrate and sometimes move the story along.  It's another fantasy world here, this one with a troupe of curious oddball children and more than a few superpowers involved.  I liked it a lot, but once again, fell into the trap of book-that's-first-in-a-trilogy-but-I-didn't-know-when-I-started-it.  So again, we wait, this time til January 2014 to find out more.

 Speaking of creepy schools, and revisiting the year in comics reading, my new favorite is Morning Glories (Nick Spenser and Joe Eisma):
 
It's set in a high school for precocious young high-schoolers, but it's not at all what it seems.  If you watched the first season of Heroes (I know, seems like forever ago, but it was only 2006) and liked following Claire's exploits as she discovered that she wasn't just your normal high school cheerleader, you might like this, too.  The first book knocked my socks off.  And then it all just kept getting more complicated.  I have to say, I am not entirely convinced that they're going to be able to resolve all the stuff they've put in motion, but I'm very intrigued to see what happens next.  I just finished Volume 5 (I think 6 will be out soon).  Jake found this for me -- maybe even for Christmas last year? -- at the Harvard Book store, I believe, where it was a staff pick.  Good stuff if you're into off-kilter superhero/high school characters in comic books.

Finally (for tonight at least), I would be remiss if I didn't mention Davy Rothbarth's My Heart is an Idiot:

 
 We've been big fans of Davy since we saw/heard him at a This American Life event way back in 2003-ish (I think that's when).  We love his magazine, Found, which you will find in our bathroom (or maybe we gave you a copy of it?).  Davy's hilarious and writes terrific essays about the truly bizarre ways he's gotten himself into and out of trouble.  This is a collection of his essays.  I can't recommend all of them, but there are some great standouts, and if you like the personal essay form, and like to hear a voice telling you outright crazy thing that really happened, Davy's the way to go.  My favorite is his essay about his Mom, who is deaf, and how he and his brother dealt with that when they were kids.  And hilarity ensues.  Actually, if you just want to read that chapter, you can read it here.  Warning: you will laugh and cry.

But finally, my absolute favorite of the year:  Karen Russell's Vampires in the Lemon Grove.

You may recall I previously reviewed Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, which I absolutely loved.  Vampires is even better.  The title story is great and has a fabulous twist on vampire lore (which I will not reveal, but know that I love it).  But for me, the real standout -- in fact, as far as I'm concerned, a contender for my favorite short story *EVER* -- is "Reeling for the Empire," in which girls are taken from their homes to work in silk mills, and where, in fact, they become silk worms.  I know Alice Munro is all the talk of the short-story lovers, and I will give her her due, but Karen Russell? She is the next great awesome tremendous short story writer.  She's a genius (and I'm not the only one saying that -- she just got a MacArthur "genius grant."  READ THIS BOOK.

Oh wait, bonus round (because I clearly *really* don't want to grade): I have to give a shout-out to my roots: Gothic novels of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries.  C'mon, they're good for you.  And so trashy! This summer, I read Eliza Fenwick's Secresy, or, the Ruin on the Rock, published in 1795, and it was great.  Austen-crazed friends, why not expand your eighteenth-century novel canon and check this one out?  Buy it directly from Broadview Press, the terrific academic publisher that put it out (now in its second edition) because Amazon has been total jerks to them (and other small publishers).  It's wonderful and naughty and features letters to and from various characters and they get up to all sorts of surprising (sometimes naughty) things.  Good stuff.

There you go.  Happy reading.  I now have to go do some unhappy reading in the form of student papers.  Blurgh.

November News Round-Up

I'm just trying to get a November post up before it's December.  Yikes!  Type fast!

LEAVES! LEAVES! LEAVES!
Raking leaves around here is an endless, thankless project.  Thanks to my Mom for doing a ton of it already in the past few days.  I thought it would be worthwhile (and depressing) to keep a tally this year.
Leaf-raking 2013:
11/8: 4 bags
11/18: 13 bags
11/20: 21 bags!
Total (and still, there are leaves everywhere!): 38

Yikes.  And special thanks to Mom, who did most of that raking.

Lucy's Birthday!
She's 6! That's just crazy!  See the Flickr photos for details. For her Birthday, she asked for the following:
+ a broken cell phone
+ something with super-heroes
+ some candy
kid needs to work on aiming a little higher. 

Hockey (aka Skating Lessons)
Lucy has been taking lessons every Saturday for a while now over at the local ice rink.  She wears full hockey gear for this, though she's really just there to learn how to skate.  The larger program's goal, of course, is to teach the kids to skate so they can play hockey (why else, one might ask, would one want to learn?).  She's really enjoying it and getting better every week. Here she is:

I know, it's pretty awesome.  Just ignore the "Redmen" on her jersey.  We try to.  She loves skating, especially when they play "coach tag."

Cinematic Titanic!
Jake and I went to see one of the last performances of Cinematic Titanic, celebrating (well, skewering) bad movies.  The particular bad movie was really horrifyingly spectacularly bad: 1973's The Doll Squad, about an all-female spy team. If you don't know what Cinematic Titanic is, it's the live version descendent of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  If you don't know what Mystery Science Theater 3000 is, then you are likely not the same age as we are, or we likely didn't know you in the period 1992 - 1996.  You could read this recent article from the Globe that covered the show.  It was a nice reunion with friends and culture past.  Also, we had a babysitter.
 

Opera!
Jake and Elizabeth and I went to the Opera!  Not just any opera, the Lizzie Borden Opera.  It was a commission by the Boston Lyric Opera about one of my favorite historical figures.  A long time ago, Elizabeth and I spent a night in the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, which is in the actual house where the whole axe thing happened.  None of us had ever been to an opera, but I thought it would be something different, and the whole Lizzie thing had me (plus, mom was in town, so hey, free babysitting and there were no movies we wanted to see!).  Just the week before, Jake and I had gone to see Lysistrata performed by my students, so we were up for some challenging theater.  It was a pretty cool night, though I can't say I'm signing up for more opera.  There was a children's chorus that was wonderfully creepy, providing the opening and the closing -- particularly the closing of children singing "Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her father forty whacks...." and so on.  That part was perfect.  My friend who does scenic design warned me that opera involved a lot of what she calls "park and bark," where a singer moves to a space, then sings her thing, and then moves to the next spot, and then the next singer does the same.  While the staging was really sparse and interesting -- a big, wide, slightly askew linoleum-covered floor, and just a dining room table with four chairs -- I will say that the movement on the stage seemed very odd and I wasn't quite sure what was going on at times.  There were screens showing the words that the characters were singing, which helped a lot, even though it was sung in English.   Lizzie walked onto the stage in the opening with an axe in her hand, and chucked it into the dining room table.  It stayed there throughout the performance, with characters walking around it all along.  Then she busts it out again at the end. Overall, an interesting night, and I'm glad we went. 

First Field Trip (foiled)
Lucy's first ever real school field trip was scheduled for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  She was really excited, because she was going to get to ride a school bus to it (she has never ridden on a school bus, being a walker, like both her parents before her were).  Both the school bus and the whole field trip concept, as well as the actual destination -- a performance of the Eric Carle Brown Bear, Brown Bear story -- were much anticipated.

Then, on Monday afternoon, the dreaded phone call from the school nurse came: Lucy has a fever and is complaining about her sore throat.  There's some strep going around -- you might want to get her checked out.  Oh no.

Thankfully, our Pedi has evening hours during winter, so we got her in.  The nurses were skeptical (she's at 99 degrees -- not even a fever! -- for how long?).  But they took her culture, and sent us back to the little room, and lo an behold, a few minutes later, they came in, looking surprised: she's positive!  Yargh.  The doctor came in a bit after that asking "what seems to be the trouble?" and when I informed him that she was positive for strep, he seemed *really* disappointed that I knew: "oh, she told you?"  I mean, what, he was going to have me guess?  Anyway, Lucy took the news fine, and heard the doctor say "no school tomorrow," and didn't seem concerned.  She was cool with it when we got home, when we took the meds, when she went to bed.  I was afraid to bring it up.

About an hour after I had put her down, she started crying "mommy!  Mommy!" and I ran up to see her assuming she felt worse.  What's wrong?  "I just remembered I'm going to miss my field trip!"  Oh dear.  Not good.  So we have promised her another trip (with us) to see another play.  So if you hear of any good children's theater, let me know.

I should note that I have vivid memories of missing *my* first field trip, which was supposed to be to the veterinarian, but I couldn't go because I was sick.  I was devastated.  And I never became a vet.

Also, Lucy then missed the *next* day too because her cough was bad.  On schedule for that day: an assembly.  She was really bummed.  Kid's got some school fun days to be made up to her.

Visitors & Thanksgiving!
We have a houseful for Thanksgiving, with my Mom, Brendan, Jennifer, Luke, and James here (hooray!) for a few days, plus a big Thanksgiving dinner (which we celebrated on Friday).

Here's to celebrating Pie-versity:

That's (clockwise from top): Pumpkin, Pecan, Lemon Merigue, Apple, and  Coconut cream (not pictured).

We had a great houseful of kids:

That's: James, Luke, Lucy, Ruth, Woodrow,  Henry, Audrey (not pictured).

Good times!

There's lots more to report, but for now, there you go.  November 2014: a pretty busy & very fun time.

Another fabulous Fall weekend

Well, it's happened again, readers.  We've had another awesome New England/Lowell fall weekend.

On Friday after school, Lucy went to a ukelele lesson with a new teacher.  It went very well and we're all quite pleased.  hooray!

We went to Our City Saturday at the Lowell National Historic Park, which this week was featuring a Halloween-themed craft.  Lucy made a really awesome mask, which she's wearing here:

We got to see our very favorite rangers, too.  Don't they look excited there?

Then, we got dressed up to Trick-or-Treat through downtown.  Here goes our little ghost:

After visiting local downtown businesses and filling a bag o' candy (for the second time this week!), we went to the Scarecrow Festival at the gardens of Mill City Grows, some of our favorite urban farmers.

Check out some of the awesome scarecrows featured there:

 Lucy made that little cardboard-and-stick one herself before we went, because she didn't want to show up at a Scarecrow Festival without her own scarecrow.  That would just be embarrassing.

By the way, those two scarecrows are by two of our artist friends, Steve & Ellen Anstey!

Then, Jake took Lucy for her first ice skating lesson!  It was terrifying.  And tremendous!  We'll try to get a link to the video up here soon, but try to imagine, say, 60 small children in hockey helmets, wearing skates and attempting to skate (though they do not yet know how to).  And just let that play in your mind for 40 minutes on repeat.  But she loved it, and she's going back.  Hooray!

Today, Jake raced in his first Cyclocross of the season: Orchard Cross at Applecrest Farm.  It was awesome. Here are some action shots of Jake:

That's him on the far left, number 182.  I know, impressive! Here he is in the great dust bowl:

And one more, jumping back on:

Then we got to check out the apples.  As you can see below, Jake got a bit excited about all the apples and jumped right in:

(no apples or Jakes were harmed in the making of the photo above).

It was a lovely weekend.

Only a few more days of October left.  We're gonna make 'em count.  Apparently there is some large and important sporting event going on involving "our" team, but, despite what you may think based on Jake's Beard, we are not exactly raging fans.  In fact, we went out to a lovely & quiet dinner & a movie during what apparently is now the most famous game of the World Series ever.  Or something like that. Going to movies and non-sports-themed restaurants during such a time is really quite pleasant -- no one else is around!  Instead of worrying about the Sox and their errors and chances and such, we've been spending our free time listening to two recent discoveries:

Welcome to Night Vale: This is an awesome podcast that apparently became very popular a while back, so we're late to the fun, but nonetheless, we're giving it our ringing endorsement.  I listened non-stop to the first eleven episodes on my drive to New York on Friday (more on that later) and now am waiting for Jake to catch up.  It's a great show, with a sort of set-up as a community radio station program broadcasting to the otherworldly desert community of Night Vale.  You should listen.

Our other, quite new, quite local pleasure is The Hadron Gospel Hour, a brand-new series from our friend Rich & company.  They're live-streaming on Sunday nights (right now) and then putting them up afterwards as podcasts.  You can check out the previous one at their site.  So much fun!

Cheers!