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The little woman and I graduated from Drew University many moons ago.  Since the early nineties I don’t think that we’ve EVER done anything with the alumni clubs in NJ nor in Boston.  I mean, I give the alumni association some money sometimes, but that’s about it. Well, they sent out an announcement that the Alumni club of Boston had bought some tickets for Spamalot at the Opera House in Boston.

The little woman is not a big fan of Monty Python.  I tried to tell her that LOTS of people who don’t like Monty Python like Spamalot - look at Condi Rice!!  The comparison didn’t turn out to be helpful.  She suggested that maybe the kids would like to go with me instead.  I considered this, but I think its probably too grown-up for them.  Monty Python can be VERY sophisticated you know.

In the end she relented and agreed to go!

I called Drew U. and got the last two tickets to the show!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

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I’m certain that my kids think that I can only grill stuff and sear grilled cheese sandwiches. 

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Who knows something about Perl?  Its a programming language that I have seen around for several years and I’ve seen some very indecipherable code for perl, but I’ve never sat down to learn it.

A couple of years ago I decided to pick up Python and I enjoyed it.  I like python quite a bit.  But there’s no python interpreter installed on the HP-UX servers on which I work.  Someone here is having some trouble with a perl script that shuffles some interface files around.

So this seems like a good excuse to learn Perl.  I sent off for an O’Reilly book called Learning Perl (its the Llama book).  That should arrive in a few days and then I can start figuring out what all the weird syntax is all about.

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It’s perfectly reasonable to reject a candidate because of his religious views.

Just before this gets completely out of hand and becomes a mantralike repetition, let us please recall what the careful phrases of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution actually and very carefully and deliberately say:

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“I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate “

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1. On Friday night I took Liz to see White Christmas at the Wang Theater downtown.  We don’t go to a lot of things like this so it was a big deal for us.  The theater was STUNNING.  It was absolutely gorgeous.  Our seats were good the show was outstanding and everything worked out great.
2. On the way home from work I swung by the opticians and picked up my new eyeglasses.  They certainly have more power than the old ones.  When I change my focus from, say the screen to the keyboard, I find it a little disorienting.  I guess maybe i just have to get used to it.
3. On Saturday the kids went to their last swim lesson and had a good time with their free swim.  All three of the older kids have now advanced to a point where I would call them “swimmers”.  The youngest still needs some work, but she’s only five so that’s ok.  Afterwards we came home and took care of some chores.  Liz wasn’t feeling well around lunch time so I took the kids to a Chinese buffet for lunch.  Eh … the food was awful, but the kids found things they liked so I think they will be open to eating Chinese food later on.  Then we went to three different post offices trying to mail some packages - one was closed, one had no parking and at the third there was some technical malfunction that shut the place down.  It was very frustrating.  So, in an effort to turn the day around we got our Christmas tree and brought it home.  We decorated it and got it all set up.  It came out nice, but has a small problem where its leaning to one side and I haven’t fixed it yet.  I got some good pictures of the kids decorating the tree. So Saturday worked out well.  I’m a sucker for Christmas.
4. Sunday.  ugh.  It started snowing around 4am and then around 10am, after about eight or nine inches, it turned over to ice and freezing rain.  In the afternoon it was just freezing rain.  The initial batch of snow was light and fluffy so me and the boys ran out and shoveled a lot of it around 10am.  That was a big help, I think, because when it turned to rain all that dry snow soaked up all the water and made it REALLY heavy.  That eff-ing plow came by several times while I was shoveling creating a VERY large and VERY heavy berm of ice and frozen slush.  Each time I would dig out the drive way and each time that son-of-a-gun would come back and deposit more slush.  My back is killing me today.  In the evening we went to a friend’s house for a small Christmas party.  unfortunately, her other guests never made it.  For some it was the weather.  For others, their unruly children couldn’t be allowed out of the house.  But it gave us a chance to visit with people we don’t normally get a lot of one-on-one time with.  And it was a good visit.  Very enjoyable.
5. When we got home the berm had returned so we shoveled a little.  This morning all the slush and soft/fluffy snow had frozen rock hard in the 15 degree overnight temperatures.  EVERYTHING was frozen.  I had previously asked the kids to dig out the rest of the slush, but now there was no point - they wouldn’t be able to do anything with it.  They have a snow-day today.  The roads are fine, but the sidewalks are impassible and many of the town’s kids walk to school.  The superintendent didn’t want the kids to have to compete with the morning’s commuters on the road, so he called school off for the day.  It was a good move, I think.

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1. White Christmas - I am not sure if I mentioned that one of my wife’s favorite Christmas rituals is that of watching “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby in black and white.  We do this every year.  Every year.  THIS year, there’s a big musical production of it at the Wang theater downtown.  So we’re going tonight.  I don’t think we’ll have all that much extra time - I had wanted to have a nice dinner downtown but I think we’ll run out of time.  Maybe we will have a nice desert somewhere special afterwards.
2. Swimming lessons - this is the last swimming lesson of the term and they won’t really learn anything - its really more for fun. And they encourage the parents to come and go swimming too.  At 8am I mostly don’t feel like going swimming.  So I will still probably sit on the side and watch them enjoy themselves.
3. Christmas Tree - gotta get the xmas tree on Saturday after the kids go swimming but before lunch.  There’s a farm up in Georgetown or Boxford where we like to cut our own tree.  I kind of think that they’re running out of good trees so we may go somewhere else, but in any case we HAVE to get the tree this weekend.
4. Caroling - Gabriel’s cub scout pack is going caroling on Saturday at 2pm.  He’s not actually all that excited about it and would prefer not to go.  But I want to go and so do the girls. So we’re making him come along.  He can be a stick in the mud.  Its a good thing that he has us to save him from himself!

I think that’s it.  Sunday looks wide open.  And it will be nice to have a little quiet time.  Its been a busy week and I’m looking forward to some quiet activities at home.  Sleepy activities.

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The good news: my cough has largely abated and I am considering starting to exercise again.

The bad news: the snow came yesterday and now I am very sore.  It wasn’t even a LOT of snow nor was it heavy.  I’m just colossally out of shape.  So I need to get back to exercising.  Not so I can look buff - just so I can take care of my chores without wrecking myself!

Also this post was made using Windows Live Writer - I guess its a blogging client.  It has lots of formatting buttons and basic HTML formatting (hyperlinks, images, etc).  It automatically figured out what protocol my blogging software was using and how to login to it.

Lets see if this post gets added to my wounded and damaged blog.

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Experts say Santa should move to Kyrgyzstan - Seasonal- msnbc.com

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Its been a busy time at the Solomon house.  The weekend breezed by quite quickly but restfully.  I’ve been watching more football this season which makes that excellent TV even better.  Sports look really great in high definition, I have to admit.  And I still find myself in front of the new TV marveling and what a beautiful picture it is.  So I’m still tickled pink by it.

On Saturday Ben spent the day at his buddy’s house making a video in which he died 28 times.  I guess it’s a catalog of gruesome ways to buy the farm.  Gabe was supposed to go to an overnight birthday party where 25 4^th grade boys were invited.  This alone gave me pause and made me think that it was just way too many.  Then I found out that the party wasn’t at the boy’s house, but at his mother’s boyfriend’s house.  So we compromised and told Gabe that he could go at 4pm and could stay until 10pm. 

He said “SWEET!!” and ran off.

It turned out that he had quite a good time and sustained no permanent injuries.  So I was very happy with that.  I got some errands done and some household chores.  Nothing interesting, I think.

On Friday evening Liz and I are going to go see “White Christmas” – a musical at < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Boston’s Wang Theater.  I’ve never been there myself, but it looks like a beautiful theater.  Different people have different non-negotiable holiday traditions.  It turns out that I’m unlikely to budge on having a natural tree.  Gotta have it.  Its not Christmas without the natural tree.  One of the little woman’s favorite xmas traditions is watching White Christmas on television.  So when I saw they were putting on a broadway-like show of it, I knew I would get good points for scoring some tickets.  I got a baby sitter and we’re all set to go.  I will let you know how it turns out.

We’ve decided that next weekend we will get our xmas tree.  We walk a fine line between getting the tree early enough to enjoy but not so early that its dropping all its needles by 12/25.  So I think this is the right weekend.

The kids are still doing swimming every Saturday morning.  Their last class of the season is this coming weekend.  Last weekend we found out that Gabriel and Chloe passed their third level class.  In my mind this means that they can be labeled “swimmers” now.  Ben is moving up to level five where they do more advanced swimming things.  Grace is still in level two, but it’s the right place for her.  She’s got a ways to go.

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