Birthday season

 

For celebration of my 48th trip around the sun, Caroline and I biked up to Concord and back

and we volunteered at Minuteman National Historical Park by helping remove invasive bittersweet plants

Heather got tickets to see Bono's stage show from his new memoir, but her COVID fever lingered and she surrendered her ticket to our neighbor. Our phones were maglocked in cases and couldn't be used during the show, but as always Bono impressed with stories and song. Memoirs are my least favorite literature genre and I almost refused the free copy of the book. Turns out it is entertaining and insightful about the man, the band, and their songs.

Erin wanted to eat at the fondue restaurant again for her birthday

We cooked an enormous carrot

and she practiced her axe chopping to feed the fireplace

For Thanksgiving Grandma Joan and Grampa Ed visited and we had a roast chicken dinner that couldn't be beat

New advent calendars: treats for the cats and puzzle erasers that I picked up in Japan

Heard of elf on the shelf? In our household we prefer fanged Elmo on the shelf. Actually Tessie, who hasn't shown signs of fear about anything, requested that fanged Elmo not appear again in her room. Must have been the glow-in-the-dark teeth

New quest at Boda Borg: Lava. It tired and bruised us, but we beat it.

Our contractors started work on our back bedroom remodeling. 

We're replacing small closets, an alcove, and a giant windowless bathroom with a walk-in closet and a slightly smaller but windowful bathroom 

At the USATF XC Junior O Nationals Erin's team (without Erin)

won 3rd place, closing the book on cross-country at Waltham Track

Caroline's competition season began for Science Olympiad. Here's how it works: Each team has 15 kids who split into pairs for events as written tests or engineering challenges. Each event is scored separately with the top team getting 1 point, second team 2 points, etc. When all events are tallied, low score wins. This year Caroline made the A team and competes in Disease Detectives (epidemiology), Forensics (crime scene analysis), and Forestry (lots of tree ID). For their first tune-up competition, Lexington A finished #1 and Caroline earned the top spot for Forensics and Forestry. In Jan and Feb she'll have competitions on the weekends sponsored by local universities.   

For her 10th birthday Tessie got her ears pierced at the same tattoo parlor as her sisters

Her dinner of choice: steak, frico (crispy cheese), garlic bread, peas, and edamame

For her party we went to a climbing gym

Capturing the state of our upstairs bedrooms: Tessie

Caroline and Erin

Mom and Dad

We joke that Tundra keeps us safe by scaring off bears and listening for incoming asteroids. So far he's done a perfect job and here he is at work

Farewell Grandpa Mike

 

Heather's Dad passed away in late October after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease

A ceremony was held in Spartanburg celebrating his life and family

There was a reception afterwards at the house where family and friends reunited

Konnichiwa Japan

 In October I took a work trip to Japan, my first time visiting Asia. Takeda's labs are in Shonan on the outskirts of greater Tokyo. We had another business meeting in Kobe, west of Osaka. Negotiating the country was easier than I expected thanks to Google Maps and Translate. The people and food were delightful and I'd like to return to see more natural and cultural sites.

My first 3 nights were in Yokohama at a hotel right near the train station. Yokohama station is one of the top ten busiest railway stations in the world and is surrounded by 12-story department stores and 

 2 subterranean levels of restaurant after restaurant. Many restaurants had plastic displays of food, and all the food that we had was amazing.

We traveled by rail to the Takeda site from Yokohama. Exposure to smokers was not a problem.

The shinkansen, or bullet trains, have dedicated stations with platforms high above the tracks. 

They travel up to 180 mph and allowed us to cover the 250 miles between Yokohama and Kobe in 2 hours and 20 min

In Kobe we had an afternoon free to explore the mountainside above the city

Cablecars rode up

for a view of the city

Among the gardens was a hot spring-fed foot soaking tub

next time we'll walk up the mountain and earn the footbath

Later we toured a new lab facility built by our collaborators. Love the green parking spots that allow drainage

Kobe at night. On TV I watched the Japan Series baseball, a week ahead of the "World" Series in the US.

Breakfast spread at the hotel

Duty-free Totoro at Narita airport. Despite mandatory mask-wearing, one of our group contracted COVID on the way home. I did not, even though I returned to a COVID situation in our house that eventually infected Erin, Caroline, Heather, and Grampa Ed. Me, Tessie, and Grandma Joan fended it off.