Is Summer Over?

August Miscellany

We have survived what should be the hottest and most humid days of summer. I think we got off pretty easy this year. We had about a week where the girls slept on the floor in our room every night so we could all share our single window air conditioner (we don't have more than that on principle). Four days ago the temps dropped in to the 70s as the remnants of tropical storm Danny came through. Today it was warmer but very pleasant. I bet we'll still get some sticky weather before summer is over, though.

Carol and the girls have been having lots of fun together. They've done several things with the neighbors. Karen invited Carol and the girls to their pool club; another day they all went together in their minivan to the naval museum at the former Boston Navy Yard; and last week they all went to Nahant Beach together.

Photos by Audrey (8/09)

Audrey has taken a sudden interest in the camera and wants to take lots of photos. What the heck, "film" is pretty cheap these days. She's pretty good at it! It's interesting to see what she thinks is worthy of recording. I think perhaps it's time to get her a camera of her own.

My work had a event of sorts at Great Brook Farm today. It had been planned since June for August 29th, but since Danny was passing through and it was forecast to rain the entire day (it did) they rescheduled it at the last minute to today. It wasn't very organized. The only details we got were a parking pass and tickets for ice cream and information that there would be a milking tour at 3:30. I'm not sure if not many people went or if the place is just too big, but we only saw one coworker the entire visit.

Great Brook Farm

Great Brook Farm has been a working dairy farm since the 1940s but was purchased by the state in the 1970s. The working part of the farm is leased to a family who run it as a normal business, but that uses only 90 of the 950 acres of land in the park. It's a pretty old school dairy operation. No free range here. It was cool to let the girls see a little bit of where food comes from. One thing I learned: when you hear about cattle eating corn, it doesn't mean just the kernels (at least not for dairy cows). The entire plant is chopped up to produce silage; cobs, stalks and all. I also learned why vertical silos you see on farms are mostly in disrepair these days. They are too complicated and costly to maintain, so most farmers have switched to silage bunkers.

Audrey starts Kindergarten on Thursday and Charlotte starts preschool the following Tuesday. We went to a Kindergarten open house and met Audrey's teachers Mrs. Pietropaulo ("Mrs. P") and Mrs. Woods. Mrs. P attended Kindergarten in the room she has now taught in for 12 years. Both girls are very excited to start school. They got new backpacks and lunchboxes: Audrey chose Star Wars Clone Wars and Charlotte chose "Ni Hau, Kai Lan".

One final piece of transition: I've been meaning to choose new doctors and dentists for us but it hasn't been a high priority. Yesterday I broke a tooth - the corner of my molar with the only amalgam filling left in my mouth broke off. It's not painful or anything, but it is sharp and needs to get fixed pronto. So I guess I'll be choosing a dentist tomorrow.

Welcome Home, Tessa!

Welcome Home, Tessa

Carol and I have been talking about getting a cat for a long time. Of course we wanted to wait until after the move and getting settled. Now that's done.

Carol and the girls made a couple of trips to the MSPCA last week to try to pick one out. They had a couple of good candidates. Charlotte is very leery of cats and very frightened of being scratched or bitten, so we didn't want a kitten. We also wanted a female because I've had males who developed spraying issues as they got older.

The MSPCA facility at Nevins Farm is quite nice. They have two "colonies" for adult cats. Each is a large room with lots of cubbies and a catwalk around the top of the walls and about a dozen adult cats roaming free. They also have small rooms where you can take a cat for some one-on-one time. Most of the cats are wearing name tags and there is information about each on a card on the wall (sex, age, traits).

If you're looking for a dog, they have large areas outside where you can take a dog for walk and play with it. They also have horses, goats, rabbits and a few exotics.

Yesterday we went back for the third trip and spent a couple of hours there. We had some one-on-one time with three different cats. The one we liked best was Tessa. She's a gorgeous, petite 1-year-old tabby. She seemed the most affectionate.

We kept her in our bedroom when we got her home. She spent the night there with all of us (it's an all-family bedroom on hot nights, with the air conditioner). Now it's 6:30am and she is exploring the rest of the house with the girls. She's very curious.

It's been 10 years since I've had a cat in my home and I've missed it. Carol and the girls are very excited, too. Welcome to our family, Tessa!

On My Ride Home From Work

Several times I've thought about stopping to take this photo. Today I finally did. This is from the Massachusetts Ave ("Mass Ave") bridge that connects Boston to Cambridge across the Charles River. I'm at the Cambridge end, near MIT.

Temps got down to the low 60s last night. It felt a little chilly when I first got on my bike this morning. The first hill about 1/2 miles from home took care of that. It got up into the 80s for a high and was a pretty sweaty ride home. But pleasant nonetheless.

News of the day? We might get a cat tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Acclimatizing

I wasn't looking forward to the extremes of Boston weather when we decided to move. The hot and humid summers and the long, cold, snowy winters both seem like hardship to me relative to Seattle's moderate climate. But so far I (and we) have been doing just fine.

For one thing, the weather in the Northeast has been unusual this spring and summer. Boston had a very rainy and cool May and June before we arrived (while Seattle had a very unusually warm and sunny May and June). As of last week neither New York or Boston had seen a 90-degree day since summer started. We also had unusually un-humid weather our first couple of weeks here. We've had some humidity since but it's bearable.

Yesterday it was 79 degrees at 7:30am and it felt normal. I guess that means I'm already used to it.

I tend to walk fast, so when I was taking the train to work I had a couple of days when I would arrive at work pretty sweaty. Now that I'm riding my bike to work it's no big deal. When I get to work I strip down and just sit in the locker room for 5-10 minutes radiating heat and evaporating sweat. But then I get to take a shower. My helmet pads never dry out: I have my helmet hanging in front of a fan at the moment to try to get that to happen tonight. It's pretty gross putting on a helmet that has pads still wet with yesterday's sweat.

Speaking of biking, I've been biking to work every day for a couple of weeks now. It is just over 11 miles and takes me 40-45 minutes. I can feel my conditioning starting to come back - I'm not huffing up the hills as much as when I started two weeks ago.

The cyclists in Boston are completely nuts. Most don't obey a single traffic law. I wonder if I'll adapt to the local riding style, but I don't think so. They blow right through red lights. I'm sure if you asked one of them, s/he'd say they look and that they know no one is coming, but they don't slow down enough for a real look. No, thanks. I'm not in that big of a hurry. There's also only maybe 50% helmet usage.

During my commute in rush hour, I can travel much faster than cars. One evening I noticed a red pickup because he passed me aggressively. We leapfrogged several times as he kept getting stuck in traffic. The last time we saw each other was 6 miles after our first encounter. Given the traffic, at pretty much every light I can ride between traffic and parked cars and pass 20-30 cars. Some drivers will try to squeeze to the right to block cyclists from doing so, but we can wriggle through a pretty small space. Very slowly, of course, because you never know when a door is going to open on parked car.

For the most part I find the drivers to be pretty respectful of my safety. As I reported before, my route is surprisingly quiet except for a few major intersections. I'm enjoying bike commuting very much.

Lesson Learned

There's a family-run ice cream place not far from our house called Soc's. We've been going there once a week or so after dinner for a treat. Last night Carol and I decided to go but we didn't tell the kids that was where we were going. I just said, "Girls, get in the car. We have a surprise."

They started guessing.

"Is it a puppy?"

"Is it a kitty?"

And a few other equally out-of-scale-relative-to-ice-cream guesses I can't remember.

When we pulled into the ice cream place, Audrey was very disappointed. The poor girl has a very active imagination and had convinced herself she was getting something really special. We felt bad.

Next time I'll just say, "Do you guys want to go get ice cream?"

Cider Hill Farm

The Boston Globe ran an article this week about Community Supported Agriculture and u-pick farms. Berries are in season so we decided that would be a great activity with the girls. Yesterday we drove up to Cider Hill Farm about 45 minutes from home to pick raspberries and blueberries.

They are currently in between the early-summer raspberry varieties and the late summer varieties. So the raspberries were a little hard to find. We managed one container of them before deciding to move on to the much more abundant blueberries. It took us a little while to find the right part of the patch, but then we found the mother lode: bushes that were so laden you could just sit on the ground next to one bush and pick hundred of plump, ripe berries. Charlotte probably ate almost as many as we picked.

Back at the farm store we bought some cider donuts and a raspberry turnover to enjoy before the trip back home.

When we got home we planned to go to the pool for a bit. Our neighbors had just returned home from a week of vacation at the beach and decided to join us. When it was time to leave the pool we decided to keep the party going with dinner at our house. We put together an impromptu spaghetti feast. Then the kids settled down watching "The Incredibles" and the adults got to hang out.

Scott and Karen and Carol and I got to enjoy our living room! Carol has been working on painting and arranging it and it's now usable. Thank you, Carol!

We really lucked out in the neighbors department. We feel very welcome and among like-minded people.

Our First Month in Boston

As I've mentioned, we've been splitting our weekend time between getting the house in order and having fun. The first album on the left contains more photos from our very enjoyable day at Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester. After 6 hours at the beach we went to nearby Rockport for dinner (fish and chips, of course) and ice cream.

Rockport is a very scenic little town. We almost didn't stop because it was crowded and we couldn't find parking. But on the way out of town we noticed a sign for a park & ride and shuttle at the town transfer station. It turned out to be very convenient.

Besides going to the beach we've had some other local adventures. Carol has been taking the girls to a playground a few blocks from home. They met a nanny named Adrian and her charges: two girls about the same age as ours from Hungary. They are becoming friends and have had a couple of play dates together.

The neighbors behind us, Scott and Karen and their kids Helen (9), Parker (7) and Anna (6) are also becoming friends. Our kids go play in their yard and they come visit us. Helen likes to be a mother's helper. One day Carol went upstairs and Helen had completely picked up the girls' room and made their beds! This week they are all on vacation and Audrey and Charlotte are having a blast caring for their chickens (Brownie and Puffy) and their rabbit (Honey Bunny).

Last week it was Parker's birthday. Karen invited the girls over for cake at about 7:30 pm. Carol took the girls over and they didn't come home until after 10:00 (I was busy fighting with a network router). It turns out there were two other women there with their kids and it turned into a girls' night out while the kids all played together and watched movies. Carol met two more neighbors. One couple is having us over for dinner next week, and they have also turned us on to the babysitters in the neighborhood.

We are really loving our neighborhood and our house. It was such a crap shoot to pick a town and house in a one-week house-hunting trip. But it has worked out very well. We're happy here.

A few other notes...

There are three wild turkeys that live outside my office. They have a reputation for being very aggressive. Sure enough, when I stopped to take a photo of them the biggest one (the mother?) charged me. At work they refer to them as the "Mercky Turkeys."

We discovered that the Melrose Public Library participates in a program where libraries buy annual passes to local museums and library card holders can use them for deeply discounted admissions. For example, full price admission at the Children's Museum for Carol and the kids would be $30. But with the library pass it is $2 per person. So last week Carol used that program and the girls had a great time.

Finally, some notes on intellectual development. I've written about the leaps both girls have taken in water comfort and swimming skills this summer. They have also both taken some intellectual leaps. Charlotte has become a very creative and expressive story teller. She makes up fairly long stories about critters and tells them to us with panache (and a very large helping of cuteness). Audrey has taken to drawing on her Magna Doodle pad. She's been really amazing us lately with drawings that show a developing understanding of spatial relationships. In the last couple of days she has become fascinated with words and has started copying them from signs, posters, books - whatever she sees around the house. She's been right on the verge of learning to read for a long time. I think this is a big step in that direction.

The interesting thing is that we haven't been actively promoting any of these developments. Most of the swimming advancements came from Audrey watching older kids in hotel and campground pools while we were crossing the country. And Charlotte of course wants to do what Audrey is doing. The developmental stuff, though, they have just started doing all on their own. Of course we praise them for it, but avoiding any hint of desire for it on our part seems to allow them the space to develop their own enthusiasm. Regardless, it's very rewarding to witness.

Be Still My Heart

My heart would be stilled if I ate many of these babies. Part of the local cuisine is a roast beef sandwich; there are several "famous" roast beef and seafood establishments here. The recommended way to order the sandwich is a "three-way": roast beef, cheese sauce and mayonnaise. I had to try it once, and I ordered mine as a "plate" with onion rings and fries. I felt kinda ripped off by the small amount of fries (that's sarcasm).

The sandwich was pretty good but I couldn't help imagining what I was doing to my arteries while I ate it. I felt like I ate too many fries but I barely made a dent in the pile. It's been a couple of hours now and my mouth still feels greasy. And you can bet there are people who eat this a couple times a week. Online reviews mention ordering a side of fried mozzarella sticks to go with it!

We went to Billy's for dinner because our real estate agent gave us gift certificates to a couple of local restaurants to welcome us to town. Billy's was one of them.

We had another day of work on the house today. I spent the entire day organizing the office - sorting through various piles of paperwork from house sale and purchase, new insurance, the girls' school registrations, etc. I made good progress and the office is no longer a huge mess. Meanwhile, Carol spent the day painting the living room. It's mostly finished and the too-dark magenta-red that was there has now been covered with a light gold. It makes a significant difference.

Between those projects and dinner we went to the pool for an hour. That is so refreshing after a day of working in warm weather.

We haven't figured out what our fun escape will be tomorrow. I bet we'll end up heading for the beach again. The girls love it so.