The Fourth of July fireworks, postponed from yesterday, were well worth the wait: nearly 20 minutes of some of the best fireworks I've ever seen. I don't know the names of all of them, but my favourites are the ones that explode in different colours, float down a bit, and then explode again in golden showers. I kept on thinking of the lines from ( Read more... )

This week has gone by very fast. Not as much time was taken up with packing as I thought - but we did sort out a lot of stuff. The Lupus Foundation came this morning and took away four big bags of old clothes and shoes - amazing, considering how much we got rid of just over a year ago, when we left Israel ( Read more... )

The weekend was slightly schizophrenic. For the first time in a while, the rain began in the early hours of the morning on Saturday, rather than in the afternoon, and continued almost without a break until late at night. As a result, we switched around our plans, and spent the day at home. We did a bit more packing (mainly ADC's clothes) and had ( Read more... )

..the last week with any sort of routine for a while, I think, since the second week of camp was cancelled on Tuesday. A and S were very disappointed, as they were looking forward to a marine biology camp - but I guess not enough people felt like paying that price for four days of camp. They thoroughly enjoyed Japanese art camp, though, coming home ( Read more... )

Today A had two birthday meals!! Breakfast was bacon and eggs, to general delight (except mine). As a vegetarian, I cannot understand my children's obsession with bacon. I personally gag at the smell of frying bacon (well, I dislike the smell of all frying meat, chicken and mince as well. I am fine with grilled/barbecued (in both senses) meat, ( Read more... )

I'm going to talk about Friday and Saturday together, because both were overshadowed by a major event: the car battery died when I set out for the supermarket on Friday morning. I think it must have died immediately, but as our road is a slope, I was able to coast downhill until a red light. When I then tried to turn right, the car definitely died ( Read more... )

On Thursday it was A's fourteenth birthday. He and I awokened at 7 a.m., when SR and LR called him from Israel on Skype to wish him happy birthday. After waiting an hour or so for S to wake up (I used the time to make brown sugar cupcakes for our breakfast), I gave A the present I had made him: hand warmers for next winter. S gave A a birthday card ( Read more... )

Today was the last day of elementary and middle school in Mayland. Since A has finished 8th grade and S has finished 5th grade, today was devoted to their promotion ceremonies - a new usage to me, BTW. I had not previously run across "promotion" in this sense. I would have just said "finished primary school" and/or "finished junior high ( Read more... )

We spent the first half of the weekend - Friday evening through Saturday afternoon - visiting our friends in Baltimore, KM and AM and their children IM, AW and CR. KM was instrumental in me being able to come to the US, as he sponsored my J-1 visa, and he and ADC have been friends from childhood (their fathers were postdocs together). IM and AW are ( Read more... )

Eep! I really fell off the SED bandwagon this week. I offer the horrible weather as an excuse - it rained almost non-stop from Tuesday through Thursday, and I really didn't feel like doing anything ( Read more... )