Mid-January Notes from the snow

We went down to Connecticut last weekend...


We played some Clue jr., and hung out and talked about my grandmother (who passed away during that week) and just enjoyed family...


Miles came down with us, and with the space and lack deep snow he had a great time running and playing and meeting my parents and his Anti-Sarah...


Cedar, the grumpy old man, also came down with us, and had a fun weekend, since Miles left him alone a bit and played with Maggie...


The dogs were a bit worried when Ben went into the barn, and interrupted play to keep and eye on him and make sure that he was OK...


Miles and Maggie had a lot of fun playing together, inside and outside...Miles has great and floppy ears...


He likes to leap and jump in the snow...


Muz never feeds dogs at the table...


The other night, there was a concert at Petrova, the school in Saranac Lake that Ben is attending this year...The 2nd graders started off the show, and Principal Dan introduced them...


The whole 2nd grade was on the stage and sang 3 songs together...it was wonderful!

Here's a video of one of the songs:

It was a great time!


Miles and I went out for a walk this morning once it had climbed to almost 0 degrees, he loved running around in the cold and found these hibernating canoes and kayaks to be an interesting site...


He had a super time chasing after the great smells in the woods, and burrowing in the snow for mice and such...


When we got back inside, he took a nap on the couch with Bruce...

January 2010

We got back from almost 2 weeks away, and although Miles and Cedar were very happy to see us, they did feel a little betrayed...


The nylabone did little to mollify Miles, although he forgave us about 10 minutes later...


My birthday rolled around a couple of days later, and we had a wonderful family dinner and celebratory brownie...



Ben built this fantastic Lego creation with tons of help from Gail one morning while we were waiting for it to warm up enough to go outside...


It eventually got up to about 5 below zero, and we headed out with Miles for a nice long walk along McMaster Road...it was so clear and bright out that the shadows seemed darker, as this picture shows...


It was a great day for a walk, although the wind made a big difference, when it picked up and blew in our faces every once in a while...


He was cold at the outset, but once we got going, Ben had a great time in the snow and cold and crisp air...


Miles loved walking and sniffing the Lake Clear roads...he's still so thin that he gets pretty cold...don't tell the other dogs, but we got him a fleece jacket for the below zero days (pics to come soon)...


Ben has a unique smile these days, with teeth coming and going at a furious pace...but he had a fun time...

Miles asked for a fisheye-esque portrait, and here it is...his nose isn't really that big, nor does it actually bend to the right...



Last night, Ben and I tried our hand at the first of many experiments out of a book I got from Amazon (thanks to a gift certificate from D for my birthday)..."Mad Science: experiments you can do at home - but probably shouldn't"...

This one involved filing the edges off of a post-1982 penny, which is made almost entirely of zinc, with only a thin outer coating of copper...filing off the edges allows the zinc interior to be dissolved by the hydrochloric acid...

Yes, hydrochloric acid, that eats the core out of the penny (or in this case 4 pennies...one was so cool, that we figure 4 would be that much cooler, and in a rare case of awesomeness, it was!)...in the pic above, you can see the acid eating away the zinc core, while leaving the copper faces of the pennies intact...lots of bubbles and hissing and even a bit of stinky smoke...we did the experiment on the stovetop, so when the smoke started, we just ran the fan for a bit...



Ben watched the pennies, and Miles watched Ben...although we had protective gloves and eyewear for Ben and I, Miles had to just keep his distance...

At the end of the experiment, we were left with two perfect (and very clean) penny faces...I hadn't seen one of these new design pennies before last night...


This last picture is Ben holding the "heads" side of the cored out penny with the inside facing the camera, if you look closely you can see the date and wording in reverse because you are looking at the inside of a penny...

Future experiments in our plans include the eternal preservation of a snowflake using cyanoacrylate glue and microscope slides and covers, and forging various metals using a thermite reaction (we'll wait for warm weather and the outdoors for that one)

Christmas and New Years

We are settling back into our lives in the Adirondacks, after returning from Christmas vacation in New York and Key West...it was a great time, although it's also super to be home!



We started off with a trip to Lincoln Center to see the Nutcracker...I went a number of times when I was much younger, but this was Ben's first time...


After the ballet, Ben and Gail took a seat on the fountain before heading downtown, while I met my friend Derek before joining them back at my parents' place...


On Christmas Eve, we had a mellow family dinner and afterwards Ben and Brad and Auntie Ann built a gingerbread house for the table centerpiece for our Christmas Dinner...


Here is the finished product...


Christmas morning, Gail and Ben did some reading while waiting for everyone to arrive...


This isn't a perfect picture of Ben, but the bubbles are really cool...


Ben and Brad and D all got musical ties from Santa, and had lots of fun playing with them...for hours...again and again and again...


3 generations of Sheffield men opening presents on Christmas morning of 2009...


After Christmas Dinner, we headed uptown, to visit with my grandmother, who will be 100 years old in less than 4 months...we shared some presents and Christmas cheer...we're so lucky that Ben and his great-grandmother know each other...


The day after Christmas, we headed out early in the morning, and were in our rented house in Key West by early afternoon...Ben got in the pool ASAP, and only got out a few times for the whole week that we were there...


Besides a super house (and nice little outbuilding that Gail and Ben and I lived in), there were gorgeous plantings throughout the grounds of the house...I played with the macro feature on my new camera a bit, and came up with this neat picture...


There was even a mini-grove of banana plants...

The following day, Ben and Muz and Gail and I went to a fantastic butterfly conservatory, which had dozens (hundreds?) of beautiful species of butterflies and some great birds...



Ben looped through a couple of times, really enjoying being able to study the butterflies up close and personal...

More macro-play with my new camera and a pretty butterfly...



After the conservatory, we walked to the southernmost point in the US...


Back to the pool for some snorkeling...


This little guy was one of 3.47 gazillion tiny lizards that scampered all over the grounds around the house that we rented...


Some of the plantings around the house were epiphytes...gaining their moisture and nutrients from the plants on which they live...Ben loved the idea of the self-contained ecosystems, and also loved the snail that lived in the plant on the left...


On one morning when it was raining a bit, we all hung out in the living room watching "National Treasure"...


Brad reading and enjoying the sun from a porch up by the canal, above the house and pool...


The pool was a great focal point of the back of the house, reading until I got hot, and then cooling everyone off with a perfectly executed cannonball was a community service that I provided many times during our visit...

We had hot and sunny and beautiful weather...



Ben took this picture from inside the pool with my new camera...


Sarah reading by the pool...


All of us went into town on Sarah's birthday, and stopped for drinks at the Hogsbreath Saloon...


We went to Mallory Square for the Sunset, and Ben took part in one of the shows, involving rescue-cats...he loved it!


We played lots of cards during the week...


Ben's diving rings in the bottom of the pool...he really spent a ton of time in the pool during our stay, and got a lot more confident swimming...


A view across the pool and into the covered patio and living room...


The living room from the kitchen...



Varied and beautiful plantings and paths ran throughout the grounds...


There were 2 kayaks that allowed us to paddle up and down the canal, which in turn led into nearby mangrove swamps, which made for some great paddle trips...


We went to visit the Key West Aquarium, and the tour-guide let Ben hold a baby alligator...he was pretty psyched...


The Aquarium is phenomenal, with a great touching tank...


The tour-guide, Patti, really knew her stuff, and showed off all of her charges to best effect, like this huge conch climbing out of her shell...


There was a big tank outside with sharks that we got to watch feeding...


Ben loved seeing all of the beasts, and actually went to the aquarium 3 times during our stay...


Cooling off in the pool after a hot day of wandering Key West...


D and I went on a paddletrip with Ben...


It was great fun and really nice to be able to paddle right from our house...


They were great sit-on-top kayaks, which allowed us to explore the mangroves, seeing lots of birds and beasts and fish...


I have a soft spot for Pelicans...


D took us on an adventure through some narrow passages in the magroves...

Along with the great birds and fish that we saw, we saw lots of great iguanas perched on the mangroves...


While the younger ones were all green, the older iguanas get wild flares of orange all over their bodies...



Some of the bigger iguanas were 6 feet from nose to tail...


Ben loved exploring the mangroves on D's kayak...


By the end of the trip, he was tired from the level of attention that he paid during the paddle...


We got home in time for a great supper and swim...

Ben asked to be woken up for the New Year, but he was really tired...



We went out again for another paddle the next day, just Gail and I, and saw a ton of birds...


We also came across lots of mellow, maybe hungover, iguanas...


We found this small heron fishing in amongst the mangroves...


Gail and I spent about 2 hours exploring the mangroves, looking at/for wildlife and enjoying the mangroves and salt air and New Year...

I fund this tiny, 2" across, horseshoe crab shell...they shed their entire shell numerous times as they grow...



This iguana leapt off of a mangrove right in front of my kayak, swam across to a tiny mangrove island, and climbed up right in front of us...


He kept climbing higher into the mangrove, which unfortunately wouldn't support his weight, which resulted in his continual slow-motion falling and climbing...


He finally got to the top and looked supremely proud of his accomplishment...moments before the branch he was on bent slowly towards the water...


We passed this bruiser on the way back to the house...


It was a great paddle, a great vacation, and a great way to end one year and begin another...with family and away (even if only temporarily) from the cold and snow that makes up our daily life in the Adirondacks...