Heading West

The trip home from Massachusetts was an ordeal to say the least.  It perhaps deserves its own blog post, but I'm not sure that would be very interesting.  Suffice it to say that my flight was very delayed in CT.  I did, however, make my connection in Vegas (they held the plane for me!) so my arrival in Reno was only a few min. late.  And our waiting time while on-board the aircraft in Hartford was cheered by a most original song and dance routine performed by the flight attendants.  You gotta love Southwest! ;)

But what I really wanted to blog about was my last night in Mass. with Miriam and her lovely boyfriend, Taj. The two of them had each had extremely long days in the office and so our evening dinner plans came as a welcome respite.  We dined at the top of nearby Mount Greylock outside Adams, MA.  It's a high mountain by Eastern standards, about 3,500 ft, with great panoramic views from the top.

When I made our dinner reservations at the Bascom Lodge (right on top of the mountain) we were told that prior to dinner there was to be a brief astronomy "lecture" in the living room.  We made it up there for the lecture and it was really quite interesting.  Most of the star/constellation identification wasn’t new information for me, but the first part of the talk, in which the presenter explained the details of the Curiosity’s Mars landing—fascinating!  

Dinner was wonderful.  It was family-style dining and since we were a party of three, we were seated with the presenters to fill the table.  They were actually a lot of fun, and even more so when plied with a bit of vino.  We spent the dinner discussing the value of nerds in the world, theories of the universe and debating Pluto’s status as a planet.  It really was a great dinner and when we’d finished eating our new friends treated all of us to some spectacular views of the Northeastern sky through their telescope. 

Thursday dawned early and Miriam and I headed to Hartford first thing to explore the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum on a work mission for Miss M. which worked out nicely since my flight was out of Bradley International Airport.  Being a museum employee (though not of the Wadsworth), Miriam gets in free to all museums!  The best part about going with her, aside from getting bits of her expert knowledge of the art itself, is that I get in free, too. :)  So it was great to stroll through the galleries of the Hudson River School and several galleries of more contemporary art, most of which was American.  As it turns out, the Wadsworth was the first public art museum in the United States as well as the first institution to begin collecting contemporary American Art. 

My last 24 hours on the east coast were wonderful.  Looking back at these posts, I guess Miriam and I really did take advantage of our time together--though it seems we never have enough!  More important than all the things we did, however, we were able to work in a lot of time together despite her work schedule (mostly in the car!) to talk, talk, talk and catch up on each others lives.    As always it was good for my soul to see Miriam.  It really would have been terrible to be in the country and not see her.

I'm a happy camper.