August 13, 2007

Weekend Wrapup

Posted by Scott at 09:14 PM

Saturday - As planned, Michelle and I went together to the new Milford Golds Gym. Although Michelle had gone before, she always went when the boys were in school. This was the first time bringing the boys along. There was some paperwork to fill out, in triplicate, for the boys. Overall the class was fine. I don't know whether the instructor just had a perm, but she definitely had a case of 80's hair. The class was just missing leg warmers and theme music from Flashdance. *grin*

In the afternoon we took the kids to the Milford pool. There are only a couple of weeks left before it closes. I must say, Timothy is a little fish when he gets in the water! Not one bit of resistance about jumping in, swimming with his head under water with eyes open.

Later in the afternoon we took the kids for what was supposed to be a quick dinner at a Restaurant That Shall Not Be Named. Despite light crowds and ordering extremely simple, quick meals, it was one hour from being seated to seeing our order. Michelle was struggling to keep her emotions restrained. The funny thing is that the next morning when she was relaying our experiences to our friends at our local donut shop, who is also in the shop, but a manager for that unnamed restaurant. She hadn't been on duty that night but was interested in what happened and openly discuss it. Initially it was awkward, (what are the odds?!) but it helped Michelle feel better.

Sunday - Sunday started with its usual Mass and donuts (and the aforementioned awkwardness). As soon as we got home we headed north to Lake Winnipesaukee. The kids enjoyed Space Jam on the drive up and Ice Age on the drive down. Weather was warm and sunny. The girls enjoyed tubing, the boys had fun swimming and boating. I didn't take many photos on this trip, just a few snapshots with the phone.

Monday - I stopped into our Nashua VW dealer today to drop my car off. While I had dreams of getting something exciting for a rental, like a VW Eos or an R32 or a Touareg, alas my rental is an entry level Chevy Cobalt. Be still my heart. I can't complain too much, considering it's all warrantee covered work with complimentary car rental. Although my car gets somewhat better fuel mileage, this car is roughly 5 to 8 thousand dollars cheaper. You can buy a lot of fuel for that kind of money... less the Fahrvergnügen. Have I ever mentioned my car's eviiil twin brother? Same color even, only a few minor tweaks here and there...

At least I got to listen to more of the new Harry Potter novel on the commute. I'm roughly at disc 12 of the 17. It took a while, but I'm starting to enjoy it. The narrator that they chose is awesome! He doesn't simply read the story. He acts out all the dialog, with great inflection, and with each character getting a unique, distinctive voice.

Tonight I did a little optimization tweak to the random photo script. It now maintains a cache of the photos available so that choosing two at random every day is pretty quick. It used to brute force index all 2600+ pictures every night and then choose two. Sometimes when the host of this site was being hammered under a heavy compute load (for instance, spam), that process of indexing all the pictures could glitch or be killed in the interest of reducing the load. This optimization should make things much more server friendly.

TJ - Congratulations to TJ. Today he became a licensed driver! Pedestrians in the greater River Grove area, keep your wits about you! *grin* My condolences to the checking account of Alyssa and Tom. Claire already has her eyes on the Jetta... *shudder*

Michael - I'll close with one last bit o' trivia. Michael lost his second top front tooth this afternoon. So now BOTH top front teeth are missing. He has a super holy hole-y smile!

Comments

Even though it's an entry level car, the Chevy Cobalt had a feature that is only available on the high trim line of the Jetta: a digital MPG gauge. The car averaged 40 mpg on the trip from Milford down to Marlborough. Not bad! That was with steady driving, no traffic jams, and no air conditioning. It's about what my ol' 1987 Escort used to get going back and forth to Rose Hulman.

Posted by: Scott at August 14, 2007 08:30 AM

The picture of you holding the twins as babies is up today ---i had to comment b/c it is such an adorable pic of you three!

Posted by: Suzy at August 16, 2007 06:06 PM