A flying visit

We were very pleased to see Miranda this last week on a flying visit.  In practice, what with her trip to New York to attend her third wedding of the month (see photo, left) and our bridge tournament, I hardly got to see her at all.  But she'll be back soon :)

By all accounts, the wedding was a very fancy affair, with the reception at Cipriani, 42nd Street.  The Amelia Earhart gang is now almost all married (in some cases to each other). 

Now, she's off to Nicaragua to do more rural veterinary service (a.k.a. spaying and neutering).  I'm sure she'll have a wonderful time.  Her Spanish is reportedly pretty darn good now, though I dare say the Limeño dialect is quite different from that of Managua.

For those of you with a healthy skepticism of the things that we do here on Earth, and especially in the United States, you might enjoy my new blog: Letter to Europa.  It's where I rant about the zany things we do on earth.  But heed the warning: politics, religion and other such subjects may be treated with all due disrespect.  By contrast, this blog will continue to be family-friendly and, going forward, rant free.  So far the new blog has received one thumbs up and one thumbs down.  Be the first to follow and/or comment.  There should be a new entry every Monday morning if all goes according to plan.

Il Trittico

Kim and I celebrated my birthday in style with a trip to New York (and a stopover in Connecticut), staying with our friends Rob and Melissa.  The highlight was The Met performance of Puccini's Trittico, which I know so well from recordings but had never seen live.  It went way beyond my expectations.  From the moment that the curtain went up on the incredibly realistic barge on the Seine, the production was inspired and flawless.  Patricia Racette was in all three operas, as Giorgetta, Angelica and Lauretta, but her performance as the eponymous Suor Angelica was without equal in my experience.  Not just her voice, which is truly magnificent, but her acting was nothing short of amazing.  For more on this opera, see my later blog entry Aimez-vous Puccini.

After the opera we went to our first Hannukah dinner at Melissa's sister.  The food was absolutely delicious.

We also spent a little time in and around Bristol, Connecticut, staying at a very nice B&B: Chimney Crest.  We visited the nation's oldest, and New England's largest, bridge club: the Hartford Bridge Club.  It's a very interesting area around there, with the Providence, Hartford and Fishkill railroad literally winding its way through town and two museums: one for carousels, one for clocks and watches.  Bristol is also the home of ESPN of course.

Meanwhile, in news from Peru, Miranda has managed to get her image into the LAN airline magazine in (see above where she is facing us at the nearest table of Rafael's). Now we know how she spends her time there.  Just kidding :)

Rafting on the Amazon

I always knew that Miranda was capable of doing just about anything -- and probably would do it whatever we said. But I never really expected to hear that she would be going rafting on the Amazon in Peru! Having completed two days of the race, I hear she's still alive and well. That's good news indeed.

She's in Peru on a Fogarty Scholarship for the academic year 09-10 and will therefore be graduating from Vet school in '11 instead of '10. She definitely seems to be having fun there in Peru. So far, she hasn't done a lot of real work, I gather, but she's still trying to get her project organized. Things operate slowly down there, I guess. Mañana.

I'm not quite sure how wide the river is at Iquitos but having watched Michael Palin's travel program Full Circle, I'd guess it's about a mile across. It doesn't seem like an ideal place to go rafting -- especially on a raft you built yourself just the previous day -- but there are plenty of crazies who come from all over the world to do it!