2013: Year in Review

Every year seems to be busy at our house, and 2013 was no exception. Last winter, after the holidays, we had a pretty snowy stretch, so we couldn’t wait to escape to Florida in February.

Chris has been busy with the garden, including a cool new hydroponics setup, and in her tenth year at the Media Lab. The Computer Clubhouse celebrated its 20th anniversary this year with a big get together.

In October Chris & I took off and spent two weeks in England.

We drove all around the south of the country. In addition to visiting a lot of sites we hadn’t seen before (such as Oxford, Cambridge, Beaulieu, & Bletchley Park), we got to visit a lot of friends and family who we hadn’t seen in many years.

Peter is a Junior in high school this year, so he’s very busy, but he’s found time for quite a bit of fun too. Last winter he finished the robot he was working on last year, and was part of the High School’s robotics team. Then he spent the summer in Pittsburgh at the National High School Game Academy, where he built a number of cool video games and made several good friends.

Tom decided that Rose-Hulman wasn’t the direction he wanted to be going. So he was home with us for a while, and then headed off to help my sister Martha pack up her house in England.

I’ve been spending a lot of time scanning a giant cache of my Grandpa John’s old slides.

I’ve also spent a lot of this year messing around with cars. In addition to finally replacing the Miata, we went to two vintage races (Pittsburgh & Lime Rock). But the big excitement was my new project, the Westfield.

This is a tiny sports car which comes as a kit. It uses a lot of parts from the old Miata. You can follow along as I build it at this feed.
We had a particularly great year on the arts front including music (ancient, African, jazz, and more jazz) and plays (both here & London).

We also got to visit some interesting places like the Tate Modern and Fallingwater