Fall Break

I'm going to come out right now and say my fall break was too short- that dratted Physics GRE exam was scheduled for 830am Saturday morning (a great way to kick off your vacation, I assure you!), and honestly it's amazing how much a difference one night makes when you only have four to work with. But a few hours after I hopped on a plane-
(The view over Western PA was just awesome...)

...And ended up for a few days in New Hampshire. Where the most beautiful foliage on the planet was in full swing, of course, so this was the best Fall Break activity one could concieve of doing.
Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous... Though to be fair, I was probably a week late for foliage because it had clearly peaked on the mountainsides (if this sounds odd as Ohio hasn't yet, keep in mind it's already snowing up there meaning it's a fair bit colder!). Luckily the lakeside keeps things a few precious degrees warmer, meaning the area was ripe for canoeing about to see the leaves. And what a stereotypically pretty activity it was too- this time of year most of the cottages are vacant on weekdays, not to be visited until next summer in most cases, so while there were one or two motorboats on Sunday I saw or heard none at all on Monday/Tuesday. Absolutely silent, and the only ripples were the ones from paddling.
Another pretty foliage shot from the lake. The odd structure to the right is actually a hundred-year-old boat house, built by a wealthy Bostonian who used to own the whole lake shore in this area back then. His daughter had a steam-powered yacht with a tall mast (click here for a picture), thus the odd boat house was constructed to accommodate it.
This little guy was what got me most excited about going past the boat house that day- believe it or not, it's a loon! Loons are very iconic for their gorgeous summertime plumage on lakes in northern North America, of course, but this guy is busily changing into his winter duds. If you look at a close-up of the picture you'll see his beak is still primarily black and he still has some semblance of a checkered back, but overall he looks a totally different bird.

And because I've always liked loons ever since I did my "bird report" in 5th grade on them and I'd never seen one ready for winter before, trust me, this was very exciting. Unfortunately the loon decided this was fall so he didn't need to stick around for photo ops anymore, so he dived under for a long time and we never really saw him again.
The reddest tree I have ever seen in my life, even if you might not be able to tell in the picture. You could spot this tree as standing out even though it was on the opposite shore from us.
This picture was taken on Tuesday, when it was cloudy so the leaves didn't look half as impressive, but I was nonetheless a fan of the orange tree and thought I would post this in the name of tree foliage diversity.

Tuesday was also noteworthy in canoeing because I went out alone, and it was dead calm again so I set off for the opposite shore. Except it turned out on the opposite shore it wasn't calm at all and in fact quite breezy, and believe you me when the wind picks up canoes just go. And this wind will always blow in the exact opposite direction of the way you want to head! To make a long story short, there was a fair bit of frantic paddling while kneeling in the middle of the canoe to overcome the wind (as opposed to the seat in the back- more awkward, but more stable), and my jeans got a bit wet. Not complaining though, as the story of paddling small craft over troubled waters is way better than whatever I would have been doing at school.
And I will now finish my fall break post by posting a picture of my Halloween gingerbread man from the local grocery, as he was just that awesome. Almost too cool to eat, until I remembered the only thing cooler than looking at a Halloween gingerbread man is cannibalizing him. The poor guy's disguise was no match for the hungry canoer.

Lounging Around

After a hectic goodbye from California, I am taking a break this week in New Hampshire before the semester starts next week. And clearly I am spending it well- as everyone knows, no vacation is perfect without reading old paperback novels while lounging on the back of a giant inflatable killer whale...

I found the killer whale (promptly dubbed "Willy," of course) two summers back when he washed up on our shore after a big storm. No one came around to claim him after a few days, at which point informal lake rules decreed him as ours and I realized how much my life was missing in the pre-whale days. Ah, this life of busily doing nothing is a good one.

Ski Gunstock! (and Killington)

As some people know, I have a minor obsession about skiing that runs in the family. It's just so much fun to slide down a mountain in the fresh air! This year my family spent a few days skiing in New Hampshire and Vermont before driving back home from my cousin's wedding, so here's the second batch of pictures from that occasion.

The second place we skied was Gunstock, a nice little mountain that has got to have the best view of any ski resort anywhere. This is because it's right on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee, the very large lake my family loves to visit, and here's a picture of it from our place-
(By the way, in this picture the water is actually frozen ice that happened to freeze like that, and that little dot is one of the first ice fishermen of the season!)

As a result of that, the awesome thing about skiing on Gunstock is all you do the entire way down is drink in the view-
My pictures don't quite capture it (it was still pretty cold, and my camera doesn't like functioning well in subzero temperatures) but trust me, it was gorgeous. Interestingly, this picture looks back to the spot where I took the first picture from toward the left and back from that large-ish island (Bear Island), as one of those littlish islands is the one I am forever taking pictures of in front of our house.
Here's my brother, Patrick, standing at the top of Gunstock. Before I forget to mention, the other interesting thing about this resort is all the runs have ammunition-related names, such as Trigger, Pistol, and Six Shooter. (And at Wildcat, detailed in an earlier post, everything is named after kitties.) I suppose the Second Amendment is alive and well at this place.

Anyway, for our very last day we decided to leave early and drive to Killington, Vermont and spending the night somewhere after the day of skiing there. Killington is the biggest ski resort on the East Coast and I'd only skied there once before, so I was really excited to see what it would be like, but unfortunately I was a bit disappointed. See, we'd been spoiled on days prior by incredible snow in New Hampshire, as there had been a large snowstorm just a few days beforehand, but Killington apparently didn't get a lot of that snow and was very icy as a result. Combine that with the blustery weather, people saying it wasn't icy at all for Killington (you mean you normally need ice skates?), and very expensive ski tickets (I think it was $70 per person, whereas the little NH resorts were maybe $25 max) mean I'm probably not going to go out of my way to go there again when there are so many other great places in the area. (To be fair, it's not like I paid for my own lift ticket as I was there with my family, but this is something to keep in mind should I end up as a poor graduate student in New England.)

One thing I really liked about Killington though was the fact that the wind had turned all the trees into "powdered sugar" as my family calls it- you know, when the pine trees are so coated in snow that it looks like they're made of candy. Absolutely gorgeous! So here's me acting a bit macho on the edge of a precipice with a grove of powdered sugar pine trees in the background.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Happy New Year! As of right now it is COLD in NH: the mercury is set at 8F last I checked (about 3pm), meaning today we took a break from skiing as no one was really gung-ho about skiing when it'd be 10 degrees colder than that. Yesterday was fun though: it was a balmy 15F at the base of Wildcat Mountain where we went, so here is my brother, sister, and me with Mount Washington in the background. My sister's the one in white, I'm the one in light blue, and my brother's the one in red. Gorgeous day and lots of great snow, even if it was on the nippy side, hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Best part of skiing yesterday: skiing with the several inches of fresh powder on the ground, which is great because this part of the country usually just has icy crud. Worst part: my brother was cutting across a trail to another one, going past a tiny chute called "The Elevator Shaft" correctly but deciding to cut down later on what must be known as "The Elevator Shaft That Never Passed Building Code Regulations." Must've been an old hiking trail it was that narrow... anyway, as it turns out, you can successfully go down a narrow black-diamond-steep chute if you strategically ram yourself into snowbanks that grew up around trees in an "I've skied 15 years so I know what I'm doing" manner. The things I check out so you don't have to...
Anyway, I'll leave you with this picture of the island in front of my family's NH place as it looked earlier today: most of the lake is frozen (though I wouldn't walk out too far yet) but it doesn't really freeze much here due to an underground spring. Give the ice another few weeks, though, and it will be covered in little fishing huts, some of which take the word 'little' to amazingly large places, and ice sailboats that go as fast as a car on the highway. New Hampshire is a fun place in the wintertime, even if it's a bit nippy out.

Two Stories

1) Yesterday I went ice skating for the first time in a year with my best friend from high school. I used to do this a LOT, but stopped going as frequently in high school for a variety of reasons so it was interesting. I was rather uneasy on the ice, and my brain immediately thought "wow, that looks really cold and hard!" to which my stomach thought "hey, let me see!" I then remembered that I never really liked ice skating very much, but it does provide the good opportunity to chat with an old friend so we stuck with it awhile longer. In the end I was nicely humbled by all the little kids speed-skating in circles around us and have some really impressive bruises on my kneecaps for my effort.

2) Tomorrow the Cendes family will climb into our car for the exciting 12-hour drive to New Hampshire. We tend to avoid NH at this time of year (because the low next week will be 8F, the high will be 12F and the like), but I have a cousin getting married in a huge multi-day weddings this weekend in Portsmouth, NH, so away we go. It'll hopefully be fun- I have a pretty fuchsia dress, my cousins are a fun group to hang out with, and odds are there will be one or two entertaining incidents we'll all talk about for years to come. Hooray!

If we don't freeze to death, we will also try and get a few ski runs in the week after the wedding. Unlike ice skating, I have no qualms with barreling down a hillside as fast as a car so I'm really looking forward to this! Hopefully there will be pictures assuming I find my camera charger between now and tomorrow...

Fall Break 1- New Hampshire

Time to start putting up the fall break pictures! I was in New England for virtually all of it, which is always really fun to do in the fall because of the leaves changing-
So pretty! For the weekend part (Saturday and most of Sunday) I was in New Hampshire, and the weather was utterly, completely gorgeous to match. Blue skies, unseasonably warm... to be honest it made the leaves not quite as nice as they often are in most years due to the warmth, and despite being past the peak for foliage there were still quite a few green leaves out there.
This is my mom and dad, canoing by. I post it because my mom made the astute observation that it was the sort of weekend that they take all the postcard and tourism photographs in so as to get everybody to visit New Hampshire, so I'm doing my part.
I paddled along in a kayak, as kayaks are way cooler than canoes will ever be.
This is probably my favorite tree I saw, just because of how vivid it is. Don't get me wrong, the red trees are nice too, but they're a little overrated and trees that turn pure yellow are much more stunning.
We also took advantage of the scenery by climbing up a little hill called East Rattlesnake not too far away on Saturday. East Rattlesnake overlooks Squam Lake, which is where the movie On Golden Pond was filmed (which if you're my age you probably haven't seen or heard of, but almost won the Best Picture Oscar in the early 80s).
My brother, Patrick, deciding to end it all at the top of East Rattlesnake. Ok not really, he was jumping to a ledge not visible to the camera in an attempt to get a good Facebook picture, but we had to do it over a few times to get it timed right from several angles. And all the while my mom and dad were criticizing us for some unknown reason...
Rainbow! Saturday just before sunset there was a very brief rainstorm, which resulted in the most beautiful and perfect rainbow I have ever seen. It was vividly bright and went from one side of the sky to the other without breaking, and there was even a double bow... ah, so beautiful! The colors even repeated a bit in the rainbow itself- as in, there was a second stripe of purple under the first- and I'm not exactly certain what causes something like that but I'd never seen it before. Some odd reflection within the water droplets I guess?

Anyway, New Hampshire was gorgeous and if you ever get the chance to go there in the fall you should unquestionably take it. Here's one last nice fall picture for the road-

Incubus!

Forgot to mention that Sunday, my last night in New Hampshire, I saw Incubus! Yay! They were doing a concert in Guilford, New Hampshire of all places, so my siblings and myself went to check them out.

(By the way, if you are culturally illiterate and have no idea who Incubus is, please go listen to Drive and Stellar and then come back when you are properly enlightened. You'll thank me for it, I promise...)

Now I will confess upfront that we were unfortunately not setting our hopes too high for this concert: the previous year we'd seen Counting Crows at the same venue where they played all slow, whiny songs not even on the CDs, and then refused to play Mr. Jones despite the crowd chanting it throughout the whole encore. (I understand that bands can't play all their famous songs at once, but if you ever reach #1 with a song you are required to play that song at all subsequent concerts because that's what people pay to see. Or at least any songs you are generally known for!!!) Thankfully last year's concert wasn't a complete waste as Goo Goo Dolls played before Counting Crows and were much better, but that didn't stop us from joking the whole way "man, I hope Incubus doesn't pull a Counting Crows on us..."


Thank goodness, Incubus delivered: they went through Drive, I Wish You Were Here, Megalomaniac, Oil and Water, and even Stand by Me as a cover. They even played a song from their next album during the encore, which was called Punch Drunk if I recall correctly.

The other noteworthy thing about this concert is how we ended up with really good seats: earlier last week my brother dropped a pair of shears on his foot and needed nine stitches, meaning he was going around with a golf club cane during the concert. His limping meant he (and my sister and I, as an extension) got VIP treatment from pretty much all the staff, and even got front-row seating on the lawn which was pretty sweet. To quote my brother who bravely hobbled without complaint, "I really don't like political correctness, but I really like it when it's in my favor."

So yes, good concert. It would have arguably been better if, in the aftermath, I didn't have to get up at 330am to catch my 6am flight back to Cleveland the next morning, but I guess you can't be too picky when such opportunities make themselves known. Plus it was so worth it.

Live Free Or Die

It's very New Zealandish in New Hampshire. No wonder I like both so much. Great weather too, check out the Weirscam to see what I mean...

Catch you guys next week, when I'm in Cleveland and no longer in the prettiness.

From the Giuliani Campaign Trail

I'm in New Hampshire this week, and one of the cool things about New Hampshire this summer is the fact that all the presidential canidates show up if you wait long enough! So today my family and I decided to act on a moment of opportunity and went to the nearby town of Rochester, New Hampshire to a campain stop for Mr. Rudy Giuliani.

As covered in The New York Times (man, it's always so cool to say you were somewhere the Times was!), his main speech at this stop was covering the issue of health care. It ends up- and I didn't realize it until I went online and searched for what reporters were saying- that this was Giuliani's unveiling of his plans for national health care in the United States, which explains the seemingly disproportionately large amount of media present!

You can't see it, but the back rows were completely filled with important-looking journalists typing away on laptops and the whole room was standing room only- it reminded me quite a bit of the 2004 Vice-Presidential Debates at CWRU.

Essentially, Giuliani's health care plan comes down to arguing that American health care is one of the greatest in the world (which I agree with- no one can argue the great quality of health care in this country for those who have insurance) and the main problem is the fact that there are people who can't afford insurance since truly poor people qualify for Medicaid. So he decided that the "American way" to do all this was to get more people to buy into health care plans on an indavidual basis (read: no longer through companies, and with tax incentives on it) so they could choose what plans they want, and the economy would thus make the prices decrease and make it more affordable. He also said he wanted to go through with tort reform (read: get rid of rediculous lawsuits) which excited me more than anything else he said today because I hate, hate, hate the current ligitous system in the United States for reasons that merit their own blog post in the future.

(Complete aside here, what's with the candidates referring to themselves by their first names this year? You know, "Rudy," "Hillary," etc. Yeah, it took me awhile to figure out how to spell Giuliani, but I already know that in the voting booth it's going to say "Rudolph Giuliani" and then where will all the "Rudy" supporters be?)

After the health care speech, Giuliani then had a "town hall" style forum in New England tradition, in which he took questions from members of the audience. I didn't get my own question out despite practically waving my hand around (I had a great question on civil liberties lined up too, hmph!), but the posed questions were all quite interesting and ranged from topics such as education and immigration and legalizing pot and whatever else you can think of... it's kind of hard to summarize such things, but the best I can do is by saying he got ovations from the (slightly para-)phrases "education should be in the hands of the parents, not the government" "we need to stop illegal immigration," and "I am for legal immigration, but assimilation of new immigrants should require the ability to read and speak English." Tort reform earlier also got an ovation, just to give you an idea of what ideas were successful.

Oh, and then afterwards Giuliani walked through the crowd a bit in order to shake hands and kiss babies and all that stuff politicians do. The thing is though, my sister and I stood right in front of him for a good minute, but he never shook our hands once! This was even after we sucked up a bit and thanked him for speaking and all that... hmph, the meanie. Let it be noted that the blogger is not amused.

In conclusion, I guess I should say something about what I think of Giuliani right? Well I must admit I was impressed- the man spoke very well and very rationally, something you don't often hear from politicians and thus made a good impression. Further, he took a very nice, libertarian stance on most things and I rather liked that as well... so I guess a good way of summing things up at this point is Giuliani is my favorite Republican because he really harks back to the Barry Goldwater type of Republican (you know, what the party is supposed to be when not taken over by religious nuts), but I can't act on it as I am a registered Independent, meaning I can't vote in party primaries in Ohio. Ah well, these things happen, but it was nonetheless interesting to go check out.

One Saintly Momma Duck

Spotted this on a rock in the lake a few days ago-

For those who can't see properly, it's a momma wood duck with twenty-seven, yes, twenty-seven!, ducklings. With the exception of one who was slightly bigger, all the ducklings are the same size and I've seen the family paddling up and down the shorefront more than once. (Well they don't really paddle, they just sort of hydroplane in this gigantic cloud of fluffy cuteness.)

Looking into it though, wood ducks lay no more than 15 eggs usually, so something is amiss here. Some other wood duck had problems so this one adopted the brood, perhaps? Either way, she must have a great deal of patience with so many little ones.

EDIT: Bird girl saves the day! My sister the bird-studying graduate student looked into it and informs me that these are actually not wood ducks (as I'm used to calling them) but rather common goldeneye ducks, which often mix their young with other families. That could explain what's going on here!

I could write a new post...

... or I could just enjoy the newfound summer hanging out with family and friends, and only stop by the library with Internet connection on occasion. Trust me, when you've just finished your fifth move in a year (the postal forwarding service hates me), you suddenly get other priorities.

Will be back once I am settled in some state and have rethought what to do with this blog space. My appologies, and thanks for your patience everyone!