Back to Rochester, NY - for a weekend.

Our friend Mishkat has a big birthday coming up this weekend, so Jan and I took the opportunity to head back to Rochester, NY. It's funny, walking down the roads we know so well, seeing people we still remember (and who remember us). So familiar. Yet so different. But I'm getting ahead of myself :).

  Thursday, 01/05. We're heading to the airport and spend most of the time on planes. The kitties are again at the Catnap Inn where Sidney has taken such great care of them last August, and Pepper is with our neighbor Billie this time. She has a dog too, Maggie, and Pepper and Maggie get along really well. Plus, Billie keeps sending us lots of video updates of Pepper eating, playing, going on a walk, sleeping, ... It's great to see that he's having fun while we are gone. I hope he still wants to come back to us on Sunday! I'll post some of the videos later in a separate post.
Right after we arrived in Rochester I see an email from Billie - she has accidentally locked herself out of our house. While Pepper is with her outside in our yard, his food is still inside. Thank goodness it is only 4 in Wilsonville, so she can get to our vet and buy a new bag of food for him. Brief shock, but I guess that settles whether or not Pepper sleeps at her house or ours ;).

Jan and I will spend the nights at the Mt. Vernon B&B. Jan's parents spent a few nights here in 2004 (I think?), when they visited us the first time. It's nice, although we are not really their target audience (wall paper with flowers in the bath room...).

  Friday, 01/06. Today we've visited the U of R and also stopped by our old apartments. Our first stop was the bookstore where we bought new UofR shirts (ours are pretty old already of course), a mug for Billie ("Wish my dog had a snooze button") and some toys for Maggie and Pepper. Next, we headed to Bausch & Lomb, the physics building, and checked if Sondra is still there - she is, and she immediately recognized us. Not only that, she still knows that Jan is working in industry and likes wind surfing, and that I am teaching at a liberal arts college. Quite remarkable (well, at least coming from someone like me who has trouble remember names and faces after only a few weeks!). We then got a lab tour in Nick's labs. Unfortunately, Nick himself is in Singapore (bad timing!), but it is fun to see our old lab spaces again. And there is so much STUFF in there that's not being used at all - oh how I wish I could take some of that with me, I'd know what to do with it!

After the lab tour we went to get lunch at the Dinosaur BBQ. Yummy!







Saturday, 01/07: We had a good breakfast during which we also met Nicki, Phil & Claire's African Grey. Here he is with Claire.

And I also got hold him for a while.

After those pictures he even settled down on my shoulder. Very cute and friendly bird!

We spent the rest of the morning in the living area (Jan was browsing the internet and I was reading application for a faculty position at WU since I am on the search committee and the application deadline in in only a week from now - better get a little bit of a head start.

Mishkat picked us up at around noon and we headed to the Simply Crepes in Pittsford, NY. We had never heard of that restaurant before - despite having lived in the area for 5 years... Had we known earlier, I am sure we'd have gone there more often! What a great concept. Just to get your mouth watering - here are a few pictures of our lunch. Yum!

Mishkat, Jona, Michaela, Jan, Chris

It was great seeing Mishkat and Chris again, and we chatted for quite some time there. At around four Mishkat drove us to the RIT. He just accepted a tenure track position there last Fall, so we were of course curious to see it. The campus is pretty cool - a lot more modern than the UofR one, but still true to the general agreement of how campuses should look like.
The building behind Mishkat is "his".

And once we arrived in his office, guess what we did - yup, we talked physics. Hehe.

Overall this was a great trip. I am glad we went, even though it was just short and pretty expensive. But the great conversations and the fun we had seeing old friends again made more than up for that.