1982....It Was a Very Good Year

January 7, 2009. Dad gave us some old bottles of wine he had been storing in the basement. Not the really good stuff but who's complaining. We open one bottle over the weekend when Jane's brother was in town. Turned out the 1982 Chateau Laroque was pretty good. 1982 was when Jane and I started graduate school at the University of Cincinnati and Jane's brother started his job at the Daily Local in West Chester, PA. Both pretty significant events to us and I was glad the wine had aged well. It gives me hope for us. Anyway, the bottles of white wine, of around the same vintage, were all bad--evidently you're not supposed keep white wine that long. One bottle of Champagne had no fizz left. Judy looked-up the current market value for Chateau Laroque and it turned out to be somewhere in the $150.00 range. It was interesting opening these bottles. The corks were all moldy and very fragile (and now that I think about it so is mine) and there was more dregs than I would have preferred but I guess that comes with age. Oh well, next time I'm in town I'll focus on the reds and convince my dad to open the really expensive bottles.

Christmas Letter 2008

Here is the Christmas letter 2008 we sent to family and freinds (sans pictures):

Christmas 2008

We hope everyone has had a good year and this Christmas greeting finds you in good health and spirits. Highlights of the past year include attending the high school graduation ceremony for Elroy and Judy, helping them move into their college dorms, and (thanks to Uncle Michael's nagging about getting the kids registered to vote) we all voted in the presidential election. Elroy is now attending UMBC just outside of Baltimore and Judy is at Kalamazoo College (Kzoo) in Michigan. We visited Judy at Kzoo over parent’s weekend in October and look forward to spending more time touring Kalamazoo and Michigan in the future. Since Elroy is only 45 minutes away, we’ve visited him more often. Although we’re not exactly sure Elroy considers that a perk he does get free housecleaning as part of the bargain.

In May, Jane and George took a mini-vacation to Arizona to do a Rim-2-Rim-2-Rim hike of the Grand Canyon. Starting from the South Rim we ran/hiked 22 miles to the North Rim (a view from the Coconino Overlook is below) and 24 miles back the following day. The hikes out of the canyon were tough and it rained, snowed and sleeted as we approached the rims, but down in the canyon the cacti were in bloom and the temperatures were balmy. In October, we ran the Marine Corps Marathon and Jane made a new friend, Teddy Roosevelt (the mascot for the Washington Nationals baseball club who ran the entire marathon in his outfit). I won't mention our finishing times, suffice it to say we managed to beat Teddy……....I think.

As part of freshman orientation at Kzoo, Judy hiked and canoed in Killarney Provincial Park in Canada for 18 days. She came back with great stories of howling wolves at night, beautiful sunrises, lousy meals, portaging canoes and forging waist-high streams. She enjoyed it all, even the pimples and dirty hair that come with wilderness backpacking. The only mishap was the day we dropped her off at Kzoo for the program and were asked, "Do you have her passport? She'll need that to get into Canada." …Oops…we'd left her passport at home. Let's call the result, Techniques in Crisis Management 101.

Elroy worked at a veterinary clinic over the summer. He too came home with some interesting and some sad stories. However, Elroy is so allergic to most furry things that veterinary medicine may not be in his cards. At present, Elroy is focusing on Chemistry and adjusting to a challenging college curriculum but still finds time to read, re-read and re-re-read his favorite Fantasy/Fiction books.

Sadly, our faithful dog, Astro, passed away the week before Thanksgiving. Astro, like all Dalmatians, kept a close watch on his family, especially the kids, and we really miss not having him under our feet. However, our newest family member, Max the Cat, is still growing and very playful and enjoys tormenting Fresca who, at 15 years old, neither appreciates nor tolerates his attention.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Oh yeah, the downstairs bathroom finally got finished. No, not by George, by the contractor who did our porch+bathroom. It was what …8 years? Not that anyone's complaining.

Are We Home Yet.....

Whenever I look in the rearview mirror on trips back and forth to Cincinnati, I see Astro resting his head between the two rearseat headrests just staring forward as if he is saying...."are we home yet."

Holiday Cookies

Tonight we packaged this year's edition of Holiday cookies to give out to the neighbors. Judy and I had been busy the past few weeks baking and decorating and when Jane brought a plate into work was surprized (or scared) how fast they were consumed--a good sign for Judy and I!! We made sugar cookie cutouts, chocolate chip, coconut macaroons with chocolate drizzle, chocolate crisps, chocolate-covered peanut butter balls, cranberry and pistachio biscotti dipped in white chocolate, and Lizzie's.

Advance Copy Christmas Letter, 2007

We hope everyone has had a good year and this Christmas greeting finds you in good health and spirits.

The highlight of our past year was our summer vacation to the National Parks of the Desert Southwest. We flew into Las Vegas and toured Zion and Bryce Canyon NPs in UT and the north rim of Grand Canyon in AZ. We had many memorable hikes; one through the Virgin River slot canyon in Zion NP and another to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes in UT. We also enjoyed visiting the ghost town of Grafton in Utah, where the famous "Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head" scene from "Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid" was filmed.

Jane and George are still working for the XXX and YYY, respectively. Jane recently traded her lab job for a supervisory regulatory position. Elroy and Judy are seniors in high school this year and working hard at classes. Both are keeping their grades up and staying on honor roll. Judy ran varsity cross-country this fall and Elroy has just started wrestling. He hurt his knee the first week of practice but is okay now. As in summer's past both mowed lawns over the summer to make spending money and this summer also studied for the SAT which they took in the fall. Besides classes, they've spent countless hours filling out forms and writing essays for the college application process. Next year Elroy and Judy will have their own stories to tell about their college experiences.

Last March, Jane and George ran the Greenway Trail Ultramarathon that one of our friends organizes. Extremely icy and muddy conditions conspired to make this the toughest physical challenge we've ever endured. George also ran the Marine Corps Marathon in October, finishing in 4:27, about 5 minutes faster than he ran the MCM in 2001. However, what we've enjoyed most this year is having Elroy and Judy join us on trail runs and we've even begun running races together. Our first "family outing" was an 8K race called the “Run Through the Grapevine” in which the race course wound through a local vineyard. Afterward, Judy thought the hilly course was brutal, Elroy was too tired to speak, but Jane was blissfully happy having won a bottle of wine.

We have a wonderful new cat named Maximus. We came upon him one evening while out walking, lost and obviously distressed (the cat not us), and he followed us home. So I guess he picked us out. After failing to find his original home we decided we could not give him up. He’s got a wonderful personality and is very tolerant of our older pets that are unsure what to think about this energetic new object of their owner’s affections.

The other news is that we’ve just started to add a little more space to our little home. The groundbreaking was just after the Thanksgiving holiday to add a first floor bedroom addition and screened porch on the back of the house. As always, additional details for these stories and more can be found at http://experiencetk.blogspot.com/. Happy Holidays to everyone.

Is there no end to this conspiracy of irrational prejudice against Red Ryder and his Peacemaker..............HO! HO! HO!

Thanksgiving 2007

The Jetson's hosted Jane's brother for Thanksgiving. The menu included herb-crusted turkey breast with gravy, stuffing with cranberries and apples, green beans with carmalized onions and apple cider vinegar dressing, and twice-baked mashed potatos. All this complemented with a nice bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau 2007 that Jane's brother brought down--a tradition started last year. I had prepped the turkey the night before, placing a mixture of finely minced sage, rosemary, thyme and garlic in EVOO underneath and on top of skin and allowed it to sit in the refrigerator over night...hmmmm it smelled good cooking. The next day the turkey was baked-off at 425 for 30 minutes and then 350 until done. The stuffing base was Stove Top with additional suateed onion and celery with craisens and appples added for a little extra tartness and sweetness. The greenbean recipe was from Rachey Ray. I thought it was the best Thanksgiving dinner yet. For dessert we had pumpkin cheesecake form Costco. It was good--better than we could've made. After an early dinner we all went to see the movie Enchanted, which was a pretty good family movie.

The next day (Black Friday) we went shopping in the morning at Tysons Galleria and in the afternoon took Astro for a long walk behing Magruder High School. It was a beautiful day, the air was crisp and the farmers were out baling hay in the fields for use in the surrounding horse farms signalling the last few days of fall. The holiday was well-appreciated as we walked through the browning grasses into the late afternoon glow.

Presidents Day Weekend

Over Presidents Day Weekend we took Judy and Elroy on a college visit to St. Mary's College in St. Mary's County, MD. That was on Monday and I'll post more on their college searches some other time. On Sunday, we took Astro for a long hike behind Magruder High School. The area, nameless as far as I know, consists of acres upon acres of open fields and woods. Although this area had clearly once been farmland, and would make a great park, it is destined to one day become a cross-county connecter between two nearby interstate roadways. Even though there are countless trails crisscrossing the fields and woods, we've never come across anyone here and we can let Astro off the leash so he can run around without fear of meeting other dogs and getting into a fight. Until this area is developed we occasionally bring Astro here for leisurely walks. On this day as soon as we arrived at Magruder HS the sunny sky turned ominously dark gray (see picture above), shortly followed by an intense winter snow squall.

It has been frigid here for the past two weeks and the last snowstorm had left four hard-packed inches of icy-crusted snow covering the ground. The ice crust was so hard it even supported my weight and one could just shuffle-slide across the top of the snow. As we ventured carefully out onto the icy crust, soft snowflakes began to gently fall around us. However, ripping winds soon kicked-up and turned those welcome snowflakes into deadly ice crytals that felt as through they could pierce any exposed, unprotected skin. The snowflakes were being blown completely sideways by the gale force winds. I had to stop and put up the hood on my coat to prevent the lethal snowflakes from knifing down my neck. I was able to just get off a couple of pictures (see picture of Elroy and Judy) before my fingers ached so much from the biting cold that I was forced to bury them deep in my pockets to rewarm.

The squall subsided after 15 minutes and the sky once again cleared and the sun shown. As we shuffled through the trails, there were signs of life everywhere in the dry brown thickets. Birds were flitting about, little mice were scampering under brambles and the many deer footprints frozen in the ice crust were evidence of their passing through. Jane and the kids found a large hill that they could slide down on their backs. Astro also slid down, unintentionally, which made us all laugh. It looked like a lot of fun, but I was too cold to try. We had come to this spot at the exact right time for an adventure and were not dissapointed.

Home for Christmas (2006)

Well...we're back home now after a week in Cincinnati visiting our families. On the way to Cincinnati we hooked-up with Jane's brother in Breezewood and convoyed to Cincinnati. The drives out and back were okay--no complaints. We arrived in Cincinnati last Saturday and enjoyed dinner at my niece's house. On Christmas Eve my whole family gathered at my older brother's house and we had dinner and opened presents. Among our holiday traditions are tasting my Dad's homemade italian sausage (this year's batch was exceptional) and the game Me Got-Me Want-Me Take. This game must have originated some time in antiquity because it sounds like Caesar's Veni-Vidi-Vici and, as the number of presents dwindle, is played with the same ruthlessness--jokingly of course and everyone has a good time. I'll write out the rules for playing Me Got-Me Want-Me Take on some future post. I always enjoy my all to short and infrequent visits with my siblings at Christmas. On Christmas Day we sat around my parents living room (Mom, Dad and Astro are pictured above) and opened presents. In the afternoon, we moved over to Jane's sister's house and had second Christmas. We opened presents, met Jane's sister's recently adopted puppy, Eliot (Jane with Eliot in her lap are shown at left) and had a great dinner of steak and tater tots. We all sat around and played Scene-It, a game that Judy got this year for Christmas. All of us played against Jane's brother who is a trivia maven and movie buff, but we managed to win one game. We had a great time with our relatives and were sad we couldn't spend more time.

We went on a couple of outings. One to Findlay Market, a Cincinnati landmark with a farmer's market in the summer and year round specialty food shops. Findlay Market was renovated a few years ago and it was nice to see that there is a substantial retail trade going on there but the downtown area surrounding Findlay Market is still deeply depressed by urban blight. We were there the day after Christmas and all, or mostly all the stores were closed for the day. We had made the trip to Findlay Market with Jane's brother who wanted to purchase Cincinnati sausage and cottage ham to bring back home. So when we saw that all the stores were closed we quickly improvised a plan B.

Plan B was a visit to Mount Adams, an oasis for the hip and trendy in Cincinnati nestled on a hilltop overlooking the downtown skyline. Here, the stores were open but the streets were completely isolated-there was no sign of people going about their daily activities. The ghost-townish feeling was was just a tad eerie. I took the picture of the church steeples (see below) while we walked aroung the deserted streets of Mount Adams.

Lastly, we desperately wanted to go on hike and scheduled a day trip to Miami Whitewater Forest, a park approximately 30 minutes from my parents house. The trails were okay, not exactly what we were looking for but it was a nice sunshiny day and as the temperatures warmed we felt great to be outside getting some exercise. On the way back, we took a side trip to Oxford, Ohio to have lunch and drive around Miami University. Elroy was with us but didn't really have much interest in exploring the campus but wanted to get back to grandma's house to watch TV and play with his cousins. The woodsy picture below was taken at Miami Whitewater. Sadly, we departed on Friday. Today as I'm writing this post it is New Years Eve---Whoopee!!!! We'll be fixing appetizers for dinner; pigs-in-a-blanket, pop-in-your-mouth sausage balls, shrimp and cocktail sauce, cheeses and plenty of chips and dip to complement the champagne my Dad provided. Sooo, if anyone reads this post---we wish you a very happy and healthy New Year.

Christmas Cookies!!!

Whew! I finally left work today at 12:30 pm and don't plan to go back until January 2nd. Yesterday was our Christmas skit, which several of us had spent around a week writing (just silly spoofs and funny songs) and a whole hour rehearsing. Anyway, I came home and together with Jane put together a couple of cookie trays for some of our neighbors that Elroy and Judy will deliver tonight. Judy and I had worked hard over the past week baking and decorating cookies with quite a few successes and a couple less-than-stellar end-products--however when the basic ingredients are butter, sugar, flour, and egg one can hardly do badly. Here is a picture of the cookies....not bad for our first attempt at multi-cookie Christmas baking. Included are sugar cookie cut-outs (Christmas trees, stars and bells), chocolate covered peanut butter balls, Amish raisen cookies, pistachio and cranberry biscotti dipped in white chocolate, chocolate-chip-toffee, black and white, and crisp chocolate bites.

Advance Copy Christmas Letter, 2006

The complete note (with pictures) will be sent in your Christmas card, but if you can't wait, here is the blog version.

CHRISTMAS 2006. As we look forward to the approaching holidays, we once again review the year that was. Although “stay the course” isn’t a popular theme nowadays, much of the past year was just that for us. You could easily re-read our past Christmas letters and get a pretty good idea of how life has been here.

One high note was our summer vacation. This year we flew to Seattle, WA and had a wonderful time touring around the Olympic National Park. While in Seattle, we also got to spend some time with Jane's childhood friend and her family, which was really nice. We spent most of our time in ONP exploring tidal pools, hiking through alpine meadows and gawking at the huge 1000 year old trees that grow in its’ rainforests. Things went without a glitch—not sure if it was luck or the fact that I planned this vacation rather than Jane—probably luck had a lot to do with it.

Elroy and Judy are high school juniors and doing well. When not flexing their academic muscles, Judy is still pursuing cross-country and Elroy wrestling. Judy's XC team qualified for States this fall and it was fun to go and watch all the great young runners. Both started learning to drive this summer and after only four months behind the wheel apparently completely understand the rules of the road. However, when we're out driving there's still a lot of "you're not coming to a complete stop", "slow down you're going too fast", and my favorite…"wasn't that a STOP sign back there?" Anyway, now that we’ve recovered from their earlier driving efforts we’re planning for them to get some highway driving experience during our trip home to Cincinnati this year. We'll see how that works out.

Judy and I are fine and still in our same jobs. At home, we're slowly evolving into digital, wireless, and satellite TV people--an adaptation to our children's lives that we're becoming more adept at. To keep in touch you can go to my blog, Over the Hill, at http://experiencetk.blogspot.com/. Don’t be confused, I use aliases to protect our identities in the blogosphere. This site also has links to two other blogs we like.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,
The Jetsons

Happy Black Friday

Today I've been informed is Black Friday, the first big shopping day of the holiday season and indeed, we have just came back from shopping at a nearby MegaMall. So.....Happy Black Friday. Uncle Mike, who came to visit yesterday morning, went to the Home Depot to shop, Elroy is playing computer games and Jane and Judy are napping--so it's quiet now.

Reflecting on yesterday, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We ate our Thanksgiving meal early, around 1 pm, and then went to see Casino Royale--the new James Bond movie. After the movie we came back home for dessert and watched the end of the Dallas Cowboys and Tampa Bay Bucaneers game. The movie was pretty good, the new James Bond is a real hunk--Jane mentioned that I closely resemble the actor Daniel Craig who portrays Bond. So that was cool.....just kidding.

Speaking of good-looking hunks, for this year's Thanksgiving meal we had turkey breast roll stuffed with italian sausage with extra garlic, sage, rosemary and thyme (see picture at left). No parsley. This was really good; moist and juicy with interesting flavors emanating from the sausage and spices. And carving it was a snap! This was accompanied by a salad of field greens, grape tomatos and petite mozarella balls with a balsamic vinegarette, roasted garlic red-skin mashed potatos, green beans infused with orange citrus and cornbread stuffing with turkey gravey. Yum. It was pretty good, thanks go to Martha Stewart, Emeril Laggase and Rachel Ray for excellent menu ideas. This nice meal (see picture below) was complimented with a nice beaujolais nouveau that Mike brought.

This morning we got up and relaxed in the family room.

Jane was working on the computer, catching-up on some work (on the left in picture below), Mike was reading (on the right in picture below). Speaking of Mike he just got back from the Home Depot with a collection of tiles to make trivets from. Anyway, Jane had recently put up our holiday decorations--note the lights on the mantle, and the room felt very cozy. I hope my parents and everyone else had as nice a Thanksgiving.

The Point Is.......I'm Thankful

Since it's almost Thanksgiving, I've been thinking about things that I'm thankful for--good health, loving family, relative prosperity and job security. Although there's always room for improvement among each, those are the biggies. But, it also occurred to me that there's been a lot of other more modest experiences to be thankful for. Moments of less scale that happen every now-and-then that are remarkable at the time but all too often are forgotten in the day-to-day turbulence of life. I had one of those experiences Monday last week.

To start off with, Columbus Day and Veteran's Day are two of my favorite holidays. These are the two days out of the year when Jane and I have the day off, they being government holidays, but Elroy and Judy still have school---and last Monday was Veteran's Day. So Jane and I were 'home alone' and had made hot plans to do a 15 mile point-to-point (PTP) training run into DC. Training for what.....I don't know yet, but it sounded like a good idea at the time. I hadn't done a PTP in 5 years, not since I was part of the MCRRC First Time Marathon program in 2001. The idea is to run from a nearby metro stop into DC, have breakfast, then take the metro back to the car. It's a fun way to get a not always so-much-fun long training run into your schedule. So, after the kids were off to school we outfitted ourselves for the run into the city.

It's critical on PTP runs to dress appropriately with comfortable run-tested clothes, lubricate key areas to prevent chafing and pack necessary supplies: water, aspirin, candy, some paper towels (for the occasional emergency pit stop) and some extra clothes (kept dry in a zip-lock baggie) and stuff all these in a fanny pack. The extra clothes are to change into for the metro trip back to the car.

The weather was borderline chilly around the low 40s when we left the Forest Glen metro parking lot. From there we weaved our way along Rock Creek Park, skirting some dirt trails, and once past the National Zoo, pavement the rest of the way. It was a beautiful day, high blue skies and we had a very peaceful, relaxing run into the city. We came upon the C&O canal probably after about 12 miles. At this point even if you're tired you start to get excited because your getting close to the National Mall and the end of the run. We passed the Watergate Hotel (see picture at left), the Kennedy Center, a few hobos just waking up, and made a quick jaunt over to the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall.

Usually, by the time you arrive on the National Mall the tourists crowds are starting to get heavy. I remember when I was with the First Time Marathon group back in 2001, we would attract a lot of attention when we arrived on the Mall. Of course, those training runs were in August and early September and the temperatures were brutally hot and humidity was near saturating---the sight of about 150 heavily sweating, scantily clad runners of all shapes and sizes running by I'm sure was quite a sight.

Anyway, on our run, Jane and I didn't attract any attention. We took it easy the final mile or two past the World War II Memorial, which looked fabulous (see picture a right), to our destination the Old Post Office and a hearty breakfast. After a quick wash-up and change in the public restroom we chowed down on eggs, sausage and hash browns. It was good. I'm thankful for that.