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Co-workers

So people here use AOL Instant Messenger as a defacto IM standard.

I continue to dislike AOL and their flipping IM product.

But I am obliged to use it. As my own little form of protest I use Trillian as a front end. It comes with several groups already defined. One of them is “Co-worker”.

Being a Dilbert fan from way back, I can’t even LOOK at that word without thinking of something else. So I changed it to accomodate my weak brain.

Now all my professional colleagues are in a group called “Cow-Orkers”.

Its my own way of sticking it to the man, you know.

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Nothing much

So we had soccer practice last night. It was the first time in several weeks that most of the kids had gotten near a soccer ball and its as if they completely forgot what the thing was for or how to behave at soccer practice. They treated the coach like a substitute teacher.

Fortunately, it was a short practice because there are all kinds of makeup games scheduled due to the recent foul weather. Afterwards I took Chloe to a local restaurant where she had lost a hat last week. They still had it and said I could come get it. The bad news is that Rt.1 was completely backed up because a truck had plowed in to a telephone pole and they had to close down 1.5 lanes of traffic during rush hour. So we had lots of time.

Chloe thought I should tell her stories of my youth during that time. Initially she wanted to hear the story of how uncle charlie, as a five year old went to the Liquor looking for the liccorice that he assumed they sold. I told her about when we moved from Arizona and my grandparents were babysitting us, we got covered head to toe in mud just before the airplane flight to Tennessee. That was always one of my grandmother’s favorite stories. She wanted to know about Tennessee so I told her about the fireflies and the cicadas stuck to the trees. I told her a little bit about my best friend, Brian and cub scouts.

She soaked up the whole thing. Like a sponge. And I’m certain it will come back to haunt me one day. The girl has a memory like a steel trap. She takes after her mother that way.

What should have been a ten minute jaunt turned in to a 90 minute odyssey of brake lights and exhaust.

There’s lots to do today, so I had better get back to it.

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As if you didn’t get it the first two times…

Wynonna Judd : To Be Loved By You / Freebird - 7-Inch Vinyl / 45RPM [Limited/Original/Recent] - Mca : Oldies.com

I was about to add a post saying that Wynonna does a mean “Freebird”. But as I was thinking about the wording it felt really familiar, so I did a search of Blogrilla for “Freebird” and it turns out that I’ve already posted exactly the same post TWICE. Independently.

Once on 6/21/05 and then again on 10/13/05.

What a dork.

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An answer to the age-old question…

Slashdot | Chicken and Egg Problem Solved

No posts for the last couple of days?!

So its been a few days since I’ve posted. Holy cow, its been nearly a week! I’ve been delinquent. It hasn’t been for any good reason. I’ve just been busy at work - we’ve got a project starting to get very hot and most of my postings are done from work. Therefore, I haven’t gotten around to writing anything.

The work-week was mostly uneventful. I should say that on Thursday evening there was a rehersal for the kids’ upcoming dance recital. It started at 5pm and I got there shortly afterwards. The kids were all dressed up in their costumes and did their dances. I only stayed until Grace’s dance was done. Then she and me and Gabriel headed home. Chloe and Ben’s numbers were both in the second half of the show so they had to stick around until, like, 8pm.
GraceWaving.jpg

On Sunday there was a memorial day parade that went right past our house. The kids’ elementary school had a float in the parade so Chloe wanted to walk in it. She and I went down to city hall and hung around for an hour or so while everyone got organized. I have to admit that I think it was one of their best parades yet. They had a really good one for the city’s 100th anniversary, but since then they’ve all been kind of flat. In this one Chloe was dressed up as Victoria (or was it Virginia?) from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory. Why? The school was putting on that show when the parade came up so they decided to do a Willy Wonka themed float. They had all the props and costumes already, so it was an easy segue. In this picture, Chloe has just run by the house and handed out candy to her brothers and sisters and is racing to catch up.
chloerunning.jpg

In the morning we had gone to a cemetary in Marblehead and planted little flags at the monuments of soldiers. We had planned to go fishing sometime that weekend and even had worms for it, but never made it. The parade took up most of the afternoon. On Saturday afternoon we set up the family tent in the backyard. Its been locked away for at least a year — maybe two. We mostly wanted to seal the seams and air it out because we’re thinking about going back to “>Tully Lake again. The boys got to sleep out in the tent all by themselves on Saturday night. Unfortunately they both got spooked within the first couple of hours and decided to come back to their beds.

Chloe was dying to sleep out there with them and was very put out when told that she was too young. I will probably sleep out there with her again sometime and probably the other kids will want to give it a try at the same time.

I’m also planning on getting out my two-man tent to air out. Its a great tent. I got it about 6 years ago and have only used it once. The boys are excited about starting cub scouts and I am hopeful they will have some use for it. So I will have a little tent-exercise this week which will involve them setting up the tent and me supervising. They should be able to do it — its pretty easy.

Memorial day was spent at Davis Farmland. Its kind of an agrarian amusement park. They have wandering farm animals like goats and sheep and chickens and cows. It was a very large petting zoo and the animals were well behaved. There are lots of playgrounds and places for grown ups to sit. They were having a construction expo where the kids could actually drive some earth movers (with the help of a grown up) and they climbed all over some of the ones that weren’t being driven around. Ben was the only one who had the patience to wait in line for a chance to drive the Bobcat. In the meantime I was keeping a watchful eye on Grace, who needed some unstructured playtime in the giant sandbox. After lunch everyone was very hot and somewhat tired of the animals - so we went to the “Sprayground”. A large concrete area filled with different varieties of sprinklers and water toys. The kids spent about an hour there. Since it was close to 90 degrees I couldn’t think of anywhere better for them to spend their time. They had a BBQ cook out going on as well. Gabriel had TWO cheese burgers (one for lunch and one later on around 3pm).

Well, back to the grind — I think I’ve chewed up enough of today’s time on this thing.

I hope all is well with you and yours.

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Still alive

All is well.

Oddly, I’ve been here for almost two months now and I’m still settling in. I have a malbox now — I had to send something to myself to see if I would get it just to make sure it worked. That is, its just a box, of course it works, but I wanted to make sure I got the address right and that the mail-crew would actually put mail to me in my box. So I ordered The DaVinci Code (cheap!) from half.com. I also ordered some photos from oFoto.com.

So far, that’s the only mail I’ve gotten. Which is ok. It will take time for word of my new address to leak out to the press before they start hounding me again.

Its such a curse to be a celebrity like myself!

Also my new business cards came in. Whee!

And my employer normally hands out gifts/schwag at the summer BBQ. This year they decided to give out these collapsable rolling coolers. They’re like those handy suitcases with the extendable handle but they have enough room for two cases of beer! They wanted to give them out now so we could use them for the rest of the summer.

Wasn’t that nice? I thought so.

Tonight I have to move the piano out of the way so the carpet-guys who are coming tomorrow can get to the floor they’re scheduled to be working on.

Ben has grown bored of Runescape but his interest has been piqued by Everquest. The trouble is that I think Everquest is quite expensive… but I’m not sure. I don’t mind the initial $20-outlay, but I’m not interested in paying another $10 a month on top of it.

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Summary of the flooding in Melrose

TownOnline.com - Local News: Relentless rain

What did the storm do to our soccer season?

News - Melrose Youth Soccer

Looks like our soccer season is shot. Ben and Gabriel play in the “under 10″ (U10) league.

Whew! That was a busy weekend!

I got a lot done over the weekend — well, a lot for me. On Saturday morning I took care of a couple of odd jobs around the house until Liz got up. Then we got down to business and finished painting our bedroom. It was a job Liz was really dreading so I volunteered to do it for her. So even though she didn’t have to she chipped in and helped out with it. The new sander continues to work out well and the painting turned out pretty well. Liz had chosen a sagey color. Very nice for a bedroom.

In the afternoon we tore up the carpet in dining room. Whew! I was thinking we would find some ratty, possibly water damaged hardwood planks under there. Possibly some ridiculously colored linoleum. We discovered neither. It was straight-up, out-of-the-shop plywood. Plain old plywood. So we thought the most expedient solution was to put down some new carpet. I pulled out a million little tacks and staples and Liz went to the flooring store around the corner where she found just what we needed. I used a utility knife to cut the capet in to 4′ wide strips that got rolled up and put out front with the garbage. She came back and helped out until we were done. “Bob” came by to make sure the measurements were correct and then put the order in for the carpet. it arrives on Tuesday and will be installed on Wednesday.

People kept walking by asking if the carpet sitting outside was because of the flooding in the area. A lot of people have heaps of carpet or damaged furniture on the side of the road. We had no water in the basement of course, but its a pretty common sight.

I also moved some boxes over to the storage unit that we’re renting and cleaned up some debris from the backyard.

Sunday was “yard-day”. Again I got up early and took care of neatening up the backyard and cleaning up some more debris. I popped down to Dunkin’ Donuts for a cup of coffee and bumped in to some of the volunteers from the Avon walk to raise money to fight cancer. On saturday 3200 people walked 26.5 miles from U-Mass, Boston up to Pine Banks Park in Melrose. Yes, it was a very circuitous route. They raised 6.2 million dollars and each of them walked by our house and clogged traffic as we tried to go to dinner. They had a tent city set up and I have to admit that it looked like fun for a good cause.

So anyway, the early morning was spent on quiet cleaning and stuff. By 9:30am I fired up the lawn mower and got the front and rear done. My neighbor across the street, Mike came by and asked borrowed my lawn mower because his had just bitten the dust and his grass had gone nuts with all the rain. So loaned him that and got out the trimmer and weed-whacked for a while. The backyard looks really great right now, I have to admit. We got a little lunch and then got back in to it. Liz did some gardening and I put some shelves in to a closet that I promised Liz I would take care of months ago.

All the sanding and painting and yard work really had me worn out and sore. By Sunday evening I could hardly move! I need to get back in to shape.

But we got a lot done!

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“Unsettled”

War Room - Salon.com

Clearly the problem here is not with the job the president is doing but with how Americans are feeling. The arogance is amazing. Bush thinks that his popularity numbers are tanking not because of anything he’s done but because of things that are beyond his control.

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