Ancient cottonwoods

while we drove around in texas last december, we saw quite some cottonwood trees. so very pretty! just this weekend i went through the photos and tried to make a selection that i can make into a photoook someday (the actual doing is the problem. the plan is there since a while, but at least now i started). its frustrating how fast you forget details of a trip!! yes, it was all pretty and impressive, but then you see some photos again and cannot even remember exactly where it was. or maybe thats just my problem.....

anyways. these trees had a sign warning you that you should not come too close as the trees were very old and limbs could fall off any moment.....

Bye bye.....

above a picture of the fung wah bus that has brought us to new york and back to boston quite a number of times now. going through my blog i see the first time i wrote about the fung wah was already in 2011! just a few months before i had taken the greyhound bus to montreal, and that wasnt much of a success. as it involved crazy driving, hour in traffic, annoying annoucements, too many stops in between, and expensive tickets, i thought we could just try the cheap chinatown bus (many people had warned us that whatever we do, we should never take the chinatown bus), as in fact ALL bus drivers drive like idiots. by now we have seen it so often on the road... being passed by a huge bus going well over the speed limit.

and so we did.... we quickly learned that its best to arrive on time, as you never ever want to sit in the back of the bus; thats where the toilet is (i guess thats enough explanation). we also learned that its really the cheapest and fastest way to get to new york and back. often under 4 hours, often without a pit stop (who needs that anyways when the destination is new york!!), always on time, and it was never a problem to take a bus earlier if you happened to be there and there was still space on board (try that with the other companies that require you to be there well in advance, and then just let you wait). taking the fug wah also turned out to be quite amusing at times. once, when we did stop at the mc donalds along the highway, one annoying passenger was not back within the 15 minute-limit, and our driver agreed with us passengers, and just drove off without him. another time (or was it the same?) we sat right behind the driver and while i was dozing off, i was first woken by the driver singing, quite loudly, and later eating sunflower seeds. also, they do slow down, full on the brakes, when they see a police car along the road, and yet another time, when going back to boston, the bus driver suddenly stopped. just alongside the road. walked to the back, used the restroom and drove off like crazy again.  without a word (they never ever say anything! except when they stop. "15 minute, you be back!") so yes, we took the bus numerous times, and even made it a habit to just go to new york for one day. 8 hours of chinatown bus included.....

but.... no longer. for now, the federal officials shut down fung wah entirely. a first inspection "just" took out the buses that were deemed unsafe; 3 out of 4, on a fleet of 28 (!!). that didnt deter fung wah; they just rented other buses and continued their crazy schedule of (i think) some 24 trips a day. the inspectors found badly maintained buses and cracked bus frames. pretty scary indeed. and when fung wah refused to cooperate (letting the inspectors see their safety records), their operating license was revoked entirely. buuuuuuhhhhh. it has been a while since we last were in new york......

Pretty tree!

today i was going through the pictures of our road trip in december, and found this one. it was in dalles, texas, at a cemetery. the trees were so pretty, and i didnt know how to take a picture of them. but tim did, i saw today, and now you can see that as well...

Fish-eye view!

we went to the beach for a bit today. it was a bit chilly, but not too bad.... we walked and i got to test this cool new lens tim got me. yaaaajjj!!!!

the snow is mostly gone (except at the places where they piled it up), and im wondering if we will get more this season. i dont think so, but you never know....

Self portrait

friday evening... time for a self portrait... :)
havent been taking a lot of pictures lately, hopefully tomorrow!!

Not real!

at first glance, you think....hmmmmm....? but no, its not real! this is somewhere along the high line in new york... must be pretty annoying having so many people walk by your window every day. taking pictures. of everything and all... including the fake man. or, especially the fake man....

Woods! Closed!

it has been raining. all day. lots and lots of rain. had it been a little colder (as was expected earlier), then it would have been snow... but no, we got rain... :(((

so, i looked at some summer pictures, and found this one again, its somewhere around gloucester. yep... in the us of a the woods can be closed. hahahhahaha!

Apartment building

this is in new york, but actually in the netherlands you very often see people hang their blanket (from the bed) outside their window. i always find that strange... hanging it out like that will make it dirty, no?

as we live in a corner apartment, we have a lot of windows (the reason we decided to take it; so much light!), but all windows have an (insect) screen, so when you open the window, there is still the screen that cannot move. thats pretty common here, but i find it soooo weird! what if you want to throw something out of the window? ;) stick your head out, or just get the crumbs from the tablecloth? 

In line

these people are waiting to eat something in the center hall of the museum of fine arts in boston. we were there a few weeks back. its always amazing to see the restaurant being entirely full, and having people wait like this. its just in this gigantic open space that connects the different parts of the museum. somehow those eaters are part of the collection too, if only for just a while.....

we never ate there and do not have the desire to ever do so... :)

Snow man!!

this is a picture of tim in the snow after the blizzard. now 2 weeks ago. tim thought it funny to jump into some snow, and well... i took the picture when i almost entirely disappeared in it... :)

the piles of snow are still alongside the roads everywhere. not white at all anymore, and melted partially, but still, so much snow had fallen during that blizzard that its still lying around!

now its snowing again, the entire weekend we had mostly rain, and only now, when its dark, its finally sticking to the trees. so very pretty!

lets see if the coming week i can get into the blogging routine again. the past week i obviously was not....

Nice ad

i was lazy the past 2 days, and i still am... but here is another picture! this is from a while back, when we were in new york... (as you can see by the water tower up in the corner). i liked this ad, even though i do not like such shoes.... i think they are very american! such high heels you never see in the netherlands (or at least, thats what i think. maybe things have changed by now?), but here shoestores are filled with them. i love shoeshopping, and am often disappointed when i see a nice looking shoe, only to take it out of the box entirely, seeing that it has such an impossible heel on it....

ah well, probably better for me. saves me some money... :)

More snow!

well, this is from last weekend, after the blizzard.... normally there is a road between the 2 traffic cones, but not last weekend...... we got some more snow today, very strong winds, and its very cold! in fact, its so unpleasant that we decided to stay home. we baked bread, cooked, watched some soap series. nothing special... somehow its now 1 at night and really time for bed! hope this time i can sleep despite the crazy winds....

Forgotten car

i showed you pictures of this place before. it was somewhere along the road in florida, dec 2011. several cars were standing around at various levels of decay.... 

here in boston we had some snow today, but nothing that remained on the ground. we do still have mountains of snow alongside the roads; they arent very pretty and white anymore, as you can imagine...

In Austin

on a wall in austin, texas, where we were last december. i thought this was a really cool graffiti.

in the subway today i saw a lot of men with "some flowers". normally you never see that. funny.... perhaps tomorrow all the valentine's candy is on sale? (the shops were full with chocolate etc). maybe i should check..... :D
as a valentine's gesture, the mayor of boston decided that parking was free today, so that everyone who wants to go out for dinner can do so without having to think about paying for parking.... although that didnt make parking in the center of boston any easier, i guess, especially since there are still huge piles of snow that are also taking up some spaces..... 

Fallen angel

at the cemetery 2 weeks ago. when we just had a tiny bit of snow.... a little sad, no?

Removing snow

this is the main street in our apartment complex, sunday afternoon. as mentioned, the snowplowing crew started their work when the snow just started coming down, they worked when the storm was at its height (the harsh wind blowing snow in your face wasnt the most fun part when we walked around friday night to "experience the storm"), they were still working when we went to sleep around 1 in the night.... i dont know whether they worked through the night, but i do know they were already working while we were just waking up.... they worked the entire saturday, sunday, and this evening i saw the bulldozer still being operated. our complex has 550 apartments, not small, but not huge either. imagine the amounts of snow and the huge amount of work being done so that we could just open the front door and walk around without sinking deep into the snow. one of the perks of apartment living, not having to shovel yourselves!! :) the least thing i could do was baking a cake for the crew, but then we broke the cake in 2 (it didnt want to come out of the bundt pan in one piece), so i baked another one..... not much work compared to what the shovellers did!

above they were removing the huge mountains of snow they had made the day before. it was loaded into the truck, and moved to the little snowfarm at the end of our complex; i guess that himalaya of snow will be there for quite a while, even though it was relatively warm today and yesterday (and even raining today). because of all the salt and other bad chemicals, the snow cannot just be dumped into the ocean, as was being done years ago. so... its piled up high, and being a pedestrian can be quite difficult... :) you have to check were you can cross the street, is there a gap on the other side too, or do i have to climb the snow? and as its melting, large, deep, muddy, salty puddles have formed. but no! im not complaining, the snow was great and now i get to wear my real snowboots that are meant to sink into the mess and still keep my feet dry!! 

ah, and, something really important; it was officially a blizzard. the national weather service said so. the past days this wasnt certain yet, so i am glad it is a fact now...... ;)

Cleared roads

no public transport this morning, and we were lazy anyways..... ..... later this morning the MBTA announced that they would resume a little bit of service from 2 this afternoon. however.... and i quote their message directly; "Unless necessary, customers are encouraged to stay home and use service sparingly." that little sentence just made me laugh all day. use it sparingly? are they checking whether you really need to take the subway or its just for fun...? ah well, as said, we were lazy, and just cleaned our apartment a bit, sorted stuff out, etc, and then went for another snow-walk. as you can see here, the main roads are clear again (after hours and hours of work), but for pedestrians that wasnt the case everywhere. here there was some sort of path to the right, but there was still enough snow left to make  for quite a tiring walk. at some places, the sidewalk wasnt cleared at all and we had to walk on the streets. not much fun, cars just sped by without even looking at us..... on  the news i saw that 1also in boston the main roads are mostly clear again, but the side streets, where people actually live and have parked their car, arent, so they still cant go anywhere.
we just wanted to have a walk on the cemetery but, although it was being plowed, turned out to be closed, and so we just went home again.... 

Epic blizzard

yep, thats me, enjoying the snow!!! never saw so much snow in my life, and i enjoyed it, very much!!

according to cnn, the blizzard was huge, but not as historic as they were reporting it could be before it happened. but to us, it was all those words. epic, historic, fun, amazing!! the only discomfort i experienced was a quite sleepless night. the wind was going crazy around our apartment, and i just could not sleep.... we did not loose power, nothing bad happened, so for us it was really only fun. while we got up, the snow-removal-team was already working hard again removing all snow (it took them the entire day). as public transport was suspended also today for the entire day, we just spent the entire day outside around our place. my goodness, there was so much snow!! just down the street is a park, and thats where we did some sledding as you can see above. there was no snow-removal in the park, and trudging through knee-deep (or deeper, at places) snow is really tiring, i found out! finally, finally, my winterjacket and boots were put to good use. i bought both after our first winter here in boston, and then never really needed them.... 

public transportation is suspended tomorrow as well, which is too bad, as i would have liked to go into boston and have a look at the city in white... but driving is allowed again (from 4pm on friday until 4pm today driving was not allowed, due to the weather. only emergency workers, snow removers etc were allowed on the road). i guess we will just stay around the house and enjoy the snow a little more before its gone again....

Snorkel parka!!

when i woke up this morning and (of course) immediately looked outside there was no snow. and it wasnt snowing.... i have to say, i was a bit disappointment (my colleagues too, i found out later...). anyways, we got ready for work. just the morning, as it was already announced that public transport would be suspended in the afternoon. while we got to the lab, some snow started falling, but just tiny flocks....

above you see tim in the jacket we bought him yesterday at the local thriftstore. i guess its aptly named "snorkel parka", hahahahhaha! when we got home in the afternoon there was still not that much snow, and it wasnt much of a storm either. "is it coming, or what?" we were saying to each other....  i guess around 6 the snow started to come down faster, and the wind was picking up too. it got dark, we went to the gym, had dinner, blablablblablbla.... and i guess now we are in the real storm. we went for a "stroll" around our apartment complex around 9.30 this evening.... what a snow!! there was at least a foot of snow, and with the strong winds blowing it into your face.... tim was very happy with his snorkel parka, blocking most of it out! we made a round, and when coming back, all our footsteps had already been erased by more snow.... and while we were just hopping around, having fun, a snowplowing crew was working very hard to remove the snow (i guess if they dont keep up, it will be very hard to remove it all tomorrow). i felt so bad for them, some just boys, and many of them not even wearing a decent jacket..... they were also going through the streets with a huge bulldozer, uilding an enormous mountain of snow right in front of some apartments; when we walked by it was almost up to the second floor! (american second floor, in the netherlands that would be the first floor). im glad we are not living there, everytime they were throwing on more snow i would be afraid the mountain would collapse into our home....

so... im curious how the world will look tomorrow. i hope we wont loose power... according to the news many people did already, and here the lights flicker every now and then.... now its time for to sleep! good night!

It's coming......

so.... the weathermen are more and more sure that the snow is really coming tomorrow. and lots of it. flights have been cancelled, schools in boston are closed, the subway will stop running in the afternoon and apparently cars should be off the road by noon.... above a picture of the first snowstorm we experienced, on jan 12, 2011. this is the boston common, after a night of strong winds and lots of snow, clean-up had started long before we got out of bed, and when we arrived here, while it was still snowing, people were just having fun.....

tims wintercoat broke just this week (the zipper), so we went to the thrift store and got him a very decent jacket that surely will keep him warm and dry. we also went to the supermarket for some milk (but forgot the yoghurt). all salad was gone, almost all meat, most chips (it wasnt me!!), most fruit, and.. there was hardly any milk anymore... luckily tim found some, so we now have our milk, eggs and bread....

all the people from the news are going crazy and keep calling this storm epic, historic, huge.... and nothing has happened yet... i hope they still have some words left after the event. at cnn they were talking about the possibility of 38 inches of snow, if i calculated correctly, that would be 1 meter of snow!! really??! wow.... i hope we have enough milk......