Weird Al Yankovic was a big part of Meghan’s and my childhood, and pretty much anyone in our generation. You could say he’s a hero of sorts. When I found out, quite by accident, that his latest tour had dates near us I bought tickets the same day. The only decision was which venue.
I chose the Lowell Summer Music Series; as Meghan said, if it rains we would be able to say that not only have we seen Weird Al live, but we saw him in a high school gymnasium. (The high school next door is the rain location.) It’s outdoors and BYOBlanket; so long as it didn’t rain and move indoors the kids are free.
So, on the appointed date and earliest possible time after work (which was earlier today, as I write this) we packed up the kids and a blanket and headed to the park to stake out a spot.
The stage, shortly before the show started. They waited for dark so they could recreate the roaming camera scene from the ‘Tacky’ video (which was the opening number)
The show was flawless. It was small enough to be fun, large enough to let the crowd’s energy really flow, and turned-down enough that I wasn’t deaf at the end. Alpha and Beta spent most of the show in a corner of the park with some other kids, but they enjoyed the show immensely as well. Their view was better than ours, despite the distance — they could see over the crowd, while we had to contend with the sound booth/tent.
Weird Al in the fat suit singing ‘Fat’. My childhood has been redeemed. Apologies for the potato quality, all I had was my cell phone and the stage lighting was particularly bright and direct during this song.
There was a good mix of old and new songs over a couple of hours, interspersed with video clips while the band changed costumes. Among other songs (in no particular order), there was Tacky (the opening number), Dare to Be Stupid, the aforementioned Fat, Amish Paradise, White and Nerdy, an awesome arrangement of Like A Surgeon set to the “unplugged” arrangement of Eric Clapton’s Layla (really), a couple of polkas interspersed throughout (of course), and closing with Yoda.
Cover of Weird Al’s latest album and tour
The girls were buzzing as we left the park, and wide awake despite a) being 10 pm, b) after a regular day of school, and c) on the first week of school. They can sleep in tomorrow, there’s no school, and Meghan and I aren’t setting an alarm — our jobs are flexible enough that we can afford to be a little late.
Butter did not have a good day today. She’s been licking her paws and scratching her face to the point she’s starting to lose fur. Sprayed her with some anti-itch spray, and that didn’t help much (but she did put herself in her crate for an hour).
She looks so miserable
Off to the vet we go. He looks her over and says yes, it’s allergies, benadryl what she needs, and by the way her anal glands are full.
So, poor Butter is itchy, has been sprayed with nasty stuff, went to the vet, had a finger up her rear to express her gland, and is due to take two pills later.
I said I should just trim her nails to make it complete, but Quinn says that would be too cruel. I think he’s right.
There’s a small, boring backstory: Meghan renewed our membership with the Museum of Science (MOS), then asked me if we should renew it (she asked me via text, so she may have a different order of events). I said we shouldn’t, since the girls haven’t been interested in going and we basically did not go at all last year — HOWEVER if we were to actually go just once I would be happy to renew while we were on-site. Despite talking about this all over text, Meghan’s disappointment was evident as she dutifully cancelled the renewal.
I considered my options carefully, as the couch isn’t a particularly comfortable place to sleep, and gently reminded her that the MOS has an observatory that they open on Friday nights to view the stars — therefore it would be open later that night, and I would happily renew while we were there. All we had to do was get the kids on board with going, or figure out what they would do while the two of us went. (The girls thought this was a cool idea. 50 points to Gryffindor.)
Credit to https://bkellysky.wordpress.com/
A few hours later we found ourselves standing on the roof of the MOS parking garage, waiting for our turn at the telescope. Sadly, I could not photograph the view from the telescope, but it was a surprisingly clear view of Saturn. A number of other people have taken photographs that are pretty similar to what we saw. Happily the docent was informative and happy to answer questions, and didn’t make us feel rushed. The MOS seems to have crowd management around the telescope down pat.
While we were waiting our turns, we took a few other pictures of Boston and astronomical phenomena, and watched the city bustle around us.
Look to the left and up from the moon, that’s Jupiter. High, thin clouds were moving in, backlighting the view and obscuring the dimmer stars. The photo was taken with my cell phone, apologies for the potato-like quality.
Baba took the whole clan to Fenway to see the Red Sox play the Chicago White Sox. It was an afternoon game so that the kids could come, too.
Baba generously bought us stadium food as well – no small sum for hot dogs, pretzels, pizza, and Del’s Lemonade.
The Sox stunk until the bottom of the 5th inning, at which point they came back from 4-0 lead by the White Sox to win 7-8.
Delta fell asleep by the 8th inning, which is surprising given the amount of noise every time the Sox got a run. Kappa, who’s about a year and a half, stayed awake and in mostly good spirits through the entire game. Beta was well behaved, and Alpha genuinely enjoyed herself.
We left as the 10th inning was starting so that we could avoid some of the crowds with the kids and headed down the street to get dinner at Wahlburgers.
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.
Meghan yelled at me for this selfie. She insisted that it was inappropriate to do while making 75 mph on I-91.
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.
Click to expand
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.
Alpha holding a reproduction Viking sword
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.
There’s a great NOVA episode about the “mystical” Ulfberht sword
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.
Waiting for Phantom of the Opera to start
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.
Notice the shadows. The sun is rising off to the right, but the cars are throwing shadows the wrong way. The strange beauty of a city made from glass.
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.
Driving home (click to expand)
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.
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.
Meghan kept little Mu busy and entertained. When he snuggled up in a sleepy-little-kid pose we had a collective realization that he’s tired.
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.
The Lighting Show in the Theater of Electricity, at the Boston Museum of Science. Meghan thinks the bolt looks like a dancer.
These trees normally stand straight. They did not last night.
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.
Dad and Alpha settling in to wait for Beta and I to finish. It was a while.
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.
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.
Meghan at Papagayo
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).
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.
Weird Al Yankovic was a big part of Meghan’s and my childhood, and pretty much anyone in our generation. You could say he’s a hero of sorts. When I found out, quite by accident, that his latest tour had dates near us I bought tickets the same day. The only decision was which venue.
