January 18, 2010

We are enjoying the day off due to the national holiday for Martin Luther King. I must say three day weekends - and of course their close cousin, four day work weeks - are a real pleasure. They really should sprinkle more of these throughout the year, something like one a month or one every other month. It is really nice to stay up a little later on a Sunday night and know you don't have to be up at the crack of dawn ready for work. The update on last week - work, exercise, warming weather.


Jo was in New Jersey for two days with some very tough meetings - lots of strategic planning and not everyone all aligned on what direction should be pursued. I was in town, as usual, with the usual mix of meetings. Managed to get out for runs every day this week as the warmer weather cleared the snow from the roads enough to make it safe to get back out. I also had a doctor appointment to work out what is wrong with my shoulder and along with the next steps. Apparently I have a rotator cuff impingement (my arm bone hits into my rotator cuff) and arthritis between my collar bone and shoulder blade. Unfortunately, while not as bad as originally thought (my rotator cuff is at least not torn) it still means surgical intervention. We are now in the process of finding the few days in which Jo is in town, we both don't have any major meetings, and the surgeon/hospital are available. Should be some time next year.

For the weekend, we had dinner with Sheri and Bruno in which we made home-made pizza with home-made mozzarella cheese. Bruno had given Sheri a cheese making kit for Christmas and they shared with us the joys of making your own cheese - check out the photos, and yes you can ask how many scientist does it take to make cheese. Only took an hour and what a really great taste. Also, it is one of those amazing processes that somehow humans figured out - much like making chocolate or tea. There are a lot of steps involved which use some interesting ingredients - citric acid and rennin for instance. It was great fun and made for some wonderful pizzas, although, I'm still trying to figure out what the step of stretching the cheese really was for.

Saturday night we went to Daniel Packer Inn in Mystic for dinner with our friends, Deb and Rich. It had been a while since we had seen them and we spent the evening catching up and consuming copious quantities of wine - well at least Jo and Rich did, Deb and I are lightweights. Sunday was a day of pottery, although not a terribly successful one as I had more pots crash and burn than come off successfully. But it was still good working in the clay. Today, we are taking it easy, hopefully getting some naps in.

The last update is on Wilson. Unfortunately, the warmer weather dramatically increased his lean this week, although he did manage to get to an incredible angle without falling over. But we have sad news, rain moved into the area last night and now Wilson is no longer imitating the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but rather the Headless Horseman. Other than that, have a great week.