This is a video (mostly) of Grace riding a bike. Its taken me a few days to do some basic editing, but I think it turned out to be fun. Ok, its three minutes of a pair of little girls riding bicycles, but this is good stuff!!
So check it.
(Turn up the sound - I chopped out all the dorky dialog of me shrieking “YAY GRACIE!! YAY CHLOE!!” and replaced it with a hot soundtrack)
Sphere: Related ContentThis morning I had to take our minivan to the Honda dealership in Cambridge. Its the first time I have been to this dealer and wasn’t sure about how to get there and what the place would be like. I was a little nervous because I always expect the dealership to try and take advantage of me and take me for every penny.
There was a minor recall on a fuel pump, and I needed an oil change and I wanted them to look over everything and make sure it was all still happy. We’ve had the car for two years now and have only put 14,000 miles on it so I didn’t think they would find anything.
They were very nice and didn’t seem to try and milk me for anything. I got a ride from their lot to the Alewife MBTA stop. I got to try out my new Charlie Card - a reloadable ticket for Boston’s public transit system.
I have to admit that I am hoping nobody saw me standing there doing it all wrong. I slid it in to the card reader on the turnstile and the thing buzzed harshly at me alerting everyone to the ‘tard trying to make the turnstile work. I tried sliding it in the slot again and (no surprise) again it rejected me. Then i saw a nearby passenger wave their card in front of a black plastic panel on the front of it.
Eureka!!
I tried it and the turnstile happily opened for me.
No, I’m not really as pulled-together as I appear. I’m really a colossal boob.
So I got on the T and rode it to Kendall Square, which is where the real point of this post comes in.
I was walking behind a young mother and her three-year-old daughter. The mother was obviously off to work and would drop her daughter off at day care shortly. The girl was dressed all in pink with some kind of crazy bird-thing on her hair-band. She wore a Dora The Explorer backpack and there was some kind of critter on her shoes too.
She was very cute. Much like my own little girls. Chloe is eight and although she’s lovely she doesn’t have that kind of “cute” anymore. Grace is only five and still has a lot of that kind of little-little kid cuteness. But she’s about to loose it. She will go to kindergarten in the fall where they will teach her not to be a baby. And for all the diapers and the crying and the things that make toddlers a giant pain in the neck, I found myself a little sad that very soon I won’t have anyone short and cute and blond who wants to hold my hand as we cross the street.
Sphere: Related Content[don't get me wrong: there are no more kids in the works. Four is really quite engouh! But rearing four kids wasn't all bad and I'll miss the endearing moments that made me enjoy being a dad to tiny kids]
I got this for Father’s Day. It Rocks!
Another Dad Blog - fatherhood is hilarious - only with humor can you survive
For me, Father’s Day was fine. It was really very quiet and uneventful. I managed to sleep in both Saturday and Sunday, which is kind of a new and delightful experience for me. I’ve been in the habit (for a LONG time) of getting up at the crack of dawn to feed the dogs or get the kids fed or whatever. Now that the kids are old enough to get their own breakfast it really very cool sleeping in!
On the other hand, I have to admit that I was really sleepy all weekend. I think I slept too long (9am) and felt too tired all day. On Saturday I mowed the grass, which turned out to be more work than I expected because it was really long. We got the minivan washed and I think that was about it. Maybe we ran some errands. I think I loafed a lot too.
Also I got a phone call from my best friend growing up. We haven’t talked in many years and it was good to hear his voice again and hear that things were mostly going well for him. We talked for about 45 minutes and caught up on old times. Unfortunately, there was a lot more I wanted to talk about but didn’t get the chance. I’ll have to call him back today or tonight and spend some more time.
Sunday was also very uneventful. We went to the Bunker Hill monument in Charlestown, MA and played tourist for a while. Every time I go to a place like that I want to go and find a book about the time and get some more answers. It’s a good place for a visit if you ever get there. We had some ice cream and hung around a marina in Charlestown.
Next year, for Father’s Day I want to get up to the Polar Caves in NH. That looks like a fun trip.
Sphere: Related ContentGS Central: What Is Girl Scouting? Daisy Girl Scouts
Last night I signed up Grace for “Daisies”. They’re like Brownies, only younger. They’re five-year-old girl scouts. Last fall, after Ben and Gabriel had joined cub scouts, Chloe wanted to be a brownie. Now Ben is a boy scout, Gabe is a cub scout, Chloe is a Brownie and Grace finally gets to be a scout of some kind.
I couldn’t say “no” could I?
So she and I walked down to the Elks club downtown where they were having their registration event and signed her up. They eagerly informed me that I should also register so I could drive and whatnot.
Uh-huh.
Luckily Liz is already registered so at least one of us will be able to get volunteer-ed for duty. She had a good time and I even recognized a couple of people there. I’m kind of out of my element at these sorts of things. Girl scouts. School-things. It’s a lot of moms whom I don’t know, but who know my kids. They talk about a lot of things I don’t know anything about and often have only marginal interest in.
For example, when I took Grace to get her dance photos last week – all the moms at the dance studio were in a tizzy about the pictures and making sure everything was correct. I sat in a chair while some mom scooted my girl off for her pictures and then returned her when they were done. I wasn’t really that involved and believe me: none of the mothers asked my opinions of their daughters’ up-do’s.
I felt like a bit of an intruder. An outsider.
So, in truth, it was a relief when the registration was done. Afterwards I took her to “Cold Rush” – an ice cream and gelato shop on the way home. We were the only patrons there and she helped me watch the first inning of the Red Sox baseball game. It was really kind of a pleasant little excursion.
Afterwards I just went through the video I took over the weekend of the girls riding their bikes. I have photographs of the event already posted at Flickr. There are also pictures of the cub scout bike rodeo there. In the near future I will also post video to YouTube of the bike riding. Right now I am in the process of piecing together the clips and putting them together in to a more coherent presentation. I am using Adobe Premier Elements. It seems to do a lot of what I want it to.
Sphere: Related ContentThe truth is… I like “The Hooters”, a pop band that reached minor fame in the 1980’s.
Also, I recently spent good money on an album by The Skorpions.
Seriously.
Whew! Its good to get THAT off my chest!
Sphere: Related ContentIn UNIX, and therefore Linux, there are a lot of published help files that are formatted in very simple text files. They’re not pretty and they’re not always understandable. But when you’re trying to ffind your way through a command you have to rely on the wisdom contained in the Manual Pages - a.k.a. MANPAGES.
I have a problem where my linux administrator’s time is hard to get a hold of so I try to fix as many of the problems myself. we’re having a problem with the time synchronization between a time server and a linux database host that’s causing my applications to crash. So i am trying to figure out if there’s something wrong with the time daemon. As I was scanning the manpages, I came across the “-P” parameter for the NTPD command:
-P Override the priority limit set by the operating system. Not recommended for sissies.
HAH!
this cracked me up.
No offense to sissies.
Sphere: Related ContentErnie’s House of Whoop Ass Dot Com
The weekend was really busy. I worked from home on Saturday because they were replacing the AC at work and it was going to be crazy-hot in there. I figured I could work at home and get a lot done while staying cool. Meanwhile, Liz’s mother arrived - she’s spending the weekend here. She goes home on Tuesday and its been working out pretty well so far.
Friday was pretty good. I really did get a lot done. I got a lot done in the first five or six hours - easily as much as I would have gotten done in Cambridge. I was quite pleased with it to be honest. Chloe had her last Brownie-event and after we picked her up we went to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner. It was great and everyone behaved themselves and had a good time. Afterwards we went to Barnes and Noble.
Bright and early on Saturday morning I dropped Ben off with the boy scouts - he went down to Martha’s Vinyard where he camped on Satuday night and rode bikes all over the island. It sounded like they laid down about 25 miles! Incidentally, his dirt bike only has a single gear. I’m pretty sure he’s wishing he had a mountain bike instead. I worried about him, I have to admit. Sure, he’s a resourceful guy but he’s just starting to do things on his own and exercise his independence. I worried about all kinds of things. His rain gear. His bike. The other kids giving him a hard time. All kinds of things. I think I even wondered about the ferry going down!
Skipping ahead, let me just assure you that he did fine. There was no rain and he had a lot of fun and said he would do it again.
Chloe and Grace did had their dance recital and both did wonderfully. In fact, I think the whole show was better than it ever has been. Me and Gabriel and my mother-in-law sat in the audience and watched the first half of the show. I’ll try to publish the pictures we took. Chloe stayed up until the end and had a great time.
On Sunday morning we eventually went down to the rugby field at Pine Banks park. Grace has been asking me to take off her training wheels. I think she saw all the big kids at the bike rodeo riding around on their two-wheeled bikes and really wanted to be a big kid. Although Chloe was technically able ride a bike last week, she needs some practice to be able to reliably stay up and make turns and stop.
So the rugby field at Pine Banks has this fabulous surface made of rubber grass and rubber dirt. Its really a great surface on which to play contact sports like football and rugby. Really anything where you’re going to crash in to the ground. So I thought this was just the right place for the girls to learn how to ride a bike!
And it was. Grace immediately took off pedaling and zoomed around like a crazy person! I called her the Mad Muffin of Melrose! Chloe got better and better and tootled around in all different directions. I got some movies of it - I will post them later. Afterwards we took the kids up to a parking lot in Wakefield where the girls got a chance to try riding on asphalt. Chloe went down to the end of the lot and said “Hey Daddy! You were right! It IS easier to ride on asphalt!”
She didn’t believe me. Great.
Grace and chloe would up tearing up and down the lot and had a great time. They didn’t want to leave. In another week, I am sure they will both be rock solid on the bikes.
So its been a big weekend here.
Sphere: Related ContentWe did it! Jericho has been saved! We sent CBS executives 20 TONS of peanuts and they listened to us! Yes, I donated $5 to the cause, so that gives me the right to include myself in the “we” who saved it.
How cool. The letter says they’ve ordered seven more episodes of Jericho for mid-season. But I have to admit that seven episodes is pretty meager. I hope more people tune in and get hooked so the story will continue.
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