Happy New Year! YEAR OF THE TIGER

 

Year of the Tiger

Happy Lunar New Year! We wish you all well in this new year.

It's been a rough ride, hasn't it? We hope you are all healthy and safe, and hope that 2022 shows us an end, or at least a calming, of the pandemic.

Ursula and Cullen
enjoy the snow

I'm writing from a 70s-era hotel on Lake Fanny Hooe in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We are here to enjoy the winter weather. Yesterday we cross-country skied at Keeweenaw Mountain Lodge built by the CWA in the 1930s.

Meet me at the corner
of Haight and Ashbury

In November, we went out to San Francisco to visit Ellis. He is an excellent host! He took us sailing, and we explored the Palace of Fine Arts. We missed Dev, who was visiting her own parents at the time.

The Rotunda

Because of the Covid, both Ellis and Dev were working from home. Ellis is a compiler at Meta, and Dev does something techie at Redfin.

Claude
our Royal Palm Tom

What is Michelle cooking up?

Here we are getting ingredients

In October, Dylan and Michelle came down to visit, and we processed poultry. There is always a lot of cooking going on when these two are around.

They are busy with their new(ish) enterprise, Bananaphone Treats, where they make wonderful sherbet, sorbets, and other deliciousness. You can follow their instagram at bananaphone_chicago to learn about their pop-ups. The Chicago Reader featured them in an article, calling Dylan "some kind of MNF MVP." 😃

In August, we sailed in Grand Traverse Bay with our friend, Elaine and her daughter, Addie. Next time we hope Matt, and their other daughter, Marlys, will come along.

Elaine and Adelade

Mary getting some sun

We took our annual backpacking trip in the Porkies (just about 100 miles west of where we are now). Every year we think it's the last time for our geriatric dogs, but at 13, Ursula and Cullen are doing great. They love being on the trail.

Cullen, the pack dog

Michael found me these wonderful
birch firewood holders
I found the charcoal pencils in the fire pit

dog tired

We try to get a site next to the lake for easy access to water. This time we had to book a campsite half a mile from the lake for our first and last nights. Because of the drought, all the streams were dry, so Mary and the dogs set up camp while Michael hiked to the lake and back to collect water. Our lakeside campsite (which we called paradise) was another six miles in. Mary got confused about the dates, so on what we thought was our last night, we hiked back to the previous site, only to realize we had one more day in the delightful lakeside site. We had to turn around and hike back again. No real problem, just...um...12 extra miles ... with packs on our backs. The dogs were a little confused about why we were doing this, but they took it in stride. The next day we had to repeat the whole six miles and then some to get to the trailhead.

camp kitchen

Mary and Lila ready to fly!

In July, we visited Chandra and Lila in Seattle. It was the first time to see them since their Covid Wedding (only their Seattle"pod" attended, but we saw the beautiful pictures. They got married on the beach with the two dogs in attendance.) and they took us on a parent trip to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. We got to meet Lila's parents, Ana and Roberto, who are delightful. They are both artists and a lot of fun. We stayed in a very sweet B&B in a Victorian house.

Mary and Ana, Lila's Mother

Fresh Fish!

Flying over the Sound

Mary, Michael, and Chandra

Isn't he fierce?

Bobblehead Monk in a taxicab

Old Town has beautiful light shows

Here I am at Hogwarts--er ZJU

In June, Mary returned from China, where she'd been teaching since February. She spent four weeks quarantined in a hotel, but then lived on Zhejiang University campus. The grounds are  picturesque and the students and faculty are friendly. She was supposed to get back to campus in the fall and then in the spring, but she had a string of bad luck, from the visa company losing her passport to an increase in COVID leading to cancelled flights, and she has had to teach two more semesters online. She loved her stay there and hopes to get back next fall

We wish you all a happy and healthy Tiger year. The web oracle says that it's a water year, and the Tiger always finds a way out, so we should expect that this year we will be courageous and may expect adventure. Please let us know how you are doing. Drop us a line, or leave us a comment here.

Much love,

Mary and Michael