O Canada

E and I had a nice visit to the Motherland (I'm still a citizen and E is a wannabe) last weekend. We stopped in Binghamton overnight (holiday weekend traffic plus construction did not make for a fun or short drive) and then made our way to Ottawa the next day. We met Sarah at the Expo (she was running the half marathon), got some free goodies, and then headed across the river and border to their place in Quebec. It was good to see Andy and Anna. It's always startling to see your friends kids because you realize how much time has passed. Last time we saw Anna she couldn't sit up by herself and now she's walking (or should I say strutting--very cute) and talking. It was a quick visit but we got to see some of the beautiful natural beauty and a bit of the city. It was a great race day for both E and Sarah...both reached their goals. E finished his marathon in 3:55 (a personal best!) and Sarah finished in 2:26...we're encouraging to go for the full marathon next time!

I took lots of pics...realizing that you need to hold my new camera very, very still, and properly focus...and that it can only do so much with low light. But I think a lot of them still came out rather well.

Ottawa photos to come (with more megapixels pics certainly take longer to load!):

The hard work:

The reward (one of the nicest medals Ezer's ever gotten!):

Anna loved the convertible (especially being behind the wheel):

The riverfront by Sarah and Andy's house:

Walking around Parliament:


Pics from a viewpoint at Gatineau Park:


Everyone:

Preview of things to come?
At the Museum of Civilization (we watched Anna while Sarah went into work for a couple of hours):

Painting at the Children's Museum:

Early morning greeting:

When we got home we enjoyed our beloved NY Times. There was an article about strokes (Lost Chances for Survival, Before and After Stroke). One quote was from a specialist in London Ontario named Vladimir Hachinski. That rang a bell...I went to school with an Eric Vladimir Hachinski. Now he's studying or practicing law in Winnipeg and is an accomplished pianist, has even played at the Kennedy Center, and is married to a recording artist/doctor named Jillian Horton (info courtesy of Google). Ah, such overachievers. Maybe I shouldn't look up the other people from my grade 5/6 gifted class...probably would be too depressing. :) Okay...couldn't help it...one is a midwife in Vancouver, another is a biology grad student at McGill, another a plastic surgery resident back in London...okay, okay, I'll stop...can't remember all the last names (or the names are too common) anyway. I keep in touch with one of my classmates from that year, my friend Nina who is mathematician who does work in random matrix theory and quantum chaos at University of Bristol in England. I have to say I'm impressed she has an entry in Wikipedia.

Today I finished cleaning out my office at school. That's it. I'm done. I think I will go in one more time to turn in keys, say good-bye, etc. One teacher was very sweet and left a card/baby cap in my mailbox for me. I have to say I was pretty good about throwing things out--E will be proud of me. However, I did indulge my love of page protectors. Even those I have Word documents of most things I have all my lesson plans, articles, assignments, etc. from the year organized in two gigantor binders.

Last Friday was graduation. It was a nice straightforward ceremony. One advantage of having well-known parents is getting one of them to be the graduation speaker. This year it was the New York senior senator, Charles Schumer. He acknowledge the other politico in the audience, former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani. One of my students was selected to be one of two senior speakers--she did a great job. Sitting in the pews (it was held at a church) and watching particular parents get on stage, all excited, hugging their kids (faculty and board parents get to do this) made me project 18 years in the future when that will be me! Crazy.

Nice church...can imagine a beautiful wedding there:

See, there are perks to having a big zoom:

With Leslie and Sybil (the student speaker I mentioned). Interestingly, Sybil, and another top minority student in my psych class are both going to Harvard, as our the daughters of Schumer and Giuliani. It's odd to me that Harvard still has so much cache and a little disappointing that these top students didn't decide to go to another great school instead.

With my officemate, Alison, a chemistry teacher. One nice thing at graduation--the school procured robes from every teacher's alma mater. I didn't buy my robe so I wore a generic black PhD robe, but had the Columbia hood!

Tonight I'm off to a concert of sorts. It's a group of authors (including Dave Barry, Stephen King, Amy Tam, etc.) who get together once in a while to play music and raise money--they call themselves Rock Bottom Remainders. I'm hoping it will be a fun/funny time.

Pregnancy-wise, still doing okay...notice that if I sit or stand too long, my feet start to tingle...bad circulation? swelling? blood pooling?