1-12-25

 Squirt has learned how to make bagels the official way and has been delivering them to us on Sundays. It's the best treat!

1-11-25

 I don't know where I got the energy from, but I cleaned out my art closet today.

1-8-25

 I made holiday/new year cards this year and wrote notes and sent them out.

1-2-25

 Went hiking with the kids at Chewakla. I was impressed with how much Bear walked.

12-29-24

 All my kids are home!!! They surprised me with a photographer and we made the best photos!

12-26-24

 I decided to try and make real French bread for the first time. It was delicious! Next time I should start with a .... what is it called.... a poule?

12-25-24

 It's Christmas Day and the first night of Hanukkah. As a Jew, I'm more into Hanukkah now, but still enjoy the festivities of Christmas.

12-22-24

 Cheese's little sister came over to bake bread with me today. She just moved back from Senegal after living there for 5 years. She forgot all her English.

12-21-24

 It's little A's birthday party. He is 1 and I made him a car cake based on his favorite book, Beep Beep, Honk Honk. 

12-20-24

 Dan took the mirror down in the hallway and then glued it back so that it would not shatter and hurt a grandchild if one of them hit it with a hammer, or if it just fell. The Js are coming to visit soon and we need to childproof!

12-18-24

 We are checking out of our cottage on the river today. I really liked knitting on the porch and looking at the water. There was a big ship that came by last night and it was interesting to watch it. 

12-17-24

 I always liked using the Van de Graaff generator with my students and had no idea that they guy was from Alabama. Here we are at his home in Tuscaloosa. We also went to see the grounds of Kentuck, an art fiar,  and the ruins of something I can't remember.

12-16-24

 We went on a tour of the UA campus today and saw the really cool natural history museum. What a beautiful campus- I had no idea. 

12-15-24

 To celebrate the end of the fall semester, Dan and I went to a cabin/cottage on a river near Tuscaloosa.

The cabin was quite rustic, but comfy and the view was amazing. It really reminded me of the dream I had a few months ago where I had a choice to jump into the water or not, and if I jumped, I could swim left (upstream) to where it was all happening, or float downstream to a restful redwood deck on the water. The dream meant the decision to retire or not. Well, I made that decision. I'm going downstream. No more upstream.

12-12-24

 Today is my big sister's birthday so we are no longer the same age. For three months, we are the same age each year. I got a kit to make your eyelashes curl and be darker. This is the before and after photo.

12-9-24

 I made a bunch of ornaments as gifts for my history-of-science students. For several years now, I've given ornaments to my students. These are all based on the characters we learned about in class. Each ornament has the date of when the particular scientist made their discovery.

12-4-24

 I gave a talk at the local bookstore about my new book. I brought lots of props and some special folks showed up. 

11-28-24

 It's thanksgiving at my mother's house. Squirt and Aza and their families are here too.

11-26-24

 We are on our way home and decided to try the train to get to the airport. It took forever and I was so scared we would be late.

11-24-24

 Breckenridge, Colorado from the porch outside our condo.

11-23-24

 The sunset on these mountains is stunning.

11-21-24

 Walking around town...

11-20-24

 On this day, I sat on the porch outside the condo, and looked at the mountains until they spoke to me. They said that I needed to retire to a more creative life. I had to work a lot on my data analysis today, which I really enjoy doing, but here I am in the Rocky Mountains working at the kitchen table on an Excel spreadsheet. 

11-19-24

 The main reason I have this blog, and have had it since 2007, is to help me remember my life. Now that I'm in my 60s, it's more important then ever, as I feel my memory diminishing. It's harder and harder to find memories that I know were stored in my head at one time. On this day, we flew to Colorado to go on a mountain vacation with the Js. 

11-13-24

 Another PhD student of mine defended his dissertation. That makes four! He did a wonderful job and I was so proud. There are three left.... and I wonder if all three will finish. I'm sure two will. Doc students are like children in the family tree of PhDs. I descend from Theodosius Dobzhansky, the evolutionary biologist.  

11-6-24

 I'm at a conference in Knoxville, TN and we are staying at a really cool hotel, The Collegiate. I'm here with a grad student and we met up with a former student who is also getting her PhD. 

11-4-24

 In my history of science class, we are studying the work of Fleming and Pasteur, so we decided to replicate some of their experiments by growing mold and bacteria and then trying to kill it with things they tried. 

10-31-24

 

We went trick or treating with the two grandbabies of Aza.

10-19-24

 I decided to make a set of paleo Hebrew stamps. There is no definitive source of knowledge here, just lots of interpretations of different writings.