Getting There Is Getting By

Today was a very cold day. My feet and hands have been freezing all day long. The current temperatuer is 25, but it feels like 16 with wind chill. However, I still had an educational and enjoyable day. Firstly, I started my day off half an hour earlier than yesterday -- I arose at 11:30 AM. After a quick lunch, I found out that Sean was coming home for the afternoon. He just began a new rotation on Monday (family medicine). His office was having a holiday party all afternoon, so he chose to take the afternoon off and come home. Rebecca, Sean, and I drove north to Bucks County, where we visited the Mercer Museum. This museum is located on 6 floors of an old cement mansion (unheated). The place was absolutely bone-chillingly cold, but the collection of artifacts was astounding. Mr. Mercer was a man of great foresight who went around collecting and preserving items from the 19th century way of life in rural Pennsylvania. At the time, the machine age was rapidly replacing old tools, equipment, and transportation. Many of the pieces he collected were from abandoned farms or trash heaps along the roadside. Today they are an impressive collection of all things old-fashioned: clocks, carriages, a whaling boat, combs, wood-working tools, printing presses, woven baskets, cider presses, iron items of all sorts (especially Amish stove pieces), Lenape Indian artifacts, dolls, plows, carpentry equipment, blacksmith equipment, shoemaking equipment... the list goes on. The museum was one-of-a-kind and truly grand!

On the way home, we hit a major traffic snarl and heard on the radio that an accident up ahead was leading to the closure of our highway. Fortunately, not 10 minutes after that grim announcement we began to move again. We caught wind of another major back-up on the Turnpike, but fortunately that traffic jam was in the opposite direction (we drove past it for miles). We had a late dinner as a family before Sean returned home. I completed some work for my Rice lab bosses, downloaded some music, and am now headed to bed. Bye for now!