The Quaker House

I decided to go to the Quaker Meeting House. I have wanted to go for a while. Partly because it is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, buildings in Chappaqua but mainly because I was interesting in going to a Quaker meeting. I had been going occasionally to the Congregational Church where Charlie goes to nursery school but inspite of a absolutely brilliant sermons by the priest and the stillness of the short periods for reflection, I was getting a little bored of all the other 'stuff'. I knew Quakerism put some emphasis on personal reflection in the meetings so I stopped in one day on a cycle ride to ask a couple of questions. I liked the answers and thought I might like to go to a meeting. There is no alter as such, and no obvious 'preist', and very little other' stuff'. The benches are laid our in a rectangluar shape, with no obvious 'head' of the room. At the first meeting I attended we sat in silence for almost 50 minutes before anyone said anything. It was both very liberating and disciplined. I liked it.

Charlie's Graduation

Charlie graduated from Play Care. These are pictures of his graduation day.

Tom's Trip

Tom Handley came for a week. It was quite an adventure, and I think he had a good time. In Chappaqua it was BBQs, swim club, cycling (rather a long cycle in fact!), playing great with the boys, Ben and Jerry's, and Dunkin' Donuts. Tom was also around for Memorial Day so we went to went down for the Parade. Here are some pictures of this visit:

A couple of shots from the Memorial Day Parade. Firstly, Tom and Jill with the Taubs: Johnathan being George's coach in this team this year. Secondly, Ollie with his cub scouts; Alexanda Stasko to his left.

Tom also had a couple of trips into the city. He came in with me, and with Jill. He bought some cool sneakers, shorts and a t-shirt.

I wish I had thought of asking him to post a couple of entries on the blog with some photos as it would be signficantly better than this post.

Stuff

Five things happened recently that made me think: 1. We had to evacuate our office because of a fire. We walked down from the 22nd floor. At one point a number of firefighters walked past us, going up. In our dark stairwell it looked like some of the pictures of 9/11. I got a little scared around the 18th floor when we all started to smell smoke and when people starting talking about the fire being below us. It was fine, they put the fire out but it was a little unnerving. 2. We had an aborted landing at JKF, coming in from Austin. There was a plane that hadn't got out of the way on the ground, so we roared up up up, did a loop and landed the second time of asking. It was a little unnerving. 3. I was part of an earthtremor in an office an hour out of San Francisco during a meeting. We all thought someone else was tapping their feet very heavily on the floor. When we realised nobody was there were lots of jokes about hiding under the tables or retreating to sit by the wall. It lasted about 30 seconds. It was a little unnerving. 4. The view out of the plane was so big and neverending. I wanted to think big and neverending thoughts. It was rather empowering. 5. I helped a blind man cross the road. That was the best feeling of the lot. : )

Beatles concert

George and Ollie played in a Beatles songs concert along with lots of other kids from Jerry's stable. It was really a fund raiser for a children's charity that operated in Israel but I, rather guility, cannot remember which one. George played 'Blackbird' on piano, with Jason Unger on guitar and vocals, and Ollie played 'O-bla-di, o-bla-da' and 'Octopus' Garden' with a group. There must have been nearly 100 people in the audience. They were great.

Visa Trip to UK

We had to take a trip back to UK to get our visas renewed. We stayed with Joan and Wilf for the for most of the week then drove around to Anna and Rupert's. After a relaxing Sunday with Joan and Wilf, including a very English walk on Bookham Common.....

...we had to be ready for our visa renewal process at 8am Monday outside the American Embassy. With the jet lag meant we were very late to bed but being on UK time meant we had to get up with our bodies thinking it was 2am! The visa interviews themselves went smoothly but we had to wait in the UK for our passports to be returned to us with the visa in. We took the opportunity to visit Sally and Bob, the Whites in Bath........

...and some work contacts in London before heading north to see the Handley's.

Easter Weekend in San Francisco

I was in San Francisco on business all the preceding week and the following week. It didn't make any sense to return to New York on Saturday, only to turn round and fly back out on the Sunday. I decided to make the most of my Saturday and Sunday mornings and then work in the afternoons. Saturday morning I went to my first ever yoga class at the Sasatori yoga studio, before heading to the San Francisco MOMA,

and then off to the seafood restaurant, Swans.

After lunch I worked.

Sunday morning I set off early and walked to Fisherman's Wharf, where I hired a bicycle for the morning. I rode over the Golden Gate bridge and up into the hills of Marin County. It was steep but wonderful. Lots of serious cyclists with 'racers' and lycra and me on my hire mountain bike.

I cycled up Conzelman Rd...

...and got a great view back of the Golden Gate Bridge to San Francisco,


before pushing onto Rodeo Beach, which is on the other side of this headland, below. (I befriended a group of the 'serious' cyclists who helped direct me).

Jill phoned me whilst I was sitting by the beach. Whilst I was in San Francisco and George was in Orlando at s in Orlando in Universal studios with his friend Jeremy. Jill was going to take Ollie and The Wooz on a couple of days out up near home, though Ollie got pretty ill, confining Jill to the house for the best part of a week. Jill wasn't happy when I told her where I was and what I had been doing.

Ski Butternut

We went to Butternut. It was very good. Here is George:

And here is Ollie


There are more pictures of our winter ski-ing on the Flickr site

Charlie's Birthday

Today was Charlie's birthday party. We had the party at Club Fit. Charlie had a great time.

Charlie especially enjoyed wearing his new David Beckham England shirt; he is quite the soccer fan.

Charlie has also got into LEGO's Mars Mission and was very excited about recieving the Recon Dropship, the Switch Fighter, the Astro Fighter and the Trike (to add to the Base Station and the Mother Ship and the Speeder he and his brothers already have), as the picture below suggests.

The Wii

The Wii, at last, in our house. The Wii was this years "must-have" Christmas present. Thing was, it was a birthday present for Ollie! Ollie wanted a party this year and also wanted it the same year as his birthday - usually we have had his party in the New Year following. Lydia, mum of Ollie's friend David, suggested that instead of Ollie getting a large number of cheaper presents, as many parents as she could muster club together and get him a Wii (pro-nouced 'we' by the way). Ollie was overjoyed. It is a pretty big deal. We were also very happy though our happiness was slightly mitigated by two factors: firstly, the shortage of supplies. Though Lydia phoned, scoured on-line and went to our local Target alot, there was none to be got. The only place in the country that seemed to be selling Wiis (except Ebay at exorbitant prices) was the Nintendo store in Manhattan and that meant queueing at 3am for a chance of getting one when the store opened at 9am. By 20 January I only faced the prospect of an hours wait. That was ok, so I got it. The second factor was that we needed four controllers and Nanchucks (!), and of course the console only comes with one. Hmm, costly accessories. By early February we were ready to play.

It is totally excellent. Even on our tiny telly. If you don't know, you use the remote (and Nanchuck where appropriate) as a raquet in tennis, bat/throw in baseball, roll in bowling, etc. It isn't like really really playing but it does bear some resemblance. The technology is quiet amazing. So we now have the Wii in the basement and we can all go down and play happily, though with five in the family and a maximum of four players we have to rotate pretty furiously!