Terry's Weekly Email Newsletters; 31 Jan 10

Hi all,

It's very cold here, although it's been warming up a little. We don't have much snow, but yesterday the high was 12 or so - today it got up to the high 20's. Yesterday, we pretty much stayed in the house, kept the fire going, and worked around inside the house and read. I'm almost done with the book The Candy Bombers. Last night we watched the movie Julie and Julia. Meryl Streep was great - the Julia Child thread of the movie was very funny, but the modern thread with Julie the blogger was not very good, so it was uneven. But overall, we enjoyed it. Today, Joe and I went to Memorial Art Gallery to see a Kimono exhibit that opened this weekend. It was fun - we also attended a lecture by the curator, which was not that great, but the exhibit was interesting. I'm thinking of trying to make a short kimono-style jacket - it's all straight line cuts, I think that I might be able to do it!

Everything seems to be going well with Mike and Jenn - Jenn is trying to adjust to living off campus in a house and is very busy. Mike is doing well - classes are in full swing and McDermott Will and Emery welcomed the summer associates in an email that also listed all of the summer associates:

In Madrid-

On our fourth day, Christmas Day, it was a beautiful morning - about the only time that saw real blue skies. We went to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace), but it was not open for tourists, being a holiday. We missed being able to tour the palace - our vacation was cut short a day because of the difficulty we had getting out there, and this is what ended up dropping off our list. We did get to see the outside though (first picture), and we walked through the Catedral de la Almudena right next door where a mass was preparing to begin. Later, we went to Parque del Retiro (second picture), a beautiful park that was quite busy with a holiday crowd. The park used to be only for the royal family, but it became open to the public in 1869. On nice days you can rent rowing boats on the lake in the park; however, by the time we got to the park the weather had turned back into the typical grey drizzle that we had most of the trip. Later in the day, we stopped again for churros and hot chocolate (third picture) - one of my favorite things to do in Madrid!

Hope everyone is well,

Kind regards,

Terry

Terry's Weekly Email Newsletter; 24 Jan 10

Hi all,

We moved Jenn back to Binghamton on Wednesday - her classes begin tomorrow. She's living in a big house with a total of 8 students. She's is not within walking distance of the campus - her plan is to take the bus (free to students) and only use her car as backup. She'll find out how she likes living away from campus.

Mike's classes are going well. He met John and one of his colleagues in San Francisco on Friday for dinner. He also went to the Sharks/Sabres hockey game on Saturday night.

Things are going well with Joe and me. I bought a rowing machine for my birthday. The one that I was using at the gym was a flywheel type, which I really liked, but it's too big and noisy for how I was planning to work out at home, so I got the magnetic resistance type - it fits in the room upstairs great. It's harder to use though then the flywheel type, and I'm still getting used to the feel of it, but I'm happy with it - and it was fairly inexpensive. I'll send some pics in the coming weeks.

More from Madrid:

Our third day was Thursday, 24 December, Christmas Eve! We went to the Museo Del Prado in the late morning - it's a beautiful museum and we saw lots of Goya and Velazquez paintings. Jenn took a Spanish art class while in Madrid, so she was able to give us some great background on many of the paintings. That evening we walked back to the church behind the Museo Del Prado - the Iglesia de San Jeronimo el Real, Madrid's royal church. It was built in the 16th century but has since been remodeled and is a popular venue for society weddings. On the walk there we stopped at a Thai restaurant for dinner. Madrid was decorated beautifully for the holidays, especially the lights at night. Throughout the city there were what Jenn said they called "cones" - tall, cone shaped structures that were all lit differently. They looked like Christmas trees, but they were most interesting at night when they were all lit up. The one near our hotel at Puerta del Sol was decorated with green and red lights, as you can see in the two pictures above.

That's about it - hope everyone is well.

Kind regards,

Terry

Terry's Weekly Email Newsletter; 17 Jan 10

Hi folks,

Hope everyone is well. Yesterday, Joe, Jenn, and I went to see the movie "Avatar" in 3D. The visual effects were good, but the story and screenplay were pretty bad, in my opinion anyway. We also went out to dinner to celebrate my birthday - then came home and played a game of Settlers of Catan. Joe won for his first time!

Joe and I are continue to get a little better every day. We'll be driving to Binghamton with Jenn on Wednesday to help her move into her house. Joe has tomorrow off from work for Martin Luther King's day. Kodak, at least in Rochester, doesn't celebrate that as a holiday.

It's been warmer here - in the 40s - and the snow is almost all gone. I took down the Christmas lights outside yesterday.

I've been reading "The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour" - a follow on to reading "The Lacuna" - recommended by John. I'm really enjoying it and am learning a lot about post-WWII that I didn't know.

Back to Madrid -

On our second day, Wednesday, 23 December, for breakfast we went out for hot chocolates and churros. Then we went to tour the Real Madrid football (soccer) stadium. The tour included a museum in the stadium, the locker room, the field (first picture above), and the press room. It was a "do it yourself" tour - there was no tour guide. It was pretty impressive. After that we stopped to eat, and in the restaurant was a framed picture of the burial of the sardine. We didn't know at the time that's what it was, but the "Sardina" caught our eyes (second picture). We have since looked it up, and it appears that Spain celebrates carnival before the beginning of Lent, and in Madrid the end of carnival on Ash Wednesday brings the "Burial of the Sardine" parade, with the participants all dressed in black carrying a cardboard sardine in a coffin which is theatrically and mournfully buried at the Fuente de los Pajaritos, marking the beginning of the fasting and reflection associated with Lent. Supposedly, the sardine is a symbol which reminds people that they will now be eating fish instead of meat. There is also a Goya painting, "The Burial of the Sardine". That evening, we went to see the language institute where Jenn took her classes (third picture), and then went on a "tapas crawl" - going from bar to bar buying tapas and drinks, all around the Plaza Mayor. Thus, the end of our second day in Madrid.

Kind regards,

Terry

Terry's Weekly Email Newsletter; 10 Jan 10

Hi folks,

I hope that everyone is well and that you were able to avoid the cold that I had! I have one more day on the antibiotic for the ear infection that I developed last week Saturday night - I'm almost feeling normal again.

Mike flew back to San Jose yesterday. He had two connections - one in Detroit and one in Minneapolis. All his flights went well and were on time. Tomorrow he starts classes.

Jenn has been hanging out with friends and getting everything ready for heading back to Binghamton on January 20. She'll be living off campus in a house this semester.

Today Joe and I took down the Christmas tree. It's been very cold - the lights outside will have to stay up a little longer until it warms up a bit!

We had a great time with everyone over the new year celebration! I wish we could all get together more often, but at least we're able to do it once a year. As I told Tom, I'm planning on going to Detroit for a weekend in mid-April to visit with Tom, Mary, and Ed.

While we were together, I didn't get a chance to tell everyone about our Madrid trip, so I'll use these next few newsletters to send some pictures and give some highlights. I think everyone heard our story of the trials and tribulations we had getting to Madrid, and that we got there a day later than planned. Jenn met us at the airport and we hauled our luggage on the metro to our hotel, located in the center of Madrid right near the Puerta del Sol. After dropping off the luggage at the hotel, we went to Cafe Botin, Spain's oldest restaurant. Opened in 1725, it is near the Plaza Mayor. On this first day in Madrid for us (Tuesday) we tried to get on the Madrid "eating schedule", which means you have your big meal between 2-4 pm and the later meal sometime 8 pm - midnight. Restaurants really cater to this schedule - if you get to a restaurant before 2 pm, they're not really ready, and after 4 pm they are clearing up. After the big meal, one takes a short siesta, and then finishes up the day. So our first big meal was at Cafe Botin. After that, we went back to the hotel for a siesta, although Jenn and I went for a walk together around the hotel while Mike and Joe rested. After the siesta, we went to the flat where Jenn lived for the semester to get her remaining luggage (she had moved some of it to the hotel on her own after we knew that we would be a day late getting there). Jenn's "host mother" was away visiting her parents, but her daughter was at the flat, so we were able to meet her and see Jenn's room, etc. After getting all Jenn's stuff to the hotel, we walked around the Puerta del Sol and the Plaza Mayor, and then we went out to a Cuban restaurant that was close by. That was pretty much our first day - the first picture above was taken near one of the metro stops, the second picture was in the Cuban restaurant, and the third picture is the view from the small balcony in our hotel room - it's a small street directly off of the Puerta del Sol, and it was busy with people most of the time!

Kind regards,

Terry