Happy September

I have just decided to quit Hip Hop classes. I've been a few times in an effort to learn to be an American. My conclusion is that I'm not hip enough and these classes aren't going to change that!

September has been a fantastic month. Pete has been at his new job for a bit over three weeks and seems to be loving it. He is helping the professors make their courses work online.

The first weekend in September my old flatmate from Sydney, Elisabeth, (who now lives in Manhattan) came to stay. We ate and drank and on Sunday morning Pete and I went in our first 5km fun run. I was very excited cos I managed to run the whole way - though fairly slowly! Pete did really well, and needless to say finished well before me. Elisabeth was upset that her camera died just as I came to the finish line - but I was somewhat relieved!

The next weekend we did another run, both beating our best times by about 90sec. If Pete had been a girl he would've got a trophy. I was just happy that I beat the 81 year old guy.

The third weekend we found a lovely beach track to run. I like this much better as the fun runs are a bit stressful. Pete has started doing his own runs for about 10km around town in the evenings. As I said, I've decided to drop Hip Hop, but I still do aerobics twice a week. I enrolled for what sounded like a fun class earlier this month called NIA. It turned out to be too new age for me - too much feel the energy flows and not enough ab crunches. I've found a better one now that leaves me quite exhausted twice a week.

Last weekend we went on a geology field trip with Yale. I am in the Geology and Geophysics department so we thought we should go and learn something about rocks. Pete was especially keen to go and I think he was the most excited student there, asking heaps of questions and banging rocks with a hammer. Connecticut used to be about 20ft under lava flows so it was pretty interesting learning all about that. We were also supposed to be looking for dinosaur footprints - but what they found was fairly tenuous.

This weekend we've been in Vermont. It is fall here and we went leaf-peeping. The hillsides are gorgeous - completely covered with pink, yellow and orange leaves. We managed a 3 hour hike this morning but the day before it rained all day. Instead we went touring cheese factories and wine tasting. We are eating the cheeses for dinner now as I type. I really wanted to see a woodpecker - but we only saw the holes in the trees. We went to a great American diner for tea one night. I had a locally farmed bison burger and biscuits and gravy. Biscuits are like dumplings that you would have with stew. We could hardly eat the next day.

So as you can tell, life has gotten pretty exciting since we got a car and two incomes!

Next month we are thinking of going to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving - there are cheap flights in the afternoon, the same as there would be Christmas afternoon in Australia. Thanksgiving is a big deal here so everyone tries to go home to be with their families and eat turkey.

We also have the Yale-Harvard football game in November which Elisabeth, Mel and Brian are coming to. I am giving a talk at Woods Hole on the 23rd November so it will be another busy month.

Our plans for Christmas are to visit Tassie the week before and then fly to Mildura Christmas eve until the 30th. We get back to NY just in time for new year's eve. It will be a rush trip so apologies in advance if we don't get to catch up with everyone. I will be giving a talk at CSIRO on the 21st Dec.

Stay tuned for October's adventures - hopefully a quiet one with November looking so busy. So far the only plans are that I am giving a talk at Princeton.