Rainy days and pleasant company

Janet and I drove to New England for the weekend, to recognize her Aunt Diane's 90th birthday. Diane is healthy and energetic, and she was joined by a large group of loving family and friends. We drove up Friday evening, and stayed at the Heritage Inn in New Milford Friday night. Saturday was a wonderful day spent with wonderful company. I'm truly blessed to have married into such a great family. It was a delight seeing Adam in the New York Times this morning. I'm proud to have married into this family not because of their accomplishments but because of the enthusiasm and intelligence that they all seem to share, which is no doubt responsible for the accomplishments.

We spent a lot of time driving along stone fences and roiling brooks. It was a very wet weekend, featuring overcast skies, intermittent heavy rain and a power outage in New Milford that lasted several hours. Sunday morning we drove along Rt. 7 for a quick visit with Janet's cousin on her father's side, Joey Chernila, his wife Alana, Saidy (who is almost two) and Rose (who was born last month) and saw exciting view of the Housatonic at flood stage: water just inches below the roadway and lots of white water, including a standing wave of three or four feet at one place. I dropped Janet off at the Hartford airport (she's now at the Applied Anthropology meetings) and drove back alone.

On the way, crossing the Delaware River on I-84 at about six, I saw a memorable sight. The river was well up over its banks -- with great expanses of inundated trees -- and the first exit on the Pennsylvania side (Matamoros) was closed. Eastbound traffic was stopped. As I passed over I could see that the intersection below was completely flooded, with the tops of traffic signs just sticking up out of the water, which must have been about six feet deep!