Rocky and Harry and the famous guy

Life continues to be rich and full in Enoughsville. 

I've had the joy of being in touch with several young men who are dear to me this week, starting with a fabulous Harry Potter birthday party hosted by my six-year-old dog park buddy, G. (Apparently, HP turned 42 last Sunday?) The party was highly multigenerational, with a bunch of people my age doing research that allowed us to pretend we knew what we were doing -- a friend of mine, for example, took a younger colleague out for a beer to ask about what to bring, and was advised to bring round chocolates with golden wings and call them "snitches". I had quite a few jars of peaches, and I was advised that HP drinks pumpkin juice, so I brought pumpkin juice made with no pumpkins but instead with peaches. (Well, I tried).  We also had out-in-the-open conversations about the ethics of celebrating one part of a person's ouvre when another part of their public speaking is problematic; it was good to have those conversations together, too).  

Yummy pretzel wand.  (Is that in the book?)
Lots of fun wearing a robe and scarf in 90-degree weather!

I also got to have some good telephone chats with Nelson, who asked me to share what he's up to in this family letter.  He's had a few up-and-down adventures, and so he's quite proud that he made his own arrangements to check into Metro Hope.  He's very happy there; it's a Christian-based organization where he's taking two classes a day, attending devotionals and vespers, and is working in the kitchen.  He's made a lot of friends, he says, and working on keeping his diabetes under control. In about a month, he'll have surgery to remove a cyst on the back of his neck; it's large and ewwwwy enough that he'll go under general anesthesia, but apparently not so scary that the surgery is scheduled immediately.  

And Xavier is getting ready to buy a motorcycle (cross fingers) that will allow him to earn money (cross fingers) by giving other people in his town in Haiti rides.  This will be the first time I bought a motorcycle, even by proxy, and I'm very excited. 

Gosling made my frugal heart proud by making signs (very funny signs with pop-culture references) for her church yard sale, which ended up raising $624 for the church.  Way to go, Gosling!

For example.

Inkling says, "I finished a shawl! (Which I will wear in a few months when it actually gets cold enough)".

Sizzling is on the road, attending a wedding in a nearby state, and rumor has it that I might get to see her tomorrow.  Yesssss!

Ofsnough spent much of the week packing up these kinds of things to send to Ukraine.

Chest seal kits, scissors, and (?) slings, I think.

Tourniquets, ace bandages, and gauze.  

Those things get bundled together into "IFAKs", in which the "F" is not an army "F"ing word, but rather these are Individual First Aid Kits:

His group has made nearly 90,000 of these.

And me?  I went to Philadelphia for MathFest, which is the most wonderful math meeting of the year, and this year was especially heartwarming.  From my hotel room, I had a lovely view of William Penn in his famous hat.

He's standing astride Independence Hall,
bits of which I could see from my room.

I got to give a minicourse, and to go to a bunch of amazing talks, to meet up with some of my best friends (who are also mathematicians), and to meet people who could become new friends.  

I have a long-standing (long-running?) tradition of going for a run with the Membership Director.  This year, we did a short run.

Him:  How does a 5k sound for tomorrow (up to the art museum and back)? 

Me:  Sounds great!   My friends and I have a run that we call the "Goat Run" (because one of the houses we pass used to have goats in the yard).  We end the run by running up the 3 stairs of Old Main on my campus, and I always sing the Rocky theme song.  So I feel like this will be a good run for me to tell my friends about.  Maybe I'll run up the stairs and sing.

Him: I’m thinking I should alert local media.

And so, that's what we did.  But no local media.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.