Rainy and cool

Today started out somewhat cool and damp after a bit of rain overnight.  I walked to Main Street Bakery this morning around 7:30 am, before the condo came to life.  I thought bakeries started work ultra-early so fresh bread was available first thing in the morning.  I guess that is not the case in the world of Aspen.  Here the daily bread comes out around 10:30 am.  I bought some "day old" bread for just $2.00 per loaf - I figured it really wasn't even a day old when I got it.  Also picked up a few sweet items as a treat.

I drove Maya and Mrs. White to the music campus where they spent the entire day.  Rehearsal, studio class, and practice.  Jem, Abe and I spent a couple of hours doing stuff around the condo and tidying up before the cleaning team showed up then we went to the rec center.  They re-discovered a place within the rec center called the Aspen Youth Center which includes the game room which I may have mentioned before, and a range of other distractions.  Today they played games and watched a movie while I did my laps and read The New Yorker.  The original plan was that they were going to skate and swim but passive entertainment intervened.

We ran by the fruit/veggie stand on the way to pick up Maya and Mrs. W.  Every time I drive up to the music school (vs. taking the bus) I notice an attractive plant along the edge of the parking lot. I nearly have to step on it when I get out of the van.  It is called Horsetail or Equisetum.  I first learned about this plant during my Yellowstone trip about a month ago and now it reminds me of the beautiful spot where we rested and watched a muskrat take a bunch of it in its mouth across a beaver pond to its lodge. No beavers there anymore.

We then drove directly to the weekly Physics in the Park event.  This program seems to have found the absolutely perfect balance between the forces causing me to never want to go back and the forces that cause me to be glad we went.  The Soylent Green-like food and pre-lecture activities were lame but I thought the lecture was interesting.  It was presented by an MIT mathematician/physicist and involved the language of mathematics as applied to everyday things like radio waves, gravity and time travel.  Before the lecture started Abe single-handedly arranged an impromptu volley ball game which even included the MIT dude (not shown in this shot).

Here's a shot of the attentive students and one of the professor trying to write some equations in terms that were easy for the young audience to understand.

Jamuna made another 3-D structure which seemed to be quite a hit.

There was a mom there with her family.  She was wearing a T-shirt that said "Starfleet Academy" on it.  I liked that.

Oh, and it rained a lot today and was cool.