Entries Tagged as ''

Traffic looks

traffic continues to look good at SmartTraveler 

and at the MSN traffic monitor.

Maybe it won’t really be a problem. I saw on the news that some people were very upset because the city scared people too much and now there’s nothing to be concerned about. I think this is like the Y2K bug. If nobody had done anything there would have been huge problems. But since people have made the arrangements they were encouraged to make (vacations, working-from-home, etc) its addressing the problem.

Sphere: Related Content

Pine Banks

The car is all better. The Pine Banks Brothers took care of it. It turned out to be a spark plug wire that was damaged/bad and was arcing which caused a cylinder in the rear to misfire. They had to take off the manifold to get to the wires and the spark plugs. Since they’re so hard to get to, Chrysler uses long-lasting platinum spark plugs that are supposed to last 90,000 miles. So my guys changed the plugs while they were in there.

So new plugs and new wires. Plus the labor involved in getting to the wires.

I talked to Liz on the phone a few minutes ago and she sounded exhausted. She’s got to go pick up the kids from camp sometime in the next 30 minutes. They had a good time there yesterday. Gabriel complained that he was bored in between the swimming, the crafts, the games, the toys and the other kids. We weren’t terribly sympathetic to his plight. Ben and Chloe had a wonderful time! They have another week coming up at the end of August, too.

I got the word today that I should plan on going to the SAP Tech-Ed event in San Diego (http://www.sapteched.com/) in October. I’m not all that thrilled about it, though. It would be nice to stay closer to home, but I’m not sure I can get the same education anywhere else. Its kind of a unique opportunity to catch up on SAP’s cutting edge technology.

I should go.

Sphere: Related Content

The following post was meant…

The following post was meant for July 6th, 2004.  I don’t know how it got posted here today or where it came from. 

Yesteday we went to the beach on Plumb Island just outside of Newburyport, MA. Its up on the border with New Hampshire. We had a really good time. We spent a couple of hours there an nobody got sunburned. The kids we well behaved. In fact, Ben was really great. We didn’t have to correct him even once.

The beach is really quite steep there and the waves had a tendency to sneak up on us. I didn’t mind standing around in the water and we told the kids they couldn’t go in over their waist. The water was about 58 degrees and the air temperature was only about 75.

It felt good though. I mostly hung around in water that was around the middle of my calves. Grace would grab my hand and make me take her in the water to chase the waves. Then when the waves came around again, she would turn around and run away from the waves shrieking. It was fun, but it made me a little dizzy.

Last night we ate some mexican food and watched “Secret Window” with Christian Slater. He was fine, but I thought the story was a little weak. It was ok. It wasn’t bad enough we had to turn it off. We still have another movie called Paycheck — Ben Affleck takes these jobs but gets his memory erased and he has to follow the clues — I think someone is trying to kill him while he’s doing this. It looks like fun.

Also the Bourne Supremacy is coming out soon. I enjoyed The Bourne Identity quite a bit and think the next movie will be good too.

This evening we set off some fireworks.

YES! Strictly speaking its not 100% leagal in the city limits, but we didn’t think anyone would turn us in. We got some a while back that spewed sparks. The packaging said something like “Flowers of Light and Fountains of Illumination” — I suspect the chinese translators left out that they wailed like a banshee!! I was quite put out, to be honest. I didn’t mind firing off a bunch of sparks but I was afraid the cops would come down on us.

But they didn’t. All is well.

I’ve dropped Liz off in Wakefield where the fireworks will be held at 9:45 tonight. We’ve got a babysitter for Grace while we take Ben and Gabe and Chloe to their first fireworks! I think they’ll really like it. Liz has staked out a great spot and there’s a band playing and she as a book. She’ll be fine. I just hope I can find a decent parking place.

This morning I went to REI to pick up sealant for the tent seams — I guess they’re not quite water tight. While I was there I saw the Kelty Sunshade was on sale for, like, 30% off. Its normally $185 and I got it for only $130. It was a splurge. See, yesterday when we went to the beach I was really quite uncomfortable hanging around on the beach baking in the sun. Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of sunblock on but I just didn’t really have anywhere to be. So I think with this I’ll be able to spend hours on the beach and not have to bake in the sun.

I cleaned out the pig’s cage and we cleaned up the bedrooms and the playroom and had a decent time today.

Sphere: Related Content