So ends one chapter of my life, and another begins. I begin my new job on Monday!
EIG Career
05/29/2012 – 03/25/2016
R.I.P
Category: Family
NYC 2016
Meghan and I like to keep our kids exposed to the cultural world, giving them a cosmopolitan worldview. I chose a job near Boston in part to allow frequent trips into the city. But one city isn’t enough to give them a breadth of experience.
We took an overnight trip to New York City during February school vacation. Discovery Times Square is currently exhibiting The Vikings, which is of particular interest to Meghan and Alpha. (That isn’t to say there isn’t interest from me and Beta, they’re just that much more keen.) Meghan found a great deal on motel rooms (the girls are old enough now that we need two) right by Times Square at Four Points by Sheraton. The view wasn’t anything to write home about but the location can’t be beat: two blocks from Times Square. The rooms were clean and neat, and the staff were bend-over-backwards friendly. I would totally stay there again.
We drove down early Wednesday morning, dropping Butter off at Marty’s and picking up Meghan’s mom (aka Baba) on the way. Baba loves going to NYC, she knows the lay of the land better than we do, and she’s a bit more adventurous than I am when the kids are around, so we invited her along. She offered to share the kids’s room to keep costs down — and that provided peace of mind overnight, too.
We rolled into town around noon and got situated in the hotel with time to spare before our exhibit reservations. We walked from the hotel and poked around Times Square for a few minutes.
There were a pair of people in costume, one dressed as Woody from Toy Story and the other as Olaf from Frozen, soliciting tips. They made their own costumes and don’t work for anyone but themselves, so Meghan got photos with each and tipped them a few bucks.
I continue to be amazed how many people are continually in New York City. The crush of people feel like there’s an event going on somewhere, but it’s really just an every day occurrence. Dozens of people at every crosswalk, hundreds of people on every sidewalk, all the time. Boston has nothing on NYC.
We made our way through the crowds to the exhibit and spent about an hour and a half learning about Vikings. As an aside: the exhibit is self-paced and just about the right length. They had a number of artifacts grouped into several themes about everyday life, instead of constructing a sequential historical narrative.
We waited to get lunch until after the exhibit so we were somewhat famished. A few storefronts down from Discovery is a pizza and Italian restaurant called John’s of Times Square, located in a former church. The adults had excellent pizza and the girls had excellent pasta. It might have been a case of hunger making the best sauce, but probably not.
After lunch we shopped around Times Square a bit. Alpha bought a New York-emblazoned sweat shirt and Beta got a pin for her hat. Baba noticed that Phantom of the Opera was playing right in front of us, so she bought three tickets for 8 o’clock that night. Beta wasn’t interested and I was wiped from driving all day; we chose to stay in.
We wandered back to the hotel to rest up. I had to step out in search of a pharmacy: we had a snafu when we left the house and forgot to pack our bathroom stuff.
Our motel offers complimentary dinner stuffs on Wednesday nights. We were just coming off of lunch, not particularly hungry, but the food was delicious. Free wine and beer, too!
We finished dinner and Beta and I headed up to our room to watch some TV and get ready for bed. Meghan, Baba, and Alpha headed out to their show, and didn’t get back until after I was asleep — sometime after 10:30 pm. They said they had a great time though!
We started the next day with an excellent breakfast buffet at the motel. We seem to have a knack for choosing motels with great breakfasts; it really makes dollars stretch further if your breakfast is hearty when you’re traveling.
We decided that we could fit in one more museum visit before leaving town. The American Museum of Natural History was on our way home and is always worth a visit. We also considered the USS Intrepid but decided to save it for another visit so we can give it the amount of time it deserves.
We got in early and encountered almost no waiting to get into the parking garage and admissions line. We had three destinations in mind: the dinosaurs, the blue whale, and the gift shop. We got to see all three, in that order. The life-size blue whale model is stupendously large – and that’s after seeing the full-size apatosaurus for comparison.
We made our way out of the city around 1 pm. We didn’t want to get home too late, and the drive can take upwards of six hours with stops and detours to Willimantic and Hampton. The ride home was uneventful, traffic was mostly light and Waze didn’t let us down. Butter the dog was very happy to see us when we picked her up, and I was extremely happy to sleep in my own bed.
Jones Family Outing
The Mystic Jones Clan met us at the Museum of Science today. They’ve never been, we’re long-time members with a fistful of free passes, and the various cousins love seeing each other, so it was a date.
We planned to meet at the museum, but our first hurdle was knowing what time they would arrive — it’s a 90 minute drive for them, but only 20 minutes for us. We made a rough guess on when to leave, and happened to get into the parking garage two cars before they did. The museum garage was full, so we both wound up in overflow parking around the corner at the Galleria Mall.
The MOS is the MOS, which means we all had a good time. Half of us got to see the electricity show, half chose to play in the animal displays. We all got to play in the hands-on bits in the ‘models’ exhibit.
The youngest cousin is not quite six, so we finished with the museum after not too long. He had fun monkeying around in the Discovery Center for a while, but even that’s not enough for a six year old to last all day.
We wandered back to the mall to grab a little food and figure out dinner. A mall-wide fire alarm kept us outside for a bit, but eventually the fire department showed up and disabled it — false alarm. We considered our options while running around Newbury Comics and settled on an early dinner at P. F. Chang’s – right outside the mall.
The food was excellent, the service was terrible, the kids were acceptable. Meghan got in some little boy time, giving Katie a break.
As the sun went down, some flurries kicked up as a fresh storm prepared to roll in overnight. The Mystic Joneses had a long drive home so we all packed up and headed out.
First Snow of the Year
This winter has been kind of a bust as far as snow goes. Thursday I was wandering around in a t-shirt because it was 60 degrees! And then The Snow Came. The kids had a snow day, I worked from home, and Dad decided to go into the office. He was sad that he missed the traditional breakfast of all snow days, french toast. I explained that you only get french toast if you stay home. Its in the rules. Really.
The snow is that heavy, wet kind that takes out trees. We only lost the one branch
(at the front of the stairs, just for the extra drama), so it could have been much worse. After Dad got home (I made him send me a Glympse so I could watch him drive home), we decided to go out and brave the roads to honor our family tradition of Friday Night at the Mall (don’t ask. I don’t know how it started). We got dinner and toddled off to Newbury Comics to see what they had.
We had a grand time. Beta found some quidditch goggles, and had enough money for them, so now she is their proud owner. I found so much stuff I would love to own, but I don’t want to actually pay for/store somewhere in my house. Alpha swears she loves comics, but she never seems to find the one that sings to her. I’m waiting for her to discover Sandman.
The drive home was beautiful, because the trees were all spangled with snow. They glowed in the headlights. There were a few new branches on the ground, which was a little nerve-wracking, but it looks if it was going to fall, it has.
This afternoon, Dad had to go down to Willimantic to help out one of his old clients. Of course, we stopped by Panera first for lunch (because Panera). He left from there, and I wandered down to a display of snow pants on clearance. On the day after a snow storm. I love how this works.
One pair of snow pants for Alpha later, I dragged the girls and Beta’s friend Lambda out to sled. First at the Senior Center here in town (which seems to be frequented by the little kids), and then Woburn Street School. They had the whole place to themselves, and spent about an hour blazing trails, building jumps, and sledding.
Much fun was had.
Sherlock
One of my favorite TV series is Sherlock, the modern update to Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous character. There are three 90+ minute episodes per season, and the seasons are spaced two years apart.
The latest season has been much anticipated by fans, so much so that the first episode, titled The Abominable Bride, warranted a limited cinematic co-release with the premier on television.
Meghan, bless her heart, found out about this release and that one of the lucky cinemas to have some showings is near us. My Christmas present was a pair of tickets. Naturally, one was actually for her. (Though she had the good taste to not point that out.)
Date Night!
Meghan’s mom came up to babysit the girls. Since we were going to be out late, she planned to stay overnight. (That plan changed at the last minute: she developed conjunctivitis the same day, and still came up, but elected to drive herself home when we got home — at 10 pm.)
Meghan and I drove into the city a bit early to have a nice dinner. Not knowing the city all that well, we parked the car around the corner from the cinema and followed our noses.
We stumbled upon a hole in the wall called Papagayo. Unlike the nearby restaurants with flashy signs and prices to match, our meal was very tasty and surprisingly inexpensive.
After dinner we had time to kill so we took in some local flavor. Within a couple of city blocks we had encountered two universities, a handful of theaters, Macy’s, Chinatown, and a strip club.
Alas, it was time for the movie so we shuffled back to the cinema and headed up. You can already find the episode on television so I’ll not bore with details; I will say that it was good. My favorite scene was when Sherlock came to (the first time).
Hiking the Fells
Beta and I seem to be the more adventuresome side of the family. Today we went hiking in the Middlesex Fells Reservation because we’d never been.
For our first look-around, I chose to start near the off-leash area at the Sheepfold, thinking we might be able to let Butter off her leash for a bit. Sadly, the area is not fenced in at all, and she won’t come on command when there are any distractions. (Butter will come when called at home, she’s not totally devoid of training, but the possibilities of squirrels and other dogs and dead things to roll around in are just too much for her to resist.)
From the Sheepfold parking area, there’s a straight shot up to the Bear Hill observation tower (about a mile) so we headed up. The view from the top is impressive.
Beta brought along a book to identify animal tracks, and we found some animal tracks that were neither human nor dog — we think they were bobcat.
Unbeknownst to me Beta did NOT bring socks, however, and her waterproof boots quickly gave her a blister. We discovered this at the tower, so we turned around and headed home a bit earlier than I had planned. She promised me that she would bring socks next time, and she was so miserable by the end of the hike that I kind of believe her this time. I think she enjoyed the hike otherwise, though.
NYE 2015
Another year, another amazing fireworks show on Boston Common!
The weather has been abnormally warm this year. Christmas day was in the 60’s, and NYE was in the upper 40’s during the day. The fireworks, held at 7 pm, were not uncomfortably cool.
Being a tradition, we like to make an evening of it. We took the train in, arriving at North Station and walking around the city. Even though we have a train station in town, the parking sucks and the fares are higher so we head down the road to Anderson RTC in Woburn. The MBTA makes outbound trips free on NYE after 8 pm, so it’s even cheaper to take the train (and just as convenient).
On the greenway in front of Quincy Market there is a carousel. December 31 is the last day of the season, so the kids like to get in one last ride. This year we arrived after dark so all the lights were on.
After the carousel, we headed across the street to Quincy Market. The Christmas tree was still lit and the holiday show, Blink!, was still running. It’s just a small light show and music that plays a few times an hour, but it’s a nice touch.
We got dinner at the kiosks in Quincy Market. It was nothing to write home about except this year there was a teenage guy playing rock hits on his guitar in the central seating area that Alpha was quite taken with. Meghan gave her some money to throw in his guitar case. It was all very cute.
We got some dessert and hot chocolate on our way out, and ate it on the way. The kids got cannoli, which weren’t quite as good as what’s available in the North End but seemed to be pretty good regardless. Meghan and I shared a slice of German Chocolate cake.
With the weather being so nice a lot of people turned out this year, and the hill overlooking the baseball diamond was downright crowded.
A funny thing about these fireworks: they always seem to have more than one climax. We always have to wait for a few moments to make sure they’re really done this time, before heading out. We caught a train from North Station before 8:30, had the girls in bed before 10. No, we didn’t stay up until midnight either.
Windows? Oh, right, that means malware
We’ve been a Microsoft-free household for the better part of a decade. I had one lonely copy of Windows XP on a virtual machine so that I could occasionally use iTunes to manage my iPad. Everything else runs some variant of Linux, OSX, or iOS. Until yesterday, Christmas day.
We purchased new hardware so the girls can a) run their Windows-based games, and b) stop fighting over the other “fast” computer. It wasn’t a terribly expensive machine (<$200) but it offers decent performance. We went completely over to the Dark Side and purchased it from our local Microsoft Store.
I was pleased with the whole process — I rather prefer the tenor of the Microsoft Store over the Apple Store (located a few storefronts away in the same mall). Windows 10 is supposed to be so much better, too. I’m not a fan of the interface but it is intuitive for some tasks.
I have just, as I type this, finished removing malware. Already. Less than 24 hours after turning their new, fully-patched Windows laptop over to the kids, there is malware on it. The built-in Windows Defender virus and malware scanner didn’t detect it, of course, but it was clear that something was wrong when I borrowed it back to check on it.
Color me unsurprised. I’m just glad that I took a whole-disk image before first boot. I think I will be restoring it to factory settings before too long. (the bastards don’t include recovery media anymore.) I’m also glad that tools like MalwareBytes and Spybot Search and Destroy have free versions.
Christmas Choral Concert (CCC)
It’s that time of year again: Beta’s fifth grade class concert.
The concert was pretty good overall, but the real highlight was a kid in the band who was responsible for banging a cowbell (more cowbell!). He was way in the back with the rest of the percussionists, and half in the shadow, but he was the most enthusiastic member — and his timing was spot-on.
Hills Home Delivery: Day 1
Oh dear god what have we done to ourselves.
One of Meghan’s friends raves about a grocery delivery service called Hills Home Delivery. After listening to their sales pitch, trying some sample food, working out the costs, and checking reviews online, we wanted to give it a try ourselves.
Our first delivery came tonight. This is several months worth of beef, chicken, pork, sausage, fish, and veggies, packed into a freezer in our basement. There’s a turkey and some cookie dough, too. Not pictured is several shelves of dry goods: pasta + sauce, flour, sugar, paper towels, and toilet paper.
This isn’t completely new to us, Meghan already buys her coffee and a few other things from Amazon, but wow that’s a lot of food all at once.
The delivery guys were friendly and professional, and pretty darn close to on-time. (Ten minutes late, but our delivery was scheduled for 5:30 pm — it’s night-time dark already, and rush-hour traffic is in full swing. I don’t consider that ‘late’.)
On paper, this looks like we should be spending the same or less on food than we’re spending now — and we can cut out a bunch of time at the grocery the store. We’ll just need occasional trips for fresh things like dairy, eggs, and fruit.