Blogrilla

On Sunday I had to go in to Boston to get some gear and Grace wanted to tag along. I thought we would make it fun so we took the subway in. She LOVED the train! We arrived at Downtown Crossing a little early so we walked along a very touristy street looking in the interesting shops and then headed over to the Boston Common where you can see the golden dome of the State House and where the Frog Pond is. There’s a playground there so Grace got to play on it for a while. Spring was just bursting out so I got a couple of photos of that too. What’s attached is a slideshow with music. She’s a great little helper and I’ll take her along anytime.

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Heard a funny story on the radio this morning.  Some bio-engineering students at MIT spent a lot of time working with E. Coli bacteria.   I guess they would start it growing and have to spend a long time waiting for it to mature.  And then they would do some highly advanced sciency thing with them.

It turns out E. Coli reeks.  It smells awful.  Like poo.  So their lab always smelled like an outhouse.  They got fed up with it and decided to do something to improve the world. 

They sent off to Purdue for some samples of petunia cells.  They pulled the (get this) wintergreen out of it and put it in to the foul smelling bacteria!  Now their lab smells like wintergreen!

(I don’t know how they chose wintergreen, but why not?)

Funny stuff.

But they didn’t stop there.  Since they spent so much time waiting they figured out how to insert a trigger in the bacteria so that once it matured it would stop issuing wintergreen scent and start issuing … banana.

Great.  They got an engineer’s sense of humor.

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Last night Grace had her second t-ball game.  I have been bad about practicing with her.  She’s so enthusiastic and in the evening I just keep forgetting to toss the ball with her or give her hitting pointers.  Believe me, I am no great baseball athlete, but I played through fifth grade and have some basic insights to offer.

same goes for throwing.  I would love to teach her how NOT to throw like a girl. 

Begging the pardon of all those out there who DO throw like a girl.

Maybe we can do that this afternoon.  Anyway, she had a good time although she started to get bored after a while.  Mercifully they have abandoned all pretense at several “rules”.  For example, they stop playing after 60 minutes no matter how many innings are left to go.  Also, there are no “outs” - this is a rule to which I object.  I have always thought they should be taught what an “out” is.  Its INTEGRAL to the rules of baseball!

But I guess enough tears have ensued that they banished “outs”.  Also a lot of the kids really don’t know what a base is or the correct order in which to round the bases.  Crazy.

But she’s having fun.  We sat on the sidelined and talked with the Mom’s and Dad’s.  Liz knows most of them so I try to stick next to her.

Someone had taken a swing and maliciously tied it up to the crossbeam of the swings.  I thought they had just looped it over and over until they couldn’t reach it, but that wasn’t the case.  They had literally tied it in a knot.  The crossbeam was too high for me to reach.  I would need something to stand on if I was going to reach it.

So I got Benjamin.

No, I didn’t stand on him.  He scrambled up my knees and chest and stood on my shoulders while holding on to the swingset and got it untied!  What a mensch!    I was proud of him for doing a community service like that.  And he looked all chuffed with himself as well.

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funny, we have netflix and Standard cable tv - so that’s like 70 channels or so.  But there’s NOTHING on!  half the channels are unwatchable because they’re either selling something or they’re selling something in Spanish.  A quarter of the remainder consists of 10 year old reruns of shows that I couldn’t stand to start with.

So yesterday the movie “American Hardcore” arrived.  No, not THAT kind of hardcore.  This is a documentary about the American punk rock scene from 1980 - 1986.  Most of this time I was too young, but when I got to be about 15 or 16 I really got in to it.  I still listen to some of the same bands as I did then.

I think I must not really grown very much (musically) since then.

In any case, it was a good movie - they did a great job with the editing and keeping the audience engaged while relying on the interviews to provide the meat of the movie.

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The weather has been phenomenal!  Its a nice break, not just from winter but from our regular spring weather, too.  “Spring” around here is normally cold and wet.  I mean, like snowy cold/wet.  There’s a lot of mud so technically, although you COULD go outside nobody really wants to.  But this week has been outstanding.

We took the kids bike riding last night.  We wanted to see Grace and Chloe on their bicycles again to make sure they were comfortable with them.  Grace still needs more practice.  Everyone needs their seats raised.

I’ve been reading a series of books lately called “The Desden Files” - they’re about a wizard living in modern day Chicago as a private investigator.  They’re kind of dark but overall a lot of fun.  They’re all mysteries - and he’s the hard boiled private dick who has to sort out the vampires from faeries.  They’re good.  The SciFi channel made a short-lived series out of them.  I saw the shows, but have to admit they were BAD with a capital “B”!  Nonetheless, the books are good.

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Saturday was good.  We had to skip swimming to go to this little league parade. It was fun!  How often do people get to be in a parade?  I dunno - I don’t think I was ever in a parade until I tagged along with one of my kids for this annual walk.

I saw neighbors and friends lining the sidewalks.  it was pretty great.  After a while I put Grace on my shoulders - not because she needed the help but she thought it was fun.  And I think she’s starting to get too big so one day I will realize that she’s too big and we’ll never do it again.

They sang the national anthem at the baseball field and awards and recognitions were made.

I had to leave partway through though because Gabriel and I had to go to a cub-scout hike in the Middlesex Fells.  It wasn’t a long hike, but it was enough to get to the top of a hill and enjoy some outstanding views from Wright’s Tower.

We spent a couple of hours there before returning to Melrose for Grace’s T-Ball game.  She had a really good time.  i will post some photos shortly.  We all went and cheered for her.  Her team cheered for her and she had a great time.  I am feeling optimistic about the rest of the season.

Ok, I took off the rest of the afternoon for a nap and some focused loafing.  It was nice.

Sunday was probably busier than Saturday.  We got up a little earlier than usual and got to work on the disaster we call our backyard.  Its been a wreck because of winter.  We

• picked up stick
• scooped poop
• picked up stones
• picked up litter that had blown in to our yard
• put away toys
• set out yard funriture

Me and the kids did that after I helped Liz spread 8 bags of mulch out front.  I got two tanks of propane for the summer.  We got more mulch.  We got 400lbs of playsand for the sand box.  We also restocked out liquor cabinet with summertime beverages.

I fixed a grown-up swing that had broken at the end of last year.  Chloe and I also managed to run out to the grocery store and picked up some FINE steak tips that came out just great.

At the end of the day Iw as very sore from slogging 50lb sacks of sand and mulch up and down the steep stairs to the backyard, but I felt pretty good. 

All in all it was a pretty weekend.

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I can’t believe this.  I spent 45 minutes watching a T-Ball game and I burned the daylights out of my face, my forehead and entirely new parts of my head!

Apparently there are parts of my head that have never seen the light of day.  Now that … *ahem* … my hair isn’t quite what it used to be it got burnt!  I think I will refuse to acknowledge it.  If I just pretend that its like it has always been… I’ll never be the wiser.

but maybe I’ll wear more hats in the summer.

How embarrassing.

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Like the calm before the storm, its been mostly quiet this week.  The wife and kids’ favorite ice cream shop opened for the season around the corner.  Somehow they always manage to be the first customers of the year.  To me, its the first sign of spring, really.

Other signs are arriving.  The trees have buds or are starting their leaves.  Grass has gone from brown to green.  T-Ball practice was on Tuesday - but I have to admit that it was kind of chilly.  We don’t have any aces or sluggers on our team but there’s a lot of enthusiasm.  Its very funny to see so many little tiny kindergartners learning to play baseball.  Baseball (and all of its derivatives (i.e. kick-ball, stick-ball, etc)) is second nature for so many people its kind of funny to realize that they don’t know where the bases are or what they’re for.

There’s a parade on Saturday morning - like at 9am.  The local little league and all the teams walk through a neighborhood in their uniforms accompanied by fire trucks and bagpipes - what a treat for the neighbors!  The mayor throws out the first pitch.  Its all good clean fun and now its Grace’s turn.  I’m kind of excited for her.  Its nice to see the spotlight on Grace a little bit.

Saturday is going to be kind of nutty.  Swimming is from 8am to 9am.  The parade is 8:30am to … probably 10am.  There’s a cub scout hike starting at 10:30am.  Finally, a t-ball game at 12:30am.  Clearly we can’t do everything.  We just have to figure out what’s going to happen and what isn’t.  Liz and I may also split up for a while to chauffeur the kids around.

This weekend is supposed to  be quite nice and I would like to clean up the yard.  Its still a wreck from the winter and its time to put down some new grass in the back, fertilize it.  Maybe aerate it.  It also needs just a plain old cleaning.

I have also been itching to go fishing.  I still have to not-catch this year’s fish!  I did quite well at not-catching fish last year, but to be honest I hope I am not quite as successful this year.

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The other night Chloe really wanted to see American Idol (don’t ask me why) but it was going to be on after her bedtime.  This made her very sad.

She brightened when she remembered Tivo!  She asked if we could please record it with Tivo.  I said “No” because Tivo was already scheduled to record something else.

Again: this made her sad.

I told her that she would just have to use the VCR.

“Daddy, what’s a VCR?”

Oy - who knew that a video cassette recorder was so antique!!

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Flickr: Search MAKE

MAKE magazine and the SciFi channel and DVICE.com are all sponsoring a “Make your own Cylon” contest where the contestants will use whatever materials they can find to create cylons. There are some amazingly talented Battlestar Galactica fans out there!

(are too!)

One guy made a very intimidating cylon easter bunny, as well as a cylon unicorn.

I can’t wait to see what else these people come up with!

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