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It’s Has been Cold last Week

minus fourteen C
Minus fourteen Celsius, looking up our driveway.

You can have cold weeks in Boston in particular during January and February. Last week while I was in Seattle it has been particularly cold and quite consistently throughout the week. Ana reported me a -23 C read off from the thermometer in our car in the early morning (was it Wednesday) and I immediately felt toasty warm in Seattle at 5 C in the morning hours. Unfortunately we do not have a photographic record of minus twenty three Celsius. On the other hand we have a photo showing a whopping -14 C in our car while I am steering the car down our driveway without properly wearing my seatbelt. Arlington can be cold in the Winter, of course Minnesota is much worse 😉

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Blake Update

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Very fitting portrait of Blake. You gotta love that kid!

I just found this excellent picture of Blake and had to post it here. Blake is making great progress in growing up: he has started to pee regularly in the bathroom, not always of course, and he does not do yet do his big business there either.
He always says he does not want to go to school, he will go ‘manja’ – that means manjana = tomorrow – but once he is there is really makes no trouble and will happily run to sit on the carpet with the other kids. They and the personnel like him there. And he is very good kid as you can see from his picture 😉

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Outing with the Boy Scouts in Belmont

Today 3-5pm we are having an outting with the scouts. In Belmont there is a habitat of Auban which is a sanctuary for wildlife mostly birds. We had a interesting set
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of games with the kids learning about endangered species and how food finding, hunting and general changes of the habitat influences the survival.

The kids are having a great time even in the cold. It is maybe -5 C and the toes started to hurt a little from the cold during the games outside until we went in and learned about owls image

and turtles. They had a stuffed owl and a life turtle. The kids really liked the explanation and were reasonably quiet.
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Chicago ORD early Morning

Just arrived here in this wonderful airport, btw ORD is derived from ORcarD field, from Seattle on the red eye. I had an excellent flight but somehow my eyes and nose do not agree. It is only now that the effects of the air conditioning and the early morning hours slowly wear off.
Last night I spent with Mike Miller and LJ in a very nice Seattle style restaurant…. we had a very nice conversation about life, children, houses, projects etc. etc. They seem to be in a good spot and are working on setting up a family. I hope they come over and visit some day soon.
Anyway meanwhile here in Chicago I realize they do not have the 6am flight to Boston anymore. I am shocked, the first flight out really is at 8:55am, really! I arrived at 5am and already planned how I was going to do standby on the 6am flight but noooo, there is no such flight.

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Plane about to board and me having slept a little more.
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My Morning Walk in Seattle to the Workshop

After ironing my shirt and my pants, very odd habit I have started to develop here in Seattle, and after catching up with Ana and the kids I am on my way through the fresh morning here to the physics building at the university of Seattle just a few blocks from my hotel, the Watertown. This morning I take some time and take a few photographs to leave a little bit of an impression of my visit here.

I am wondering about what Bernd Surrow, one of my ex-colleagues from MIT, told me that he took his oldest son with him to workshops as early as his son turned eight years old. I should take Ivan with me for my next trip. The next trip I will go as it seems to Aspen 😉 Ivan needs to start learning how to ski.

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Seattle – City of Coffee

First morning in Seattle, it is different from Boston…. Not yet sure though what it is. It seems somehow more Asian and somehow more modern. Need to see how I can make that more precise. Anyway…. enjoying my coffee in the Pineapple Cafe this morning.

imagePineapple Cafe on 43rd Street

The picture shows a nice wall drawing in the cafe which is part of the general atmosphere here in the area. As the cab driver assured me, it is not always as foggy here (they had fog for four days in a row already) and the city is very expensive, he moved from Los Angeles and was hoping for better prices on real estate but he had to pay even more. Let’s see whether I can figure out what the difference is between Boston and Seattle while I am here. It feels quite different!

Just found this interesting discussion and I mostly agree with the general statements that Boston has better public transport, is dirtier, has better education opportunities, feels more urban and is more stressed out. Weather of course is more intense in Boston and the laid back west coast folks like that. Both have really nice sides it seems, I love to live in Boston feel the seasons, enjoy the dirty city and take advantage of the excellent universities.

Here is another impression from a coffee shop in Seattle, not a chain but one of these more unique ones you find a lot of at the west coast.
IMG_20130122_125806Solstice Coffee on University Avenue

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Workshop in Seattle

Convenership transitions are not really step functions. The effects taper off with some time constant. I am now on my trip to a workshop I had agreed on being at well before the end of the year. I have never been to Seattle but from a number of Facebook friends I know that the area is gorgeous. Maybe almost as nice as Boston. I guess the mountains are more impressive over there.
In the past I have been several times in Vancouver which is very close and said to be quite similar. Let’s see how it is over in the west this time of a year.
My flight goes through Newark and the flight is overbooked. I am writing this all from my comfortable 10A seat using the new mobile wordpress app. They tried to rebook some people to the direct flight, but that would have brought me into Seattle later (1hr20mins) and implied also a long wait at Logan. I decided to stick with my flight…. it seems to be going fine. This week in Seattle I have to use to get ahead workwise so I can make good use of the last week with the family. It is called a workshop, so working is somehow implied. Lots of house projects lined up so good to have a free back when coming back to Boston.

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Dressing the Skylight

Last weekend and this weekend I used to dress the skylight from the inside and I know now why the people we hired originally to install the skylight did not want to do it. The work is not very hard but it takes some time as the pieces have to fit and properly match up to the window on the one hand side and to the hole in the roof on the other hand side. It took,me 2 itterations to match both aspects and the product is certainly not perfect but it does not look terrible either. I am writing this while I am waiting for my flight to leave to Seattle and cannot add the picture but I will do that later. Some painting will still be required to make the attic look beautiful. It certainly is functional right now.

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Soccer with Markus and Ivan

Today is Sunday and at noon our two oldest have their indoor soccer practice. At 11:30 I informesd our two rascals that they should start to get ready. About ten minutes later they were of course still watching/playing and I had to turn into the enforcer.
Markus gave me the usual I want to quit routine while Ivan got ready pretty calmly. Markus today was not very motivated probably based on his I did not make a goal feeling.
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Here is Ivan and one of the kids from Belmont. His father plays actually on my squash team at MIT.
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The practice takes 1.5 hours….. lots of time for me to grab a coffee at the vending machine, write a blog post, take some pictures and have a good conversation with my squash team mate.
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