While Susan and Jean were visiting, I attempted to make pancakes from a box mix. It was a dismal failure. The box tasted better than the pancakes. Later, I learned that the mix had passed its “best used by date” three years ago.

This evening, I redeemed myself with a batch that was squarely in the highly edible range, dare I say yummy. I used the internet to research the best box mixes and ordered the winning brand. While they do not compare to Jeanine’s scratch pancakes, I can make them myself with minimal effort. I served them with fresh strawberries and received an approving smile from Jeanine.

This evening, my soccer team competed in the finals for the over-62 League Championship. We played in South Weymouth, where the air temperature was 84F plus an additional 5-10 degrees that artificial turf fields contribute to the ambient temperature near the ground. About 8 minutes into the game, a player from the opposing team collapsed on the field, having suffered a heart attack. He had no pulse and was starting to turn ashen. Fortunately, one of my teammates is a doctor and immediately took charge of the situation. He barked out orders between breaths as he administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He directed one person to begin CPR, a second to fetch the portable defibrillator we carry with us, a third to call 911, and the rest of us to form a human shade umbrella to keep the sun off him. Within 2-3 minutes the defibrillator was connected and triggered which restarted his heart. His eyes popped open and he became responsive. Ten minutes later, the ambulance and EMTs arrived and took over. It was a very sobering moment for everyone. There is no doubt in my mind that this guy would be dead now if not for the expertise of our doctor, immediate availability of a defibrillator, and the teamwork of all who cared for him.

Both teams agreed to terminate the match and were declared co-champions. We finished the season the an undefeated 10-0-1 record. Not too shabby.

UPDATE:

Leo, the player who collapsed, is going to make a full recovery.

Jeanine hosted a hen party for her friends this evening, one of whom was celebrating her birthday. I was not invited and spent the evening in my office until summoned to take a group photo. Jeanine was laughing uncontrollably, for reasons I hope to discover later, and I was not able to get a “serious” portrait of the group. Having said that, this image captures the mood of the night very accurately.

UPDATE: I have learned the cause for laughter, but have been told I may not publish the details. I can reveal that it involved an unintentional “jeu de mots” during a conversation between Jeanine and her hairdresser about a new employee at the salon.

Jeanine’s sister, Susan, and her partner Jean arrived yesterday and will be staying with us until Saturday. Today, while Jeanine was at a hair appointment that she could not reschedule, I orchestrated an outing to Bonsai West, which has one of the most extensive collections of bonsai trees I have ever seen. Some of the trees are over a hundred years old, meticulously trained and shaped to mimic the appearance of mature, full-sized trees found in nature. It is one of my favorite places to visit, and I was glad I could share it with my sisters.

Maya joined us for dinner and a raucous discussion that we all enjoyed.

The Magellan Explorer is a modern expedition ship custom-built for Antarctic cruises, launched in 2019 and designed to the latest Polar Code specifications with a Polar Class 6 (LR PC6) ice rating for safe polar navigation. It accommodates up to 76 guests in 38 cabins featuring private balconies, individually controlled heating, sitting areas, and bathrooms with heated floors. The ship is 298 feet long, with a beam of 53 feet, and is operated by a crew of 60. Public spaces include a glass-enclosed observation lounge, a spacious dining room with panoramic windows, a library, a gym, a sauna, and an outdoor BBQ area. For wildlife observation and landings, it is equipped with ten Zodiac boats and features two mid-ship gangways for efficient embarkation. The ship’s maneuverability and comfort are enhanced by state-of-the-art stabilizers, bow and stern thrusters, and advanced ice-detecting radar.

It has been a dream of mine to visit Antarctica, and today I booked a 20-day cruise on the Magellan Explorer, which will include stops in the Falkland and South Georgia Islands. We will depart from Punta Arenas, Chile, in late October 2026 (the earliest availability) and return to Ushuaia, Argentina.

489 days and counting!

With new import policies and taxes on Chinese goods in effect, it has become impossible to buy a new DJI drone in this country. This has led to high demand for used drones and I decided it is a good time to sell my backup.

Kyle believes that selling my backup is guaranteed to ensure that I crash my primary drone. I have to admit that this thought has also occurred to me.

In my mind, I see myself as playing soccer much as I did when I was a younger man. Alas, video of my performance on the pitch does not support such wishful thinking. Our post-season, semi-final playoff match last Sunday was professionally recorded, and I have reviewed the footage several times. Playing it back at 2x speed is what I visualize in my head and approximates the pace at which the game should be played. It also enables me to accurately assess my contributions and mistakes. Fortunately, I played one of my better matches and only gave away the ball once. On the positive side, I forced several turnovers and turned them into dangerous counterattacks, the best example of which is shown in the brief video above (I am in the #2 maroon jersey) . At 66, I am the second oldest player on my over-62 team and I am not sure how much longer my body will allow me to keep playing. All I can say now is that I am reasonably healthy going into the finals next Sunday and have signed up for the 2025 fall season.

It was a good day to review video footage indoors as the outside temperature reached 102F (picture of my car dashboard during my lunch run). I worked in the yard for less than two hours this morning and probably lost 5 pounds in water weight.

Nicolai has just been named to the World Amputee Football Federation (WAFF) Players Committee. In this role, he will advocate for players of the sport as it continues to grow and gain worldwide popularity. This is a great honor, and we are extremely proud of him.

Our local beavers appear to be starting construction on a new lodge. This evening, this rather large one came ashore directly in front of our house, cut down a small sapling, and took off upstream. The photos are not very good because (a) it was dusk, and (b) the lens on my camera fogged up when I took it from our air-conditioned house out to the patio where the humidity was very high.

This morning, I woke up to find a blue heron perched on a branch over the river. The light was wonderful, and I managed to get this shot without scaring my subject away. Later, I removed and sectioned a large branch that had fallen into the river during a winter storm. It proved to be a more strenuous task than I had anticipated, made no easier by the extreme temperatures we are having today.

Jeanine threw her back out while getting into her car after yoga class this afternoon. We had to cancel plans to attend the neighborhood picnic and a dinner party we were looking forward to. I am not a very good nursemaid maid but I tried to make her as comfortable as possible.

Kyle shared several photos from his trip to Portugal. The Benagil Cave has been on my bucket list for some time, and I was thrilled to see that he had visited this natural wonder.

Kyle may have inherited his passion for adventure travel from me, but there is no doubt he acquired his appreciation for exotic fine food from his mother. Presented with the meal below, I would be content to have the bread and the lemon, and possibly the sweet potato if I were feeling particularly venturesome.

Kris is a big baseball fan, or to be more specific, a Phillies fan. Even so, we thought she would enjoy a tour of Fenway Park while in town. Fenway is the oldest active Major League Baseball stadium, having opened in 1912 as the home of the Boston Red Sox. The park is famous for its distinctive features, especially the 37-foot-high left field wall known as the “Green Monster,” as well as quirky elements like “The Triangle” and “Pesky’s Pole”. With a seating capacity of about 37,755 for night games, it is one of the smallest MLB ballparks. Fenway has hosted the World Series eleven times, with the Red Sox winning six championships there. Besides baseball, it has been a venue for football, concerts, hockey, and other major events. In 2012, Fenway Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places, cementing its status as a Boston and baseball landmark.

This evening, we were joined by Kris and Maya’s friends Sarinnagh and Claire to celebrate her 26th birthday, a day in advance. Unfortunately, her brothers were unable to attend. Kyle is in Portugal touring the wine country, and Nico is in Arizona dodging rattlesnakes (literally). Maya requested that we dine at the Dali restaurant, a Spanish tapas bar she has always wanted to try. The food and ambiance were exceptional but no match for the friendships around the table. Maya has been best friends with Sarinnagh since kindergarten, and with Claire since middle school. Jeanine and Kris have been BFF for nearly 50 years. The warmth of the celebration reflected the profound relationships among these women.

After dinner, we reconvened at Maya’s apartment, where she introduced us to Wally and Kurt, the sibling cats she lives with.

Jeanine and Kris enjoyed a cocktail after a long day of work. In the morning, they were on the river in a canoe extracting water chestnuts. In the afternoon, they were at Kyle’s place getting it ready for new tenants. Kyle would be wise to thank them profusely for the effort they put in. I mulched our newly planted creeping thyme bed, which was more than enough exercise while I recover from my weekend collision with the ground.

Pictured in the middle is Jeanine’s grandmother, Lila Nalder, on her father’s side, framed by her parents. Lauren, Jeanine’s sister, shared this photo with us after receiving it from some sort of ancestry group. It is no doubt the oldest picture we have of Jeanine’s side of the family and a real treasure.

With 7 minutes to go in my soccer match this morning, I suffered a slight concussion when an opponent took my feet out from under me while I was up for a head ball. I landed flat on my back and head. It was an unintentional foul, and I think the other guy felt worse than I did. I took a moment to gather myself and returned to the pitch. A few minutes later, I felt a little disoriented and decided to finish the game on the bench. It was our last game of the season before playoffs, and we ended in style with a 4-0 win.

When I returned home, Nico and Maya were hard at work preparing a special Father’s Day lunch, which was amazing. We had the best fried chicken sandwiches I have ever tasted. They were truly amazing and followed by corn fritters, one of my all-time favorite foods.

Kyle called in from Portugal to join the celebration, and although we missed his presence, I am thrilled to see him living his best life.

What happened in the days, even hours, after an asteroid set off the extinction of the dinosaurs? I learned the answer to this question while listening to a TED Talk by renowned paleontologist Dr. Ken Lacovara, the founding executive director of the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum, which opened just over 2 months ago in southern New Jersey. Built on the site of a marl quarry, it contains the most complete fossil record of the event that ended the age of the dinosaurs. Over 100,000 specimens representing more than 100 species were excavated from an area the size of a tennis court over a period of 14 years.

When I learned that Jeanine and I would be traveling to Ocean City to visit with the Earles, I knew we would have to add this museum to our itinerary. This morning we made the one-hour drive to visit the park and museum, and it more than lived up to my expectations. Afterwards, Jeanine and I made the drive back to Concord, during which I listened to another TED Talk and learned the answer to why small mammals who survived the impact managed to thrive when, by all accounts, the surviving reptiles should have annihilated them. The answer, BTW: fungi.

Although all of the land-based dinosaurs were wiped out, many reptiles and aquatic dinosaurs survived the initial asteroid impact. The nuclear winter that followed (dust blocking the sun for years) took care of almost all the survivors.

Pictured below is a shark tooth. Striations found in the femur of a large dinosaur made by sharks support the theory that animals killed moments after the impact were taken to sea by the ensuing tsunami, where they would have been floating buffets.

The fossil record also shows that many carnivorous dinosaurs were no match for the much larger plant-eaters, which could use their weight to crush them. Think lion versus bull elephant.

Kris’ daughter, Bethany, took us on a golf cart tour of Ocean City, starting with the Surf Road Beach on the northern end of the island.

We then visited two of the adjacent properties that she and her husband are developing on the bay side of the island. The one in the foreground is listed for $14.9M, and the one behind it for $11.5M, with construction expected to be completed by the end of summer.

Caffeination was the next order of business.

In the evening, we were joined by Rob, Kris’s husband, who flew up from Florida. After another amazing dinner, we hit the boardwalk for a final time and took advantage of the latest communication technology available in the home state of Bell Laboratories.

This morning, Jeanine, Kris, her daughter Beth, and Aunt Martha made a short excursion to Dots Pastry shop, where we acquired several thousand calories to augment our otherwise healthy breakfast. Later we went for a walk through Ocean City’s town center, stopping to purchase a new summer outfit for Jeanine. I then settled in for a leisurely nap while the women took to the beach and ocean.

Jeanine and I drove to Ocean City, NJ, today, where we will be staying with her best friend, Kris, and her family. We timed our travel to avoid rush hour traffic in the greater NYC area and made the journey in 6 hours including two brief stops for recharging the car. After several days of rain in Concord, we enjoyed the clear skies, warm sun, and ocean breezes that greeted us.

After dinner, we strolled down to the boardwalk to enjoy the Strawberry Moon. Initially, I feared that clouds on the horizon would ruin the opportunity, but eagle-eyed Jeanine spotted it as it emerged from cover. This Strawberry Moon was especially significant because it coincided with a major lunar standstill or “lunistice,” a rare event that occurs roughly every 18.6 years. This made the full moon appear unusually low on the horizon, the lowest it has been since 2006 and won’t be again until 2043. When the moon is low, it often appears more reddish or orange due to atmospheric scattering and this year smoke from the Canadian wildfires only added to the color.

Water chestnut (Trapa natans), often called “American water chestnut” in the U.S., is a highly invasive aquatic plant, not to be confused with the edible water chestnut used in Asian cuisine. Native to Eurasia, it was introduced to North America in the 19th century and has since become a major ecological threat in the northeastern United States. Jeanine joined other members of the community this morning to pull plants from the river in the ongoing battle to keep the spread at bay.

Yesterday, Jeanine and I planted 95 creeping thyme plants in the area between our patio and the clover lawn over a few hours. If they grow to their expected dimensions, we will have a lush, natural carpet covering the entire area that is robust enough to withstand foot traffic and will nearly double the usable size of our patio. Compared to similar work we did in the front yard, this project went three times faster, taking advantage of lessons learned. This time, we marked the hole locations for the entire area before excavating and then excavated all the holes before planting. Now for the hard part: wait 1 or 2 years for the creeping thyme to spread.

Next month, Jeanine and I will be traveling to Galway, Ireland, to celebrate the marriage of my nephew, Mario. We will fly into Dublin a week before, where we will rent a car and meet up with my brother (Mark) and sister-in-law (Marie) to do a little touring through Northern Ireland. Before such trips, I like to identify places to visit and map out a driving route. Today, I spent some time documenting a tentative plan to share with Mark and Marie for their review.

Le Grand Prix Elmendorf du Pain is an annual Parisian-inspired street festival and bread competition held in East Cambridge, celebrating French baking traditions and local community spirit. The event features an eclectic mix of French-inspired food vendors, local artists, live music, and a festive atmosphere as Cambridge and Eighth streets are closed to cars for the occasion. The bread competition is divided into amateur and professional categories, with this year’s challenge focusing on demi-baguettes for home bakers and croissants for professionals, judged blind by a panel of experts. Inspired by Paris’s Grand Prix de la Baguette, the event aims to highlight both the artistry of bread-making and the vibrancy of the East Cambridge community. Jeanine and I enjoyed our visit during which we obtained two loaves of bread, a cheese and cracker plate, a cherry and almond cookie, and two rather large smiles.

We then drove to Medford for a brief visit with Kyle, who is leaving for Portugal tomorrow on a month-long stint working remotely.

Earlier in the day, I watched from the sidelines as my soccer team fought hard for a 2-1 win, which secured our first-place finish for the spring season and home-field advantage for the league championship playoffs. I decided it was better to forego playing today than risk re-injuring my hamstring and missing the playoff matches. I fully expect to be back on the pitch next weekend.

Followers of this blog know that waterfalls are one of my favorite natural subjects. The photo above was not taken by me, and I was unable to determine the photographer to give proper attribution. When I learned that this waterfall inside a cave was taken in Ireland, I instantly knew that I had to see it for myself during our upcoming trip there for my nephew’s wedding. It took a fair amount of sleuthing to discover its location and how to reach it. It is not clear if we will be able to work it into our travel plans, but my fingers are crossed.

Lodge Park in Nahant, occupies land once used by Native Americans and later became the site of the Nahant Hotel, considered America’s first seaside resort, built in 1823 and destroyed by fire in 1861. After the hotel burned, the property was acquired by the family of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who built his summer “cottage” there in 1868, making it a prominent family estate. The site’s strategic location led to its use for coastal defense during the Spanish-American War, both World Wars, and the Cold War, including as a Nike missile base. The U.S. government purchased the estate in 1941, and after the military base was decommissioned, the Town of Nahant acquired the land. In 1988, it was officially designated Lodge Park, honoring the Lodge family, and is now a public park known for its scenic views and layered history. I made a brief visit after some consulting work in Billerica and a visit to the Arc’tyrex store in Lynnfield where I returned a 12-year old shell jacket with delaminating seams for a generous store credit that I used to purchase a down jacket.

In the evening, we hosted a small “dinner” party consisting of potluck appetizers with an Indiana theme. Our guests included old friends, neighbors, and new acquaintances.

We are very fortunate to be situated on a section of the Sudbury River with a rather diverse shoreline that morphs depending on the water level. Presently, the water is high due to heavy spring rains. The wetlands (brown areas) are fully saturated, and you can see the various canals created by waterfowl, beavers, muskrats, and otters. The tree line serves to provide great background color during the spring and fall, while the water lilies create nice texture in the foreground.

Today, we had an extended visit from a large snapping turtle. I estimate the shell length to be 16 inches. S/he spent several hours moving about the newly mulched areas of our front yard and eventually started excavating the compost pile in which my future bonsai Japanese Lace Leaf Maple is growing. A provoked snapping turtle of this size can easily remove a finger from your hand and can strike with lightning speed over a distance of about six inches. It is best to give them a wide berth. I suspect she was surveying our yard to locate a good place to lay eggs. When the coast is clear, I will investigate the compost pile to see if I find eggs there. If yes, I will cordon off the area until the baby turtles hatch.

I’m still feeling under the weather today, despite the beautiful outdoor weather we’re enjoying. I decided to do a little bird photography from our patio to distract myself.

For the first time since moving to Concord some 22 years ago, I found the beach at Walden Pond vacant on a warm summer afternoon. It will remain closed until a new pavilion is constructed to replace the old one.

I spent a good part of the afternoon doing aerial photography around town as an excuse to be outside. I have been suffering from the flu for the past few days and needed to do something other than sleep.

Pictured below is the WR Grace Superfund Site located on the town line between Acton and Concord. Grace acquired the site in 1954, using it to make concrete additives, organic chemicals, container sealing compounds, latex products, and paper and plastic battery separators. Wastes from these operations were discharged into unlined lagoons or buried in landfills onsite, contaminating soil, sediment, and groundwater. The surface contaminants have been removed, and a 5 megawatt solar field has been installed. Groundwater remediation is ongoing and expected to continue through at least 2031.

While I was playing soccer in Italy, my younger sister, Alissa, was competing at the Blackpool Dance Festival in the UK. She placed 8th in her age group of 33 entrants. My parents met on the dance floor and enjoyed ballroom dancing for their entire lives. They would be so happy to see their daughter following in their footsteps.

On the home front, I scored my first goal of the season on the soccer pitch in a one-sided 10-2 victory over Wayland. Unfortunately, I managed to tweak my left hamstring with just two minutes left to play in the match. I eased up immediately and hope that it will prove to be a minor injury. We have just two games left in our spring season before the playoffs.