Cary Spring Scenes

Apart from the several excursions noted, as well as holidays and birthdays, and theatrical performances, our nearly ten months in Cary were fairly uneventful. Most days we sorted through our stuff, looking especially for prospective eBay offerings, looking for things to toss, to give to charity, to keep. Vicki sold more than $6000 of stuff on eBay or locally, several of the sales really surprising us...items we thought were sort of idiosyncratically ours but turned out to be in some serious demand. Despite having no specific goals, when it came time to pack up and vacate, were were disappointed that there was still so much stuff left. I never really got to the several boxes of files and mementos from my work life. These minutiae are the hardest to deal with. Next time. Oh, in addition to the death-cleaning bit, we also did quite a bit of walking, probably averaging 12k steps a day. And for the first time in some years, we watched some TV. Then sold the TV.

The pix below and in the next post will have to represent the rest of our time in Cary. I may add to them or edit further as time permits. But I'm already two weeks behind in my coverage of Paris!

Vicki's sister Marie came to visit us in late January

Out walking

Vicki broke a bone in her right hand in January;

dealing with it, treatment, and recovery, all

had a bearing on our work...I tried to convince her

it was a great opportunity to become ambidextrous,

but she didn't buy it

Daughter Rebecca's February birthday...one of the big ones

An item we sold that we will (hopefully) not miss...our bed-bug oven

(for treating clothes, etc., killing bed bugs and their eggs)

My aspiration to become a Wagner scholar now officially dismissed;
and the scores sold to someone in Texas (Das Barbecu?)

Another item sold, with mixed feelings...my ultra 

light-weight backpack, which got us around five continents...

A disagreement among the doctors: in downtown Durham a bus
from Chapel Hill chides Duke Health for using animals in medical
teaching; there is no end to the hard-court rivalry

Another item not to be missed: our grizzly-proof food sack,

for back-packing

Spring finally arriving

In Cary's downtown park, another edition of the junior entrepreneur

fair

P has won 'best in show' at several of these fairs around

the Triangle; this time her jewelry-making skills earned

her a ton of money

At our birthdays dinner at the Fairview in Durham

Nice finish

Vicki's birthday brunch

And three-generation tea party

Surviving picture of Easter brunch at the Peck and Plume

in downtown Cary

The carb table

Of great interest: wild wisteria in Cary, pockets of it here and there,

vining to the tops of the pine trees; the bloom lasts a week

or so, then, all gone...

One of the rescue bikes I acquired and fixed up in Cary; 

now in more expert hands;  the female version is now Penelope's bike

New home: now a merely 10x15 storage unit, temperature and

humidity controlled

Some gorgeous sunsets in Cary, if you don't mind an obstructed view

One of P's 13th birthday gifts from us was a second day at Disney

Paris--Vicki and P are en route from Les Halles as I write...

Part of the celebration...blooming of a Chinese flowering

tea we'd been carrying around with us since Beijing, 2008

The cicadas were with us from late April...not as

bad as some other places, though still creepy and

icky; and noisy

En route to her first prom

Another of P's extracurricular activities were more or less
weekly sessions at our apartment acquiring an assortment of
culinary and textile skills...here working on the dress she
made herself (pix later)

Just  before we left for Paris, we got to see P in her theater arts spring

production of Frozen

Very talented young woman!

Interim Update #1,281

Nous sommes maintenant à Paris. In the last week, as planned, we put everything in storage (again! but far less this time), vacated our Cary apartment, and returned to our Paris apartment, same one as last year, in the 6th, by Luxembourg Garden. We're here for six weeks. And then, ever on...

As usual, I'm behind on the blog, owing a couple more posts on our time in Cary. We're settled-in here already, and I'll get to the blog forthwith. Patienz!

Us, Saturday evening, Luxembourg Garden, 250 steps from our
appartement

Total Eclipsters

Last fall, Vicki read of the then-impending April 8th total solar eclipse. We immediately decided we wanted to see it and quickly wrote to Indianapolis family/friends Joey and Jodi to see whether their spare bedroom might be available around that time. Indeed it was, so we rented a car for the week, studied up on astronomical matters, solar and lunar periodicity, etc., and made our travel plans. 

Said plans included "dropping by" younger daughter Rachel's house in DC, to deliver several boxes of her childhood mementoes, a TV, and other items, and to pick up items we had left there on previous visits, as well as others she wanted to pass along, maybe even have eBay maven Vicki sell. Vicki has an expansive notion of "along the way," so along the way, after DC and the stop in Indianapolis, were also brief visits with Mead/Stephenson family genealogist cousin Ann in Salem, IN, and then with sister Marie in Knoxville. We were gone about a week all-told. See map below.

It was not our first total solar eclipse. That was on March 7, 1970, in Miami, FL. I had just graduated from Florida State University (BA, honors in both philosophy and religion) and was working as a bellboy (bellman then) at the Miami Springs Villas.* No philosophy jokes, please. (Ask me about Joe Namath, Arthur C. Clarke, Eddie Arcaro, et. al.; also where I got into graduate school a few months later). Vicki was doing her student teaching at Shenandoah Jr. HS, and, accordingly, has no memory of any of this. Teaching junior high will do that to you. At the Villas, somehow I had arranged to be outside during totality, as it is now called...I think my excuse was something about making sure all the golf carts were plugged in and charging. My chief memory is of standing there, in the bamboo grove where the golf carts were charging, observing the increasing darkness, listening to the increasingly weird behavior of the birds and other critters.... I doubt that I looked at the (eclipsed) sun...maybe briefly. There were no specialized glasses for the event. Mostly I was impressed by what was going on on the ground. But I digress.

Along the way

Our steed, a Hyundai Genesis; I did not like this car; next time
we will ask for a Leviticus or Deuteronomy

Crossing the Ohio River; not pictured: daughter Rachel; we had a
productive and good but short visit in DC, sufficiently short that I
neglected to get any pix; she is pictured elsewhere on this blog; amply

Late lunch Bahama Mamas at Schmidt's in Columbus, along the way;
a favorite place in a town where we spent 13 formative years...five graduate
degrees between us and my first actual full-time "permanent" employment

Next afternoon, we are with Joey and Jodi and our nephew, Joseph,
Joey's son, at a friend's house nearby, an eclipse party sponsored by
their church discussion group (I think Joey said it was the agnostic
Methodist discussion group; but, no matter, they were really nice
and interesting people and offered some wonderful eats); plus,
where better to view an eclipse than on a suburban landscaped lake....

Trying on my new shades

Group portrait

By 3PM, things were getting pretty dark

And then, totality, as seen by my Pixel 8 Pro

Ditto

And then by my old-fangled but still impressive Panasonic Lumix
ZS65 

Jodi notes the dip their solar panel system took for those three
minutes; temperatures dropped almost 6 degrees during the eclipse

Moving right along, after another great day and evening, and dinner,
with Joey and Jodi and Joseph, we are down the road a bit, in Salem,
having lunch with Vicki's cousin Ann, Mead/Stephenson family
genealogist, scanning new-found pix, etc; again, I failed to get any
more relevant pix...Vicki's mother is left-most on the bottom row...

Lastly, after a splendid day with Marie and Norm and Stacey, but no
pix of them--again, they are amply represented elsewhere on the blog--
we are on the way home, stopping at the Buccee's in Sevierville, TN;
Buccee's is, of course, one of the cultural gems of the American South...
aka the United Shit-Holes of Trumpistan--an humongous truck stop
that doesn't allow trucks...and this is currently the largest of all the
Buccee's...located, appropriately, on that longest stretch of tawdriness
in the world, the road from Gatlinburg through Pigeon Forge to
Sevierville; not a particularly fitting end to a great ecliptic road trip;
but it is what it is...

*which may account for the fact that The Cocoanuts is my favorite Marx brothers movie; not Horsefeathers, despite my long association with higher education, "college" football, etc.

Cicadian Rhythms Begin

Pictured below is, according to Google Lens, a dead cicada I found in our parking lot this morning. Let the cicadian rhythms begin! You saw it first here...

Duke Gardens

Actually, the winter was pretty mild here in Cary, NC, but the blog needed a rest, and our routine provided a good opportunity for some downtime. 

Last week, with nearly everything in bud or blossom, daughter Rebecca took us to Duke Gardens, in nearby Durham. Though there's no lack of foliage where we live, it was very nice to see a large, mature botanical garden, with many specimens, very well presented. Memories of Keuckenhof last year and before and of so many great English gardens in previous years. Thank you, Rebecca!

Big place, right at the center of the old campus, next to the Duke
Chapel...memories also of SMU friends who came from Duke...
Andy Parker, Andy Bryant, and foremost Ken Pye, whom I was
privileged to work for before I became vice provost...

Moi, at the entrance

Sans moi

Ample water features and such

Interesting rock garden

Among the ponds

More rock features, waterfalls

Camellias going well

Many Japanese accents

Us, there

Excellent signage...seriously...hardly
a shrub, flower bed, nor tree was not
well identified

Now in what the Brits would call the "kitchen garden"

Worm farm...part of an educational exhibit

Ditto: the compost pile...note the tomato escaping over the fence

In the kitchen garden

More water features

Neo-Gothic cruciform arch?

Last seen at Keukenhof

Outside the gift shoppe

Also outside the gift shoppe, just as we were leaving,
I spotted a specimen of my favorite weird tree, a very young
Monkey Puzzle; my set was complete; well...except for
the rhodos...maybe later

In Hibernation