May 9, 2017

Greetings everyone. I am pleased to report that so far, 2017 has turned out to be a pretty good year.  I taught a course that I truly enjoyed this past semester. The students were great and brought positive energy to the classroom; I think I learned as much from them as they did from me. Winter went pretty quickly, spring arrived, and then it was time for Spring Break. Matt and I headed down to Saint John for a week. The trip started out frustratingly when our flight was delayed (no real reason for this other than a flight crew that were slow as molasses). This meant we had to stay in Charlotte, North Carolina for an entire day. We made the most of our delay, took the new light rail into the city center from our airport hotel, and spent some time exploring downtown. Unfortunately our delay also made us miss overlapping with Matt’s parents in Saint John, and that was truly a bummer, but at least we got to spend some time with Matt’s brother and his fiancé. The weather and water were great. And I was very pleased to discover that the rooster that kept us up at all hours of the night last year was absent this year. I’m guessing maybe somebody ate him? I certainly slept better without him crowing outside our window. Matt and I took the dollar bus out to the southeastern corner of the island and we hiked out to the very tip of a rocky outcrop called Ramshead. It was hot and dry and the cactus were most impressive. The wind was blowing so hard it felt like we might just blow off the point. After the hike, we snorkeled in Salt Pond Bay, where we saw some very large fish and three squid. This continues our tradition of seeing squid every time we go to Saint John, and these squid were the best yet. They swam in synchronized formation and sparkled in the sun.

In early April our friend Andy visited and took us down to Louisville for the weekend. We stayed at the Old Seelbach Hotel and went hunting for the hotel’s ghost, who is known as the Blue Lady. We opted to look for her on the top floor of the hotel, which was quiet and spooky. We went up a back staircase and ended up in a storage area with nobody around. After creeping through the storage area, we came out into a foyer for the grand ballroom. We discovered that one of the doors for the ballroom was ajar, and crept inside. Quietly, we made our way around the dark room. Shadows from the big windows played across the walls and curtains and really added to the spooky ambiance. We didn’t find the ghost, but perhaps that’s for the best (my feeling of unease might have become unmanageable). Beyond our ghost hunting foray, we saw a good cross section of the city, starting with a tour of a new distillery called Angel’s Envy. Then we checked out the “door to nowhere” which is the façade of an old house, walked across the Big Four Bridge to Jeffersonville Indiana and enjoyed a beer on the Ohio River at the Flat12 Bierworks, and wandered around downtown Louisville, finishing off the night with a bourbon at the Haymarket. Before heading out of town, we checked out Jerry’s Junk (the home and yard of a true hoarder) and the alternate universe of the Louisville megacaverns. This is a giant underground limestone quarry that has been turned into an adventure park, complete with a ropes course, zip-line tour, and off-road bike tour.

We hosted Matt’s postdoctoral advisor in mid April and then headed to New Orleans for the annual American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting. The conference was fantastic and the weather was perfect. We stayed in a light and airy apartment right on Jackson Square and Matt spent his daytime hours sitting on the balcony listening to the music below while I attended the conference. We spent our evenings alternating between site-seeing and visiting venues ranging from Tiki bars to Cuban lounges to historic bars that have been operational for close to 300 years. We discovered some great gems. We also got ahold of a book that allowed us to take a self-guided haunted tour of the French Quarter. That city has some crazy history! I got the impression that half of the buildings may harbor ghosts.

Now that our semester has wrapped up I have a little time to myself. I have just spent a weekend with family on my Dad’s side in Houston Texas and another weekend in Hershey Pennsylvania with Matt’s family. Both trips were much needed - low key with lots of time to catch up. And in Texas, it was warm enough to swim in my cousin’s beautiful pool several times, which felt great. We also visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which is an absolutely phenomenal institution. The weather in Hershey was cold and wet, but we did get to go to Tröegs Brewery with Matt’s Dad, and we enjoyed watching the Kentucky Derby from a warm and dry location.

So, all in all, things are good. I’m pleased that it is May. I love this time of year and am looking forward to spending as much time as possible outside before it gets hot and sticky. I hope that the year is shaping up to be a good one for you as well.