November 2, 2010

It has been two weeks since I posted last and the truth is I'm a wee bit tired of writing a weekly message.  I have been thinking about taking a long time off since if you count the time this came out as an email message I have been posting weekly for almost 15 years or so.  And I don't live that exciting of a life so it is challenging to figure out what to write sometimes.  I do wonder if I accumulated all of the messages could I publish a book and become a celebrity.

Anyway, Election Day in the US.  I'm interested to see what happens in CT to see if you can buy a Senate seat with enough money.  I feel the best people should win regardless of their personal finances, but I also realize that is incredibly naive and it wouldn't be the first elected position to go to someone with a lot of money.  Jo and I voted this morning so we have completed our civic duty - all that is left until the next election is to pay taxes.  Onto the more personal news.

 Jo completed her circumnavigation of the globe last week.  Jo traveled to Ireland (where she celebrated her birthday at the Guinness Brewery with her team), England, Tunisia (got to see the ruins of Carthage - see photo below), Japan, Shanghai and Beijing China, and India all in two weeks.  She had a great time although came home very tired and completely messed up on time zones.  As she was in a few of the countries only one day it makes it really hard for your circadian clock to catch up.  She did get to enjoy the World Expo (that's the top photo) while in Shanghai visiting the US, China, Belgium, and one other countries pavilions (Belgium and the other one were due to their lines to get in being shorter and I can't remember the missing country's name).  China won for having the best pavilion, but since they were the host country you might expect that.  My week by comparison was pretty tame since it consisted of going to work, exercising, reading, and sleeping in one time zone.  But we can't all be jet-setters.

We spent the weekend with Jo catching up on sleep and hanging around the house since Jo wanted some down time (can't imagine why).  Naturally there were a few chores thrown in - like tackling the leaves in the yard, that will be a theme for another couple of weeks - and other miscellaneous chores.  Saturday night we enjoyed the Ivoryton Pumpkin Festival, with Sheri and Bruno, in which the town showed off the pumpkin carving skills of the local residents. Was just the right level for our energy levels since it only took about 30 minutes to walk around in enjoy the roughly 100 carved pumpkins.  This was after working our way through a beef stew and homemade breads.  It was good to catch up with everyone as it has been a while with everyone on the road lately. 

As a parting thought, I leave you with this sinkhole in Germany.  As you know I have a fascination, and quite honestly some fear, of sinkholes.  Who knows if there is one growing right underneath you today.  The fact that these massive depressions can occur out of the blue is so cool.