Gotta love skype...

It's 4:30am my time. I woke up at 2:00 because I had a nightmare and called Grady on skype. We just talked for 2 hours. Nightmare forgotten! Back to bed.

Grandma, that post just made my night!

Haha when is this performance? Hopefully I'll be back in time to see you as a sheep.

Tomorrow I am headed to London with Richard. We are staying at his house because he lives pretty close to the city, and then taking a train in. He is going to be my guide because he knows the city pretty well. On the list: Westminister Abbey, London Bridge, the Tower of London, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. I'll take tons of pictures!!

love you! Two weeks from Monday and I see you!

Baaaaaa

We had a read through of the Christmas play for Christmas Eve today. I am a sheep - there are two of us. My only line is Baaaaa, but I get to say it at will, especially if it seems that someone with a speaking part forgets his/her lines.

GrAnn

santa claus is coming to brooklyn NY

Lexy and I just went and got a Christmas tree from the guy on the corner who is selling trees for $150 a pop. We got a tree that is two feet tall because that is all we could afford and it was 40 dollars... kind of missing the luxury of cutting a cedar from the back woods. Oh well, all part of the experience. We went to BIG D, a discount store right around the corner to get all the decorations. It is run by a polish family, but still, I don't know if that's an excuse for this sign: "Have a marry Christmas with decorations from BIG D." is that how we would spell that?

we also got a bunch of ingredients for christmas cookies and we will be baking and decorating all day long. currently listening to Harry Connick Jr. in our kitchen. Will post pictures later.

love you!

Before voting in the next election...

It is absolutely imperative that you all watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avw0n9b2o9U

Lately I've been stressed about crew, I've been working out a lot here but not erging and I'm afraid that when I get back to school I will be really far behind everyone. I tried doing the team workout today and I failed miserably, it's just so hard to push through a hard workout while you're by yourself instead of with the entire team. Erging seems tedious and long and I'm so unmotivated. So I emailed Noel and asked for his advice on training by yourself, what kept him going when he had to train solo etc. He wrote me back the nicest email! He designed a practice plan for me for the rest of the time I'm away, telling me what to do on each day so that I wouldn't get too bored. He gave me advice on how to have competitions with myself to stay motivated, and told me not to worry too much about erging. He broke his arm his senior year of college and wasn't able to row for the first 2 months of winter training so he was on a bike instead of with the team, and 3 weeks after the cast came off he set a 2k PR. He also was really encouraging and told me to remember that I was a leader on the team and that the novice looked up to me, that our boat was going to be "fast fast fast" in the spring if we put in the effort now.
So now I have lots of training to do in the next 19 days. Starting with an 80 minutes steady state tomorrow and lifting. Better start hydrating and get to sleep.

I do what I can

I just finished a book on North Korea.  A fascinating look at the lives of 6 citizens leading up to and after their decisions to defect.  The following picture from the book shows a satellite image of the penisula at night.  Guess which country has a problem supplying electricity to its people!



Boy oh boy did the wind blow in Ripton last night.  We lost a section of fence and the grill got blown over but no big trees down luckily.  Now comes 1-3 inches of rain.  Oh that it were to be snow.  We're supposed to have CVPS in house for lunch and we are wondering how many will actually show up and how many will get called out to repair downed lines.  Oh well you do what you can do.

Love you all.  Peace.  Peter