Our Bold Adventure Continues

We've been out of Brooklyn for more than four years now. That's the way I think of it. How long has it been since we left New York? Not how long has Boulder, or Minneapolis, been our home. We closed on this house almost exactly two years ago exactly. And so, I'm a bit introspective. In the circles of introspection I realized that my life in New York is completely inseparable from my pre-kids life. We moved when the girls were 9 months old. At the time they felt SO old to us. They weren't newborns. We'd survived the hardest part. Now, when I see a nine-month kid they look so tiny. So there were 13 years without kids in New York, and then a measly less-than-a-year with infants? My NYC memories are full of the things I did before kids, luxurious things like yoga classes, and harder things like working until 9:00 many nights. I never had to jostle for a spot in a preschool, I didn't have to learn which sidewalks were okay for trikes and which were too crowded. I jus...

It's hot in the Big Horn Basin. And the sun is relentless. There is no shade. These conditions are, in large part, what makes this a good place to find fossils. They’re also why Dr. Scott Wing wears huge wrap-around sunglasses fit for someone leaving cataract surgery. One summer a few years ago, a couple of his post-doc students secretly decorated them with crazy glue and gold glitter. This might be a you-have-to-see-it-thing to understand, but they’re pretty sweet sunglasses. Scott Wing is a paleobotanist. He goes to Wyoming every summer to crack rocks and look for evidence of past plant life. He's spent 37 summers doing this, and says he'll stop only when he can't do it anymore. Dr. Wing isn't just a paleontologist, he's a rock star. Literally. Not only is he a premium scientist for the Smithsonian who has contributed greatly to the study of paleontological flora, he's a talented communicator. He has a gift for explaining the complex in accessible terms. H...