The time leading up to our trip to PA was exteremly busy. Both Heidi and I had given concerts, and Heidi had just finished off her huge 3" log book of all the student teaching she had done last semester. I had work very hard the last two weeks to get all the parts cleaned up, adjusted and measured for my first vacuum tube at MIT. We were both really looking forward to the break!

We had a great time:

Some M&M pretzels to carry us through the week.

We had this extremely difficult puzzle to do as well. 750 pieces and no straight edges. It took about 1 week!

We visited my friend's large new house. They had a cute rabbit too.

The rest of these photos are from Longwood Gardens. These are lights in the shape of animals in one garden. I intensionally blurred these so you could see them. If in focus, the lights are nothing more than tiny, indistinct dots.

Here's a strange plant that looks like a bird!

The Bonsai gardens...

Another Bonsai tree.

There's me shooting flowers.

This daisy would've been a great shot, but it's slightly blurred due to the extremely low lighting at Longwood.

Some more flowers...

Some light ferns or lichen growing on the rocks.

An orchid (?)

Poinsettia

The balls of flowers looked interesting.

Some pink roses.

The star of the winetasting was the famed 1961 Chateau Latour Bordeux! An online search earlier by one of the attendees ranked the average cost of a bottle of this stuff at $3,600!! My dad bought it around 1970 for a then whopping $25 (in 1970 dollars - That's something like buying a $250 bottle now).

Opening the 1961 Chateau Latour Bordeux! (Opened 12/30/2006)

After 45 years, the cork was in pretty good shape (still moist, no mold), although it took a few tries to get it out completely!

The table is all set for the night. 14 people attending is a lot of glasses! Also on the list were a 1982 Austrailian __ ($450), a 1989 Italian __ ($150), and a very good 200_ Merlot ($50).

The group is ready for that Latour!