A Blog

Well, Lance is in steamy New Orleans at the Library Show this weekend, so I had some extra time to finally put together a little blog and here it is! Jerry the Librarian is my inspiration. I must apologize for the lengthy blogs but honestly, I'm not much of a phone person, as you can probably tell from all too infrequent calls!

This is the best picture of Norwalk so far because it shows how Norwalk (like many cities along the shore in SW CT) is quite a transportation hub - we still enjoy the regular whistle of the train and now we can sniff the sea smell whilst we sit upon the stoop (a bit sour during low tide) . Bob is maintaining his social life, making many new friends including one of the feline variety, a skinny alley cat who we've named Norton (ala Honeymooners)

Found this on Wikipedia, an excerpt about South Norwalk from a 1911 Encyclopedia:
"SOUTH NORWALK, a city of Fairfield County, CT, at the mouth of the Norwalk river, on Long Island Sound, in the township of Norwalk, and 42 m. by rail N.E. of New York. Pop. (1900) 6591, including 1528 foreign-born (many Hungarians) and 83 negroes; (1910) 8968. It is served by the main line and the Danbury division of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railway, by inter-urban electric lines, and by steamboats to New York. The business and manufacturing section is close to the river and only a few feet above it; behind this, along a ridge, is the residential district; along the Sound are summer cottages and pleasure resorts. West Avenue is a finely shaded drive. The city has a public library and a soldiers monument. South Norwalk is chiefly a manufacturing and commercial city. It has a good harbour (in which there are three lighthouses), considerable coastwise trade, and important oyster fisheries."


The latest traveling news from us: we went camping last weekend in the Pioneer Valley and Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts (northwestern Mass). It was quite beautiful - like a blown-up version of the Miss River Valley - lush foresty hill/mountains with small college towns set amongst the valley. A highlight was stopping by Ben and Jerry's in Lenox and having a Banana Rum ice cream cone.....yummy yummy. It rained off and on our 2nd day camping, so I convinced Lance that we should throw our stuff in the car and drive through the Berkshires to see if we could find a better camping spot (or go home if not). We stopped to hike at a few parks, saw a gigantic beaver and porcupine (not together) and also this amazing waterfall deep in the forest.

Lance is off to Dresden in mid-July. He'll be going to Frankfurt in early October and I'll tag along for that trips. Then it sounds as though we are both off to Beijing the week before Labor Day, although I have a lot of paperwork to fill out yet to make that happen.

My job, which is eons better than the last one, has made me finally realize that all I really want to do is research. Give me a project and put me in an office and shut the door and I'm perfectly happy. See how opposite Lance and I are? And the Natural History Museum job (100% research) is still open just to tempt me and drive me crazy. Things are going very well for Lance at work although he is beginning to feel the crunch due to his heavy travel schedule. He seems to have a good team and strong support from above (I mean management, not God, well I guess God supports him too but you know what I mean!). Anyways, that's all the news that is (someone tell me what that line is from - can't remember). I'll try to put an update out every week or so. Hope this finds you well. Happy Summer!