We spent some time Saturday at an old furnace town near Show Hill. It’s a kind of Jerusalem Mill on steroids, based on an 18^th century iron furnace “company town”. They have a dozen or so buildings reflecting different aspects of life in the town. The day we were there, they had a blacksmith and a printer running their respective shops. Both were interesting people.

We will drive home immediately after work Tuesday. Mark is defending his thesis Wednesday. We will attend his presentation, along with Jiajia, Ed, and Lynne. We aren’t invited to hang while Mark’s committee discusses his thesis with him, so Jiajia will take us to visit the University of Maryland ice cream creamery. Danita and I will take everybody out to dinner Wednesday evening to celebrate. Besides being an interesting and fun day, it gives us an opportunity to take our cold-weather gear home. We will return early Thursday morning, so we can get back in time for a school group presentation we will lead on Thursday.

The last school group visit at Assateague Island is Friday. After that, we will transition to a Wednesday – Sunday work week so we can do traditional interpretive ranger programs with park visitors.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Our supervisor Kelly has a new hobby. She is learning how to be part of the Salisbury roller derby team. Saturday they were playing their only home game during our stay here, against the Reading, PA team. Naturally we had to go see it. It was our first roller derby. We don’t know that much about the sport, but it was a lot of fun watching. Too bad the game was so lopsided, with a score of 180 to 105 in favor of the visitors.

That anchored our weekend. We decided that while we were in Salisbury, we should definitely visit the Salisbury Zoo. Unfortunately, we found the zoo was closed, simply because the entrance was under a foot of water. Imagine! After all, a good pair of wading boots is at least two feet high. Who on the Eastern Shore doesn’t own a decent pair of waders?

I was hoping to spend the morning at the zoo, but since that wasn’t going to be possible, we moved on to our next activity, the Ward Museum. This museum is about hand carved duck decoys. I couldn’t imagine anything more boring than a bunch of old, faded carved ducks. When we arrived, the museum “lived up” to my expectations with a retrospective room, a history of duck hunting on the Eastern shore, and a room full of old faded carved ducks. But the room after that go much more interesting. With decoys being made in a factory out of plastic, carving ducks out of wood has become an amazing art form. (Plus, their gift shop had some way cool coffee cups.)

The Ward Museum is home of the world-wide water fowl carving contest. Many winning carvings were on display. The carvings look exactly like a live bird. Artists even carve individual feathers and then place them on their carving to enhance the realism. Some carvings are carefully balanced on impossibly thin support wires, cleverly disguised as part of a wing or tree branch.

We rounded the day out with the movie “Rampage”. It was a combination of Japanese monster movie and an American disaster film. It had every formulaic stereotype in the book. Critics panned it. It was also funny as all get out. Danita and I found it totally entertaining and a great hoot.

We enjoyed an excellent lunch at the Back Street Grill. Today we attended a Church breakfast – all you can eat for $10. The food was good and plentiful, and the money went to a good cause.

Even our professional lives are doing well. The accolades are rolling in, as you can see.

That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We finished our busiest week. Our primary job is to run the presentations for schools that schedule visits to the park. Last week, we had up to 8 presentations in one day. We needed all hands on deck. Now the very busy part of our job is over. We have half days of work for the rest of the month. We’ll be helping out with other aspects at the park, but there isn’t all that much that’s important until the big crowds come, starting on Memorial Day weekend.

We’ve had to make adjustments. Our internet plan provides 10 GBytes of data a month. I was shocked to learn that the web pages we visit and our Email use nearly 3 times that much data. Adapting is not very hard. We also get a bonus of 50 GBytes of data a month, provided it is used between 2 and 8 AM. We are early risers. We start our work day at 8:30. So we’re doing our internet in the morning. We turn our connection off for the rest of the day. We have two new housemates starting today. Ben is living upstairs. He is doing a bat survey and will be here for a couple of weeks. Karen is living in one of the bedrooms downstairs. She is a “free spirit” and quite a talker. She took a seasonal job here because the ocean is her “healing place”. She’s a very nice person, but definitely works at a different wavelength than Danita and I. After dinner, we sequestered ourselves in our room. We knew that more people would eventually live in the house with us, but we thought that they would tell us a day or so ahead before people came. We learned of Ben and Karen when they showed up.

We had a very uncharacteristic weekend. It started out normally. Saturday was sunny and warm. We did chores and took bike rides. The strangeness started Sunday. We went out to breakfast on Mother’s Day. Normally, we consider that the worst day of the year to eat out, but we went to 7 AM Mass, and got to the restaurant before the crowds. Then went up to Rehoboth Beach to visit the outlet stores. We’re looking forward to our trip to France. In our previous travels, we’ve found that there are times when the best plan is to wash clothes in the hotel sink. That doesn’t work for heavy pants and shirts, because the clothes don’t dry fast enough. I still remember working in Paris, unable to find a wash and fold, and spending a small fortune to get my clothes laundered. (I was on an expense account at the time.) We got some light weight clothes that dry quickly. This was a desperation trip. We tried shopping in Columbia. The stores don’t carry a broad selection of these kinds of clothes (even REI). I looked online, but felt uncomfortable buying clothes I couldn’t see or try on. It was a productive trip. I found all the pants and shirts I will need. Danita found a couple of things. The discounts are astounding, but shopping at the outlet stores was stressful. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Danita’s support.

The rest of the weekend was a bit of a bust. After the beautiful weather Saturday, Sunday was 60 degrees with occasional rain. We cancelled our other plans and spent the day at our temporary home, relaxing until we found ourselves talking with Karen.  ;-)

We had some very good news this week. Mark is scheduling his thesis defense. We’re looking forward to attending.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

We drove a day to get down, a day to get back, and spent a day a the Reeds. It was worth every minute of driving.

Elizabeth, Bryon, Pat – Waiting for time to leave

Four Generatons (The dress was warn by Danita, Jul, Elizbeth. The pearls were from Leona.)

Pat getting into trouble (Elizabeth might fall in!)

During the service – Elizabeth reading, Bryon alter serving

The Women – Danita, Jul, Godmother Barbara, Melody, Elizabeth