Thursday, November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

A wonderful Turkeyday was had by all. We are especially glad that Dad was up for spending several hours here.  All-in-all this was a special Thanksgiving spent with the all of the local family.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Nostalgia

No, I'm not trying to channel Alan Moore, but I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about the influence of one's parents. Today was special in that I was out replacing the roof of the horses' lean-to on my "honey-do" vacation, but today was certainly not unique.

Throughout the spring and summer I've consciously noted the pleasure and satisfaction that derives from having a reasonably organized toolshop, and the utility that having that delivers. My wife requests that I tackle a minor home repair job, and I'm able to quickly accomplish it.

Some of my favorite memories stem from working with my father in his shop. One of the centerpieces of that shop was the pegboard "wall" that he had made to hold the majority of his hand tools. Knowing from first hand knowledge that such a wall existed was always a mental barrier to me when Fiona asked me to complete some fairly trivial household tasks, simply because I didn't have access to it.

However, this year saw me taking over about half of the floorspace of the barn for my "Mantown" and one of the first things I built was my own pegboard "wall".  Since then my response time on household repairs has diminished dramatically, and I'm quite a bit more content than I've been in years.

Life is good.

An Unexpected Visitor

One of the "Honey-Do" items is to replace the corrugated roof on the horses' lean-to. Halfway through removing the rotted part of the plywood underlayment, I discovered an abandoned home. Considering that it's 20 feet up and right up against the ceiling, it's going to be very difficult to verify if the previous tenants will re-occupy the dwelling, but I'm going to assume that they will.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Awwwwwwww

It was too cute to not take a picture of it. Deidre fell asleep with the cat asleep in her arms.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Tough Guys Wear Pink

Emma made this t-shirt for me after I refused to wear a cantelope-colored shirt that Fiona had bought for me. Pink is fine. Cantelope is not. Am I right, or am I right guys?

Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Latest Home Improvement

Fiona is very pleased with how the new kitchen floor turned out. So am I. Be sure to take your shoes off at the door.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I love living in the future...

Yesterday was the last day of a co-worker and so a group of us took him out for drinks after work. When we finally called it a night, a quick check of the MBTA's website told me that my next train wasn't for another hour and forty minutes.  Can it get any worse than being stuck in North Station for over an hour while waiting for a train?

However, I'm living in the future, right?  While waiting for the Orange line at Back Bay, I pull up Amazon.com on my phone, find a new ebook for $0.00, "purchase" it, and by the time I've settled in to a rather hideously uncomfortable bench at North Station, "Bright of the Sky" by Kay Kenyon has been downloaded to my phone and I can lose myself in a surprisingly good sci-fi story about quantum computer based AIs and dimension traveling across branes.

However, I'm still ticked about the pundits in the 70's being wrong about the future. Where's my flying car so I don't have be waiting in the rain for my morning train to work?

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Friday, November 5, 2010

Huge photo update

With much demand from all members of the family, I have finally uploaded all the pictures that have been languishing on my home computer's hard drive for most of the year. Use the [Picture Gallery] link in the left-hand sidebar at http://www.windyoaks.com. Enjoy!

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Thanksgiving beta

Fiona cooked an outstandingly delicious turkey dinner tonight. It was awesome.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

My new favorite T-shirt

It's title?  The Binge.  I got it at shirt.woot.com.

Beauty is fleeting (v2)

I was greeted by this all across the sky as I stepped off the train tonight. By the time I got the camera out to snap this pic, only half the sky was illuminated. Thirty seconds later, all color was gone from the clouds.