Geoff in his COLD cave

Think we should turn up the heat!

Most People Think Thanksgiving to Christmas is the Busiest Time of Year...

...but I'm feeling it's the calm after the storm this year! We've had a very chaotic and busy two months from mid-September to now, so forgive me for being somewhat absent.

For whatever reason, St. Louis has a tradition of making "Choosing a High School for Your Child" a huge big deal. There are so many Catholic high schools that most people agree it's akin to applying for college - but nobody seems anxious to change that, even as they complain vociferously - it's ridiculous, but it's OUR ridiculous" - and even the recession has done nothing to calm it down any. It was interesting, overwhelming, tiring, stressful - and now thank goodness it's over - we now wait for February for them to tell us where she'll go, although her teacher said she'll have no problem getting into her first choice. And we're glad her first choice was also our fir$t choice...Meanwhile she was gearing up to be St. Catherine of Alexandria for All Saint's Day Mass, the alternative Hallowe'en event for 8th graders at OLP:

Rubén made her a broken wheel and I re-purposed some dresses to suitably clothe the saint. At the same time we were preparing for another family event - after studying since last spring, I formally joined the Catholic church on November 14th. First, Father Tobin officially blessed our marriage since a Catholic priest hadn't been there 15 years ago:

It was an even tinier celebration than that one, since we had only three witnesses: Lucie, Marianne (my confirmation sponsor) and Carol, a good friend from our classes (she was the sponsor of Suzy, another good friend from classes). It was at 4:30 on Wednesday and Lucie had to get out of Newspaper early and when we got home we called out for pizza - but we had it with champagne and cake from Marianne!

The confirmation celebration was during a regular mass so it was a little more formal. This is a picture of Marianne and me after the ceremony:

She is a great lady and very funny. Her sons have all graduated from OLP now but she's very involved in the church and school.

Meanwhile, I discovered that Rubén's passport had expired - we haven't been able to go to Mexico for 3 years now, so we hadn't noticed. We were going to go up to Kansas City after Thanksgiving but they gave us an appointment last Monday, so that was another overwhelming upheaval. It feels like all I've been doing lately is checking stuff off the list! I was really happy though - I got out of unloading Christmas trees at work - in the RAIN! - since I took off on Wednesday to make Thanksgiving dinner preparations that were postponed by Monday in KC.

Our life has calmed down somewhat - we even got to play a little yesterday! and now I will get to work to plan Christmas - I'll be e-mailing soon with my research!

lots of love,

Agelaius

Turkey Day in Daytona

Dear Sibs:

The problem with taking a photo in the sunshine is that it needs to be facing into the subjects! This is just to prove we were in sunny Daytona Beach on Thanksgiving - and on the beach. We drove down to the beach for our post-prandial stroll. Unfortunately, when we got back to the parking garage, the Camaro would not start. Not the sort of adventure one really wants. Dan thought it was the security system and asked for a paperclip; I gave him one of my earrings, but it didn't work. After two cab rides and many tries of this and that, he figured it was the battery and/or the alternator. After more adventures, and a tow truck, he finally got his pie. Sigh! Well, other than that, we had a great time!

Love,

Gilly

Christmas Time!

Hi- Just got Dad's letter. Any new plans for the holiday? What are the dates that out-of-towners are staying? We'll most likely come in on the 26th and leave the 31st.

We can stay somewhere else (a friend's house or a hotel like the Gage's did last year) to open up rooms and let them stay in their own rooms instead of the basement.

Look forward to seeing everyone and am open to any suggestions to making it less taxing for mom.

Google and Folding Algorithms

Hello everyone! I thought you might like to know what I've been up to!

After I got back from Vienna (a couple of days after), I flew out to Mountain View, California for an internship with Google. It was pretty stressful at first, since I hadn't gotten an apartment yet. I stayed with a friend who was working for another company in Palo Alto (about an hour away from Google by bus), and after a week managed to get a lease and moved into my own apartment. The internship was a lot of fun. I met some nice people, worked on a little project to help the team I was on display the results from their nightly tests and generally enjoyed the lovely Silicon Valley weather. Right now I'm interviewing with Google for a full-time position in Munich -- we'll see how that goes!

I'm about 5 weeks into the semester and my classes are pretty good. I'm taking two ballet classes (so I have ballet 4 times a week). I'm taking a class about Grimms' Fairy Tales, which sounded like it would be pretty cool, but is actually a somewhat boring literary analysis class, and I'm taking 4th semester German. I have two computer science classes. One of them is about compilers, and it's pretty cool since it's taught in a functional language called OCAML (yes, it's pronounced "oh-camel"). Most commonly used programming languages are imperative, which means that you give the computer a series of instructions and it executes them in order; functional programming languages are more mathematical in their organization. It's interesting to write in a different type of language, since it makes you think differently.

My other CS class is pretty exciting -- it's my senior thesis! I'm working with a professor I really like (Jeff Erickson) and my topic is going to be geometric folding algorithms. Right now I'm just reading about the area so that I can get a feel for how the proofs work and what unsolved problems there are. Some of the kinds of things in this field are questions like "If I have a 3D shape, can I cut it such that I can unfold it flat?" or another one that's more related to origami, "Given some 3D shape, can I fold a flat piece of paper into that shape?"

I'm living in an apartment right now with one of my friends whom I lived with in the dorms. It's a nice little apartment that's close to campus, and I'm enjoying being able to cook my own meals and such. I've been really busy with Women in Computer Science (I am the treasurer again this year) and the Reflections|Projections conference (I'm organizing logistics and food). Hopefully the conference will go well -- it's October 15-17, so it's coming up fast!

Since I don't have any pictures from California, here's one of me with purple hair. I dyed it last week and it's a little splotchy, but I think I like it. It bleeds every time my hair gets wet, but it washes out of stuff easily, so it's really all right.

For a Laugh

This is funny- very deadpan delivery

http://www.caregiverstress.com/2010/07/a-reminder-that-laughter-is-the-best-medicine/

Dragged into the 21st century

Dear sibs:

Our resale shop had a webcam come in as a donation so I volunteered to take it home and find out if it worked. Dan saw it and suggested I keep it so we could Skype. Sally saw it and set us up on Skype. So, today we got a virtual tour of Dan's apartment! Such excitement - the old folks hardly know what to do! Made me think of Daddy saying - it's movies! you have to move!

Anyway, both our dear darling little ones have moved into their very own apartments. Sally is sharing with a good friend of hers; Dan was going to share but his proposed roommate decided not to return to school. So now he's trying to find a roommate and luxuriating in a large 2 bedroom apartment in the meantime. I know they would love to hear from you - and might even respond! Here are their new addresses:

Dan Wilsak: 1200 Floral Springs Blvd. Apt. 3-311; Port Orange, FL 32129
Sally Wilsak: 904 W. Stoughton, Apt. 13; Urbana, IL 61801

Love,

Gilly

Historic fire tower at Manistee National Forest, Along Lake MI




Old Ship in Manistee and Along Little Manistee River (COLD!)


We went camping up north at a small forest service campground along the Little Manistee River this weekend. It rained hard off and on from Friday night to Sat. night. Glad to have the camper van! Most of Geoff's 250 pictures are of mushrooms, so here are some non-fungi ones:

Gage's Summer Vacation

We're back from our adventures out east. Four wonderful days at Jack & Sue's "cabin" near Boone, NC (here's a photo of our horseback riding adventure) and then up to PA to visit Falling Water (beautiful) and a stop at Wright Paterson Airforce Museum in Dayton on the way home.

Expect postcards posted from Chicago!


Kathie, do you remember "The Banana Boat Song" when we were rehearsing Angel Project?
Well, I tried to upload the video for you Kathie but here's the info, you can cut and paste:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PBO7YE7vjE&feature=related

Do you remember? "Aw no man... it's too piercing, it's too piercing..."

xxx
Karen

PS. Next week J & R head for mission trip in Louisiana, Karen goes to NY/San Francisco/Dallas for Ringling audition workshops and Gigi gets to go to Camp Wilsak!

This is the postcard we never sent...

...because the post office was VERY crowded!

GREETINGS FROM GREAT HOPES PLANTATION

Williamsburg, Virginia

I'll send more pictures soon - love from Agelaius

Schools Out! Summer Starts!

This is actually a slightly late post since graduation for Jackson was actually June 15th....It was quite elaborate with five musical performances (solos/groups) and speeches by Jackson and four of his classmates. Jackson got the social studies award! Fred drove out from Cleveland to attend which was very nice...we went out for a fabulous lunch at a restaurant with a GF italian menu! Yesterday we attended the last "graduation party" so now we're officially into summer...

Jackson has been training with the cross country team at Northside so he's an official part of high school already. They get to school at 6:30am and train until 8:30am. With that accomplished I don't feel so bad about him spending the rest of the day at his beloved computer! This morning he left for Camp Makajawan so Gigi is an only child for a week. Her plans for this summer are a week of Eco Explorers Camp and, hopefully, volunteering at an animal shelter. We have a trip planned to NC on July 17th and I'm supposed to teach in NY for Clown College Auditions (at Coney Island!) and then R & J are going to New Orleans to build houses on a St. John's mission trip the first week of August (New Orleans in AUGUST!!!) So that's basic plan for the summer...

My big project is working on learning how to do websites. Jackson found me a very cool site that lets you play around with flash so here's what I've done so far:

dots-all-folks.webs.com
www.wix.com/Jackson889/TheatreZarko

One is my website, the other is a scrapbook for Zarko. Theatre Zarko is trying to get itself organized but I've been a little frustrated about how slow things are progressing...

Just talked to Mama and heard an update on the Barrios travels and your health, Geoff. I remember you all in my prayers,
xxx
Karen

Lucky Earrings

Dear Sibs:

Well, looks like I had a better birthday than Geoff did anyway. Dan barbecued chicken for our dinner and Rick gave me another Dr. Who DVD. The exciting part is that we only saw that episode once before and so it was like new! Such exciting lives we lead. Since Sally updated us with photos aus Wien, I'll just add that Dan flew solo today for the first time. I was a little nervous and wore my lucky earrings (the airplane ones he gave me for Christmas). And that was with him at the airport and me at VBS! Can't imagine what I would have done if I had been there. Anyway, the first thing he said to me when I came home was, "I'm alive!" That's a great birthday present!

Love,
Gilly
P.S. Kathie, I'm so glad you figured out how to pass this along to Mama and Daddy!

Happy (Belated) Birthdays!

I want to apologize to all my brethern and sistern whose birthdays I've missed. I was not feeling well for the last week (just thinking I had stomach flu), but on Tuesday I got another kidney stone (so perhaps I was having symptoms all last week).

So here's my birthday preset (about 4mm on the long axis), hope you all had better ones.

HERE WE ARE...

almost in summer and I haven't written for awhile, so I thought a little update would be appropriate. I've been very busy at work but also very happy with lots of interesting things to do, not just watering and sweating - although I do that alot also. Lucie had a great final 2 weeks of school with exams over and getting all her projects in - including a really neat scrapbook that she made about a girl living through the Civil War. Lucie dressed up to present her scrapbook and volunteered to be the first presenter! YEAH! And then all the celebrations and farewells that go with the end of school. Lucie didn't want me to come to May Crowning or the reception for that but the 7th grade had a special part in that (so they will know what to do next year!). Lucie said she wanted it all to be a surprise for us next year! It's very formal, the girls wear long dresses and the guys wear suits and then they wear them again for graduation. Seventh grade is the host for the Graduation Reception (the moms and dads that is) and so I helped with that so we didn't go to Graduation Mass either so that will be another surprise I guess. Lucie's been working hard on the yearbook, another a 7th grade job which has continued into the summer (and not done yet). Last week she worked at Vacation Bible School as a Bible Story Teller and really enjoyed that - Bridget Atwood is the leader and Lucie knows her (and the high school and college students who run

VBS with her) from Confirmation classes and Youth Group.

Now she's at Maryville for the Summer Arts Institute - her 3rd year! and she got a full scholarship from the Metalsmithing Artists Group. That was a great surprise and happiness. She was reluctant to go at first (maybe she listens too much to us worrying about the economy) but was really psyched yesterday morning and came back very happy - several of her group from last year are back as well. Rubén is fine but he does not like the humidity - he says he comes from heaven and I say so do we all but he is talking about Zacatecas. Unfortunately there is a war in heaven so we will not be going down there this year - on the advice of his brothers "don't come!" That's going to make it four years since we've been there which gives us all heartache.

Here are some pictures to end on a higher note:

Pears on our Espalier Lucie's Magnolia Blooms Happy Camper/Reluctant poser

P.S. I've finally figured out I can save the blog to a document and upload it to Daddy's computer so I can share without using up a lot of INK. Will do - wanted to share all of Sally's TRIP!

lotsalove,

Vienna Part 2

Well, I guess now that I'm actually back from Vienna, it's time for that second update I promised. I'll start where I left off, which is Monday, May 31. After class on Monday, we went with our professor to Kunsthaus Wien. On the way we passed by the Hundertwasserhaus, which is this crazy apartment complex designed by the same architect who made that power plant by our university. He's a big believer in nature, so the floors are crooked because he just followed the natural contours of the ground, and there are tree growing inside. Then we kept going to the Kunsthaus, which was also designed by Hundertwasser. It's a museum with a bunch of his paintings, including one that was in our German book. They didn't actually let us take pictures in the museum, which was ok since the outside was so wild! There were some paintings with shiny stuff on them. I liked one called "Hute Tragen," because it was called "Wearing Hats" and it was a picture of guys wearing hats. A lot of the others didn't make as much sense. On the way back we saw the entrance to the Toilet of Modern Art, but I didn't go in and take pictures because I thought it would be weird taking pictures where people are peeing. These pictures are of the Hundertwasserhaus, and then the second and third are the Kunsthaus.





On Tuesday we went to Cafe Demel. This particular cafe has something of a competition with another one that I forgot about whose chocolate cake is better. So naturally we had to have some cake. We ordered our coffee from the waitress, and then she said we had to go over to the pastry counter to get desserts. It was pretty weird, because we went there and they just gave us a ticket for the dessert we wanted and then we took it back to the table and gave it to the waitress, who brought us the cake. The pictures here are me drinking my coffee (Einspaenner, which is something like espresso and whipped cream, I think), the amazing dessert that I got (Schokoladebombe) and Sarah being classy with her tea. The Schokoladebombe was very tasty. It had custard inside, and the little piece of chocolate stuck in it says "Demel." Sarah and Alex got the chocolate cake, which they liked, and Jerome got a coffee called Anna Demel because he likes the ones with peoples' names.




On Wednesday we went to the catacombs under Stephansdom. They wouldn't let us take pictures. We saw these big iron jars that purportedly contained the Hapsburgs' intestines from back before they had preservatives. Most of it was pretty chapel-looking. The old section was more cave-like, but they still weren't too creepy. Although I imagine sitting through an air raid down in the catacombs under the city must have been terrifying. Afterwards we went to a cafe called Cafe Griensteidl, where we could take pictures. I got a Maria Theresa coffee, which had rainbow sprinkles on it! Sarah and I shared a scrumptious ice cream that was called "Nuss und Schuss." It was enormous and super tasty.











On Thursday we went to Belvedere instead of class. It was a holiday, so the university wasn't open. Belvedere is another palace-turned-art-museum. It's divided into upper and lower parts. The first picture is from the upper part looking down through the garden at the lower part. The next one is down in the gardens by the lower part, when we'd gotten tired of looking at art. Sarah is sitting on some modern art. That weekend I went to Berlin. I was going to meet a friend from Denmark there, but then he decided he couldn't come. I went anyway, and met my German teacher from the fall and he showed me around the city a little. Unfortunately, I didn't feel well Saturday afternoon, so I just have a couple of lame pictures and I didn't make it to the Stasi Museum.





On Monday, we went to a placed called the Donauinsel (because it is an island in the Danube). It's a really huge island though, so it looks like land with a river on either side. People like to go there to go biking or sit in the sun. We walked around and were hot. I got some ice cream, as proved by the following picture (I think it is also the only picture of the spiffy new purse I got in Vienna). Then we stopped by a beer garden and had some beer. Well, three of us had beer and Sarah had ice cream. Since the ice cream was cooler looking than the beer, that's what I took the picture of. Afterward, we went to a little cafe which was appropriately called Kleines Cafe. To complete the trifecta of pictures of girls with food, there's me with my Einspaenner, which is something like espresso and whipped cream, and was probably the best coffee I've ever had.


On Tuesday, four of us went to Cafe Tirolerhof and had yummy coffee. Here are some pictures. Alex didn't realize that he was in the picture, which is why he's making a funny face. Sarah was just making a funny face for some reason. That night we went to a concert in Schoenbrunn Park. The park is really huge, and it was absolutely packed with people. Our professor said that the previous year there were 140,000 people at this concert. They played music themed around planets and stars, which included Star Wars and Holst's "Mars." It was pretty awesome, but so dark that my pictures didn't turn out very well.

On Wednesday we visited an art museum called the Leopold Museum. We saw stuff by people like Gustav Klimt. I didn't take many pictures because I'm really not that into Expressionism.





On Thursday, Sarah and I went to Prater. It's a pretty cool amusement park, but most of the rides are for little kids. Except for the giant Ferris Wheel, which we went on. There's a picture of us on the Ferris Wheel, a picture that I took out the window, and Sarah standing by the entrance. We also saw the Republik Kugelmugel. We had no idea what it was at the time, and then we looked it up online when we got home. Pretty weird!




The Friday before I went back home (June 11), we went to the zoo at the Schoenbrunn Palace Gardens. I took a ton of pictures, but here's three of the best: Sarah looking at a zebra, Sarah and Jerome sitting on elephant statues while we waited for them to start feeding the elephants, and the ice cream that we went out for afterward. It was very hot that day and it tasted really good after looking at animals in the heat!



So that's all for that trip. Now I'm off to California to work for Google! See you all soon, I hope!

Geoff's Car

Thanks Sally for the update. It is so interesting to hear what you are doing. Keep it up! Well, we were given 3 dozen bagels from Joel and Debra. She used to babysit Alex and we gave them Geoff's Mercury Tracer. So we got bagels for a car! If we only had room in the freezer to freeze most of them. Here are pictures of the bounty.

Vienna

Well, I was writing journals for my class today and it occurred to me that my relatives might enjoy knowing what I'm up to. I'll spare you all the German version of the story though!
I guess the first interesting thing to talk about was May 18. Two of the other students, my professor and I went to a famous Viennese coffeehouse called Cafe Central. There's a lot of famous people who went there, like Sigmund Freud and Leon Trotsky. They had lovely (and delicious) desserts. Here's me with my "Kaffee mit Schlagobers" (that's just "coffee with whipped cream.")
The next day I went my roommate (whose name is, incidentally, also Sarah) and one of the other students to a museum called the Haus der Musik. They had a lot of cool stuff about famous Viennese composers (Mozart, Strauss, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and some others). There was a pretty cool exhibit where you could randomly generate your own Viennese waltz, and another one where you could conduct an orchestra, which would play however fast or slow you conducted. I think Gramma would have like that a lot, but then there was a bunch of more modern kind of stuff that involved a lot of really annoying noises that I think she would have not liked. I thought some of it was cool, but the noises got a little annoying after a while.
The day after that we went to the Natural History Museum. We saw a bunch of shiny rocks and some dinosaur bones. I took a bunch of pictures, but they were mostly just rocks, so I'm going to put up the picture I took of a building right by our university:This is a power plant. It was designed by a guy named Friedensreich Hundertwasser who build a bunch of buildings around Vienna that are very strange-looking. I'm going to have to go see his most famous one some time and take some good pictures.

That weekend we went to a place called Kahlenberg. We took the bus up the mountain and then walked down, stopping at a little winery on the way. We drank wine and sparkling water overlooking the Danube. It was really lovely. Here's some pictures:




This week we also went to a lot of places. On Tuesday, we visited the Art History museum. That night we went to a concert by the Wiener Hofburg Orchester. They played Mozart, Strauss and some other composers. Unfortunately, I didn't get a program, so I don't remember exactly what they played, but there was some opera, a cute little piece with a bird in it that I think was called "Im Krapfenwaldl," a very funny piece where a guy played an anvil, and naturally, Blue Danube Waltz. They guy playing the anvil was a real ham. At some point, he broke the conductor's baton, so the conductor took one of his hammers to conduct with, and the guy finished the piece with just the one hammer.
On Thursday, we went to Schoenbrunn Palace, which is a huge palace that's often compared to Versailles. We only saw some of it, but we were still walking through rooms for about 30 minutes! Apparently Maria Theresa and her son, Franz Josef were responsible for most of the decoration.
There's also a huge, beautiful garden. There's a formal garden, then a huge fountain called the Neptunbrunn, and then a big hill and a monument called the Gloriette. Here's the gardens and the Gloriette, and a picture of me and Sarah in the garden.















On Friday, we went to the Wiener Zentralfriedhof, which is a super huge cemetery. There's really not a lot to say about that. We saw the graves of some famous composers, namely Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss, Schubert and a monument for Mozart. They had these huge piles of broken stone on the side from the world wars when the cemetery (and the rest of Austria) was bombed.

Yesterday, we took an hour-long train ride to visit Duernstein, which was where Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned at some point. The castle isn't in good repair anymore (there was a sign saying "enter at your own risk"), but you can climb the mountain and go explore the ruins! Which is what we did. The path was really steep, but being up on top of the mountain and looking down at the picturesque little village we had climbed up from was pretty cool! Here's some pictures, which sadly don't quite convey how high up we were! That's Sarah and another guy in the class named Dane. No, he isn't Danish.
Anyway, I hope that was interesting. I'll post some more pictures in the next couple of weeks! I'm thinking about going out and taking some more today for our treasure hunt assignment, but it's raining again, so I might not. It's been raining a lot. Our professor says it's because of the volcano in Iceland.

Bis Bald (until later),
Sally