it was mike's birthday on wednesday! he's now officially old at 26. too bad he couldn't really enjoy it because he had to present his proposal to the group on thursday and then have a poster ready on friday for a conference. he did manage to take the night off on wednesday so we could have a group of people over for dinner and cake.

on friday, mike went to a conference in upstate new york. check out the hotel he stayed at: http://www.mohonk.com/.

on saturday, i rented a car and drove up to meet him. we spent yesterday checking out the catskill mountains and the small towns in the area. it was nice enough just to be driving a car again! thank goodness we both remember how. :-)

we also visited the howe caverns. since it was late in the day in the middle of march, not many people wanted to see the caverns - we went on the tour with a young couple and their fifteen month old baby and a mother with her very inquisitive ten year old son. our tour guide, a young guy about 17 or so, gave the tour in a very tired voice to the point where we wondered if he even understood what he was saying (he managed to call the river still in the caves the "river styx" without any irony whatsoever). eventually, though, we figured that he just had a deadpan sense of humor. after all, when the little boy said "you rock!" he responded with "yes, yes i do."

a picture of me exploring the caverns:



a picture of mike exploring the gift shop (please admire the cheeseburger hat):

on the way back we stopped at a costco near the bronx. the fact that we had a car got us so excited that we bought as many groceries as we could - including two 40 pound containers of cat litter which are just too heavy to deal with when we're carless. now the real question is where are we going to put 75 rolls of toilet paper?

laura and jeremy kindly fed the kittens while we were gone. you'll all be glad to know that our love of our kittens has not extended to buying presents for them when we go on trips. not yet.