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Wednesday

Confirmed: the cherry juice cured me. My foot feels much better today - so good, in fact, that we’re going to a local carnival tonight. That is, its one of those travelling amusement parks that sets up shop in a parking lot for a week at a time and then moves on. They have smaller versions of everyone’s favorite rides. The food is terrible for you, but then again many people don’t hang on to it for very long once they get to the “Gravitron” anyway.

The kids are really looking forward to it.

My mother-in-law left this morning. The visit went well. No complaints.

Looks like the day got away from me. I have to run and get to that carnival!

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A Long weekend

So the weekend was ok. It was only “ok” because I came down with another case of gout. This time my reliable old colchicine failed to help. For several days, when I woke up in the morning my foot would hurt – right in the middle. I have lousy arches, so this was not unusual and didn’t make me think of gout.

But on Saturday the pain intensified and I started taking the colchicine around lunch time. It never did go away, but over the next 48 hours I developed some unpleasant side effects of the medicine. Eventually I asked Liz to go out and fetch me some cherry juice, which is supposed to be an effective cure.

She brought home several bottles of it and had read that you’re supposed to drink it as fast as possible. It was a 32oz bottle and wow, was I full afterwards. I really sloshed around a lot.

But I have to admit that the next morning I was 80% cured! I took another bottle with me to work and I’ll finish that off this morning and hope to be 100% better by the time I go home!

All this as come about, I think, because I have let my weight creep back up. Out of the 25lbs I lost last year, I have regained 15lbs and I think this gout-business is a result of that 15lbs. So I am redoubling my efforts and will see if I can find new or better ways of losing weight and getting my health back in order.

On Saturday we planted a new bright red azalea. We also put some more thought in to what kind of gardening/landscaping we want to do in the backyard. I think we’re going to plant a magnolia tree along one side and dogwood tree in another corner.

Yesterday the kids picked out some things they wanted to plant in a garden. Chloe chose almost all flowers and Ben chose almost all vegetables (broccoli and peas I think). I hear they made an adorable little plot – but I haven’t had a chance to go see.

On Sunday we went to Long Hill to hide Easter eggs. The kids had a really great time. I got some photos – I’ll have to post them as soon as I get a chance. The flowers were just starting to bloom and everything went really well. It was a lovely, if chilly day.

Since we live in Massachusetts we get Patriots’ day off. That was Monday. I spent the whole day on the sofa, really. I mean, sure we went to Arena Farms in Lexington where we bought many flowers and seeds and whatnot, but I mostly sat on my butt there. Oh, we did feed the ducks and cat fish. Then we came home after lunch a the 99 restaurant and I spent the rest of the day on the sofa.

It wasn’t my first choice in how to spend my day off, but then I didn’t get a choice.

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Home away from home away from home

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At my old job we had a cafeteria in the building that I would run down to for coffee or a bagel in the morning and often for lunch. I always liked the people who worked there and the food was often good.

My new place doesn’t have anything like that. Well, they have a canteen with free soda, coffee, espresso and snacks (smartfood, chips and animal crackers). But nothing very complete. So for lunch I usually go to BeanTowne CoffeeHouse. Its just a little coffee place that also serves sandwiches and bagels.

This morning I had an outstanding bacon, egg and cheese on an everything bagel. it was a top notch breakfast. I’m very happy with it. I suppose I should try some other places in thei neighborhood too.

Emma’s Pizza is really good. They’re only a block away and make some really great gourmet pizza.

Last night we watched a show on PBS called “Raising Cain“. I missed the beginning because I had taken Ben, Gabe and Chloe to the roller skating rink where their school was having a fund-raiser. Everyone was good and had a great time. I enjoyed sitting at a table munching popcorn and reading a newspaper while the kids skated in cirles and gabbed with their friends. It was all very wholesome.

So the show was kind of depressing. It underscored how difficult it can be to be a boy. Some of it was shot at my kids’ elementary school and in our town. More of it was shot a few miles away in the local center of urban blight, Chelsea. The last piece was shot in the ‘burbs of Lexington. Naturally, being endowed with all my Y-chromosomes, the essential message of male socialization wasn’t news, but it was interesting to see someone quantify it and put words to the things we did as kids and what I assume still goes on.

But, like I say, it was kind of depressing so afterwards we put on an episode of Northern Exposure. After 20 years that show still makes me laugh really hard. There was a scene where Joe” was recovering from drinking too much of Holling’s “good stuff” (home made vodka). Marilyn offered him “a hair of the dog” in a cofee mug. He swigged it and spat it right out because it was … you guessed it — hot water with dog hair in it!

Hilarious stuff.

Today should be slow, what with easter approaching. I think many people won’t be in or will have abbreviated schedules. My mother in law arrives tomorrow for a visit of several days. On Sunday we’re planning on going to Long Hill to hide/find easter eggs. I have Monday off for Patriots’ Day.

I need to get a haircut. The boys need haircuts. I want to spend some time outside. I haven’t ridden my bike in a long time, so I’ll probably try to take a spin on it and go somewhere interesting. Maybe I can take the boys to Middlesex Fells.

Weather for the weekend looks a little iffy. But with temperatures at 71 degrees I don’t even care if it rains. We’ll still find stuff to do outside.

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What do you think about this thing?

RadioShack.com - Toys & Games: Hobby projects & kits: Vex Robotics: Vex™ Robotics Starter Kit

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Start all over with just a bucket

War Room - Salon.com

Tuesday night soccer

So soccer worked out really well for me last night.  The boys had a good time and didn’t seem to mind having me helping out.  We started off by splitting up: the coach took about four kids who might want to learn how to be goal-keeper and worked with them for about 10 minutes while I took the others and we worked on ball handling.

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I had read about a couple of games we could play to help emphasize discrete ball handling skills.  We did a couple of those and we had a fine time.  I got to know a kid named “Freddy” – I haven’t seen him before because he’s been busy finishing off the hockey season.  Freddy doesn’t know much about soccer but he knows about trying hard and applying himself.  He worked hard and wouldn’t quite despite falling on his face over and over again.  We will have to watch him because he seems to get frustrated with his lack of experience and he gets mad.

 

Then we brought everyone together and played some more ball handling games.  We eventually moved on to a structure scrimmage where we slowed things down so we could emphasize to the kids the need to spread out.  We did that for about 30 minutes.

 

Liz suggested that next time we should play a scrimmage game where nobody is allowed to run with the ball (aka dribbling).  They can go and get it and chase it, but they have to pass the ball to someone.  I like that idea.  They need to get better at passing.  Too many of the kids just boot the ball as far as they can without any idea of why they’re doing it or who is going to get the ball.

 

It was a nice way to spend an hour on a Tuesday evening.  Liz got me a red “< ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Melrose” sweatshirt and a white “Melrose” t-shirt so I would like I was part of the group.  None of the other coaches wear anything like it, but I dig it anyway.

 

I like being called “coach”.

 

I think I’ll stay with it for a while.

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Handling The Office Jerk

Handling The Office Jerk - Forbes.com

There’s (at least) one in every office. This article has some keen insights, I have to say.

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What could go wrong?

Its a stunning day here. Its been 55 degrees and sunny for most of the day. At lunch time I went over to a discounted technical bookstore near here — did I say I was near MIT? See, since I’ve started this new job I need a broader range of skills — specifically Linux. Our admin is a great guy and very clever, but he’s in high demand and I have trouble getting his time. Since this is a small site its only natural that I pick up some of the admin duties for my boxes. So I needed a reference book. I didn’t expect them to be out of it. Its a pretty common book and I thought it would have been in stock, but it wasn’t. So I got a different one, which I hope will be just as good or even better.

It was a beautiful walk there — only about three blocks. Afterwars, I had some chinese food that was awful, but I ate it outside which made it all ok. Afterwards I got a cookie and a cup of coffee from Starbucks and wandered back to my desk.

Strangely, I have rarely had a better lunch.

My afternoon has been full of documentation, security and meetings. I’m continuing to install a system, but it chugs along mostly unattended.

After work I have to high-tail it over to the Franklin school in Melrose because we have a soccer practice at 5pm. I had such a good time on Sunday i really hope the kids like having me around because I’ll keep doing what I did on Sunday as long as they’ll let me!

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WooHoo!

Good times are here!

I got a full sized keyboard!!

Its luxury, I tell you.

Nothing good to say

JVC GZ-MG30 Camcorder Review - JVC Other Media - JVC Camcorders - Camcorder Reviews - Consumer Camcorders - Camcorderinfo.com

Hmm… they have nothing good to say about the Everio I was thinking about getting. Well, ok they did have ONE good thing to say:

It wasn’t the single worst performing camera they had seen all year.

It was the second worst.

I may need to reevaluate my criterion for a camera.

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