Alaskan Cruise

This is really what everyone's been waiting for, so without further ado...

I took Monday the 23rd off from work so that B and I could enjoy Happy Hour at the restaurant. And so I could do this:

Working with my hands and sweating hard every day at work made me want to splurge and pamper myself with this luxury I used to think silly. Well, I still think it's silly, but it was fun.

We boarded the M.S. Zaandam on the 25th, where one of the first things we had to do was an evacuation drill.

Arden was not too happy with her life vest, but, naturally, she was terribly cute in it. In Juneau we took a van from the dock to see glaciers and greenery.

We also saw salmon, bears and bear cubs, but unfortunately I don't have pictures of that. Our van-driver was also the worst story-teller ever, which made for excellent dinner conversation that night. Each night when we returned to our cabin, we discovered a new and exciting towel-animal.

We had two different kinds of elephants (this is only one), something that must have been a peacock, and even a creepy monkey thing hanging by its arms from a hangar. From Juneau we went to Skagway where we took a three hour train ride to White Pass Summit, on the Canadian border. It was an incredibly beautiful trip, but I somehow didn't take my camera that day. You'll just have to take my word for it. The next day we went to Glacier Bay National Park.

Eerily beautiful, we spent an entire day just floating in the bay, listening to the sounds of crumbling glaciers and seabirds. We even glimpsed humpback whales in the afternoon. Our second-to-last night on the ship was another formal night, when I discovered the corduroy dress I'd sewn fit a little snugger than I remembered. (Probably due to the rich and plentiful food on board the Zaandam.) But that didn't prevent me from jumping up on the piano at J and O's urging.

We sang "Hey Jude" then practiced "Bohemian Rhapsody" for farewell karaoke the following night. On the trip back to Vancouver we saw dolphins frolicking beside the ship.

Lots of fun! And we had beautiful weather all but one day. Hope B's dad had a Happy Birthday celebration!

Provincetown, MA

I finally found the cable for my camera, so here are some much anticipated pictures from the summer. First: the weekend of the Goldstein-Love wedding in Provincetown, MA at Steven Pinker's house.

From a morning walk on the beach behind our hotel:

The wedding:

Yael and Gabe under the Chupah; Steven Pinker prefacing the vows with a short speech on humans and language.

The bride and my date.

The sad hora danced out of pity for the Klezmer band.

The wedding party escapes to the beach.