Life in the Commonwealth

I still haven't figured out what to do with this blog -- a blog about California can't be written in Massachusetts, about Massachusetts -- but as I've been figuring things out, I've let things lapse completely and the next thing I knew, six months (more than six months!) had passed. So here are a few pictures to show you what our lives have been like since we moved.

Spring was beautiful. This is strange, I guess, because we'd already started spring in California, and yet it was early enough on in Massachusetts that it still felt exciting. Before all the rain hit in June, we had a very nice April and May.

I traveled to upstate New York with my family to attend my cousin Kathleen's wedding.

And at the end of May, I turned 31 and we closed on our house. Thus began the long process of unpacking, which is still going on today.

We enjoyed getting reunited with Boston, New England, and our local friends and family. Here are some pictures from a trip up to Ipswich, MA, to eat fried clams and pick strawberries. The clams were great but the strawberries had suffered in all the rain.

Brendan and Barb at Russell Orchards

In July, we drove down to New Jersey for O'Malley Family Track Day at Monmouth Park.

We spent part of the next morning on my brother-in-law's boat in the Atlantic and on the Navesink River with my inlaws, below.

I had high hopes for gardening but had to put it off, for the most part, until next year, when I will be finished with school and should have a bit more time. Fortunately there were already a lot of beautiful perennials in the yard, so things looked pretty good without much effort...although eventually "not much effort" meant that the yard started looking like a jungle. I did get some tomato and cherry pepper plants in the ground, and we had some great cherry tomatoes for a while. Stacey pickled and canned some of our cherry peppers, and with the rest we made hot sauce. I'm planning on a lot more veggies next year!

We flew down to Florida just before Labor Day for the wedding of my good friend from college, Jennie, and her husband Eric. The wedding was a lot of fun and got me excited for my 10 Year College Reunion coming up next May!

Then off to Palm Coast for some R&R with the O'Malleys, including a trip to the fort in St. Augustine, below.

Stacey and I both love fall, so it's been exciting to experience a "real" New England fall after missing out on them when we were in California. However, we were not expecting to get snow -- twice! -- in October!

I took the picture below on my way to work. While stopped in Kendall Square near MIT, the operator on the subway train I was riding announced a "brief delay" due to "police action." After fifteen minutes I gave up and decided to walk the rest of the way. It was a bit chilly on the Longfellow Bridge, but the views were nice! Later I found out that President Obama was speaking at MIT that day. I think I have him to thank for holding up my commute!

Almost every year since I was a baby, my family has spent a weekend in the fall with friends in Maine, making apple cider and stuffing ourselves full of all sorts of good eats. This was my first Cider Weekend since 2006, and although the first day was pretty miserably rainy, we did get a head start on the good eats. Luckily Day 2 was gorgeous -- perfect weather for picking, crushing, and pressing apples into cider.

Here's a shot of Hancock Pond:

And the view from the orchard:

Lucy "helping" us pick:

Becky and puppies

Susy getting down to business

Lucy relaxes while the rest of us work.

First, you wash the apples...

Then you crush them in the crusher...

Then you press the apples into cider in the press:

Crushed apple, waiting to be pressed

Et voila -- cider!

Susy and Becky are an efficient bottling team.

Some of the final product

Lucy relaxing again...I sense a theme.

The next few months should be busy. I need to finish my independent study so that I can complete my degree and we have a lot of walls to paint, carpet to rip up, boxes to unpack and cabinets and closets to organize.  I'll try to report back soon.

Safe and sound.

I apologize for taking so long to post that we have arrived in Massachusetts! It's been a hairy couple of days. As many of you know, Stacey and I are buying the house I grew up in from my father. He and my stepmother are renovating a house she bought before they met, but it's not finished yet. So in the meantime, we had to find a way to fit all of our stuff into a house that is already pretty full of their stuff. Yesterday our movers (who were great) dropped off our belongings and we managed to fit everything, though some rooms are packed to the gills! Yesterday Stacey's father and stepmother arrived after driving our second car across the country (thanks Bill and Susan!) and we went to our beloved Blue Room with both families to celebrate our triumphant return! I am happy to be in Massachusetts, but already getting a bit tired of living out of boxes/suitcases and of cat-and-dog negotiations (my father's golden retriever, Lucy, wants to be Scout's friend; Scout would prefer that she drop dead). The weekend will be full of errands and school work and then it's back to the grind on Monday. Wish us luck!

Days 4 & 5: Lincoln to Buffalo

We left Lincoln on Tuesday and drove through Iowa and into Illinois. See, Iowa is just a little bit less flat than Nebraska:

Illinois was flat again. Not so exciting, either.

Today we drove through Indiana, Ohio, and a small chunk of Pennsylvania, then up into New York, where we found...vineyards! All this way from California, and still we find the grapevines:

It's a bit colder here, though! When we arrived at our hotel in Buffalo, it was 39 degrees with cold winds. We're not in California anymore, folks.

What's that you say? Is that a picture of the Anchor Bar, the legendary spot where the Buffalo chicken wing was invented? Why yes it is!

Stacey loves buffalo wings, so she was excited by the idea of trying out the originals. I have been to Buffalo many times, but have never been to the Anchor Bar. I worried about being disappointed. I'm not particularly a buffalo wing fan. I eat them, but I don't get that excited by them. And there are buffalo wings available everywhere these days. Would the Anchor Bar's wings stand out?

Yes! Stacey and I both have declared the Anchor Bar's buffalo wings the best we've ever had. The keys are the super crispy skin and the sauce-to-wing ratio. But mostly the super crispy skin. I'm a sucker for crispy chicken skin. We also ordered beef on weck, a western New York specialty consisting of sliced roast beef on what is called a kimmelweck roll, a kind of kaiser roll covered in salt and caraway seeds. I grew up eating this, courtesy of my upstate-New York-native mother, but Stacey had never had it. It was also a big hit. Top it all off with Genesee Cream Ale and Yuengling, and you have two happy travelers.

You know what else makes us happy? Tomorrow we will reach our destination!

Day 2, er, 3: Salt Lake to Lincoln, Nebraska

Since leaving California, we'd been following weather reports of blizzards in Wyoming and Nebraska that had closed parts of I-80, the road we are taking most of the way across the country.  When we woke up in Salt Lake on Sunday morning, the interstate was still closed from Rock Springs, Wyoming, East through the rest of the state.  I had slept poorly due to a bad cough, and was consequently feeling worse.  We decided to wait things out for a day in Salt Lake City.

We had forgotten it was Sunday, and not much is open in Salt Lake on Sunday.  I didn't have the energy to do much anyway, and spent most of the day in bed.  Scout enjoyed an extra day's reprieve from the dreaded carrier.  Below is a picture of Scout chillaxing on the sofa in our hotel room.

Salt Lake City is surrounded by beautiful mountains.  They were quite spectacular but I couldn't get any pictures that didn't have a Wal-Mart in the foreground, so didn't bother.

Monday morning we set out early, driving through the mountains as the sun was rising.  This is probably somewhere around Park City.

From the snowy mountains, I-80 winds into an area that looks kind of like the Old Thunder Mountain Railroad in Disney World...

From Utah, we drove into Wyoming -- and little sign of the blizzard that had closed the road.  There were a few inches of snow in some places, but just a dusting in others, and the roads were clear.  

At a rest stop, I saw at least six little critters that I think were prairie dogs -- except they seemed kind of smaller than I expected.  What do you think?

One of the snowier areas, below. That's Elk Mountain, part of the Medicine Bow mountain range.

Wyoming was long, but not as long as our next state: Nebraska.  We remembered from our drive in the other direction that Nebraska is very flat and very, very long.  It seems to go on forever, and is the first state we've gone through so far where there really isn't anything to look at.

There was a  nice sunset behind us, which I tried to capture in our rearview mirror:

We arrived at our hotel in Lincoln without incident, and feeling only a little stir-crazy.  We were pleased to find a Runza Restaurant just around the corner.  While preparing for this trip, I had researched some of our stopping points on the Road Food website, which indicated that when in Nebraska, one has to try the regional phenomenon that is the Runza sandwich.  It's a soft bread pocket into which is stuffed a mixture of ground beef, onions and spices.  We wisely bought the kind with cheese.

Well...the Runza is not bad.  The ground meat and onion mixture is sort of pasty, but it tastes good.  The bread is good.  But I won't go running back to Nebraska just to get one.

Perhaps due to our Runzas, we slept well last night and are getting ready to head out for our third leg of the trip.  It is only 22 degrees here in Lincoln -- the coldest weather I've experienced since the winter before we moved to California!  We'll be glad to get out of Nebraska.  Fortunately, the Iowa border is less than an hour away.

Rewind: Day 1, San Jose to Salt Lake City

Stacey and I left San Jose this morning and drove about twelve hours to Salt Lake City, Utah.  This is one of the longest days of our trip and was uneventful.  Good weather, no traffic (although we did see the aftermath of this fatal bus accident).  Here are some pictures from our trip (all taken from the moving car, so nothing fancy).

Sierra Nevadas, possibly near Truckee, California.  Scout did not enjoy the mountains, howling the whole way through.  Otherwise she was fine and slept the rest of the way.  We remembered today that she was unhappy the last time we drove through the Sierra Nevadas, and realized it might be an altitude thing.  Can cats' ears pop?

Nevada, somewhere east of Elko.  I didn't remember northern Nevada having so many mountains.  Maybe they stood out this time because they still have snow on them!

You can see all the snow here:

You know you're approaching Utah when you drive over a hill and suddenly, instead of desert brush, you see a white strip on the horizon: salt flats!

Looks like snow, but it's salt.

Pink mountains in the sunset, about 70 miles west of Salt Lake City.

We're getting ready for a good night's sleep (we hope) in preparation for another long day tomorrow.  We'll try to keep you posted!