Not the Screamin' Eagle

Dear Sibs:

Many years ago, Rick and I went to Six Flags over St. Louis and rode the Screaming Eagle.  Afterwards, Rick said - well that couldn't have been so bad, you didn't scream.  I said I was too SCARED to scream! 

The past few months haven't been nearly so bad, but they have felt like a roller coaster.  Once we decided to move nearer to Dan for our retirement, we contacted his real estate agent and went to look at about 10 houses.  Exhausting, but interesting.  We really like the agent.  UP  Went back home, thought about things, and - before I had a chance to ask him to show us more houses - received an email from his office saying he had passed away!  DOWN

So we connected with his associate.  Wendy showed us about eight more houses - the first of which was perfect.  It took us all morning to be sure of that, though, since it was priced near the top of our budget.  We told her we would make a bid and she said she would call back in the afternoon with advice on what to bid.    UP She did call back - to say that the listing agent "forgot" that we were viewing the house and already accepted another bid!  DOWN

After taking some time to adjust to this setback, we went back up to see more houses.  This time, we saw two houses that we liked.  One was great house, meh location; the other was meh house, better location.  We went with the latter, made a bid, which was accepted.  UP  The day before Thanksgiving, we had the house inspected.  DOWN DOWN DOWN  The inspection was not good, the response of the sellers was snotty (although, to be fair, it was emails from their agent) and we were not very happy.  Our agent helped us through the process of getting out of the contract.  UP  Now we are regrouping and hoping to see another group of houses very soon.

Suddenly one morning, the bathroom window cracked.  Why?  Who knows?  DOWN  In the meantime, we talked to a friend of mine from church who is a real estate agent, and he came and looked at our house.  He thinks he can get top dollar for it and that it will sell quickly.  In addition, he didn't think the house needed anything more than some touchup painting.  UP

Whew!  I hope things stay UP as we have identified some very nice looking houses.  I guess another UP is that we will be able to stay two nights in St. Louis.  See you then!

Love,
Gilly

As a Tribute to Miss Piggy

Notice the "Main ingredient"

I'm going whole hog and making Figgy Pudding this year! Current writing assignment is to pontificate about Fig Trees and getting somewhat distracted one day I googled figgy pudding instead of Ficus carica aka The Common Fig and this is what I got from mr. google...

And some recipes, one of which makes you light rum and brandy on fire for two minutes before clapping the pan lid back on - sounds exciting?

So be forewarned, I'm setting aside some brandy so we can "bring out the figgy pudding" ON FIRE!

And if you want to know how to grow a fig tree, I'll be able to tell you that as well if I don't die of boredom first.
see you all soon, love agelaius

Don't know why...

I haven't been starling for a looonnnggg time! and actually only just checked and found all your posts, so thanks for that!

Wonder Woman stops every calamity in her path!

Before Lucie left we took Rubén to see Wonder Woman for his birthday. Here's Lucie in her goodbye picture showing she's up to world travel just like her idol!
Our summer was spent vicariously in Greenwich mean time and we are totally proud of Lucie who met with almost all the disasters of traveling (not montezuma's revenge thank goodness) and did so well we have just become obsolete as her parents (mostly). As it should be.

I hope you've all had a chance to see her instagram account of those six weeks. Here's my favorite:

Lucie's Eye!

trying to make little moons

Lucie, just after the totality

Then all that's left to tell about is our eclipse adventure which ended up not being very photogenic, mostly experiential, but here are a few. I tried to make the little moons with my fingers all day long but I didn't realize it has to be a VERY tiny aperture. So I have a lot of shadow pictures of me making the OK sign! An unforeseen consequence of being on a university campus was that all the safety lights came on (the parking garage roof where we were and campus parking lot below) so that it didn't get completely dark! love, Agelaius

P.S. What a great pre-eclipse dinner we all had! Best part of the adventure!

Our trip to the UP

There was a fantastic beach, just across the bridge right along the road. that meant that you could hear the cars (a little but the surf and breeze mostly covered it, and it wasn't too busy) but how fantastic so close, so clear, and mostly empty too. 

And the water was ultra clear. I might make a loop of this and have it play  continuously.  Way too cold for me to get more than my ankles wet, but Sue was out in it.

This is the Black river, called that for good reason. Lots of tannins in the water (Sue says from the leaves) makes the water so dark. When we hiked along the beach at the mouth, the whole coast like was still dark from the river water. Here, however, it was SWARMING with mosquitoes, so we didn't spend much time. Sue was trying to escape them by walking out into the middl elf the river, but it didn't help.

 Another hike, this time trying to find the beach along Lake Huron. Should have known it wouldn't actually make it to the beach since it was called "Fishermans' Trail" Muddy, buggy, with occasional slugs dangling form the trees. But two beautiful orb webs, we luckily didn't walk into.

And the obligatory view of the bridge, as we're getting ready to drive back to troll-land ("under" the bridge :)).  This was a nice camping park just across the bridge in St. Ignace. Packed, unlike every other camp ground we surveyed.

Yes, that's the bridge in the back

Pinot Palette Picassos

Dear Family:

For my birthday, I decided I wanted a girls night out at a place called Pinot's Palette.  This is a place Dan and Roslyn went to and enjoyed; where you sip wine and paint pictures.  You either choose by date or by painting as they only do one painting each session.  All your supplies are provided and the teacher talks you through the painting step by step.  It just so happened that the painting I liked the best was on June 21 - close enough to my birthday to be appropriate - and also the day after Gigi's last day of school.  So, I asked Karen and Gigi to join me.  We had a great time!  This is what we painted:

We forgot to bring a camera (or phone/tablet in this day and age) to the painting session, so this is just of the finished projects.  Karen and I sipped wine and tried not to mix up our brush cleaner cups and our wine glasses, and Gigi had soda (Pepsi, no Coke!).  It was much harder than I had anticipated, but a lot of fun since I had my best buds with me.  A happy birthday!

Love,
Gilly

Hoyer Happenings

Hi- Here's what we've been up to lately. Took a walk around the Seminary this winter and took a photo of #1

Alex, the growing boy (good way to get him to eat lettuce and tomatoes!)

Detroit Women's March

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Geoff helping me monitor a swamp for Michigan Nature Association

Spring Bike rides!

Mother's Day on Belle Isle Park

 

a prescribed burn I helped with

and Alex's 8th grade field trip to Washington DC (his bus--Alex is on the far right)

Hybrid!!

I know you all have names for your cars but somehow we never got around to doing that so...

Goodbye to The Car and hello to The Car!

I had no IDEA that it would take FOUR HOURS to buy a car.  Richard and I went out to test drive last night at 6:00 before dinner and didn't get home until 10!  We were starving...
But here it is -- and we're doing our best to reduce our carbon footprint so we found a hybrid.  It's a used Toyota Camry 2014 but you'd never know it had two previous owners AND they gave  us $300 for the Honda which, when we took it in to ask about that odd squealing sound we were told: the brakes will fail if you brake suddenly be ready to use the handbrake... So safe and sound with even a residual new car smell!

New York

I went to New York last weekend! It was a busy weekend, but I got to see lots of stuff. I went to see the Empire State Building:

And the Statue of Liberty:

And some dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum:

I also saw the 9/11 memorial, Grand Central Station, the library, the Lion King and went to the oldest church in Harlem. The memorial was nice; they were sort of waterfalls in the ground and it was nice and cool nearby. Grand Central Station and the library had really neat architecture. The Lion King had spectacular costumes.

So I had a nice weekend! It was relaxing and now back to work!

Retirement - Tiring again?

Dear Family:

As you can see from the lack of posts from the Wilsak house, I have been doing nothing!  Well, sort of nothing.  I gave myself permission to be a total bump on a log for a month before even asking "What will I do in retirement?"  The official day was March 3 - because, of course, I wanted to be able to March Forth the next day!  The first two weeks of March were spent wasting time; I did think they might ask me to help train my replacement, but she wasn't hired until we were almost ready to leave on our vacation.  Ah, vacation!  (As if I hadn't vacated enough already!)  Anyway, we took the Amtrak Empire Builder out to Portland, Oregon.  A friend of ours from St. John's had told me enthusiastically how wonderful Whitefish, Montana is, where he fishes each year, but the schedule said we would be sleeping when we got there.

So, Wisconsin first - lovely as always - and bedtime by Minneapolis.  Slept through North Dakota, woke up in Montana.  Boring!  Odd alternations of flat and bumpy (the terrain, not the ride), but not much to see.  When we arrived in Whitefish in western Montana, it was indeed almost bedtime.  And then the conductor announced that there was a landslide up ahead and we would be staying in Whitefish for at least four hours while they cleared the track.  (Heading into the mountains there is only one track, so there was no way around the blockage.)  He came on the PA system a little later to say, it might be longer, we don't know for sure, but don't worry, we'll let you know, please don't walk too far away from the train as we don't know exactly when we will leave.  So we went to bed and slept more comfortably since the train was stationary.  Next morning, the announcement was that the track was still not clear, again, please don't walk too far away as we will leave you behind if you are too far away to get back when we blow the whistle.  Rick and I, needless to say, did not get off the train - I just stepped out to take this photo.

So now the train is 12 hours late, but we are awake to see the beautiful part of Montana.  Our friend from St. John's was correct, it is a beautiful part of the country.  Unbelievably, there were actually two passengers who wandered too far away from the train and were left behind!  I hope they enjoyed Whitefish.  Without wi-fi on the train, my lovely new tablet was unable to tell us which mountains we were enjoying.  (By the by, my techie family - what does wi-fi stand for?  Wireless what?)  It was abundantly clear, over the course of the day, how different the east and west sides of the mountains are.  I think Kathie called it the rain shadow. 

Anyway, on the east side there was barely any snow left, as you can see on the left; and on the west side - well, look right!





Our last meal on the train had to be Subway sandwiches - which the car attendant had to be sent out for, since we we so late, but we finally arrive in Portland, Oregon at 3:30 a.m. on Monday morning.  We had been scheduled to arrive on Sunday morning.  Fortunately, the river cruise schedule included Sunday night at a hotel (albeit across the river in Vancouver, Washington) and the boat wasn't to embark until 3 p.m. on Monday.  We had much less sleep than we would have preferred, but it was nice to sleep in a stationary bed.  They collected our baggage so we could explore Portland without dragging suitcases around and provided a very nice breakfast.  So after we signed up for our excursions, we went out to see what (the other) Vancouver has to offer.  Mostly rain.  It was a good thing we had our umbrellas.  Not seeing anything worth the effort (we were tired, after all) we had a light lunch at a Starbucks and stayed talking until time to find the boat.  I forgot to take a picture of the boat, but it is a paddlewheeler and looks like a steamboat.  We later learned that only about 25% of its motive power comes from the paddles, but they do turn.

We went west to Astoria, Washington, and were bused up to the top of a very steep hill to an oddly compelling monument that gave us a view of the Pacific Ocean.  Well, Rick was brave enough to climb the circular stairs to the top; I was not.  They had holes in them - you could see all the way down!  Anyway, this is the tower monument.  It has paintings of the history of the city wound all the way around it.  It is supposedly based on Trajan's Monument in Rome.  Italy, that is.

 

 The river cruise itself was wonderful.  The boat is small, we met some lovely people, and even enjoyed the entertainment.  There was a singer/pianist in the lounge every night who was a hoot!  He could imitate almost any famous person's style and had a silly sense of humor.  He also finished his gig at 10 every night - we were probably the youngest people on board and everything was clearly geared to an older audience.  It was fun anyway.  They also had a lecturer - called a Riverlorian - who gave interesting and informative lectures every now and then.  We missed some, being on excursions, but enjoyed the ones we heard.  The stated them of the cruise was Wine, but it seemed focused more on Lewis and Clark to me.  The wine part, though, meant that we didn't have to pay extra for our wine at dinner!  We also went on a wine tour but were not impressed with the vaunted Washington pinot noirs.  There had been record rain recently, so our cruise could not go as far up the Columbia River as they had planned, but they did a good job of changing plans on the fly, so to speak.  We did get to go to Multomah Falls, even though the bus ride was longer than it would have been if the boat had been able to go farther up the river, and with the extra rain, the falls were in spectacular form.  I'll post a photo, but it doesn't quite express the immensity of the experience.  Note the bridge across the middle; that will help put it in perspective.

It is possible to hike up to the top, but we didn't have much time and - again - it was raining.  Also again, I was too chicken to go out on the bridge, but Rick did.  The rest of that day's trip had a lot of other waterfalls, but this was the biggest.  Our other excursions included a replica of Stonehenge, built as it would have looked originally (albeit in the eyes of 18th century scholarship); the country's most expensive rest stop (marble bathroom building); an antique auto and airplane museum; and a museum full of Romanian royal gewgaws.  It also had one of the more fascinating exhibits; a wartime fashion show.  Evidently, after World War II, there wasn't enough fabric available for the annual Paris fashion shows, but they didn't want to cancel the shows.  So, someone got the bright idea of making the clothes for foot tall mannequins (or should I say womaquins) and posing them in diorama style.  They were quite spectacular.  The first ones were ordinary and looked much as a regular fashion show would, but the last case had ball gowns with the womaquins in odd poses.  One was flying by on a broomstick and the bridal model was fainting on a couch.

We enjoyed the river cruise very much, even through all the rain.  Then we took the Pacific Coastline train down to San Francisco to see Sally.  We had a lovely two day do nothing visit; the cats even decided to snuggle up to us.  Finally, we returned home on the California Zephyr.  So in a large nutshell, that was our vacation.  Since then, we have set up trellises in the garden, planted peas and radishes, nurtured more seedlings in the basement, and had our roof replaced.  After a few days of sunshine, it is again raining, but that is conducive to my do-nothing phase.  What shall I do when my month of indolence is over?  Who knows!
Love,
Gilly

Spring Break: Botanic Gardens & Starved Rock

Celebrating spring, even though it still looks brown around the edges... We went to the Chicago Botanic Gardens on Sunday and then Tues/Weds/Thurs spent some time hiking and swimming at Starved Rock.  Here are some photos:

Woman Tickling Gigi's Nose

R & G next to their "Your so Sensitve" Plant (fisheye effect)

Sleeping Beauty

Gigi & Karen in the Wind

Hey, Sue -- are these your Trilliums?

 
Lots of love from all of us, we're looking forward to Easter Dinner at the Wilsaks -- hope you all have a Happy Easter!
xxx Karen

Proud Mom of a Mandarin Student

Gigi & Talia on stage

It wouldn't be Gigi's choice to stand up in front of a crowd of people and give a speech, much less a two minute speech in Mandarin -- so you can understand how proud we are that she did it!  It caused all sorts of anxiety but she survived last night's panic and did a good job this morning -- in fact she won a silver medal!

Talia & Gigi with their awards

Gigi gets a silver!

Westinghouse Winners: Gigi, Talia, Frances and Kalia