March 03, 2007

Thick Fog

Posted by Scott at 06:56 AM

I woke up this morning, looked outside, and could barely see across the street. For much of winter southern New Hampshire often tends to be on the border of freezing. Many times when we have a healthy Nor'easter, the next day you can clear it wearing just a sweatshirt, hat, and gloves because it's ~35°F.

Yesterday we had such conditions. It started snowing the previous evening and there was about four inches of snow on the ground when I woke. I knew that just south of us it was sleet and rain so I started the snowblower to clear things before it got wet here. Sure enough within hours the snow turned heavier, then sleet, then rain. Around 4 o'clock we went out to clear it again. There was only an inch, but it could best be described as 7-Eleven slurpy in consistency. When it's like that, even an inch feels like a backbreaker. That's why I cleared what I could while it was still snow.

I stayed home yesterday and worked from our master bedroom. I don't think I mentioned it, but Michelle bought a beautiful desk for me while mom and dad were visiting. Dad certainly remembers helping her haul it up the stairs. Considering I plan on just laptop'ing at that desk, it seems a bit large, but it is nice to be able to spread out the reference books when you need to. Yesterday I was writing some non-trivial data structures in Perl (arrays of queues of hashs of array fields) so it was nice to have room for my Perl reference books next to me.

The kids were home, of course, due to the school vacation. They had some friends over and were playing a lot on the Wii. Last weekend I had purchased WarioWare: Smooth Moves and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz in hopes of helping Michelle stay sane during vacation week. I didn't allow the WarioWare game to be opened until Thursday, as I wanted to spread the gaming out a bit. I have to give the Wii some credit — it gets you off of your bum. Timothy is our most active Wii gamer … and the most entertaining to watch! In taking a break from gaming many of them watched Flushed Away while Claire watched One Night with the King down on the basement television.

So here we are today. It's super foggy out. The highs are expected to be mid-40's which will really clear out the residual slop from yesterday. Claire is going with our friend, Tammy, to Tammy's baby shower late this morning. Abby is going to a birthday party for her friend, Allison. Who knows what Michelle has in mind for me and the boys? Often times when both girls are gone like that, it means we can run errands in the car, which I like driving more than the van.

Comments

Hey Scott,
Cass and I got Wii's today! After months of searching every weekend, we walked into Target today and they actually had them. I havent opened mine yet as I feel guilty about spending the money when there are other things that I could have used, but I did play a bit with Cassidy this morning and it was fun. Talk to you later.

Chris

Posted by: Chris at March 4, 2007 05:26 PM

Hey Chris,

Congrats to you and Cassidy both! It's too bad you aren't able to visit anytime soon. I'm sure you'd have a blast playing with our kids. Timbo's getting pretty decent at Tennis, Boxing, and Bowling. Outstanding for a 4 year old!

When I was waiting to pick Abby up from her birthday party yesterday, the place had a vintage Nintendo64 for folks in the waiting area. I had the boys with me and they had a good time playing DiddyKong and MarioKart64. We hardly cared that Abby was being a super dawdle queen... Considering you can get a used N64 for ~$50 on Amazon or eBay, it had me thinking... ;-)

Posted by: Scott at March 4, 2007 09:07 PM

Hey Scott,
I still have an original Nintendo in good working condition. I don't even think your kids would enjoy playing it. For me it was fun because I used to play at the Parolin's house when I was about 10.
Chris

Posted by: Chris at March 5, 2007 10:46 AM

Hi Chris,

An original NES? Nah.

There are a number of titles available for the Wii from older systems via their "Virtual Console". Unfortunately, there aren't many (yet) from the N64 days. We *did* buy and download MarioKart64. I thought it was a fun bargain for $10. Here's a good page for you to bookmark:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_%28North_America%29

Posted by: Scott at March 5, 2007 01:05 PM

Oh cool I may have to give you a jingle to learn how to set up the Wii for downloading. I didnt realize you had to use points. There are some classic games on that site.
Chris

Posted by: Chris at March 5, 2007 04:44 PM