January
Another year is ending, which means it’s time for our annual news- and photo-laden retrospective blog post. As usual, we emphasize the fun things we did and our photos, without totally ignoring how our work went.
We started the year with a short trip to what has become our favorite Airbnb in Shawnee, PA, near the Delaware Water Gap, for our 22nd wedding anniversary. We had a lovely time, eating and drinking well, seeing some nature, and hanging out with our friends Sierra and Jacob, who brought along a double Bananagrams game with which we had some epic games, as well a fantastic pie they made.
During this trip, despite being (as we thought) very careful and being up-to-date with vaccines and boosters, we picked up COVID infections. It disrupted the start of classes for both of us, but we had a relatively easy time with it and recovered completely.
February
On February 11, we took advantage of our maximum level of COVID immunity, after all the vaccinations and our infection, to have a really lovely dinner at Elements restaurant in Princeton, to celebrate Valentine’s Day. A multi-course tasting dinner complete with wine pairing.
During the last weekend of February, we stayed at and Airbnb in New Hope where we shared a lovely dinner out with Charlie and Nicki. Of course, that is when Russia invaded Ukraine, and we ended up monitoring the news and being edgy for Sunday and Monday — which is one quadrillionth or less of the disruption Ukrainian lives had to absorb.
March
March started with the extremely successful Lyric Fest concert “Yiddishe Nightingale“, which we caught at the Academy of Vocal Arts on March 2. This concert came about from an idea that our dear friends Mike and Eva Leeds had, and was generously supported by them. The concert drew a large crowd in all performances and was great fun and quite an education for the two of us.
As has been the case for several years now, our spring breaks did not coincide. Nevertheless, we did get a weekend in an Airbnb in Perkasie, joined by Suzanne and Kevin and Tallulah, their sweet and happy dog (this Airbnb was super dog-friendly). Here are Suzanne, Kevin, and Marianne getting ready for a game of Double Bananagrams (courtesy of Sierra and Jacob) with me. Suzanne and Kevin braved a scary snowstorm to join us there!
The day after the games, we went for a wine tasting at the Trolley Barn Public Market in Quakertown, on our way back home. Pennsylvania wines are … cute.
April
April had some sweet events for us. There was the Lyric Fest concert “The Song Catcher” on April 9th, which presented folk songs reimagined by contemporary composers. Before it, we had a great lunch at Cuba Libre, and after it we were chaperones (!) for the Arcadia U Cotillion at the Warwick Hotel in Center City having been asked by one of M’s star students.
On the 15th, we had the great good luck to be joined by our dear friend Jill for drinks at Jean Georges, in the new Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia and then onto dinner at The Love with her son Owen. Twilight in the 60th floor lobby was quite a sight!
In mid-April, we also got our second COVID vaccine boosters. We had mild reactions to the shots, as on the previous occasions.
Near the end of April, M hosted a reunion “girls’ weekend” in the city for a few of her high school classmates, a.k.a., the Valley Girls. This was so much fun gossiping about what happened to classmates and doing an impromptu walking tour of Philadelphia that they organized another one for November.
For D, the highlight of the end of the month came at his department’s annual awards luncheon, where he was awarded the best research paper award.
May
May brought the end of the semesters for both of us and the start of lighter times. Another semester ended well for us (although D was not thrilled by how teaching a section of “Econ 101” students, for the first time in some years, went—students seemed to have forgotten how to be students and to be mostly apathetic and clueless as to what it means to study). Marianne was the mace bearer at Arcadia University’s graduation, for the first time (and had to lead the procession off the field in double-time due to a tornado warning).
Our young friends Sierra and Jacob had a party at Jacob’s parents’ house to celebrate their first wedding anniversary as a kind of delayed post-Covid celebration of their wedding and Jacob’s graduation from medical school. It was lovely to take part in the celebration and meet some of their friends we had been hearing about over the years, as well as catch up with both their parents. And all that yummy food!
We had a brief trip to Ocean City, NJ, where we were able to grab some nice bird photos, amid socializing with M’s colleagues and relaxing a bit.
D’s brother Kostas visited the U.S. near the end of the month, and we were able to catch up with him a couple of times in NJ.
June
We started June with a week in Germantown, NY, where we stayed in a favorite Airbnb with Eileen. We made several side trips and excursions. Here we are at the Vintage Vibe market in Rhinebeck:
After the Vintage Vibe market we visited a nearby distillery, from where we simply must commemorate the bloody Mary drinks Eileen is smiling about in the next picture; each had a veritable garden of greenery on top.
We visited a few more interesting places, including Poets’ Walk, and had the chance to have dinner a couple of times with Anthony and Barbara, whose country house is only about a mile and a half down the road from our Airbnb. On the last full day of the trip, we visited Montgomery Place and its gardens. Eileen snapped this nice photo of us:
After we came back home, we had several lovely social events before we ran out of June days. One was a bourbon tasting in our gazebo with a colleague of M’s and his wife. We learned quite a bit from them about bourbons and got pleasantly tipsy.
We also attended a gala fundraising event for the Wilma Theatre, that Mike and Eva had generously invited us to. The event started at the Kimmel Center, continued across the street at the Wilma, and concluded with an outdoor cast party at the lush and romantic Horticulture Society pop up garden on South St. We had a blast visiting with Mike and Eva, Mike’s brother Ed and his wife Nancy, attending the gala event on the stage of the Wilma, and having delicious food and drink and participating in the bidding to support the theater.
Another fun social event was going to Arcadia University’s campus on a nice Friday afternoon and evening for an outdoor movie showing with dear friends Reiko and Troy. We felt like kids again watching Spiderman and eating movie candy and popcorn provided by M’s HR committee.
Two days later, we went to the Jenkins Arboretum and Gardens for Suzanne’s art exhibit opening. We chatted with several friends at the reception, bought some ceramic bowls Suzanne had made (her new direction in art, not that she has stopped painting), and did not miss the opportunity to make photos. It is as usual hard to choose just one photo, but perhaps this one will do.
We ended June with a great dinner at Jean Georges at the Four Seasons hotel in Philadelphia to celebrate Marianne’s birthday (a little early, due to restaurant availability).
July
One cannot have enough birthday celebrations, right? We had another one on the first of July, with Lily joining us, so we could also celebrate her graduation.
This month we made our first trip for brunch to the Yardley Inn. They had a nice big tent for outside seating, which we appreciated a lot. They also had some mighty good cocktails including their specially made YI house bourbon and very good food. After brunch, we went to hang out for a while at Washington Crossing State Park, a bit up the road on the same side of the Delaware River, where D caught this photo of M in a pensive mood.
In the middle of the month, we visited Branford, CT, where we stayed at the quaint and luxurious Thimble Islands B&B, which is right on the water. The visit allowed us to visit friends nearby, as well as the Mystic Seaport Museum, and a state park with excellent opportunities to photograph birds. It will take a lot of restraint to post only a few photos from this picturesque trip!
The next photo shows Marianne taking a photo of the Gillette Castle State Park — a remarkable mix of a Disney sensibility with Henry Chapman Mercer’s Fonthill Castle Arts-and-Crafts workmanship in Doylestown complete with a trick bar, an indoor koi pond, and many elaborately carved wooden doors, each one different from the others.
August
Temple U’s Fall semester started in mid-August, earlier than in all previous years D has taught there. That left us with a narrow window for a seaside vacation to say goodbye to the summer, but we managed just fine, finding an old-style resort called Icona, in New Jersey, on Diamond Beach, a little north of Cape May where we enjoyed relaxing on the beach with lunch service and umbrella set ups.
Near the end of the month, we went to the annual end-of-summer party at Mike and Eva’s. It was great to catch up with them and their offspring Dan and Melanie with their partners, as well as colleagues from Temple and a Temple PhD alum who teaches locally. A memorable and fun highlight was a traveling Prosecco bar on wheels, the use of which Melanie had won at a fundraiser.
September
With classes underway for both of us, we made a little time for our bivalent COVID boosters mid-month. Fortunately, we had light side effects and our teaching was not disrupted.
We had a lovely visit with Ellen and Jim at Longwood Gardens, with lots of walking and admiring fall colors, the fountain light show, and the special light installation.
The day after the Longwood Gardens visit, we dropped by Mt. Cuba center nearby, where we had a lovely visit in the lush grounds.
October
We enjoyed a weekend outing in our favorite Airbnb in the Delaware Water Gap area again (same as where we stayed for our anniversary in January). A highlight of this visit was visiting a number of spectacular waterfalls nearby.
Here is a photo of Hidden Lake from October 16 — compare with the second photo above in the January paragraph.
We timed this trip to see some Fall foliage, and we were not disappointed. Tempting as it is to add a dozen more photos now, we will only add one more.
The end of October took us to Long Island for a memorial mass and celebration dinner for a dear family friend. The dinner and the company more than made up for the extra long trip to New York on a Saturday afternoon via the Rockaways and with a nail stuck in our tire. Brunch the next day with my nephew and his family while the tire was being repaired.
November
We made another short trip to Washington Crossing State Park. It’s nice to see as we’re putting this long blog post together, that we managed to make at least one trip every month, even as we eschewed airports and planes.
The next day, the 13th, we attended Lyric Fest’s concert A Singer’s Singer, a biography in music of Winnaretta Singer, a remarkable heiress of the Singer sewing machine fortune who became a major sponsor of art song in Paris in the beginning of the 20th Century. We loved the concert so much we regretted not having gone to its first performance on the 12th, which would have allowed us to see it again!
The following weekend, during a rare November heat wave, Marianne made the trek to Port Jefferson, Long Island via trains for a second gathering of the Valley Girls. The festivities included wine tasting, an art museum, a farmer’s market, a Viking market, and a dune hike. Hilarity ensued.
We celebrated Thanksgiving at Suzanne and Kevin’s. It was a small, cozy, lovely gathering, and we met some nice new people.
The day after we had a short visit by Sierra and Jacob, for dinner and a few energetic rounds of Sweet Existence, a game based on the Strange Planet comic series.
M paid a visit to Dominique and family for what has become the traditional Leftovers meal on Saturday, and on Sunday we had brunch with our friend Emina, formerly a PhD advisee of D’s.
December
Another Fall semester came to a successful conclusion for both of us. On the 13th, we visited Center City on a whim to see the light show at City Hall and look at the Christmas Market, after which we had a nice dinner at Estia.
The next day we went to a movie house, for the first time since the pandemic started, to see a matinee screening of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of The Hours, joined by Suzanne and Kevin. The opera was very good, in every respect–visual, acting, vocal, staging, story–and then we capped a lovely day with a Mexican dinner at a local favorite of hours, Tamarindos.
D was lucky enough to be able to submit grades as early as the 12th (payoff for the unusually early start of Temple’s Fall semester), but M was only able to submit grades 10 days later. However, we had a nice time shopping for presents and decorating and it never felt completely hectic to do so.
On the 16th we drove up to Long Island for grand-niece Caterina’s sweet 16 party. It was nice to catch up with M’s family and some friends we hadn’t seen in years. We also came away with the following photo, taken by Dominique, which makes us smile (the party theme was the 1950s):
We were lucky to not be affected by the bad winter storm that hit most of the United States over Christmas, never losing power. On Christmas day, we celebrated in a cozy gathering at Suzanne and Kevin’s after a Skype video call with D’s family in Greece.
Patient readers, thank you for reading this gigantic post. We hope you enjoyed this account of how our 2022 was and we wish you a healthy, happy, and peaceful 2023.