Dad's House

Normally I stay at my dad's house when I visit him and my sister, but this year Sally and Randy came along so we decided to stay at a hotel. Also, my dad's house doesn't have air conditioning and Conn. in August can get very hot and humid. As it turned out, we had great weather. We arrived just after a heat spell and the entire week was just beautiful.

Shortly after we arrived in Conn. we went to my dad's house and Sally and Randy took my dad and sister out to dinner while I went to visit Paul, Rick and Mark.

Brooklyn Museum of Art

A couple of years ago I learned that the Brooklyn Museum had a pretty good Impressionist collection so before leaving I decided to check out their website. I discovered that they had a temporary exhibition called "Monet's London" which featured a number of Monet's work from his years in London as well as pointing and photographs from the same era. At this point I was very excited to see the museum.

I've often told Sally and Randy how, when I was young, we would go on a family trip to New York and everytime we would get lost. True to Helmerich tradition we got lost on our trip to Brooklyn. Part of the problem was that the museum had really bad, and wrong, directions.

Both of my sister's were concerned about me dragging my 84 year old father out to the museum. A few years ago my father was run over by a car while crossing the street and had his hip shattered. He had a partial hip replacement, but it is still difficult from him to get around. I rented a big buick to make sure that he could have as comfortable a ride to New York as possible. My dad walked through the entire museum, he really amazed all of us. I was so happy that he didn't have any problems.

Nancy's B&B

Nancy wanted to rent a B&B so that they whole family could get together. Sally and I had several bad experiences with B&Bs and weren't interested in staying at one, but Nancy decided to rent one in New Haven near the shore. The house was easy to get to from my dad's house. It was an old Victorian with a lot of charm and character. On Monday we all got together at the B&B and talked and played some games. We also got together at the B&B after our cruise to the Thimble Islands. This was really the first B&B that I had been to that I actually liked. Good Job Nancy!

Thimble Islands

Before leaving Nancy did a lot of research on activities that we could do together. Nancy wanted to look for something that my dad could easily do given his bad hip. One of the things that she found was a boat cruise of the Thimble Islands. The Thimble Islands are a bunch (I think about 50) islands in the Long Island Sound. The islands are quite small. A couple of them are large enough to have 3 house on them, but most of them are just big enough to put a house on. Some of them are just rocks sticking up in the sound and are too small for a house. There was a senior tour that arrived at the same time we did so we shared the boat with a bunch of seniors. The cruise was more interesting that I thought it would be.

Terry's House

I had hoped that I would see Terry on Saturday night, but he was unable to make it. On Wednesday morning Terry called me and asked me if I wanted to visit him in New York. Sally and Randy had gone to visit her mom so I didn't have any way to get to his house. A few minutes later Paul called and told me he could take off early from work. At about 1pm Paul showed up at my hotel and we took off for the one hour commute to Terry's house. Terry had something to do at 4pm, but I hadn't seen Terry since Rick's wedding last year and the drive gave Paul and me a chance to catch up on things. Terry has a 107 year old house in Purdys New York. The house is within walking distance from the train station so he can get to Manhatten in about 1 hour.

The Hotel

We decided to stay at the AmeriSuite Hotel in Shelton which was less than 15 minutes from my dad's house. We settled on it because it had a suite area that we though might come in handy if people wanted to come over to the hotel. Originally we got a suite with a King Sized bed, but Randy found the sleep sofa to be too uncomfortable so we switched to a room with two double beds. The room wasn't bad, but the air conditioning was a bit noisy.

Mark's House

Before leaving, I had emailed my friends to let them know I was coming to town. We arrived Saturday afternoon and it looked liked Saturday night would be the only night that I would get to see some of them. We first stopped off at my dad's house to say hello. While I was there Paul called, he was visiting his parents in Trumbull. He stopped by in about 15 minutes and we went over to Mark's house while Sally and Randy had dinner with my dad and sister. I was very tired that night, but it was still great to see the old crew again.