Apple Season

Here is what I learned this week: New York produces a bunch of different varieties of apple.

I spent the majority of Saturday at a training required for my New York teaching license. It was one of the last "hoops" to jump through to finish my transfer. Well, that and wait to see if they accept my application.

After spending six hours learning about bullying prevention and intervention, I got home to find that M had blessedly gone through the giant stack of papers that has developed on our coffee table over the past few weeks.

We were both sick of paper, sitting, and being inside, so we went out into the crisp afternoon to see what sort of apple orchards we could find.

Our first stop was Lakeside Farms-- a farm stand with bakery and deli that we have visited before. Their apple barn was open and they had several varieties that we were unfamiliar with including Zinger! (exclamation mark included) and Cortland. We picked up some Cortland as well as some cider donuts to munch.
As we drove on, we found two more. One a small family operation with "u pick" apples, Riverview Orchards. They were closing, but included another new to us variety, Jonamac (Johnathan and Macintosh?) . Further down the road was a much larger operation, Bowman Orchards, that not only had apples, but also a corn maze, goats, pumpkin patch, and ice cream shop. We stopped at the store to pick up a few Jonamac to determine if they were something we might like. Not so much.

Official Logo from their website:
https://www.rivervieworchards.com/

On Sunday, we decided to go to Bowman as they had more apple varieties than Riverview. As we had not heard of the majority of the kinds, we thought the variety would be a good approach. It was hopping! Everyone seemed to want to pick apples and get their cider donuts. 

Of them all, we ended up with a few of several kinds including our favorite, Honeycrisp, Gala, a few Fuji, 20 oz (a rather tart apple), and H103 (cross between a honeycrisp and gala and so far unnamed).  

The Jonamacs turned into applesauce, while the others are awaiting other fates (eating, baking, more eating). It was a beautiful day to be outside it the fresh fall air!

Honeycrisp "dwarf" tree

Hurricane Week

Suddenly, hurricanes are on my radar.

Google Maps Storm Track

There is a rather big one, Dorian, threatening the east coast. It has already hit the southeast and is now creeping up. People are evacuating if they can "further up and further in" to get out of the path. We not near the projected landfall, and for that I am grateful.

When it rains, it pours (hurricanes?).

This week I started my part-time job at the college library in Albany! It is really nice to be back in the library environment. The smallness of it allows for all of the staff to work on everything: archives, reference, inventory, collection management, inter library loans, metadata. It will be a wonderful learning opportunity and I am glad to be there.

Friday was quite the day over here at our house.

Friday was the day that both of our cars became officially New York registered and inspected. They are sporting some shiny new yellow plates. Interestingly enough, they are issuing a new design in April. Apparently, this is a very hot topic involving a lot of feelings.

Current Design

New Design effective in April  

I also got my NYS driver's license in the mail (yay for photo ID!).       
Friday was our 4th wedding anniversary-- I am so glad to be married to M! He is a wonderful man who seeks God, aims to do the right thing (even in the face of seemingly punitive bureaucracy), gets giddy over exploring Creation, and very supportive. I am so grateful for our four years together and look forward to many more.

M+D and "Grandma" R on our wedding day

On Friday, M caught a weekend flight to Minnesota.
Unfortunately, it was not for a nice visit with the B family, rather it is a much sadder occasion.
M's adoptive "Grandma" R went home to be with the Lord on August 30th after a few weeks of being ill.
We felt it was important for him to go and be there for the visitation and funeral.

Even as logistics kept me here, I wish I could be there this weekend.
Therefore, I wanted to share a little about this lovely person.
M would tell you that the B family friend, "Grandma R", was always there for him and his brothers growing up. She went to recitals, games, 4-H competitions. She had them over for dinner and cooked as many hot dogs as three teenage boys could eat (let me tell you, that's a lot) with her special "hot dog sauce". She was there for Thanksgiving and Christmas, birthdays and weddings. When I met her, she showed me nothing but kindness and love as one of the B family. Her witty and entertaining personality made you feel right at home. She will be greatly missed by her own sons and grandchildren, as well as by my in-laws and our family. We were glad to see her in June when we were visiting the B family. After visiting her in the morning at her house, we later ran into her perusing the sweets at Jim's Apple Farm. Little did we know that would be the last time we saw her.

Would you please take a minute to pray for R's family (biological and "adoptive") as they wrestle with a world that no longer has Grandma R in it?

The grief in losing R, combined with M being out of town, and continued "new state" shock has made this a tough weekend. Fortunately, I have free, unlimited phone calls and have talked to my mom (there is a study about mother's voices and their ability to calm their children... you should look it up) who reminds me that God will never leave us nor forsake us, no matter where or when or how we are.

Current life goal: Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, " I will never leave you; never will I forsake you." --Hebrews 13:5

The Great New York State Fair

Its Labor Day weekend. What do we think would be a great way to spend it?

Visiting The Great New York State Fair on the last possible weekend!

The upside: the tickets are literally $1.
The downside: since tickets are $1, it is the highest traffic day of the year. Past stats for the Saturday of Labor Day weekend have been around 120,000-140,0000. I think we met most of them on the interstate.

So you might be wondering, where is the New York State Fair, anyway? Syracuse!
Fortunately for us in the Albany area, it is about two hours away. If you are willing to take the toll road, that is (if you want to save your $$, it is an extra hour).

In Missouri, there always seemed to be this threat to toll I-70--impacting a whole lot of people. The state of New York decided it was a good idea to toll two interstates: I-90 and I-87-- but only through the most traveled sections.

This past month, M and I have spent a considerable amount of effort avoiding toll roads (by "considerable", I mean that we put the "avoid tolls" feature on our GPS) and so have experienced an interesting amount of roads that wind their way through forests and plains. Mostly forest.

The E-Z pass is a device that you put in your car with a bar code. When you go through the toll booth, it scans your pass and deducts the money from your prepaid account.

Two things made us break down and buy an E-Z Pass for the toll roads.

1. Starting after Labor Day, I will be driving down to Albany two days a week to be a part-time reference librarian at a local college (driving to Albany efficiently involves a toll road).

2. The Great New York State Fair. Or rather, any travelling throughout the state that we will want to do, as well as the rest of the eastern seaboard. Apparently everyone agreed to use this system.

                                                       


According to M's research, the things to do at The Great New York State Fair are as follows:

• Eat strange foods
• Look at animals
• Watch amazing bands on the grandstand
• Enjoy a truly cultural experience

Here is what we actually did at The Great New York State Fair:

• Ate deep fried/frozen foods
• Admired the sand sculpture in the commerce building
• Watched a lady making soap and learned about the chemistry involved
• Wondered why the electric company had such a large booth
• Took a political poll sponsored by the Libertarian party
• Drank lots of milk from the 25 cent milk bar while admiring the butter sculpture
• Waited in restroom lines

Interestingly enough, we saw no animals (except for walking by the petting zoo).

Wizard of Oz sand sculpture. The reverse side is the Moon Landing

The Exposition Center had a
"Things to Do in New York State
all Year" Exhibit

The Summer section was focused on camping and included
Smoky the Bear and a "lean to" cabin with three sides
that are rentable throughout the state parks.

All in all, I think it was a good choice to go to the fair this weekend, it really was nice to go away and visit such an American tradition as the state fair. Walking around there, the general feeling I had was "this is American!". It did make me want to see that Rogers and Hammerstein musical "State Fair". Its a hard one to find now-a-days, probably need to check online.

This week starts another week of getting settled in the area and hoping to find some conclusion to the saga of registering the cars with an inspection of our red Durango. Nobody hold your breath now!

Embracing Fall

This past weekend, M and I went to see the illustrious and (somewhat) famous Lake George. I have never really been a lake person, especially swimming in them (yuck!), but we heard it was a sight to see and see it we did. There were some things that I was prepared for: mountains, tacky tourist shops, and overpriced pizza. There were also some things that surprised me: people laying out on a sandy beach with the brisk wind coming off of the lake, the sheer number of taken parking spots, and the gorgeous weather of an early fall.

Photo Credit: Matthew Boraas

Originally taken aback by the idea of moving someplace where the beginning of September really is the beginning of fall (as opposed to merry MO where my past coworkers are still running the AC in their classrooms), I found that while I am not thrilled about pulling out a sweater, I am loving having the windows open all night and the AC off.

We played the tourist for a few hours, enjoying that beach and tacky shops, as well as a moderate (as well as we could find) dinner. The thing that struck me while sitting on a patio and listening to a high school kid play a mash up of oldies and 80s music was that this beautiful, seasonal, mountainous place was only 45 minutes from my new home. Just as I was thinking that, M commented "and just think, we could get home from work, jump in the car, and come here for an evening if we like".

Just so, M, just so.

This move has been a difficult one, changing states, homes, jobs, etc and all the rules that are different and all the time it takes to get settled in a new place. Even the toaster that we had shipped from Missouri broke this past week. The toaster! That thing has been working for nearly a decade.
However, this weekend, we just enjoyed being so close to a beautiful place and looking forward to exploring the Adirondack mountains in the future. We learned that there was so much to see in this amazing park that we were not entirely sure where to start. Lake George is close, so we started there.

While I am not quite ready to embrace winter, I think for now, I will embrace fall.

Photo Credit: Matthew Boraas