So for Alex's winter break between semesters, we made another little trip off east, to Pittsburg. This time the weather was for nicer than the arctic fury of last year.
There's a nice set of trails near an old mill that we went for a little hike on before we reached Pittsburg, and it was glorious, if a little soggy. Water still draining from the steep hills around the river, and the occasional cool draft falling down along the water was very refreshing -- it was that warm.
We didn't stay on the trail much, but climbed around the rocks by the rushing water, biting our tongues when Alex decided to do something hair raising.

And Pittsburg was a very nice town. Compact downtown squished between the bluffs and the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny. Our hotel wasn't as art deco cool as the ones in Louisville, but still pretty nice, and in walking distance of the "cultural district": theaters, restaurants and parks. We had a nice time visiting the Phipps Conservatory, and the Mattress Museum (installation art) and the Toonseum.

Quarterly Catchup

Obviously I need to update more often.

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to post more. I guess I;m doing better even if it took me a month and a half to get to it...

Digging back to October, here's one of our jack o'lanterns which came out pretty well. You can see that this is the pumpkins-are-old-and-due-for-the-compost version, but I think he looks even more creepy rather dried up.

 This is having breakfast with the Hammonds after Thanksgiving. Chris and Tom are so wonderful to put us up at the hotel overnight. It makes the visit much more relaxed, and we get more time to gab.

 Tempe, doing her best to look sweet and innocent. She's probably recovering from chasing Alex around the house. She's pretty feisty still, and really enjoys chasing the laser pointer or jumping at the feather stick. And she's finally getting over her licking, and even sleeps at my knees rather than tucked into my armpit.

 One of the things that Sue likes to do is go visit graveyards, so one of her weekends (we each get an "family" activity everyone has to do, and we cycle through weekends) we drove out to a big old graveyard in Detroit, and walked around for an hour. It was really foggy, so i think that's why Sue chose this outing

But later, on one of my weekends, when I was very cold but bright a sunny, we drove down to Belle Isle and walked around the Conservatory (lots of tropical plants is a nice winter still environment), and then went next door to look in on the Aquarium, which is slowly recovering from when it shut down for lack of money about 4 years ago.