Christmas 2023

This time last year there were at least a two feet of snow on the ground. Donna shoveled while I recovered from a surgery that prevented me lifting more than 10 lbs. The deep freeze lasted a couple weeks but it took about six months for me to get back to form in the gym with deadlifts, squats and bench. I don't know why I love power lifting, but I do. Now, ready and waiting on the snow, but there is none to shovel. Sad, as I enjoy it. Almost freezing out though.

 

Christmas Day dinner is planned and the execution begun with cranberry sauce made with apples, orange-lemon juice and lemon-orange zest. The 4lb pork loin prepared by the butcher for a porchetta marinated overnight in a paste of sage, thyme, rosemary, garlic, parsley blended into a base of pancetta. In between working on the porchetta, I prepared the Fagioli all'uccelletto, aka Italian baked beans, to be warmed up Christmas Day. And as usual at the holidays, in a nod to the American South I made a couple of chess pies. Roasted yams and risotto with wild mushroom gravy will accompany the porchetta. Christmas Day will kick off with a frittata and Christmas Eve with biscuits, which I haven't made since coming to BC, but I recall my paternal Grandmother making them daily.

Christmas Day menu:

caprese frittata for breakfast 

hors d'oeuvre of toast with pate and pesto

Donna's deviled eggs

cranberry sauce

dressing with pork gravy

roasted yams

risotto via sous vide

fagioli all'uccelletto

porchetta with pancetta and herbs (0.7 of 4 lbs went to meatloaf with 2 of beef))

chess pie for desert

Cava and Cote d'Rhone

 

For the first time ever I didn't make it to MSBM.ORG. During our week-long mass spectrometry school held annually in Dubrovnik, Croatia the first week of July students are instructed in the fundamentals and applications of mass spectrometry, mostly in the life sciences. Some sort of GI ailment struck just as I was preparing to depart. I made it as far as Seattle, but there was no way to sit on an airplane in such a condition. So, I returned to Victoria to recuperate. During the Summer months afterward Donna and I explored city restaurants all close enough to walk the 30 minutes to the harbor. In fact, I recuperated so well that by Fall I was up to my typical January weight. I know this because I have weighed myself for the last dozen years on a near daily basis using a Withings wireless scale. Surprisingly, on average I gain and lose 10 lbs each year between January and September. Time to start losing again, which means counting calories.

 

I did though make it to the farm twice this year to see my folks in May and June. Mom is busier than ever trying to keep track of my Dad who has struggled to recover from his fall two years ago December. He ended up in the hospital for his 90th birthday after a fall while burning brush. While his cracked hip recovered, as did his strength, his ability to speak was affected most probably from the pain medication in hospital. As we age our ability to metabolize drugs declines. Often old folk seem to take a mental turn for the worse after a surgery involving anesthesia. This is an effect similar to chemo-brain suffered by cancer therapy patients. The younger you are the easier it is to recover. Dad didn't have surgery. So it must have been the pain medications in hospital, which Mom said he reacted badly to, that precipitated this speech impediment. Somehow Mom maintains a positive attitude even though this is the third person in a row she has had to be care taker for at least part time. First it was her Mom Reba Robinson and then her Uncle Hubert Robinson. Both have passed now but she only had a few years of normalcy before Dad's problem arose. 

 

I finally paid for 23&me to tell me that my parents are in fact my genetic parents as they had both already had their genes sequenced. What is interesting is that while the Goodlett family has been in the US since the early 1700s, as have the Robinsons, my genome is still about 88% "British". My parent's % of British is of course a bit higher. What this must mean is that the "Goodlett families" that settled in Greenville South Carolina pre-Revolutionary War and then moved to Moulton Alabama when the Cherokees were removed in the early 1800s, have consistently married within the same ethnic and I would guess protestant religious circles. I say this knowing our Scottish ancestors in South Carolina were Presbyterians. My Mom's side of the family seems to have gone through the same restricted passage of marriage into like ethnic clans for the last two hundred years ending up in Northeast Mississippi and Northwest Alabama. Remarkable. 

 

Notably, our boys have often accused Donna and me of being too close genetically, a common joke in the rural South. However, 23&me put an end to that. We share almost no common genes with me being closer to my myriad 4th and 5th African American cousins genetically than I am to Donna. Not even any interesting genetic predispositions revealed, but then if you really are interested in your genetic susceptibility to disease then a site like Invitae is a better place to start. I was surprised though to find out that I have about 0.3% indigenous American genes and 0.4% Western African genes. The latter wasn't really a surprise as the Goodletts in Moulton and Greenville had slaves. In fact some of their descendants have already reached out to me on 23&me and Ancestry.com.

 

I also finally made an Instagram page for the lab that is mostly a collection of photos that didn't belong any where else. Some of these are a look back at the people who inspired and trained me. This was driven in part by a desire to get away from Twitter and Elon Musk's overt racist leanings. With the new Instagram account comes a Threads account that I can use instead. At least I don't know Mark Zuckerberg's political leanings or I might be out of luck there too. The lab continues to investigate the relationship between microbial membrane lipid structures that contribute to an organism being pathogenic or commensal. Small changes in the structures of these organic molecules in Gram-negative microbes can result in an organism being recognized or not by the host. Those that are recognized are often cleared, but those that aren't may be commensals or simply lead to chronic infections. And this year, thanks to funding from the Terry Fox Foundation, we added examination of the tumor microenvironment in ovarian cancer to our todo list. Not part of the program, my interest is the connection between microbes in our tissues and how they may be turned against us or even drive cancers. Microbes are literally everywhere in and around us. All those COVID masks really did reduce transmission.

 

Speaking of microbes, we got a clue into the cause of Graham's chronic fatigue - now lingering six years. He had previously been diagnosed with a Lyme disease infection, the Gram-negative microbe Borellia is the causative agent, and treated unsuccessfully for this just as he began University. The symptoms worsened though leading him to drop out of engineering school at the University of Maryland by JAN 2018. Recently, he began to suspect a different organism was the root cause and sought testing from a new specialist, B. Robert Mozayeni. Bartonella, another Gram-negative microbe, and Babesia were detected by RNA-based assays. So now we wait on what the possible treatment options are. While Gram-negative bacteria are all related by having a second membrane that aids their causing numerous human maladies, they can respond to therapies in different ways. In fact, many microbes live in biofilms inside us that make targeting them very difficult. The same microbe that is killed in the lab by an antibiotic might not respond in vivo due to the protective barrier of the biofilm. So, we will see where this takes us. Any improvement would be welcomed as it would mean Donna is not a prisoner here to this situation like my Mom is with Dad in Moulton.

 

Back in Baltimore Mint took on a new role in traveling sales at Morris Tile. This puts him on the road a few days a week to visit customers. His partner, Jasmine Maghari, is working on a Masters degree in genetic counseling at my former employer the University of Maryland-Baltimore. Afterward I expect they will stay in the area where her family is but not sure if Mint will continue with tile sales. Not sure where that can take him but it is a solid job for now as people even in the pandemic continued to renovate and build new homes. As part of the sales job he bought a new vehicle which means my soon to be 20 year old Subaru Forester is sitting idle. Perhaps this year we will move it to the farm to have there when I visit and maybe even I'll eventually convert it to electric. More than a few companies offer this service now.

 

As we close on 2023 the political climate around the 2024 Presidential election in the States looms large. While some bemoan that Biden is 80, Trump is only a couple years younger. Would be better to have younger options, but for now this is it. The worst thing people seem to say about Biden is that he has lost a step due to age. Regardless, he has quietly accomplished more than most Presidents slowly turning the economy around from the pandemic induced economic downturn. Meanwhile, Trump seems unapologetic for his Fascist rhetoric saying immigrants are diluting the blood of Americans and that they are vermin. These Fascist phrases are outrageous but then that is how he rolls, shock factor out front to disorient. If he is elected again then it will be by a minority just like the first time, which can happen thanks to the electoral college process that allows minorities to rule. Sad to think that so many Americans follow a cult leader*, but in fact he is playing on their real fears driven by social and economy change which is exactly how notables like Hitler and Mussolini came to power. We should try to find compromise to alleviate their fears but what Trump is selling is a one sided option with no room for that. This rhetoric is accompanied by abortion and book bans running rampant in many states endangering lives and freedom. The former was brought on by the right wing US Supreme Court forcing their religious views on everyone. Shameful, but it has allowed states to move to extreme positions that now threaten the lives of Mothers. In Texas the Supreme Court has acted like a Taliban style Christian court in effect banning abortions even if the Mother's life is at risk. Despicable. This shift to minority rule will not stand, but there may be more pain for the US to endure before control is turned around to more moderate leadership.

 

With all that said we have begun to think about retirement in the US of course. The difficulty will be timing. For now I'm still taking students and given my ad hoc management style, which you can pull off with creative people, there can be a soft landing on that front. So, it will likely be a slow controlled retreat from here, but when is an open question. Not for a few more years. Meanwhile, the crew here at the Proteome Centre are first class scientists and pretty much manage themselves doing scientific work for customers from all over the world. This makes life easier for me than it ever was in Baltimore**. For Donna and Milo, who now walk about 4 miles a day morning, noon and night, not much would change in retirement, but the humidity of Alabama. Well, the cold too will be different as the Winters in North Alabama are much colder than here where we are surrounded by water. 

From Moscow to Melbourne we wish you all the best in the New Year. Sending love and hugs from Victoria to whoever needs them. Dave, Donna, Graham and Milo

* I suppose that in fact it is not that Trump is a Cult Leader but that there is a cult that follows him. He is just playing on this. In her book "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" (2023) Rachel Maddow reminds us that the fascist populous picks the fascist leader, not the other way around.

** Over and over again people ask me how I like Victoria. My standard response is that it is pretty quiet almost boring here compared to Baltimore where there are 300 murders a year. I realized after some time here that what I missed about Baltimore, other than the much better food scene than here, is the adrenaline rush. It is similar to the solider who returns from several tours of duty to a quiet a home town only to re-enlist. It's like that here. No adrenaline rush like Baltimore where my 30 minute walk to work had me constantly on alert for danger. After awhile you don't notice this adrenaline but its complete absence here is obvious. Still, it is a wonderful quiet, lovely place here with nearly zero chance of being shot or mugged. And still we love Baltimore for all its quirkiness and lovely people.

 

Christmas 2022

As I sit here recovering from an elective surgery last week that prevents me lifting more than 10 lbs for 6-8 weeks there is more than a foot 🦶🏼of snow ❄️ 🥶 on the ground. When I decided the holiday break would be a good time for this fix, I wasn't counting on a bomb cyclone 💣🌀 coming along or maybe I just wasn't planning. At exactly this time last year there was a similar "freak" snow here. No shoveling for me, but no problem because I have Donna. 💪🏼 She shoveled the side walk in front of the house, which must be about ~ 40 meters (~ 40 yards), and the steps up to the house too and salted it all. Fortunately, the snow was mostly powder and easy to move. With the car snowed in and roads impassable, she also walked two hours round trip downtown (normally only 30 min one way) to meet a friend who came over on the Clipper from Seattle to visit Buchart gardens. At least Lynn Deal is from Chicago originally. So not unaccustomed to so much snow. On day 2, Donna dug the car out from under a frozen mess and went off to the grocery store and on returning home she shoveled more snow!

This year we said goodbye to Trixie, seen here with Donna's BIG rooster in Baltimore. Trixie was a Rottweiler-Mastif mix who was two years old when Donna found her in a shelter at Halloween 2010. Diagnosed with Cushing's disease prior to our leaving Seattle in 2013, Donna kept her healthy much longer than we anticipated including loss of a toe due to cancer. However, the excess cortisol production eventually took its toll. The last year saw her needing to go out to pee every other hour night and day, a consequence of the hormonal imbalance. And in the end, she could only collapse onto the floor with labored breathing due to fluid build up in her lungs. Tortuous to see and hear there was no fix. Faithful to the end Donna lay down with Trixie in the special room at the Vet for such purposes as Trixie drifted off into the next world. I am notably not able to handle this. So, I just cried and hugged Donna when she got home much the same as I had when Dapper, our first dog, slipped away.

Thirty-five years after getting married we spent a couple weeks in Croatia and The Netherlands. Fortunately, this trip was booked prior to arrival of our staggering Canadian tax bill (they apparently need a mid-size car) and the US IRS saying we owed them enough to buy a luxury car. The latter was an IRS miscalculation exacerbated by the Republican refusal to properly fund the IRS. This lack of funding means a lack of qualified people to review returns and also means millionaires are orders of magnitude less likely to be audited than normal people and yet we still wait for the IRS to resolve our issue. But, I digress. We first spent a few days in Cavtat at our favorite resort before going on to Dubrovnik to stay with old friends at the Sesame B&B. The old town has now limited cruise ship disembarkments to one ship per day making the place much more enjoyable. Amazingly, there is always something new to see there and on Lokrum, which is a magical place where Richard the Lionheart was shipwrecked. From there we were on to Korcula, of Marco Polo fame, by Jadrolinija ferry. Korcula at his birth during the era of European city-states was controlled by the Venetians who had failed to take Dubrovnik, but has long been a Croatian island. There we stayed in the old town in Hotel Korcula but drove up island one day to visit some remote beaches. Lovely, quiet place during August. Further up the coast again on the ferry we stayed for a night in Trogir, which is only a few minutes from the airport near Split of Emperor Diocletian fame, and were then off to Amsterdam for a couple days. Not surprisingly we were posting aimlessly on social media and unbeknownst to us our friend and my former choir director, Todd Shively, and his partner were also in A'dam we discovered when they saw our posts, LOL. This led to a lovely evening on the canals with them. Thanks Todd!

Afterward Donna headed back to Victoria where our eldest son Mint (aka David [M] Goodlett VII) had come out to stay the two weeks with his brother Graham so that we could get away. And I was then off to Maastricht to give a lecture at the International Mass Spectrometry Conference on our efforts in single cell proteomics before going to Gdansk to speak at the Medical University of Gdansk about how to integrate a research program into a fee-for service centre. Notably this year Mint finally found a J O B!!! Actually, the job found him, which is often how it works. His housemate already worked at a tile supply company and knew they needed someone. There at Morris tile Mint is putting his Mother's extraordinary organizational skills to use in the warehouse and selling. We are very proud of course that he is finally putting his Kinesiology degree to use, LOL. Honestly though getting a college degree at the least says to an employer that you can accomplish goals in the long run. Well done Mint, seen here with me before leaving Baltimore! Sadly, Graham is no better but fortunately, no worse either. Only a useless fibromyalgia diagnosis to describe his condition. Sigh...

After returning from Croatia, Milo, an American bulldog seen here entered our lives. He is our third dog and second rescue dog. You would never know he hadn't been with us his entire life. Moved in and made himself at home. Mostly aloof. Good at sleeping. Excellent at slobbering. Hates squirrels and raccoons taunting him. Not sure about the neighborhood's peacocks. Not happy about being on a diet. Barks incessantly to go out or to be let into a room. Unlike Trixie he doesn't see other dogs as a threat unless they jump him and then it can get ugly, but at least Donna can walk him. Three times a day now they are out and about. Lucky dog so says the Vet and me. 

The renovations begun in 2021 when we moved in are finally "complete". Not to say that there aren't more renovations needed, but that we are exhausted from a year and half of dust, chaos and trying to communicate with various vendors and trades. So, we'll take a break from the house renovations next year and work more on the yard which when we arrived was covered in ivy obscuring view of the house. Most of that is gone or at least hidden under ground, as it is never really gone, but lots needs to be done to bring the yard up to a level equal to Donna's interior design. The yard was at some point created by putting up a retaining wall and backfilling on top of the rock that is just barely below the veneer of dirt on the entire property. Along with everything else, the retaining wall needs replacing, LOL. Never mind that for now, when we bought the place most rooms, like the dining room, had layers of wall paper tediously removed by Donna so that she could add her paint color schemes. The kitchen with its wood stove for heat had to be gutted and the bathroom also as it had last been remodeled more than 50 years ago. 😩

After ASMS.ORG this year in June I stopped by the farm to see my folks. Seen here with my Dad who will soon be 91, it was good to see that he had physically recovered from the fall last December that had him in the hospital for his 90th birthday. After being in a wheelchair and needing a walker for about six months, he amazingly recovered from the cracked hip he suffered in a fall while burning trash. Why was he burning trash? Because he could, LOL, but no more of that! While he is quite strong for 90, his recovery is likely in large part due to my Mother's support seen here with him a few years ago. Not unexpectedly after the disorientation of such a traumatic event, his short term memory which had begun to fail him before the accident has not gotten better. While chatting he could tell me all about butchering hogs down in the pasture with his Dad, where he was born on the farm by the pond and how his Dad had butchered chickens in the backyard 😆 of the Sheffield home and how their milk cow was stolen after he left it as instructed overnight in a local park to graze. However, he couldn't remember recently where I lived but when I told him Victoria, BC, he said "I've been there!". Indeed, he had when we lived in Seattle. Because he loves to hear me play guitar but rarely has me nearby, I made a YouTube channel so that he can enjoy it whenever my Mom can turn it on for him. Oh dear, not much going on there. I definitely need to carve out more time for this in the new year.

Amazingly, after twenty years in academics I finally taught my first undergraduate course this Fall. Previously, I had been in schools of pharmacy that train students who mostly already have an undergraduate degree. So this was a new experience, but thanks to the lovely students here for taking it easy on me. While it was in the end a delight, I was admittedly worried when at the start they weren't sure about primary amines and condensation reactions drawn on the chalkboard. LOL, we got through it and they as mostly 4th year students will soon get on with their lives knowing a bit about discovery experimentation in the biomedical sciences. 

Seen here is the Proteome Centre staff and my wet lab group at our holiday outing to an escape room. Loads of fun and more so without any obvious risk of catching COVID! Notably, the proteome centre carries out fee-for-service work projects for Canadians and scientists from all over the world, while the wet lab is focused on understanding why lipids in Gram negative bacteria can some times escape immune detection allowing chronic infections (think syphilis and Lyme disease) or turn deadly in under a week (think the black Plague or Tularemia) or in other cases (think Salmonella or E coli) be recognized readily making you ghastly ill in order to clear the infection. All well, but loads to learn. Fortunately, I'm blessed to have a group of amazing people working on this problem and generally at the Centre where the staff are AAA human beings doing solid science day in and out.

In the US it seems like the greatest victim of all time - maybe the greatest ever LOL -@POTUS45 will soon be one with the world he has created for himself. What an absurdity, but now much mimicked and by some who are much smarter - not difficult to achieve - and thus more dangerous. While we may soon shed his clownish facade, the evil of white supremacy and white victimization that he has empowered will not go quietly. Watching President Zelensky speak to Congress last night some 81 years after Churchill made the treacherous North Atlantic crossing to do the same and under similar conditions with a madman raining terror on civilians in Britain, it seems like only yesterday when @POTUS45 was trying to bribe Zelensky resulting in his first impeachment. And then, a second one for emboldening a mob to attack the capitol. And then, the stealing of government documents and finally being recommended - first ever ex-President to have such distinction, so much winning LOL - by Congress to the DOJ for criminal prosecution. It is not enough to chant "lock him", but rather "lock them" up. Lock up all who attempted to overthrow duly elected President Biden. You just can't make this nonsense up, but it is the smart and evil ones that will follow to be wary of as they will not commit their crimes in the light of day. At the least @POTUS45 and his cronies are guilty of seditious conspiracy to overthrow the US government and should pay the penalty for their actions,

Enough of that, but I had to get it off my chest. Hopefully, the US government can cast off this evil that has caught hold and move on to the promised liberté et égalité pour tous. Speaking of French speaking, Canadian immigration finally thought well enough of our application for permanent residency (like a US green card) to grant us this designation. Notably, it means we can come and go across the border with ease and with no need now to carry my work permit. It also means that Graham can finally get on the province's medical service plan. As an adult dependent he was not eligible, FFS! So he has had only emergency medical coverage since we arrived. The basic difference between our experience in the US and here is that while in the US medical service is metered out based on money - we always had the gold plated plan and so only complained about cost, here it is metered out based on time and we and everyone else has to wait and wait and wait for appointments. It's true that many more people have healthcare here than in the US, but it is still a mess of a different sort here. Glad to be here though. All good.

From the appropriately named Rockland neighborhood in Victoria, BC c'est tout jusqu'à l'année prochaine (aka that's all until next year).

Love, hugs and kisses to those of you who might need or just want them: Dave, Donna, Graham and Milo

Christmas 2021 in Victoria BC 

Waking up on Boxing Day to snow on the ground and wildlife in the area. Looks to be frozen over until Tuesday at least here. So the car is probably stuck until then at the top of our steep driveway. Yesterday, missing Tuscany or just the sunny Mediterranean, we feasted on pork roast braised in a Dutch oven in milk with sage and rosemary accompanied by fagiolli all'uccelletto, and tomato cucumber salad with basil. The gravy the roast made was delicious over polenta with parmesan or just about anything for that matter. And of course we had chess pies for desert with fresh whipped cream. I'm pretty happy with my chess pie recipe - finally. In this case I used cream in place of evaporated milk, which produces a firmer pie filling, and half the sugar called for in the original recipe which is way too sweet for me. The day even started with pie: a German style bacon onion pie. The day before Christmas Eve my Dad (seen here 3 years ago), born 90 years ago on 29 DEC on the farm he now lives on, went in hospital after falling outside while burning debris. That meant Mom spent Christmas Eve and Day in hospital in Florence. While he sounded normal when I spoke to him, the fall has revealed or caused - no way to know at the moment - a problem with his right hip meaning he'll require some rehabilitation before he can go home. They hope that can start tomorrow and in Decatur if not Moulton, but regardless the new year will get off to a complicated start for them. 

 

Speaking of complicated, this year got off to quite a start in the US with the first breaching of the capitol since the Brits had a look around during the War of 1812. Before we knew so much about Trump it would have been hard to believe that a sitting President would try to stop the vote count he rightfully lost by sending rioters to the capitol much less by calling the Georgia Secretary of State asking him to find more votes. Incredible (sounds better said with French accent), but sadly all too believable now. And this came after a year of his confused discussions of a deadly virus ravishing the world like none since the 1918 flu pandemic. Remarkable (also sounds better with French accent) that so many still refuse to be vaccinated when all their lives they have been vaccinated just to go to school. Fine for them to express their rights, but I don't think they should receive preference over the vaccinated who need ICU beds. No matter how you spin it, their refusal to be vaccinated has tasked the medical ICU professionals to the point of breaking because now most pandemic victims in ICU beds are not vaccinated. Sadly, it seems that once you believe one conspiracy, the second one is much easier to believe. Something like a third of Republicans don't believe Biden is the duly elected President. So there ya go...

 

As you will have seen on Instagram we bought a house this year in Victoria, British Columbia. Before moving I was admonished by Donna “I’m not doing any renovations in Victoria! We are buying a ready to move in house!!” well, we got the last part right technically at least but my mitre saw is still in a storage unit in Moulton since there was no need for it here, LOL. Renovations are ongoing and likely will be … maybe forever. Kitchen reno is almost done but it took four months for the ventilation hood to arrive and it still needs to be installed. That will happen this week - maybe - and then the backsplash tile can go up. The master bath and walk through closet reno is next. And while the drawings are ready, we need to organize the trades to get started. Not exactly straight forward because they are all in short supply here. Outside the 100 yrs of ivy growth is 99% gone but the 1% lurking out of sight will never be gone because of course you can’t kill that sh*t. Pennsylvania blue stone (quarried on Vancouver island) will be going in soon for the walk way leading up to the house. Double A Painting are coming out early in the new year to assess the situation. While the exterior original wood siding is a mess, it is still salvageable but probably can’t go too many more years without some wood repair, sealing, and painting. Lots more work to do in the yard and the wall out front needs work too....and then developing the yard such that plants can survive the annual Summer drought and Winter wetness requires some thought. Thus, the previously Donna “not goan do no reno” Goodlett has been busy and will be for some time to come. She worked hard removing loads of wall paper, painting and more to get us in the house in July and then redesigning the gutted kitchen, planters and chimney, etc. 

 

Like anyone buying a house recently we found the housing market’s price inflation was  exacerbated by the pandemic’s creation of low inventory here and all over the developed world. While our row house in Baltimore sold seven years after purchase for $100k more than we paid in 2013, our Seattle house, which sold in 2013 for $550k, sold again this past Summer for $1.3M. Yikes! The housing market here is similar to Seattle because - as the locals say Victoria is home of the newly wed and nearly dead - having some of the best weather in all of Canada has people flocking here and at least the nearly dead have loads of expendable cash that they can't take with them. This meant despite our best intentions, we bought a fixer because the inflated prices and sealed bidding process saw us lose out on four houses from $100-300k over asking price before finally finding this 1920 Tudor. And those houses we lost out on were all listed for more than $1M! This Tudor, over run by ivy and with bathrooms last remodeled in 1960, had no other bidders, LOL, but even that would not have lasted long as the market is too tight here. In our case a prior offer fell through and the owners - to our advantage - were desperate to get out of the property. So timing was everything as it always is and there is of course no substitute in life for good old fashioned luck. To conclude I can offer home buying in a hot market tip #1: price is inversely proportional to the amount of ivy on the property. So if you can just barely see the house from the road due to ivy, then it is probably a good deal, LOL. By the way, this is the third property we bought that had parts of it overrun by ivy. So, something is clearly wrong with us, LOL :) 

 

Mint braved the pandemic to come out for a visit in October. Where do you want to go for dinner was one of his first questions. Hmmm? We looked at each other and realized that due to the pandemic we had not been out to eat once in the year we had been here. Ugh%^&*. Normally we would eat out once a week, but COVID restrictions, an old dog with Cushing’s and Ham’s needs meant we had not been out once for an entire year. Argh@#$. So, we made a reservation at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel and sat outside for dinner for the first time since leaving Baltimore. Meanwhile back near Baltimore, Mint graduated in May with a degree in kinesiology from the University of Maryland’s main undergraduate campus in College Park which is right next to WA DA. His girlfriend, who is a delightful, strong Irish-Palestinian genetic blend, has another year to go there leaving him with no interest in moving. Since graduating he has freelanced in the “gig” economy working inventory in a tile warehouse owned by the Father of his Korean-American house mate whose grandmother – who can’t speak English and is slowly losing her fight with dementia - thinks Mint is the family mechanic because she saw him working on a car there one day, LOL. So, if you need a forklift operator trained in kinesiology and possessing a real talent for graffiti art, then he is your guy. Call me! I got to see him again in Philadelphia when I also braved the pandemic to travel to my annual science conference ASMS where I met my PhD advisor for the first time in a few years. Mint worked at the conference for the organizers as a “gopher” aka administrative assistant, something he excels at, for my mate Jennifer Watson. He can thank his Mom – not me - for his organizational skills as I am the traditional artistic type organizing in piles of this and that, LMAO, at best. 

 

Thanks to one of former President Roosevelt’s "socialist" programs known as Medicaid, Mint with no full-time job, managed to get health insurance. Here though, thanks to an incompetent administrator at UVic, Ham still has no health insurance other than for emergencies. Three video calls with this person over the year prior to our move and she insisted each time we explained his situation (can't work or go to school, etc) not to worry. [insert explicatives freely like an Aussie ordering beer or pretty much anything] What she apparently meant was that she was not worried. While it turns out he can get health insurance on his own, this can only happen after I have permanent residence, or he just takes one class at UVic, which we had explained he cannot. Doh! We have applied for PR, but have no idea when it will be granted. For now Ham’s condition is more or less unchanged. An undiagnosed malady - by more than a dozen health professionals over a half dozen years – that leaves him unable to do simple things like open jars or cans, etc. Year five of this starts in the new year. The only thing left to do is whole genome sequencing to look for rare genetic mutations but this won’t solve any problems, just suggest possible origins. Seems almost useless. None of the obvious mutations they checked related to muscular dysfunction were candidates to explain his condition. Sigh.

 

Just before the province closed gyms – again – before Christmas and thanks to omicron this time, I managed – thanks to an amazing trainer named Johnson Nguyen – to get my deadlifts back to my pre-pandemic 225 lbs. My upper range is somewhat limited by a ruptured L5-S1 disc, but a simple cue was all it took to get my "normal" back. While it’s no record for my age-weight class, it is good enough to get your heart pounding. And! He also fixed my bench form. There, despite a hole in my left rotator cuff from a bone spur, which should have been repaired just before the pandemic shut Baltimore down but was not thanks to a ban on nonlife threatening surgeries, has kept me off form for a few years now. With Johnson I’m hopeful I can beat the provincial record of only 155 lbs for my age-weight class by 20-30 lbs. The record seems low but then maybe most guys in my age-weight class have worn out their shoulders. For now though I am packing on the pounds again unable to get to the gym but loving to cook, eat and drink too much 👀… 

Trixie - now 14 - has had to get use to two homes in the last year. Neither having a fence means we have had to get use to taking her out because there is no shortage of beautiful wildlife distractions as well as macabre looking black squirrels, owls looking for squirrels, raccoons and baby deer. And, with Cushing's disease firmly in place she drinks way too much water and is up every night between 1-3 to go outside. So our sleep patterns are more like parents with a toddler than what we would like. That means naps in the afternoon to avoid being like zombies all day. That and the general malaise affecting many brought on by the pandemic means that I have - despite posting my arrangement of a Christmas classic last year - not had much time for my music. I did manage to design a new logo based on a combination of an old "Goodlet" coat of arms from Scotland modified with a book placed on the original "or a fess gules" and the University of Victoria arms. Thanks to DPAK (seen here back row 4th from right) for implementing it! And many thanks to him for his work on the didactic portion of our mass spectrometry focused Summer School, postponed two years now but hopefully on again in July 2022.

That's all for now. I'm still on Twitter and Facebook etc. So feel free to reach out or visit if the pandemic ever eases up! Happy Holidays from Dave, Donna, Ham and Trixie near Government House with an amazing garden in Victoria's Rockland neighborhood where we are minutes from the beach with water too cold year round to swim in without a Finnish sauna nearby! 

 

 Of twenty-twenty, we have had a plenty...good bye and good riddance!

Like you, my year started pretty normal. Right out the gate I was off to Edinburgh, Rotterdam, Leiden, Amsterdam and Gdansk, where there is a lovely Ferris wheel (links to photos on my instagram page), all in a two week period. Standard stuff, but by March life had slowed considerably. Ugh@#$%^&* The SARS virus we had been hearing about from China was in Maryland and in all the places I had just visited in the EU. Fortunately, Governor Hogan took steps early to implement quarantine actions. Stay at home orders went into place in March and the University of Maryland complied. Don't go to work if you don't have to we were told. Mask up inside. Limit contact outside your bubble. Social distance. Only "ZOOM" video meetings. Lots of new words in the daily lexicon. For me being use to working from home or where ever I wanted, this didn't sound bad at first. And, by then my lab had dwindle to a few and I was contemplating moving. So, there wasn't much going on in the lab that needed my attention. However, suddenly being forced to work from home felt confining in the same way that pre-COVID working from home had been a luxury. 

Speaking of moving, we did so during the damn pandemic making it our 5th time to move across the continent. Shipped the Kia Sportage to Seattle and rented a lux SUV that Donna drove the entire way every day for five days from BWI to SEA. I worked off and on the whole way and tried be generally as annoying as I felt safe being all in order to help keep her awake. Once there we took a couple days to regroup, picked up the Kia and then moved on Northward. Even got in a lovely lunch with my former driver while we waited on the Kia to arrive at his house near Seatac. Arriving in Victoria on 1 OCT we went straight into quarantine for two weeks - as per government requirements and yes they called to check that we were in fact staying home. No going out. No going off property. Thanks to Donna's foresight in packing all the household things we would need in the two week quarantine when we could not get to our belongings, we were mostly set. And, thanks to delivery of fast-food and groceries it went by well enough bolstered by help from Dave Schibli and Derek Smith. These guys work at the lab I inherited from Christoph Borchers who resigned as Director back in July 2019. They insisted on helping move all of our belongings from their de facto quarantine at the ABF terminal in Surrey (an inexpensive way to move but requires you load your own trailer) which is right at the border. Not a simple journey from Surrey to Victoria as it is three hours one way including a 1.5 hour ferry ride, but these guys insisted on helping even though it meant unloading off the ABF trailer in Surrey onto a UHAUL and then off the UHAUL into our Victoria rental. Long day, but felt like we had arrived to find family waiting on us. 

Just like the 18 years in Seattle, we put down roots in Baltimore in our seven years there making leaving bittersweet. Lots of friends left behind and sadly one homeless man, Leslie Dale Watson, who I had come to know well during my walks to and from work. Too many people to name, but thanks to social media they are virtually close except Dale who I'll likely never have the luxury of chatting with again. And then there was our hundred + year old row house with all of its charm like the marble fireplace that we bid farewell. Sold surprisingly quickly, but then Donna had staged it like a pro! Lots of charm in the historic Bolton Hill neighborhood like the veg and fruit man's horse drawn wagon that we will miss. All of the places we could walk to were also hard to give up as was our lovely patio decorated by Donna enjoyed by Trixie and where I worked and ate many meals. Even our 33rd anniversary was spent in quarantine but in style in the kitchen. Thanks COVID! 

Our oldest, aka Mint, stayed behind in Maryland near the College Park campus where he is finishing up his degree in kinesiology. What he'll do with this degree remains a mystery but he has begun making job applications. Can't imagine the job market will recover by the time he finishes in May 2021, but loads of new graduates will be in this unnerving position. Sadly, this will be the first Christmas we have spent without him. Don't want to dwell on that but hope he can - pandemic pending - find a way to celebrate if even alone. He said perhaps he would be with his Seattle childhood mate Elliott who is now in the Coast Guard and nearby in Virginia. Our youngest on the other hand, aka Ham, is here with us. Soon he'll start his fourth year convalescing from an unknown medical problem causing debilitating muscle soreness. In July he and I traveled to LA to visit Cedars Sinai's Center for Undiagnosed Patients (CUP) to try to shed some light on his condition. CUP uses a team of doctors who meet patients individually and then meet as a group afterward to discuss possible diagnoses. Sadly, none was forthcoming. Even the genetic mutations ordered by the CUP neurologist failed to find anything pathological, sigh. As of now we are set to undergo whole genome sequencing to see if something inheritable shows up. With COVID ravishing LA even more so than when we visited, when even the homeless on the streets had masks on, it could be Summer 2021 before we are able to discuss results with the genetic counselor. 

Our first morning in Victoria we awoke to the strangest feeling brought on by complete and utter silence. Not even any road noise in our Gordon Head neighborhood. Weird because in Baltimore we had become use to the daily sounds of urban life: gunshots, sirens, police helicopters overhead with spot lights at night, traffic scofflaws, pedestrians yelling obscenities at each other, squeegee boys, twelve O'clock boys and all manner of chaos one can imagine in a city where police abdicated control of traffic laws after the Freddy Gray riots. Despite all that, we will always miss Baltimore. What a wonderful and whacky place to live. The urban life - sans traffic scofflaws - suited us. I loved walking where ever I wanted and interacting with all the "scary" people we were warned about when moving there in 2013: "Don't live in the city! It's too dangerous" we were told. Well, it was fine and fun. Fantastic even. In addition to Donna's now good friends she left behind, I met a luthier - Phil Jacoby - who got all my guitars working again after spending decades mostly in their cases. More of this to come on that front I hope.

That's about all I got. We are happy to be at a University that wants me, but sad to have left our friends behind in Baltimore. Indeed, very sad to have left Charm-City with its gritty, funky, friendly folk where grocery store security guards wear bullet proof vests and carry firearms and remind you to "stay safe" as you exit the store. Victoria is quite a bit more boring by comparison, but we'll get use to it - I hope. Happy Holidays from Dave, Donna, Ham and Trixie! We miss you Mint!!!!! Hoping the border opens by the time you graduate so we can be together. Lots of love, hugs and kisses from all of us to all of you.

NATIVITATIS MMXIX

As the year winds down I am definitely ready for a break. Seems like I had more travel than usual this year, but it was probably just more international travel. Here https://www.instagram.com/p/BydZuABAfRs/ I can be seen "working" in Atlanta 🤓 and here https://www.instagram.com/p/B0BR06BgHBT/ in Dubrovnik 😎. Recently, on the way to the FDA I traveled through WA DC's union station where the main hall is more impressive than ever with the holiday decorations https://www.instagram.com/p/B6L4--vFct8/ and like NYC Baltimore is also ballin' for Christmas https://www.instagram.com/p/B6WSrYEg4GL/

In Shanghai I met up with two former colleagues from the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Biaoyang Lin of Zhejiang University and Wei Yan of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, both of whom have gone on to Professorships in China and are pictured here with me in front of the Parliament building:https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ZKXzcA3Mu/ Unlike me when they left Seattle, they left their families behind. Neither seemed happy about this, but you gotta go where the work is and their now Americanized families were not interested in moving back. For the record I tried this scam on Donna when we moved to Baltimore, but she would not go for it 🙄 Notably, as dual Chinese - American nationals they are no longer as Chinese as they use to be and can't work on certain classified projects there. BTW: the Chinese are killing it in Shanghai with architecture as witnessed in the beer bottle opener building next to Shanghai's famous tower https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ZKuNggEmQ/


I finally made it to Africa this year where in Accra, Ghana I spoke at the University of Ghana about our work in microbial diagnostics, sepsis and biomarkers. While I'm comfortable being a minority, Baltimore is 65% African (American Africans and African Africans - loads of which are Nigerian), in Ghana an Anglo really stands out 👀  Notably, at Ningbo University near Shanghai there were quite a few Africans on campus but in Accra, while there were many Chinese in the city, due to the Chinese push to gain influence, I didn't see any pale skin on campus. That was odd because campuses are usually hot zones of cultural mixing. Maybe this is just a sign that the University of Ghana is on the rise rather than having made it. In Accra the thing that stood out most was the style of dress for men and women. Lots of eye popping colors as seen in this photo at a textile outlet https://www.instagram.com/p/B4XYU2_A8dv/  

The other thing that stood out was the amazing hospitality of Ghanaians. It made me wonder if this is a relic of the British system Ghana and other British colonies experienced: an organized society with instilled manners of social behavior. Possibly, as most ex-British colonies seem to have no shortage of manners. Regardless, it is still a fairly poor country where the main hospital was built by the British over 100 years ago  https://www.instagram.com/p/B4RrUbFg62x/ and the street vendors perform amazing feats from their heads https://www.instagram.com/p/B4RlwdXA7sO/ Speaking of lovely architecture the Presidential residence - office known as Jubilee House is one of the most architecturally beautiful designs I have seen https://www.instagram.com/p/B4XYB5Eg0yO/ Ghana is a shining example of democracy in Africa with lots of room for growth in tourism and natural resources.

Meanwhile back in Baltimore David (Minter) Goodlett (aka the VII as in the 7th David Goodlett in a row but the first D. M. Goodlett) got through another year at the University of Maryland in their kinesiology program. He found some honest work this year for Jennifer Watson who runs several science conferences like www.asms.org, an annual event with 6-7k attendees. Jen's Mom, who started the company decades ago, fell in love with Mint and wanted to adopt him because of his manners and work ethic. Wait? What? Who knew? Looks like he'll get some more work with them in 2020. That's good as it's not clear he really knows what he wants to do when he graduates. Well, make a lot of money but he is not alone there. Judging from his choice of attire here https://www.instagram.com/p/B2ufB8eAlM3/  without loads of money to make it rain he may be pretty lonely 😜 

Graham continued his convalescence away from school. Still no resolution to his chronic muscle pain that saw him drop out of University of Maryland's engineering program January 2018. As of this year only one of the four of us has not been hospitalized since moving to Baltimore, i.e. Donna. Graham had his stint back in September a result of medication and diet that saw him in for a week rebalancing his blood chemistry 🥺 Earlier in the year we tried to get him into the NIH's undiagnosed disease network but their reply was "we don't think we can help you". Ah right, so they are running a network for recognizable diseases that have not been diagnosed. Probably just trying to take in patients they know they can help which helps their success rate and and funding from Congress. Pathetic. Change the name of your damn program, NIH! ... We are now close to getting him into Cedar Sinai's undiagnosed disease network. Stay tuned. Hopefully, by next year there will be some resolution. Regardless, he turned 22 this year https://www.instagram.com/p/B4H0DSHAOSv/ 

It's been mostly a great year with lots to be thankful for like this Bolton Hill mansion from which we can walk to work, grocery store, pharmacy, doctor, dentist, hardware store, movie theater, opera house, symphony, dinner-drinks, and train station. For Donna, proximity to the train station means she is only 45 minutes away from all the best protests in WA DC. Notably, the best (45th) President ever and everyone knows it (his words not mine 🙄) does not disappoint there https://www.instagram.com/p/B1ZyNAdgYPp/. Alas, it doesn't seem possible that we could ever live such a pragmatic urban lifestyle for the money a Professor makes any where else. Certainly the same row house in Boston or NYC would cost 4x more than this 4k sq ft mansion in the heart of the city. Donna, seen here https://www.instagram.com/p/BwhcyCQhyQm/ at our favorite local eatery, Noona's by the Mt Royal light rail station and a ten minute walk from our place, continued her part-time work at Sunlight Natural Health http://sunlightnaturalhealth.com/ for a naturopathic doctor who is among the many Doctors treating Graham.

We hope to have exciting news to share in the new year. 🎉No. Donna is not pregnant again and no we didn't win the lottery 😜 For now we wish you all a happy holiday season and blessed new year. 

💕🥰 🙏🏼Dave, Donna, Mint, Ham and Trixie

P.S. For those interested in my work see the following link https://proteomics-now.com/speakers/35-dave-goodlett/index.html which I found while searching for a tweet from the lab. Seems the web never forgets 👀 I recall making the video in Finland but don't think I ever saw this webpage with a link to an interview of me that was made for an online proteomics forum. 

Christmas 2018

For our 31^st wedding anniversary we traveled to Italy and Croatia, two places we both adore. While there I spoke twice at the Croatian Biophysics Society Summer school held in Split, which is where the Roman Emperor built his retirement palace. It was originally more like a fortress of course (www.diocletianspalace.org) which the modern city grew up around and into. Now melded seamlessly, the two are difficult to distinguish. We stayed at Marmontova apartments (www.marmontsplit.com/) run by a lovely family that put us only five minutes walk from the promenade where we consumed lots of sea air, wine and coffee at the many outdoor cafes. 

 

Split's food fresh and prepared

From Split we flew to Rome and took the train to Florence where I spoke at a workshop at the International Mass Spectrometry Conference (www.imsc2018.it/). We had both only ever been in Florence for one day each but not together. As time at the conference permitted we explored from a base at hotel Brunelleschi (www.brunelleschihotelflorence.com/) in the old town very near the Duomo. We skipped the Duomo tour due to long lines but went through the museum next to it, which contains loads of stone carved frescos from the original Gothic façade to the cathedral. Well worth the visit just to see how folk use to learn about what was in the bible. LOL ... For example, I learned that Noah was fond of wine and going commando (lower right panel below where the actual caption was "Drunk Noah" LOL ... and just above you can see that Eve really did come out of Adam's side).

Old and new art of Florence

From Florence we spent a day in Rome and then were off to Dubrovnik to visit with the Master Hotelier of the Sesame (www.bbsesameinn.com/en-gb/photos), Misko Ecergovic. He always hugs Donna straight away on exiting the taxi ignoring me while collecting her baggage. Because he is one of those people who instantly make you feel like family, most nights he took the time to buy us nightcaps at a local seaside café. Previously, we would just sit at his place, the Sesame (www.sesame.hr), where is partner Marina is the head chef and have drinks. Now though he has leased it out to better enjoy his family, but with Marina in place as chef the food remains delicious. The "retired" and well-seasoned Misko has lots of stories and opinions about life. For example, he favors the Socratic form of education which is difficult to accommodate in the modern education system. Adding to Misko's world view is the time he and his son were interred in a “concentration” camp during part of the Croatian Independence War (1991-1995). The Sesame Inn and restaurant are both in a stone building long owned by the family with the rooms decorated by artwork from when the lower floors were an art gallery.

Dubrovnik scenes

No visit to Dubrovnik would be complete without a stay in Cavtat, which is the village closest to the airport. If you can afford it, Hotel Croatia is the place to stay (hotel-croatia.cavtat.hotels-hr.com/en/). An all-inclusive resort built during Yugoslav times it was briefly occupied by Montenegrin forces during the war. A short stroll around the bay takes you to one of our favorite restaurants, Bugenvila (bugenvila.eu/). The harbor water is so clean and clear that you could literally jump in for a swim after dinner or maybe just to float around. 

 Scenes from Lokrum

Scenes from Cavtat

Meanwhile in Baltimore, other things happened that kept us occupied in 2018. Some good. Some, not so good. In my case, I continued to search for a new home for the lab. Insert the politics of academics, which makes everything more complicated than it needs to be, and the best I can say is that we love living in Baltimore but my job - not so much. I can only say here that the power brokers of academic politics are often outside the reaches of the normal legal system leaving Professors to fend for themselves. Hopefully, the situation will resolve in 2019. On the bright side of 2018 at work, six students graduated from the lab with their Doctor of Philosophy degrees (aka PhD = piled higher and deeper). This was really a great bunch of students who either began in year one or two after our move here in 2013. When I first started in academics in 2004, Sam Miller - a colleague in Seattle who was a few years ahead of me - said that students keep you young. Absolutely true. In many ways they are like adopted children who grow into young adulthood while with you. It's a blessing to have so many of them to enrich my life.

Baltimore scenes

In January Graham, having been at College Park for only a week of his 4^th semester, was back home unable to go on. After three semesters of success in math and physics and chemistry, he had just been admitted to the very competitive Chemical Engineering program at the University of Maryland. Going back to his start, the night before starting at College Park in Fall 2016 he received a Lyme disease diagnosis and started antibiotic therapy. However, by January 2018 his symptoms were worse to the point where he was dealing with so much pain that he had to drop out being unable to use his hands except like you might with no opposable thumb. For him, 2018 went by going through various therapies, but his symptoms did not resolve. We are now more convinced than before that his symptoms are not due to Lyme and have begun the process of going through various specialists to try to sort out this medical mystery.

 Mint and Ham

Mint (aka David Minter) continued the year at College Park without his brother and in their kinesiology program and will probably also end with a minor in business from his time at Towson University. We think he’ll finish Fall 2019 and then who knows. Medical school? Graduate school? Physical therapy school? Time to decide later because like his second grade math teacher explained to us during a conference “this kid will never die of a heart attack”. At least in public he never seems to lose his cool, which is an admirable trait. This though cannot be said of his watching Auburn University football games. Given the team’s woes this year, the curses flew fast and furious at the TV. So animated were he and I during games that Trixie usually left the room after just a few minutes into the first quarter. War Eagle, damnit!!!!

In a story line that might be heard in a country song, the dog - Trixie - cost me at least $2000 when one of her toes was remove due to a malignancy. We were told this was cheaper than chemotherapy. Chemotherapy? For a dog? Yep. It's a thing. So, I thought to myself - self - this is thousands more than the standard American veterinary care in the back country that my Grandpa administered as needed. Not long after the toe was removed, she went in to have a tooth removed. Back home, she was missing five teeth! When I asked how much that cost, “you don't want to know” was the reply.   However, it had to be cheaper than the crown put on one of my molars recently. When I told Donna this would cost $340, she growled “why didn’t insurance pay@#$%!?” to which I replied “they paid half”. LOL. C'est la vie. I still don't know how much the dog’s dental work cost, but more than mine I bet@#$%^&*!

Donna continues to work at Sunlight Natural Health (sunlightnaturalhealth.com/) helping out in the office. She also spent the year as a patient of Arivale (www.arivale.com), a company founded by my former boss Leroy Hood (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leroy_Hood) at the Institute for Systems Biology (systemsbiology.org). Arivale use massive amounts of patient specific data they collect along with lifestyle surveys to reshape your biochemistry by reshaping your interactions with the world. This is certainly one version of the future of personalized medicine that I recommend keeping an eye on. As an aside, early in the year Donna received the results of her 23andme genomic analysis (www.23andme.com). As expected given our geographic genealogy for the last couple hundred years she was mostly Irish, English and Scot but there was a small % of Finnish of all things. No idea where this came from if not from some Finns involved in the Viking raids of the UK. I'm waiting on my kit but I'll be shocked if it is much different than hers save for perhaps the Finnish component.

You can find us on Facebook, Instagram (instagram.com/davegoodlett/) and twitter (twitter.com/goodlettlab1) and for now in Baltimore but who knows where we might be this time next year. We are only 20 minutes drive from BWI airport and 10 minutes walk to Penn station, which takes you to WA DC in 45 minutes or NYC in a couple hours. So, please stop by when you are in town.

Happy Holidays from the Baltimore Goodletts ...

 Runner up photos from 2018

You have got to be kidding...

Patio

Bugenvila G&T

Split

Split smiles

Piazza del Duomo

Arch d' Firenze

Ponte Vecchio

Trevi fountain smiles

Incheon

Bros @ Cinghiale DEC 2017

Bros Christmas Day 2017

Comfy

Not your chair, Dave

Twice in 2018

Ryan Burns' music shack in Burien, WA

HEL to ICN Finnair business class

HEL to GDN

Is that big chicken staying?

Bros @ Loch Bar for April - May b'day celebrations

Really?

FFS

 Bros @Cinghiale DEC 2018

OCT Steak cake for b'day 21

 Bros 26 OCT 2018

 Gilded

 Washington's impressive "monument"

Donna's stocking acting out.

 ...and they did

Thanks Erik Nilsson for a wee dram of Iceland

Faded Glory

Baltimore's Artscape 

 Donna at Neal and Joe's hair salon

 Ridiculous

 ICCVS gang at MSBM

 MSBM's 2018 class

 That's right DPAK. Swim trunks. Not underwear. LOL!

 Istria bitters

 Whew! I needed that ...

 Southern end DBV harbor

Watching world cup in DBV

 Being introduced to MSBM for lecture

on the way to DBV harbor

 DBV

That's all folks

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