January 24, 2010

Fairly short update this week as it consisted mostly of work events. We enjoyed the extra day off and made use of it to put in some time with pottery and relaxing. Always nice this time of year to not have lots of outdoor chores to take up time.

For the work week, I had evening events two of the nights which always makes it feel like you get done working one day to wake up and immediately start back in. Joann had a day trip to the New York office in which she got delayed getting home. So all in all a pretty busy work week for us - even if it was only four days.

My highlight for the week was getting brand new front teeth installed. They now match the current color of the rest of my teeth much better than my 30-35 year old ones that I had previously. Now I just hope they last as long. We had no big plans this weekend, so after our usual mix of exercising and chores, I spent the remainder of the time between finances, taxes, and a little time for some computer gaming. Jo had to pack for her week long trip to Ireland and then caught up on some overdue reading.

Still no news on when my shoulder surgery will happen as apparently the scheduling process takes forever - what a way to run a business. Other than that, as you can tell from above - Jo is off to Ireland for a week while I hold down the fort with a packed week of meetings.

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.

January 10, 2010

The first week of work after the break is behind us and we survived going back. Not to say it wasn't difficult but we managed. Fortunately we both had relatively calm weeks and Joann was in town. The bigger struggle this week was with the weather. Like the rest of the nation we have had several days of frigid weather. The cold weather keeps the snow that is on the edges of the road and sidewalks from clearing off making it difficult for us to get our evening runs in. So we have been confined to either just running loops in our neighborhood or working out on indoor cardio equipment. Even with all those hurdles, we got our exercising in each evening although I'm nursing both a sore ankle and shoulder. Oh the fun of aging.

On the home front, we continued our re-invigoration of pottery. We spent the evenings this week getting clay prepared for upcoming projects along with moving the pots that were thrown into their next stage - compare the photos from the last post to this one, there are only three pots now since one pot didn't survive the footing process. Next up is to start glazing again. This takes a lot more concentration and you need to have your artistic juices flowing since you have to be in the mood to create the artist pattern and decide on the color palette. To be honest, it has never been my favorite part of doing pottery. I much prefer the creation of the basic piece. But the glazing is what really makes the pot work - or not in the case of a poor glazing choice.

The upcoming holds travel to New Jersey for Jo and my final discussion with the doctor on my shoulder surgery for me. Also need to begin to think about taxes for 2009. So lots of fun activities on tap. Fortunately, the early weather forecasts show some warming up later in the week. Also something cheery to look forward to.

In case you were curious on how Wilson was doing (our snowperson), we had one day of warmer temperatures which has encourage Wilson to imitate the leaning tower of Pisa. Or he is a great example of what happens when the sun only hits one side of your snowperson. Fortunately the cold snap is preserving him from completely toppling over for now.

January 3, 2010

The first post of 2010, got to remember to write the new year on checks. We have had a great week relaxing at home and getting a myriad of different chores and hobbies done. Hard to figure out where to start. After enjoying Emmet Otter's Christmas show (this is apparently a Christmas book from the 70's, turned into a Muppet show, and then turned into a play at the Goodspeed Opera House) with Sheri and Bruno we had dinner in Chester, CT at the River Tavern. The food was great and we got around to making our 2010 predictions. We were at our clairvoyant best as we each filled two pages of some very interesting predictions for what will happen this year to ourselves, Pfizer, stars, athletes, politicians, and the world.

For the remainder of our week of leisure, we focused on pottery. We prepped clay for a couple of projects, cleaned up the pottery room some as it hadn't been used in a long time. I also managed to threw three pots - well I threw four but one didn't survive the finishing process. It was good to get the creative side engaged for once. More to come from there this year - hopefully. We had several wonderful snowfalls this week. Wonderful from the standpoint of painting the trees all white and I've gotten to use the snowblower several times. All good there. We took advantage of one of the snow events to make a snowman that we promptly dubbed "Wilson". While we were going for a Frosty or possibly Maynard. When we were done decorating it looked more like the volleyball from the film Castaway once Tom Hanks was done with it. Wilson has been losing eyes and his nose as the temperatures warmed briefly in the middle of the week.

We had a nice evening at home on New Year's eve. We talked about our plans for 2010 while enjoying some champagne (or sparkling wine if you want to listen to the wine producers from France) and watching the ball drop. Jo, once again, mentioned that she would like to do the 5K race in Central Park, NY that starts at midnight. Still not sure I want to be starting a run at midnight - especially in NY. New Year's day meant it was time for the Christmas decorations to be packed away. The house always seems so plain after they are all down. Then yesterday, after another 3-4 inches of snow and snowblowing again (yeah!), we spent the evening with Stuart and Tiffany where Tiffany and I tried yet again to defeat Stuart and Jo in ping pong. We are now 0-30 (or something like that). Tiffany and I are thinking of taking ping pong lessons in secret to finally defeat them.

To fill in many of the other things we did this week: put a puzzle of Madison, WI together (gift from Jo's sister this year), returned a few gifts that weren't the right size, cleaned up a few more rooms and made a sizable donation to Goodwill as a result, watched four movies (Defiance with Daniel Craig was the best of the bunch), made lots of good food and consumed way too much good food (including the highlight of Jo's cinnamon rolls), slept and napped as needed, and got in a few pool and pinball games. With that said, we are as ready as we will ever be for the alarm clock going off tomorrow morning and the start of the work needed to keep us in snowblower equipment.