Let it snow... NOT!

Friday, 12-18 and Sunday 12-20 we have had huge winter storms. Friday we got around 12 inches, and today we have another 12 or so. We had a break on Saturday - the roads were clear enough to go to the store, but then we got hammered again on Sunday.

Here is a picture of the snow on our back deck, looking towards the driveway and the car. I love how the snow stacks up on the railing.
We swept the car off this morning to go to church, so it doesn't look too bad. But notice the snow stacked up against the fence. When we run the snow blower, the only place to put the snow is against the fence along the house. We've had trouble with the fence blowing over in the wind lately, but I think with all the snow, it's going to be pretty stable this winter.
	Our pine tree in the back yard is covered - it's so pretty, as long as you don't have to go outside!
	We keep the BBQ grill on the back deck. Here's a shot of how the snow builds up on it. Guess I won't be doing any grilling for a while.

We had a wonderful Christmas program this morning. It might be that we had to sacrifice a bit to get there today, as the roads were very bad, but there was a sweet spirit there. We had lots of wonderful music and a couple of especially thought-provoking speakers.

Christmas Concert

December 12th and 13th were the annual Christmas concerts with the Melrose Symphony Orchestra. Here is a picture of me ready to go to the Saturday concert. These concerts are a mixture of classical and pops music, along with a wonderful soloist and a hand bell choir.



Robert is all decked out to go to the ward party in his snazzy Christmas tie.



After the concert we finally had time to get our tree decorated.

Thanksgiving 2008

I'm finally getting around to posting our pictures from Thanksgiving. We spent Thanksgiving with Dan, Karen, Jared and Sean, in Hamilton, NY.

Hamilton is about a 5 hour drive from Boston. We were going to leave around 10 on Wednesday, but we actually didn't hit the road until 12:30. We had heavy traffic until Sturbrige, along 95, but then from Sturbridge on it wasn't bad. We left Utica in the dark and had to navigate the back roads to Hamilton in the dark. The roads are a combination of rolling hills and curves, which made driving exciting.

This is the dinning room table all set and ready for diinner

We served up the food in the kitchen. We had traditional turkey, potatoes, stuffing, gravy and lots of other good things to eat.

Dan's friends had given them a huge blue hubbard squash. Sean and Dan broke it apart by throwing it on the ground, and then we scooped out the seeds and cooked the flesh. Here's a picture of Sean getting the seeds ready for toasting.

Here's a picture of Dan, Karen and Jared.

Jared is three years old and lots of fun. His favorite toys are cars and trucks, and his favorite movie is "Cars." Uncle Sean was a great hit because he has a movie preview on his BlackBerry of a car racing movie, which he let Jared watch to his heart's content.

Jared is playing with Uncle Sean's phone, while Dan and Sean pose for the camera.

This is a shot of Dan and Karen's front door. They live in a duplex that is an old house in Hamilton, with a deep back yard.

This house is located across the street. I fell in love with it - notice the beautiful stone work.

Dan and Karen have a flower arrangement on their piano, which looks like it is growing out of the back of my head in this picture. I haven't taken to wearing hats or feathers yet.

We are especially thankful for all of our family and friends at this time of year. We hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.

Texas Trip

On November 11th Robert and I drove to Manchester, NH. I got on a plane for Austin for business and he got on a plane for Houston to visit Amy and David.

After spending a couple of days in Austin, I drove to Houston on Friday to pick up Robert. Robert had spent some time with Amy, Drew, Hannah and David in Houston, and we went out to lunch with them.

We ate lunch outside in the sun under the shade of a 400 year old tree. It was dropping acorns, leaves and little green jumping spiders that really liked Amy.

We then drove to Beaumont to spend some time with my brother and his family. It's about an hour and a half to Beaumont. On the way there we crossed the Houston Ship Channel on a bridge that goes up around 175 feet over the channel. It was pretty nerve-wracking - like riding up and down a roller-coaster. Here's a picture of the bridge

Here are some shots of Bruce, Lorraine and Benjamin (who came home from Nagadoches for the weekend).

Friday night we ate pizza and played a really fun game called Blokus. We were all still speaking to each other after it was over, which was an accomplishment!

On Saturday we went to Gator Country. It was cool and breezy, so the gators weren't too active, but we got some great pictures.

We went on a tour to get all educated about gators. The picture above is the guide holding a 3-year old gator. She has a broken jaw - look closely at the picture - the front of her snout is always open. She couldn't survive in the wild, because she couldn't snap and grab food.

Our favorite part of the tour was seeing Big Al. He is one of the largest gators in captivity. He was sunning himself on the bank, and because it was cold, the guide was able to get in the pen and give him a kiss on the snout.


We also saw some large snapping turtles. These turtles live on the bottom and rarely move. The guide opened its mouth to show the little pink lure that looks like a worm to fish. The fish come to investigate and the turtle snaps them into its mouth. Turns out that the turtle's neck can extend 1 1/2 to 2 feet out to grab food.

Lorraine and I hit the Fabric Shop in the afternoon while Bug went with Bruce and Robert to look for a new car. His old car got totaled in a close encounter with a tree, so he's in the market for something new to drive. I found some nice fabrics for a quilt that I'm planning, and we got to preview several of the test drive cars that Bug was thinking about. I purchased the fabric, but Bug didn't purchase a car that day.

While we were in Beaumont we got to tour Uncle Bruce's wood shop. He is working on Christmas presents for their grandkids and helping some of Lorraine's Webelos scouts with their Space Derby rockets. It was fun to see all his tools and to see Grandpa's work table that used to be in the basement on Louise Ave. It was also fun to see Grandma's old piano that I practiced on for many years.

We also went to a genuine Texas BBQ to have dinner on Monday night. The food was great and the ambience terrific. Driving from Austin to Houston I saw signs for BBQ's advertising "chop beef". I got to have some - it's basically beef that is grilled first and then chopped or shredded and served in BBQ sauce.

Tuesday morning we went back to Houston. I caught a plane back to Manchester, but Robert caught one for Oakland to go visit his dad. He also stopped in to see Aunt Verlene and had a nice visit with her.

Getting Organized

I've been working on getting my office space more tidy and organized. I bought a 2-drawer file cabinent at the office supply store the other day, and found this nifty organizer.



It has up to 12 adjustable slots, but I kept one slot big for the tape and pencil sharpener. All of the miscellaneous stuff that has cluttered my desk is now nicely organized!

Now if I could just find a way to hide the cable clutter!

New England Fall Colors

Gee, here it is the 2nd of November. Where did October go? I've been taking pictures of the fall colors during the whole month, so I guess it's time to post them. They run from early in the season to around the 20th of October.




These three pictures are on the shores of Silver Lake in Wilmington. I bike by here a lot.





These shots are early in the season. The reds have been especially vivid this year. This forest is near the field owned by the 495th Radio-Controlled Flght Squadron near Andover, MA.








These 4 shots are in and around Billerica, Tewksbury and Wilmington.




I have a window seat at work. This is the view from my window looking out towards the neighboring cemetery. I love the combination of the yellow trees with the red bushes, and the backdrop of the trees surrounding the cemetery. The picture doesn't do it justice because I'm shooting through my window, but it's a great view. I saw a wild turkey run across the parking lot today.

End of September

This week was a really busy one. I taught the Advanced AutoMod class to 5 customers, 2 from Singapore, 2 from Ohio and one from Canada. This meant that I had to be to work at 7:30 or so to get things all set up, and then didn't leave until 5 or 5:30 on most days. They were great to work with, and we had a good week together.

On Wednesday Robert left for a short trip to Florida. He was going for some demos and meetings at Eglin AFB. He left at 6:30 Wednesday morning and returned home at about 1 AM early Saturday morning. Nyssa and I both missed him a lot!

I took Nyssa to the vet for her yearly physical. She's around 12 years old now, and is starting to show her age a bit. She has had a heart murmur for a long time, but it's getting worse, and so now we have to consider what we want to do to treat it - x-rays, echo cardiograms, drugs and stuff. I bought her a harness to use on walks, instead of the collar, which irritates her trachea and makes her cough more. I also found a cute little pink jacket for her, but will have to exchange it for a medium instead of a small. She seems to feel the chill more now that she is older.

We had nice weather until Friday, when it started raining - apparently the remnants of some tropical storm or other. Friday night Tiffany and Dan came over for steaks. I used the grill in the rain, and while I was getting it heated up, Nyssa saw the steam and started barking about it. She did this once before when I had a pot on the stove that had gone dry and was smoking a bit. A canine smoke alarm!

Tiffany has completed her coursework for an associates degree - here is a picture of her with her diploma.







Congrats, Tiffany!



Last night we had a mosquito in our house. Being the mosquito magnet that I am, I got a couple of bites before I saw the bug and squashed it. I really wish I weren't so allergic to mosquitoes - I have a couple of large red itchies.

It's hard to believe that September is all but finished. Our foliage is just starting to turn to the fall colors. It's late this year, because we had such a wet summer. However, it is expected to be especially brilliant for the same reason. I drove to Manchester, NH, on Thursday, and saw a bit of red here and there. Saturday during my bike ride I passed an area where all the trees had turned bright red. There are trees here and there on the way to church that have turned red. The next week or so will bring out the other colors, and I'll put some pictures up when I have some pretty views.


I wasn't able to do a lot on my thesis until the weekend. I pounded away at the code and couldn't get one particular thing to work, so I gave up for a while and went riding. About 10 miles into my ride I realized what I was doing wrong, and when I got back, I fixed the problem. Oxygen is so good for the brain! I'm just about finished with iteration 1 - all I have left is to feed back the results.xml document to the client, get the results nicely formatted, and then spin off a thread to launch the server-side activities.


We have a family in our ward with 5 little boys ranging in age from 9 down to 1 1/2. We have had them over and I have worked with the boys in the Primary when I substituted as the chorister. Their mom reported to me that the other day they saw someone who looked like Robert. Their 3 year old said, "Look, it's Sister Rains' brother!"


My Bosch bread mixer arrived this week. I now have a wheat grinder and a bread mixer, and have really enjoyed getting back into making bread. The whole wheat bread recipe from the Lion House Cookbook is especially tasty. It is also a good food-storage recipe - it calls for oatmeal, honey and powdered milk, in addition to the whole wheat flour.


I'm still looking for people to come to Boston to visit, so that I can go to some of the tourist attractions like Old Ironsides, the Freedom Trail and other places. Salem is a good place to visit in October, as they have all sorts of activities associated with their heritage and connection to the witch trials. The next 2-3 weeks will be especially beautiful as all the trees turn, and the coast of Mass. and New Hampshire is really pretty any time during the year.