Recently in My World Category

I've finally been able to capture the true nature of my family:

Of course, here's a slightly more "normal" family portrait:

I've posted a few photos from my niece Rowan's 8th birthday.

Take a look and let me know what you think of the quality of the Picasa Web Album.

To escape the 90+ degree temperatures and smothering humidity that have been smothering New England today, Melissa and I went to see the new movie, Julie & Julia. Bottomline: We thoroughly enjoyed it!

The movie tells two stories in parallel: the first of Julia Child's journey from bored diplomatic housewife to creator of the most popular cookbook of all time, and the second of Julie Powell, a frustrated wannabe writer who decides to cook her way through Child's cookbook over the course of a year and blog about the experience to overcome her writer's block.

Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. As other reviewers have noted, this was a series of lectures, and therefore should NOT be considered a guide on "how to write a novel." If, however, you have a background in English literature and want to write a novel, then you may find this book an interesting exercise in critical analysis.

I found the sections on story, people (parts 1 and 2), and plot thought-provoking and insightful. What made these sections most interesting were how Forster used examples to explore his analysis. Even though he refers to several novels I have never read, he provided sufficient context that I was able to understand his points with relative ease. Having read these section, I feel that I will be able to assess my own work to see how it stands up in each area.

I struggled a bit with the section on prophecy as it stabbed at my memories of reading Moby Dick, Billy Bud, and The Brothers Karamazov, from almost 20 years ago. Even so, combined with Forster's examples and analysis, I remembered enough to feel like I had a reasonable grasp of the analysis. That said, I think it will be worthwhile to revisit at least one of those books in the near future and then reread this section to see if I really understood it.

When Forster's subjects increased in complexity, diving into the more nuanced aspects of fantasy and patterns & rhythm, I floundered. I found it nearly impossible to fully understand his points without having read the novels from which he drew his examples. The concepts of rhythm & patterns in particular I feel are macro-level elements that one can only really appreciate in the context of having read an entire novel. Because of this, I didn't feel as though his examples could do the concept justice. I have limited experience reading Henry James, and none with Marcel Proust, Anatole France, or Percy Lubbock, all of whose novels Forster used as examples, so I had reason to flounder. And, unlike my interest in Melville or Dostoyevsky's work, I honestly have no interest in reading these authors, so it seems that my only opportunity to gain insight into Forster's analysis on fantasy and rhythm & patterns will be if I read some of his novels in which I hope he managed to demonstrate some of his advice.

View all my reviews >>

Last week my friend Liesl was in town teaching a training course. She had a hectic schedule, but was able to find some time to come over for a tour of our house and then join us for dinner. We went to Feng Shui, my favorite Asian restaurant, then went for ice cream at Kimball Farms.

Of course it's been nine years since we've seen each other in person, so I couldn't let her leave without snapping a couple of photos to commemorate her visit.

Melissa took one of me and Liesl:

Here's one Liesl took of me and Melissa:

Melissa's been working the last few months on transforming our rather dull, front flower bed into a work of art. Here's a few photos of the work in progress:

In late April Niko developed a mild rash on the left side of his muzzle, near his nose. We took him to the Vet, who wasn't immediately certain of the cause. With the rash being localized to a small area and not spreading, it didn't seem to be an allergic reaction, so she took a skin sample and ruled out certain varieties of mites and other microscopic critters. She prescribed a course of antibiotics with the hope that they would knock out any infections, thinking that was the most likely cause. Unfortunately the antibiotics had no effect and Niko started scratching the area with his paw the last few days, so I took him in for another visit today.

The Vet still doesn't know what is causing the rash, so she did another skin sample and checked it to no avail. She also took a hair sample and is sending it for a culture to check for a fungal infection. The Vet said if that's the cause, then she would typically prescribe a topical ointment, however because of its location, she thinks Niko would just lick it off before it had a chance to work. So, while we're waiting for the hair culture results to come back, we're going ahead with what's probably the only treatment that will work if it's a fungal infection: making Niko wear an Elizabethan collar, also known as a ruff, to prevent him from scratching the wound. As you can tell from this photo, I don't think Niko is too happy with this idea:

If this isn't a fungal infection, then we're probably going to have to get a skin biopsy and see if it's some form of immune disorder. Please keep us in your thoughts as we hope that a few weeks of wearing an uncomfortable ruff is all he has to endure to get better.

A former high school classmate of mine recently posted some photos on Facebook. Below is the one I was most surprised to see: it's yours truly and my friend Kelly at our Senior Prom.

In case you wondered, the answer is yes, that is a Miami Vice tuxedo I'm wearing. :P

I just heard that the 80s classic movie Heathers is being made into a musical. I'm not much for musical theater, the last show we saw being Spamalot! a few years ago, but I have to say that if this show comes to Boston and is getting halfway decent reviews, then I'm going!

Here's some of my favorite lines from that movie that I hope make it into the lyrics (warning: adult language):

• "Grow up Heather, bulimia's so '87."
• "This is Ohio. If you don't have a brewski in your hand you might as well be wearing a dress."
• "Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?"
• "I like it. It's got that what-a-cruel-world-let's-toss-ourselves-in-the-abyss type ambience."
• "Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count."
• "Well, f*ck me gently with a chainsaw. Do I look like Mother Theresa?"
• "Tomorrow, I'll be kissing her aerobicized ass, but tonight, let me dream of a world without Heather, a world where I am free."

Melissa and I had the pleasure of babysitting our nephew Killian on Saturday. Here's a few photos we snapped during his visit:

Killian & Uncle Alan playing "Boxheads."

This weekend Melissa and I gave Niko his first bath at home. Unfortunately he was quite a handful so I didn't have an opportunity to capture the adventure for posterity. Instead, I took a few photos of him post-bath. I think you'll agree that he's a very handsome dog.

I'm ready for my close-up.		Does that camera have a Yam Good treat on the other side?

This past week I could not believe my ears when I heard a story on NPR about how PETA is trying to rebrand fish as "Sea Kittens." I laughed so hard that I almost drove off the road. Then I realized as the story continued, that these people are serious. From the NPR web site:

"PETA thought that by renaming fish sea kittens, compassionate people who would never dream of hurting a dog or a cat might extend that sympathy to fish, or sea kittens," PETA campaign coordinator Ashley Byrne says.

Growing up, I went fishing on a regular basis with my Dad and brother. I don't think I ever felt much sympathy for the fish because we ate nearly everything we caught and I thought it was far more humane (and less work) to eat a dead fish than a live one. Honestly, if anyone deserved sympathy during our fishing trips, it was my Dad. My brother and I were typical kids, and by that I mean we weren't very good at sitting still for long periods let alone the extended spans we often spent staring at the surface of a lake hoping that a fish would bite at the gnarled worm we had haplessly impaled on a hook. Dad showed tremendous patience with us as demonstrated by not only our staying out for several hours, but by the fact that he took us with him time and again. I thought fishing was fun also because we got to spend leisure time with him that didn't involve tearing down a wall or putting up drywall. The Peta spokesperson apparently has a different view on what Dad was doing with us:

"Most parents would never dream of spending a weekend torturing kittens for fun with their families, but hooking a sea kitten through the mouth and dragging her through the water is the same as hooking a kitten through the mouth and dragging her behind your car," Byrne says.

Granted there were times when we caught fish that were considered too small to be legal. In those cases we carefully removed from the hook and returned to the water, alive and able to swim away. I don't recall that any of these fish were mangled or mortally wounded, at least not with anything more severe than the minor cuts I suffered from the occasional fish hook which I somehow managed to get caught in my hand, which my Dad promptly removed.

In classic journalistic style, the NPR reporter sought the public's reaction to the campaign. In a move that I would have expected from The Onion or The Daily Show, the reporter went to what one might consider a hostile environment: members of a fourth-generation commercial fishing family in Alaska. The comments were about what you might expect. My favorite quote was from a 12-year old girl, with whom I couldn't agree more:

"I don't see fish as sea kittens; I see them as food."

After hearing this story, I took a few minutes to visit the peta.org web site and to look over their materials. While there I skimmed it and didn't find anything that changed my opinion about the rebranding. I took a minute and made a sea kitten avatar (see right) and in the process began to think about the incredible amount of money this organization must have spent on this absurd campaign. I've never given money to Peta, and honestly, after looking at how they spend donations, I will not do so in the future. If you care to read about the campaign for yourself, or create your own sea kitten avatar, visit the site at peta.org

Here's an image I found recently that I thought people might get a kick out of: A parody I created of a Spin magazine cover which features my musical alter ego, DJ Snarky.

If I'm not mistaken, I created this in the late Spring/early Summer of 2003, right about the time I quit my job and was contemplating a move to Barcelona.

This is what I'm buying Melissa for her birthday, as soon as it becomes available:

Check it out...this is a brilliant ad, one of the most creative I have seen in recent memory.

I have finally finished compiling the web-based album of photos from our Italian honeymoon. You can find them at: Honeymoon.

This album has four parts, with photos from each city we visited:

• Venezia (Venice)—where we spent our first four days,


• Siena—where we spent the next week,


• San Gimignano—which we visited on a day trip from Siena, and


• Firenze (Florence)—where we spent our last four days,

The cities aren't listed in the order we visited them because the program I used to create the album, Jalbum, put them in alphabetical order.

A note about the web-based wedding photos
In the coming weeks I will be creating an expanded version of the web-based wedding album to include captions and to add some of the many wonderful photos (and possibly videos) from the friends and family who were able to attend.

This should be a lot easier with Jalbum versus the crappy freeware tool I used to create the original version that only contained proofs from our photographer. That tool was far too cumbersome and very pretty limited in its formatting options to deal with again.

I would like to wish everyone a very happy new year! Melissa and I are starting 2009 out with a new addition to our family: earlier this week we adopted a 2.5 year-old Siberian Husky named Niko.

Niko comes to us from one of Melissa's co-workers who is moving into an apartment building that doesn't allow pets. Niko is kid friendly and allegedly house-broken, so we'll see how things work out. Luckily I'm on vacation for the first week he's with us, so hopefully that will help with the transition. The challenge will be in seeing how well he, Melissa, and I are able to adapt to when I'm back at work next week. I will post more photos soon.

Despite the power being turned off, Melissa and I were able to have a nice breakfast at Cafe Madrid. While we were out, Santa stopped by to wish us a Merry Christmas. The owner of the restaurant snapped our photo and e-mailed it to us today.

We lost power late Thursday night when the rain turned to ice on the trees in our heavily wooded neighborhood, and branches began popping and cracking. Sounded like intermittent gun fire throughout the night. Friday morning we discovered that branches from our next-door neighbor's trees had taken out the power lines to their house and crushed their mailbox. The line was down across the road and we had to move the blockade the police set up at the end of the street so we could get to work. Roads were clogged with fallen tree limbs and in a few places, whole trees. Despite the four inches of rain we did not have any water in our basement, so flooding was not a problem. Melissa and I both worked all day and returned home to discover that the power was still off. We were very lucky to find that our friends, Nancy & Karl, who were only two towns over, had both power and a spare bedroom for us to crash in.

Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene

My review

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

My review

I'm happy to report that I've finished tearing down the chicken coop and breaking down the rotten lumber and other debris. All told, it took me several Saturdays and a few hours during the weeknights over the last month to break down the larger pieces, remove all the nails from all the boards, separate the roofing shingles from the lumber, and spray termite and ant colonies that were eating the coop from the inside out.

Here's the freshly cleared site with the stack of lumber that I still have to dispose of:

This is the view of the cleared area looking into the woods. We're working with a landscaper to have them clear the leaves back to the line of larger trees as well as nuke the poison ivy.

Here's the long view of the area that I've cleared. The Chicken coop stood in the bare brown area on the right of the foreground. After the landscaper clears the leaves and nukes the poison ivy, we'll probably tear down the picket fence and put in some natural divider between the grass and the wooded area. We're considering planting wildflowers in the area below the trees rather than planting more grass, covering the area with bark mulch, or spending a lot of time and energy to create a complex garden area.

Last month I posted a photo from my last day of production at Generation, my college magazine. Annemarie, one of the people in that photo, sent an e-mail to some of our friends from college and Evan forwarded this photo from our 1989 Thanksgiving celebration at Annemarie's apartment:

Here's the list of suspects (left-to-right):

• 1st row: Evan, Jen, Larry (w/ beard), Beth, Jim, Liesl, Chris


• 2nd row: Guillermo, Leigh Ann, Scott, Tom (w/ the hat)


• 3rd row: me, Gregg, mystery man (half hidden), Kathleen, Jon, Annemarie, Lori, & Mike (standing)

So one of the things that Melissa and I decided to do with the house thing Spring is to paint the living room. As you may recall, it had nasty mint green paint contrasting with bland wood paneling on either side of brick fireplace. Here's what it looked like:

We considered tearing down the paneling and replacing it with drywall, but ultimately decided to try painting it to see how it looked. Melissa, with help from the clerk at the Benjamin Moore store, selected one of their new Aura paints, which is both self-priming and self-leveling. This saved a lot of time with sanding and priming the paneling, not to mention that it looks fantastic! Kudos to Melissa on her choice of color--deep purple--and her hard work on painting the paneling.

This last photo shows Alpaca, the sand-like color we picked for the adjoining walls. Unlike the wall with the paneling, we had to prime these walls with two coats.

I've spent the last few weeks cleaning weeds, leaves, and miscellaneous junk out of the back forty. Now that I've got most of that out of the way and a dumpster delivered, it was time to tearing down the chicken coop. Here's a couple of photos from the process:

This past weekend I was cleaning out one of my boxes of magazines and photos from SUNY Buffalo and discovered this photo of the Production team at Generation Magazine on the night we put our last issue to bed. I'm pretty sure this was late April or early May 1990.

From left to right: Evan, me, Annemarie, Tom, and Chris.

Morte D'Urban by J.F. Powers

My review

Melissa and I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2007 has been a very busy but wonderful year for us. With my going to India in March, our getting engaged in June, buying a house in July, moving in August, and getting settled over the last few months, we've had a lot on our plates. Throughout this crazy year we have been blessed with the love and support of our family and friends and for that we are immensely grateful.

My tendonitis started bothering me late last week. For anyone not familiar with my experience with it, back in early 2003, I was out of work for several months because I had it very bad in both arms. I was experiencing shooting pains from the elbow down my forearm into the nerves between my middle and ring fingers on both hands. I couldn't type, I couldn't hold a pen, the vibrations from driving even hurt my hands. Luckily, a consultation with a hand surgeon and a nerve conduction test confirmed that it wasn't carpal tunnel, and so no surgery was required. I was able to make a full recovery through rest and physical and occupational therapy. Eventually I was able to return to work, but only on the condition that I be hypervigilant about taking frequent breaks and being careful not to spend too much time on the computer. Taking a year off and changing jobs went a long way to strengthen my arms and improve my attitude toward overworking my arms. It's been almost three years since I've had any serious symptoms, that is until now.

It turns out that the last few weeks of working the day job, at which I'm typically at a computer for 8-10 hours, then coming home at night and spending another 2-5 hours working at the breakneck pace NaNoWriMo requires has had a siginificant negative impact on my arms. I started feeling the twinges of nerve pain in my fingers mid-last week. With that in mind, I took a few days off over the Thanksgiving holiday, hoping my body would have enough rest to recover so that I could make the final push to finish my NaNoWriMo novel without further difficulty. Alas, that is not the case. I spent a couple of hours tonight writing another 3,000 words, bringing my total word count up over 26,000. But with these few hours of work has come the frightening and familiar series of sharp pains shooting ever stronger through both arms.

I will finish this novel, but I will not be finishing a draft of it this month. Perhaps if I were closer to the 50,000 word goal, I would push through, but given that I would have to write over 5,000 words a night for the rest of this week, I don't think my body could take the stress. It is far more important that I maintain my health so I can continue to work at my day job. So, all of that said, I'm officially calling it quits on my attempt at completing a draft of a novel in a month. I've learned a lot doing this, but those lessons are the subject for another entry at another time. Now is the time for a heavy dose of Advil and a good night's rest.

Long hours at the day job today, but I still managed to squeeze in some time after work to pump out an above quota day's worth of writing: 1,794 words. This brings my total word count up to 18,201.

The good news about today's effort is that I climbed out of the rabbit hole I went down yesterday while chasing that plot bunny, and came out to find myself able to resume one of the original subplots of the story.

I'm still ~5,400 words short of where I should be, but I think I can overcome that this weekend as I lock myself in the house while Melissa goes out to do a work project all day Saturday.

For now, it's time for bed.

Okay, I'm knocking off for the night. I broke the 16,000 word mark, so I'm giving myself the rest of the evening off.

I'll admit it, I invoked the power of a plot bunny--one of those amusing but meaningless tangents that likely will not make it into the final draft, but worked well in the short term for keeping the creative juices flowing.

In case you wondered, I killed off one supporting character (SC) with this plot bunny (not literally), but I compensated by introducing seven more. I guess meeting Richard Russo and hearing him read from his latest novel last week really inspired me. Oh, shoot, I didn't blog about that event...well, maybe later this week if/when I'm blocked again.

Okay, as you can see by the subject line of this entry, I'm slowly trudging along on my effort to write a novel in a month.

I have had a few good days, mostly over the weekend. The weekdays are a real bear given how much time I spend in front of a keyboard for the day job. I'm just not able to endure a 16-hour day of sitting at a keyboard, as my inflamed tendinitis is starting to remind me.

To see my progress on the novel, keep your eyes peeled while visiting this site for one of the widgets a fellow NaNoWriMo author, Paul Hawke, has developed. He's created a few, including the one to the right. This is a simple display showing overall progress and how I did on any given day. Light green and red show where I was above or below the goal for the day, bold green and red are reserved for days where I did exceptionally well or monumentally badly.

Now I'm sure some of you who check this site shortly after I post this entry will notice the discrepancy between the word count in the subject of this entry and what the graphic says. The reason for this is that I generated the graphic earlier in the day, before updating my word count. If you don't believe me, you can view my NaNoWriMo profile on the official site.

THE BOSTON RED SOX HAVE JUST WON THE 2007 WORLD SERIES IN A FOUR-GAME SWEEP OVER THE COLORADO ROCKIES!!!

I've been fighting a cold all weekend and I'm exhausted, but I stayed up to watch the game. I couldn't be happier!!!

Now I'm going to bed. :)

I'm excited (and somewhat nervous) to announce that I'm taking the plunge and signing up for National Novel Writing Month. Here's a description, from the NaNoWriMo web site, of what I've committed to doing in November:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Now most people who know me, know that I've been talking about writing a novel forever. Well, it's finally time that I put fingers to keyboard and start pumping out the words. The goal, as stated above, is to generate quantity, not quality. Anyone who knows anything about my writing habits knows that this will be an extraordinary challenge for me not to revise as I go along. But, as the rules say, that's what December is for.

Please wish me good luck on this endeavor, and I promise not to be too cranky as the month wears on and I'm trying to crank out this first draft.

The Boston Red Sox have just won the 2007 American League Championship Series. They beat the Cleveland Indians by a score of 11-2.

Watch out Colorado, here comes Boston!

GO SOX!!!!

So we finally got around to exploring the "back forty" of our property, the area beyond the picket fence that borders the grassy portion behind the house. Perhaps the most intriguing part of this area is the chicken coop. Yes, I said chicken coop. Here's a photo:

We spent about two hours clearing the brush and junk from around it. In the process we found some interesting items, including these:

The scrap pile

Snowblower with weeds in the engine block

Mass DPW safety cone

Rodent trap

Oar from inflatable raft

Mysterious metal thing...

It's a solar panel!

Until recently I had taken this blog offline. Aside from my being incredibly busy with Melissa, the day job, and minor problems with blog mail notifications, the single greatest reason I haven't been blogging was the onslaught of spam.

Initially I had set up the site so that comments would be posted without my reviewing them. I received the occasional spam comment offering male performance enhancement, videos of things I didn't want to imagine, and of course, mortgage refinancing for born-again, lesbian gamblers. While annoying, the volume of these types of comments was manageable for a while, about five or six per entry.

I'm happy to announce, that after a 17 month hiatus, Alan's Skew is coming back online. As many of my family and friends already know, there's been a lot of changes in my personal life. I'll be posting a few select details as the mood strikes me in the coming weeks.

It's official: Melissa and I have bought a house. It's a ranch with 4 bedroom, 2 baths on 1.5 acres in Chelmsford, MA. Here's some photos, click on them to get a closer view.

Front View		Kitchen		Living Room
Bedroom 1		Bedroom 2		Bedroom 3

We closed on the sale today and we're moving in tomorrow. More photos to come.

Last night I proposed to my girlfriend, Melissa, and I'm very happy to
announce that she said, "Yes!"

Here's a couple of photos of the ring:

I discovered last night that my blog's e-mail notifications are on the fritz. My buddy John has been doing some maintenance on the server where my blog is hosted and neither of us realized that this work affected the notification application.

He is going to move my blog to a new server in the next week or two, so hopefully we'll have notifications working again soon.

As I recently announced, Melissa and I are moving into a new apartment. We picked up the keys today and I snapped a few pictures after we moved a couple of boxes in.

Here's a view of the living room. The whole place has hardwood floors, white walls, and nicely maintained dark wood trim. The living room has a fireplace that, for now, is purely decorative. The landlord said he'll consider having the chimney serviced, but wouldn't commit to it in writing. That's fine, I think it's cool we'll have a mantle to display photos.

To the right of the fireplace, is the sun room. It's a nice little room that we'll use as a mini-arts studio.

I'm happy to announce that Melissa and I are moving in together in April. We found a great two-bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood in Arlington, MA. The new place is about 6.5 miles northeast from my current place.

More details to follow as we get closer to our move-in date.

I was finally able to see Killian and Mary at the hospital on Friday night. They are both doing well, and Killian slept through most of our visit. Mary was camera shy, so these photos are of Killian and a couple of me and Melissa holding him.

My nephew, Killian Tanner, was born today at 2:34 p.m. EDT. He is 10.9 lbs, 20.5 inches long, with a crop of dark hair.

As of this afternoon, mother and baby were doing well.

Photos to follow when I visit on Thursday night.

Today I went to visit my friends Amy & Brian. Earlier this month, they welcomed their fourth child, Vincent, into the world. Vincent—"Vinnie"—is now just over two weeks old. Here's a few photos I took during my visit.

In this photo his Mom is smiling, but Vincent was staring off at the ceiling fan which for who knows what reason is absolutely fascinating to him.

This weekend Melissa and I went down to Florida on a weekend getaway, hoping to find some warmer weather. While it was only slightly warmer than Boston, averaging low 50s during the day and frost-warnings at night, it was sunny and there was no snow! We didn't get to work on our tans, but we did have a lot of fun.

On Saturday morning I set the culinary bar high for our first trip together and took Melissa to her first-ever breakfast at Bob Evans. Needless to say, we had a hearty, if not heart-healthy breakfast. After the antacid breath mints, we drove over to Busch Gardens in Tampa. As the photo below shows, this place was a lot of fun.

If you're not familiar with it, Busch Gardens is an odd hybrid of amusement park (with 10 roller coasters), wildlife refuge, and life-size beer commercial. We saw and fed the giraffe while on a Serengetti Tour, which was well worth the extra charge beyond the park admission price. Here's a few more photos from the trip:

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and safe, fun, relaxing holiday weekend. Here's a photo I took today of me and Melissa in front of our tree.

I saw this great cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning, editorial cartoonist, Tony Auth. I think it really captures the essence of what our politically-hypercorrect society has produced.

Read more about Tony Auth on Slate.com.

Yesterday Melissa and I attended what's become an annual event in my social calendar: Pumpkin Carving at Nancy & Karl's house in Acton, MA. This year there were about 25 or so people, more than half of whom were kids. Here's a look at the group's collective carving efforts:

Just wanted to offer congratulations to my friend Marjorie and her husband Ron who welcomed the arrival of their baby girl, Trinity, on Wednesday, October 12, 2005. Mom & "Trinnie" are doing fine.

Today Melissa and I went down to the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade and enjoyed a few hours of the 2005 Boston Blues Festival. There were a couple of acts, but the one that made the biggest impression on me was David "Honeyboy" Edwards, a 90-year old Delta Blues musician. He was just amazing! Here's a photo of him playing:

This weekend I went on a date to the 20th Anniversary Portsmouth Blues Festival at the Red Hook Brewery. The show featured a great cross-section of blues talent: Shemekia Copeland (right) T.J. Wheeler, Bala Tounkara, & The Funky River Band Rockin' Jake Bob Halperin The James Cohen Caravan Flamenco/Jazz Band Nathan & the Zydeco Cha Chas (warning: link plays music) Amos Lee

The festival was organized by the Blues Bank Collective, which is one of the oldest Blues education organizations in the world. T.J. Wheeler, the Executive Director, performed with a group of his young proteges, The Funky River Band. The kids were good musicians on their respective instruments (hand drums, guitar, and flute) but I didn't think much of their harmonies. Bala Tounkara, who played a really cool string instrument from his native Mali, boosted the groups performance. Wheeler held the whole group together with his masterful guitar playing.

I'm not much of a flamenco fan, but have to say that I was blown away by the James Cohen Caravan. I enjoyed Nate Williams and the Zydeco Cha Chas too, but have to admit that after the second song if it weren't for the between-song chatter by the singer, I wouldn't have been able to tell when one ended and the next started.

The product release I've been working on since mid-April has to ship on June 30th come hell or high water. Well the tide is high and the air above the water line is sweltering, so I'm pretty stressed. I've been working hard since my return from Italy at the beginning of May, having only taken two or three complete days off including weekends. It's part of the nature of being a technical writer in high tech--holding onto the tail of the dog (or in this case the cow) as it's pushed out the door as soon as the code is compiled and mostly tested.

In any case, I was happy to use my brother and niece as an excuse to take a few hours off on Saturday to go with them to the Higgins Faire at Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, MA.   Here I am trying on one of the many medieval helmets--I think this one is from a Norman soldier. Luckly you can't see the security cable they've had to run through the helmets so that people don't steal them. This is a recent addition, since Pete and I visited the museum five or six years ago and they didn't have anti-theft devices on anything on display at that time. "Excuse me sir, is that a Norman helmet in your pocket, or are you...?" Even with the cable it was pretty cool to try this one on.

My niece wore her royal garb and was dubbed "Lady Rowan" by the King and Queen of Castle Higgins when we entered. We then went in and found a workshop where we could make a shield with a heraldic seal. Rowan's seal has a label (the square rook pattern at the top to indicate she is first born, then a unicorn and a crown because that's what she wanted and that's what she got.

Since 1929, Harry's Bar has been a popular watering hole and elegant eatery for writers, artists, celebrities, and aristocrats. It's most famous patron was Hemingway. Now while I don't consider myself a great fan of "Papa" and I'm not exactly known for my exotic palette, I'd say I was both interested and excited at the prospect of eating at one Venice's swankier restaurants that had a literary legacy. What I did not realize was just how much I would pay for the experience, fiscally and physically.   The average meal at Harry's consists of an appetizer, a first course, a main course, and a dessert. I chose the Minestrone Soup which was amazing, especially considering it cost 19 euro (which is about $24 US given that 1 euro was about $1.30 US during our trip). I skipped the first course and selected a main course, the Sole Calabresi, which was 57 euro ($74 US). Total, the meal cost me the 85 euro I had in my wallet, and I had to borrow a few dollars from the other members of our group. It was embarrassing, but they were very generous.

Here's a picture of our group of fine diners outside the entrance of Harry's following our meal:

(Left to right: Tom, Barbara, Beth, Dakota, Jill, and me)

So tonight I had dinner celebrating Cinco de Mayo at the Iguana Cantina in Waltham. While it's not unusual that I ate at the Iguana, it was a little different that I had musical entertainment:

Despite the offers to embibe one of the many wonderful Mexican beers, I resisted.

I just returned from a 9-day vacation in Italy. It was a tour with 30 people through Rome, Florence, and Venice. Here's a few photo highlights, I'll have more from each city over the next week or two.

Here I am at St. Peter's Square in Rome following our tour of the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's.

On Saturday I went with my friends LeAnn, Scott, and their kids to celebrate their daughter Gwyneth's 7th birthday. We went for dim sum at China Pearl, a nice restaurant in Boston's China town district. Afterward, we did a little shopping, picked up a few gifts for the birthday girl, and then went for dessert at Faneuil Hall.

Here's Ashlyn, Gwyneth, and me

As most readers of this blog know I've been working pretty hard since joining my current company in May 2004. I'm pleased to say that my efforts have been rewarded and today I was promoted to the position of Documentation Manager.

The promotion goes into effect on April 1, a better April Fool's Day gift I could not ask for. Hopefully the joke will not be on me when I see what increase in compensation I get for this promotion, other than the extra work and less time for marathon foosball matches. It will also help supplement my saving for a house/condo and my upcoming vacation.

Here's a few more photos from my trip to New Mexico in 2001. These are from a side trip to a sculpture park we visited on our way to Santa Fe.

This one is exactly what it looks like: me with a giant armadillo...something you would have expected to see in Texas more than in the Land of Enchantment.

Here's some photos from my 2001 vacation to New Mexico. My friend Greg took me for a tour of a local store called "The Black Hole." The place is run by a former Los Alamos National Laboratories employee-turned peace activist who now sells surplus items from the lab. The stuff inside the store was an odd cross between an Army surplus store and the prop department for Dr. Strangelove. [Note: Movie title corrected on 2/17/05, per Marjorie's comment]

Yes, the photo here shows me holding a decommissioned sea mine and behind me seems to be a pile of assorted missle casings.

I woke up feeling sick this morning, but I slept through most of the afternoon so I could stay up and watch the Super Bowl.

I'm very happy to announce that the New England Patriots made it worth the effort as they have just won their third Super Bowl in the last four years. The final score was 24-21, a lot closer than predicted, but a great outcome nonetheless!

Yea!!!

Now I'm going to bed...

I've survived the dreaded Blizzard of 2005 this weekend. The Boston area had about 29 inches of snow complemented by 50+ mph gusts of wind and near zero temperatures creating -15 degree windchills. Just lovely.

The wind created snow drifts like the one shown in this picture of Pearl in the parking lot behind my apartment building:

I dug her out but didn't go anywhere because while the streets appear to be plowed (thanks to having a City councilman living on my block), nothing is open, plus I think it's illegal to park on the street or any of the City parking lots until the state of emergency is lifted by the Governor.

Most of the local city schools are closed on Monday...don't know if my office will be open, probably. I'll be happy to get out of the house.

Here's a photo my Mom took of me and my friend Debbie just before we left for Jennie & David's wedding reception:

While visiting friends and family in Buffalo over New Year's Day weekend, I took a trip with my folks to visit the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens in South Park.

My Mom wanted to check out the seasonal pointsettia display and see what else was growing in the Conservatory. Here's my folks in front of the giant Christmas tree.

We were very fortunate to discover that our visit to see the pointsettias overlapped with the beginning of the orchid blooming period. Here's a bunch of photos I took of these amazing flowers:

On New Year's Eve I attended my friend Jennie's wedding. Check out these photos from the festivities.

The bride and groom, Jennie and David:

Best wishes to everyone for a safe, Merry Christmas.

Here's a few others from the collection of self-portraits I made this past weekend:

The Engineering group I work with had a Yankee gift swap today to celebrate the holidays. For those not familiar with the concept, it's pretty simple: say there's 15 people in the group and everyone brings a wrapped gift of a set value, say no more than $10. Each person pulls a number from a bowl, then the person with #1 selects a gift and unwraps it. The person with #2 selects a gift, unwraps it, and then can swap with #1. Each person thereafter picks a gift and has the option of swapping with any of the other opened gifts. After #15 selects his or her present, the person with #1 has the option of swapping with anyone else's. Believe it or not, this was the most coveted gift at today's Yankee swap. It was swapped about six times between the 14 people who participated:

The "winner" of this gift decided to share it with the whole group by hanging it from the ceiling outside our Vice President's office. Apologies for the poor quality, I took the photo with my cell phone.

First photo of my friends' John and Sandy's daughter: Kristin. I know I'm biased but I have to say I think she's a cutie.

More later.

My best friend John, and his wife Sandy along with their daughter Marie are happy to welcome the safe and happy arrival of Kristin Louise at 12:19 p.m. today. I'm awaiting photos from the proud father, but as of our last phone call he was busy keeping three year old Marie occupied. :)

Best wishes to the whole family!

p.s. I hope I spelled her name correctly, apologies if I didn't.

Please join me in wishing my parents a Happy Anniversary. Today marks 42 years! Here's hoping there's many more happy and healthy ones to come!

Here's a photo of them with their granddaughter, Rowan, earlier this year during a visit to Boston.

While many people are fighting for the right to vote even once, I had an odd experience that shows you how easy it is for things to go askew in the U.S. electoral system:

I got to the polling place this morning and my name was on the register roles, twice. They misspelled my last name so it showed up in two places. It's five letters and a VERY common Anglo name, so it's beyond me how they managed to screw it up, but my City Clerk's office did. I pointed it out to the clerk at the polling place but he didn't seem to care because there was a queue they wanted to get cleared before the polling volunteers' oxygen tanks ran out or pacemaker batteries died. Of course they didn't ask for any photo ID, so I suppose I could go and vote again tonight. Probably won't though. Once was quite enough for me.

I'm ECSTATIC to report that the Boston Red Sox have just defeated the St. Louis Cardinals to win the World Series!!!

The Curse of the Bambino is dead! Long live the Red Sox!!!

Now I'm going to bed and sleep in tomorrow!

p.s. Bill Buckner: all is forgiven. :)

Recently I've had a problem with anonymous users posting rude, offensive, and generally inappropriate comments to my blog. Therefore I am forced to implement the necessary process of reviewing comments before they get posted to the site.

This is an unfortunate but necessary step to avoid offending the people who I've invited to read this site, as well as the uninvited. :P It will also significantly reduce the likelihood that anyone will want to sue me because of the comments being posted. So here's my "Policy on Alan's Skew Comments":

Please keep your comments relevant to the content posted on this site. This is my site and therefore I reserve the right to refuse to post a comment. If I deem it to be inappropriate, I'll attempt to return it to you with a note telling you so. It'll be up to you to change it or not. If you don't like it, get your own blog.

Here's a list of the top five things that will cause me to not post a comment:

1. Use of expletives except in occasional mild expressions of emphasis - There's a lot of words in the English language, please expand your vocabulary.


2. Threatening language - I don't wish to be sued or have any harm come to me or anyone I know.


3. Deragotory, defamatory, or threatening language about me or issues concerning race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, or sexual orientation - I don't wish to have legal counsel for the Armenian-Pro-Nuke-Transgender-Conservative-Whale-Lovers-for-Jesus Committee of South Bend, Indiana, or any other group suing me.


4. Disclosure of anyone's personal information - This is the "World Wide" Web after all.


5. Advertisements - I already have more than enough offers for help to grow more hair, enlarge parts of my body, remove unwanted hair, improve my stamina, and buy my prescriptions in other countries, while cleaning my oven and showing me graphic images of young people doing unspeakable things with other species. Eeewww!

This is a partial list and is subject to change without notice.

I apologize in advance if I do not have time to get your comment posted immediately. I have a day job and that's what pays the bills, so that takes higher priority than my blog. Sorry.

I'm happy to report that my home phone is back in working order. I confirmed with my landlord on Thursday that my new downstairs neighbor had RCN install a new cable line to her place. On Wednesday, when I lost phone service, the RCN technician drilled a new hole into the side of the house and had to run cable through the basement drilling several more holes. My landlord was not very happy with this very invasive process.

I followed my landlord's suggestion that I call RCN and demand that they fix the problem they apparently caused. The RCN customer service person very nicely replied that while they were sorry for my inconvenience, they could not repair the problem because they were not my phone provider, unless I was willing to switch to RCN that day. (Not a chance!) I told her I was staying with Verizon and that if they were able to fix the line and show RCN's tech had caused the problem, then I would be forwarding my bill to RCN. She politely told me I that I should call their 800 number again if Verizon was able to do that and billed me.

The Verizon tech showed up at 8:30 this morning and said he could tell by the gnarled nest of disconnected cables and loose phone lines hanging out of the cable/phone junction box on the side of the building, coupled with the pile of wire cuttings and pieces of electrical tape on the ground, that my building had been the site of a recent RCN installation.

Mysteriously when I arrived home late last night my home phone had no dial tone. I did the standard troubleshooting of testing each jack with a corded phone, but no luck. I went down to the side of the house to look at the phone junction box but there wasn't any signs of tampering. On the way back up the rear stairs I noticed that there was some construction debris near the trash cans, a new back installed door on my downstairs neighbor's apartment, and the smell of fresh paint in the hallway. All likely from the woman on the 2nd floor getting a new roommate. Perhaps she had a new line installed. Who knows.

Anyhow, Verizon couldn't commit to their standard 4-hour time block for a service call today, probably because my service call was so late last night (9:30 p.m.). I decided to wait for the service tech on Friday morning as I have a major work project deliverable due today.

Therefore, if you need to reach me in the next 24 hours, call me on my cell.

After 9 years of driving a Saturn, I'm pleased to announce that I've bought a new vehicle: a 2004 Toyota RAV4. Her name is "Pearl" (named for the color of the trim that complements the Salsa Red color. Here's a photo from the Toyota web site:

This photo shows one of the things I really liked about the car: removable rear seats (cute blonde not included).

In the prints of the disposable camera I mentioned in my last entry, I found a photo from a trip to Buffalo for my Dad's birthday. While I was there I had the chance to visit with my cousins: Mike and Tina, and Tina's daughter, Katrina.

(Left to right: Dad, Mike, Katrina, Tina, and me)

I recently found a disposable Kodak camera that had been bouncing around my car since January of this year. I shot the last of the remaining exposures at my niece's birthday part and sent it for processing. One of the interesting photos I found was this shot of my bedroom at my friend Liz's, where I stayed earlier this year.

I think the size of this space and the obvious lack of clutter in it provides a little insight into why I've been so reticent to unpack the large volume of boxes I have stored in my spare bedroom. The blue moon and stars curtain was my privy screen as my room that connected to the kitchen was without a door. The striped blanket over the head of the bed acted as a windbreak from the cold, winter winds that routinely blasted my side of the building. It was quite cozy and I'm immensely grateful to Liz for putting up, er, putting me up.

While my folks were in town a few weeks ago for my niece's birthday, we went to the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, MA. My folks are interested in Olmsted's work because as the father of modern urban landscape design, his first professional project was Delaware Park in our hometown: Buffalo, NY.

After Olmsted worked in Buffalo he went to New York and played a key role in designing Central Park. He moved to Boston in 1890 to seek refuge from the stress of dealing with the politics of public works in NYC. Once in Boston Olmsted started his design firm and, among other projects, designed the park system that surrounds Boston known as the Emerald Necklace. The office was open until 1980 when the owners moved to New Hampshire. They turned the building, all its contents, and the grounds over to the U.S. National Park Service for preservation.

Here's some artistic renderings of the photos I took on our trip: This is the entryway to the grounds.

This weekend was my niece Rowan's 3rd birthday. To celebrate my parents came into town and we had a nice little party at my brother's house. Here's a few photos from the party today:

To top off our trip to Santa Barbara office, my boss (Elizabeth), co-workers (James and Deanna), and I went to Hollywood for the evening. James wanted to meet up with his brother who lives there, I wanted to have dinner with my friend Pam who lives there, and Elizabeth and Deanna went sightseeing on their own.

On the way into town we passed the Capital Records building...somehow I doubt this would look the same if it was a stack of compact discs.

I met Pam at her condo and we walked down to Hollywood Boulevard to have dinner and see a few sights. Our first stop was Grauman's Chinese Theater.

One of the attractions of the theater is the hand and footprints of many stars. Here's Clark Gable:

This week I'm in Santa Barbara, CA on business. This is my first trip to California so I brought my camera to snap a few photos.

Here's State Street in downtown Santa Barbara. The city is absolutely beautiful with a unique combination of southwestern Spanish-influenced architecture and the tropical delights of the Pacific ocean breezes blowing in from the south.

I went for a drive this afternoon with a co-worker to scout out houses--he's transferring to this office in the next few months. On the drive we saw a uniquely California thing: a line of 10 or so Lamborghinis and Ferraris racing up Highway 101:

In previous portrait drawing classes, we've drawn on 18"x24" drawing pads. In this week's class we drew the subject on a much larger scale, we did a quick study sketch, divided it into four quadrants, and then drew each quadrant on an 18"x24" sheet. Here's what the my quadrants looked like:

Top left quadrant.		Top right quadrant.
Bottom left quadrant.		Bottom right quadrant.

And the four quadrants, roughly aligned look like this:

Among the photos I took on Saturday's Big Bug Birthday adventure were a series of four of two dragonflies mating. Here's a collage of those images:

On Saturday I went to my friends' daughter's birthday party outing at Garden in the Woods, a nature area run by the New England Wildflower Society in Framingham, MA. We were there to see the Big Bugs exhibit which comprised a series of twelve large bug sculptures displayed along the trail that runs through this park.

Here's the birthday girl, Ashlyn (second from the left), and her friends standing in front of the giant grasshopper.

Here's the Big Bug Butterfly.

This past Saturday afternoon I went down to the Boston Public Garden to join Pete and Rowan for a ride on the famous swan boats. Here's a few photos of our little adventure:

I knew that I'd be working a lot in June so one of the things I did to try and maintain a balance between work and life was to sign up for a portrait drawing class at Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

This week was the third class and the first one where I made a drawing that I felt really looks like the person. In the first two classes we were all drawing the same model, but in Thursday night's class we set up our easels in a zig-zag pattern and drew our classmates. This is my rendering of Louise. Mercifully her hair kept flopping down over her eyes, so I didn't waste any time obsessing about drawing them. You'll have to take my word for it, she's got lovely eyes.

The image has an odd wave pattern in it because of the humidity's effect on the newsprint I used. Next class we're going to start using better quality paper. Newsprint is fine for sketching, but isn't thick enough to be reworked and is a pretty low archival quality.

After 21 straight days of working, I'm happy to report that my project has shipped today. I'm now going to take a few days off to recoup and recharge.

I don't know what I'll do but that's fine with me. Happy holiday weekend to all.

My sofa, chair, and ottoman have arrived: at 7:30 this morning. Here's the first photos:

I got a call earlier this week from the furniture company to schedule delivery of my new sofa, chair, and ottoman. This made me start thinking again about an uneasiness I was feeling about the colors in my living room (red and white walls with a slate blue carpet) were just not going to work with the butter colored furniture. Something had to give and the obvious choices were either repaint the walls or do something about the carpet.

In a word, the carpet lost.

I pulled up the carpet, rolled it up and tossed it in the front hall (shown at left). I took a look at the hardwood floors and a layer of salt and sand, but frankly, it was far less gross than the carpet (the remnant left under the radiator shown below).

It took a bit of work to get the crud off the floor, but after moving the oriental carpet from the studio room into the living room to cover most of the nasty floor marks, the room was finally ready.

I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to having furniture.

In honor of my brother Peter turning 40 today (photo from his party this morning), I'd like to offer this tribute of the lyrics to Weird Al Yankovic's "Happy Birthday." I do this for two reasons: first, I love this song, and second, because Pete introduced me to The Dr. Demento Show when we were kids and it was on one of the very first shows that I heard Weird Al. So here you go, brother:

Happy Birthday by Al Yankovic

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you

Well, it's time to celebrate your birthday, it happens every year
We'll eat a lot of broccoli and drink a lot of beer
You should be good and happy that there's something you can eat
A million npeople every day are starving in the street

Your daddy's in the gutter with the wretched and the poor
Your mama's in the kitchen with a can of Cycle Four
There's garbage in the water
There's poison in the sky
I guess it won't be long before we're all gonna die

I'm still feeling a bit foggy as far as the ear infection goes. I'm not going to risk making any long drives (over 25 minutes) anywhere because I've been getting wicked headaches from the road noise. But I did feel well enough to tackle the task of putting my new PC desk together. It was a bit of a struggle to do alone, but the assembly instructions were well illustrated and I got it put together in about an hour. Here's what the finished product looks like:

Here's a few photos of the freshly painted living room. I'm still not entirely sure I'm happy with the color but I couldn't stand the thought of repainting it this soon. Maybe in another month or two. In the meantime, take a look:

So I went to bed at 10:45 last night thinking that I would sleep in until about 9:00 or 10:00. Alas, no, I was wide awake at 6:40 this morning and after my coughing fit, couldn't get back to sleep. My ear drum is still popped, but it's now making some crunching sounds when I swallow—which is progress, I think. Anyhow, after a shower and breakfast I decided it was too early to do laundry, so I started putting the masking tape up in preparation for painting the living/entertainment room. My digital camera was handy, so I snapped a couple photos in process.

Here's what it looked like after I taped it up.

Here's a shot of the Pepto-Bismol pink colored primer. Since I'm painting the room a deep red, the guy at Home Depot said I needed to prime the walls with a tinted primer so the red would only require two or three coats, instead of six or seven if I were painting directly on white.

I was planning on going to Buffalo but given how foggy I've felt in the mornings and how much I'm still coughing in the evening, right up until bedtime, I'm scrapping my travel plans and staying in Boston. The thought of driving with my head feeling this foggy and a popped right ear drum that severely limits my hearing is too much to handle.

I picked up the exhaust vent for the washer/dryer unit and a couple of cans of paint at Home Depot tonight, and after sleeping in tomorrow, I'll catch up on laundry backlog and take a stab at painting my living/entertainment room.

Other than that, I'll be taking it very easy this weekend. If I have the ambition, I'll post some photos of the painting project.

My new PC desk was finally delivered today. I was prepared to work from home all day, but the Staples delivery crew showed up at 10:45 this morning and carried the monsterous box with my new desk up the stairs like it was an air mattress. It was in the back bedroom awaiting assembly by 11:00 and I was able to go to work.

This evening my buddy Wade showed up with a stacked washer/dryer unit in the back of his SUV. This was a generous gift from my friend Amy, who had lent it to Wade and his wife when they moved into their new house a few years ago. Wade has since bought standard washer and dryer units, so he had offered this one to me.

It took us about an hour and with all the grunting and banging around of the unit's metal sides as we pushed and pulled it up the stairs, my new neighbors might have been thinking that the sounds eminating from the hallway were either the sounds of someone passing kidney stones during a thunderstorm, or two guys moving a washer/dryer unit up a narrow stairwell. Regardless of what they thought was the source of the sounds, they probably did what most reasonable people would do in this situation: lock the doors and double-check the ammunition supply.

At 9:15 this morning I got a call from Staples customer service rep saying that they could deliver my desk between 12 and 3, which is when I told them I'd be home waiting for the furniture pre-measure. Since my right ear drum had popped last night and throbbed with a 101 degree fever late last night, I made calling my doctor's office for an emergency appointment a priority. I got one for 11:30, kind of close to my pre-measure and the desk delivery, but it was either that or make a trip to the ER after the deliveries. I didn't think my ear drum could wait and I didn't want another night of throbbing ear pain and a fever.

Finally: a couple of photos I took with my digital camera as I toured my new apartment the day I took possession of the keys.

Here's the front room, which I'll be using for a painting/creative studio. I'll likely move the ragged oriental rug into the back bedroom:
Here's the dining room which I'll be using as a living/entertainment room. This is where the new couch and chair will go after I paint the room.

Over the weekend I ordered a new computer cart from Staples, and a sofa/arm chair combo from a local furniture store. The computer cart, shown below, was, according to the sales clerk, scheduled for delivery today between 5 and 8 p.m.

The delivery truck never showed. I called at 6:45 and found out that the sales clerk was wrong—delivery is between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Regardless, they did not show up or leave a note saying that they did while I wasn't home. Frustrating, but oh well. The support rep I spoke to said they will call me tomorrow to reschedule the delivery time. Hopefully they will be able to provide a two- or three-hour window in which to expect them so I don't have to miss the entire day of work.

I'm happy to report that I'm moved into the new apartment and now have a home phone number, cable service, and DSL. Yeah! I'll post some photos of the new place in a few days.

My cell bill was way out of control last month because of the move and new job activities. Please call me on my new home number if you want to reach me.

More tomorrow.

I did manage to rewire the wireless cable-to-TV/sound system last night and it works fine now. I had the sound going through the VCR before going to the stereo and that caused a noticeable volume drop. I also solved the telephone interference problem by replacing the phone. Different frequencies for each device and they're all happy. Hopefully it isn't screwing up any of my neighbors' phones.

The cable guy came this morning and I made his life very easy. I decided to try a technology option to avoid running the cable around the perimeter of my bedroom and punching multiple holes in the horse-hair plaster walls. I picked up a 2.4 GHz video relay device from Radio Shack and hooked it up last night. The results were not great.

The video signal quality to the TV is fine, the remote control relay works flawlessly, but the sound quality is noticeably poorer than having a direct connection to the cable box. Tomorrow night I'll try a few different combinations of connections, but I'm not too optimistic.

I stayed home from work on Friday morning waiting for the phone installation tech to show up only to find out that they were turning it on remotely. Well, that didn't work. I plugged in my phone and an old Caller ID box I had to discover no dial tone and a message on the box saying "Hang up phone and check all cords." Annoying, yes, but at least I still had my cell phone.

My home telephone service will be turned on this Friday and, after several e-mails back-and-forth with the cable provider, I should have a service person showing up next Tuesday to connect me to the vast wasteland known as "cable TV in the summer." I think the most interesting challenge will be getting cable run from the bedrooms to the living and dining rooms which, for unknown reasons, have no cable outlets despite the service coming into the house on their side of the building.

Anyone have suggestions on to how to run coaxial cable from an outside wall through a room that has the horrific combination of having multiple doors on the perimeter and no carpets? I'm thinking one of those speed-bump style wire channels is in order...but then how to get it from the bedroom to the dining room without running the cable out the door and around the corner? Hmmph.

Almost forgot, I went to see the doctor this afternoon. She says it looks like muscle spasms, not anything long-term like slipped discs or worse. Just to be safe she sent me to the hospital for X-rays, but she won't have the results until tomorrow, so if anything shows up on them, she said she'll call me. She prescribed a strong muscle relaxant and said to postpone the unpacking until I'm feeling better. Considering that with this pain the most comfortable position for me is sitting, I'm not planning on doing anything ridiculously physical in the next few days. Hot bath, heating pad, and going to bed early all sound good to me...also sounds like I'm getting old. Damn, I didn't think that would happen so soon!

I ordered my new home phone service yesterday from Verizon, but because I'm going to training class next Monday through Thursday, I won't be able to take a half-day off of work to be home for the phone installers until next Friday, May 14th. Bummer. Subsequently, my DSL connection won't go live until the following week. It may be Memorial Day before I get back on the Internet from home!!! Oh well. :P

In the meantime, I'll be checking e-mail intermittently from work, but please, don't expect speedy responses. Call me on my cell phone if you would like to reach me in a timely manner.

Through a series of miraculous works by a great group of friends, I am now officially moved into my new apartment. Last Thursday my friend Amy and her wonderful children, Nick, Natalie, and their begrudging sister, Rachel, helped me empty my stored stuff from their basement into a rental truck. Nick really did an outstanding job and I can't sing his praises loud enough. For a 15-year old to do that much work without so much as a whisper of complaint was wonderful.

Friday morning I drove the truck down to Waltham and was met by my brother, Pete (with 2.5-year old Rowan in tow), and my friends: Wade, Nancy, Amy (and kids), and eventually, Liz. The old saying, "Many hands make light work" held true in this case. Where Thursday's truck loading took us about 6.5 hours, Friday's unload, up three flights of stairs, was completed in less than 3.5 hours. Peter and Wade were the strongest backs in the group, complemented by Nick's slightly diminished zeal to finish up so he could go home and play Star Gate for a few precious, uninterrupted hours.

I'm going offline for a few days while I move. You can reach me on my cell if you need me. I'll check e-mail at Pete's or Amy's over the weekend.

With the new job starting on Monday I'm going to need a place to live, a bit closer than Quincy. That said, I started looking last night and this morning I've found and just signed a rental agreement for a nice, spacious apartment in Waltham. It's a few miles from where I lived previously, but on a quieter street than the major thoroughfare that was South Street. It's a tenancy-at-will which I'm happy about because I'm restarting my savings to buy my own home. I expect to be at this apartment for only the next 12-18 months.

I'll post some digital photos in the next few days, after I get my stuff moved in over the next few days. I'll send an e-mail with the new mailing address after I filed the change-of-address with the USPS this weekend.

I'm happy to announce that I've accepted an offer for a full-time senior technical writer position with Authoria in Waltham. They have a great team of people, I have a dynamic boss who I look forward to working with, and a really interesting product using cutting edge technology. I'm very excited to get back into the workforce! I start on Monday, May 3rd!

After using AltaVista's Babel Fish site to translate that e-mail from the Chilean government, I began wondering how well the software would do on a round-trip translation: English-to-Spanish and back to English. To make this a quick test I randomly picked a Dear Abby letter I found on Yahoo:

The next day I asked her if we could go places where we could both have a good time. She said: "Look. I wanted to go in, OK? My friends were there, and I wanted to have a good time."

Well, so did I, Abby! She could have gone to the club another time with her girlfriends. We were supposed to be together that night. I think it was insulting and callous for her to treat me like that. I'm so hurt I'm ready to break the engagement.

Do you think I am being overly sensitive? Rhonda does. -- HURT AND ASHAMED IN N.Y.C.

In my experience few letters from U.S. government agencies to the public are well written. I've often wondered if citizens of other countries have the same problem receiving official communiques from their governments. This morning an answer came from an unexpected source.

I received an e-mail message from Domingo Namuncura Serrano, the Management Advisor to the President of Chile. Although my ability to read Spanish is far better than my ability to speak it, I was not able to completely understand his message. I thought I had the gist of it, but wanted to be certain, so I turned to my favorite free, online tranlsation web site, AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation for help.

Now before I tell you what the message said, I bet you're wondering why I got an e-mail from the Chilean Government? Good question!

Happy Easter! In honor of the holiday I've "resurrected" an image from my artist's archives. I made this using Fractal Painter in 1995 for an Easter card I sent to family and a few friends:

Trying to keep from getting too bummed out by the four days of rainy weather and the pace of the job hunt, I turned this afternoon to making a collage from some photos I took at breakfast while out with my friend Amy and her kids a few months ago. This is her daughter, Natalie, who was seven and a half at the time:

Click on the image for a larger version.

Last Friday, while doing laps in the job market's icy waters waiting for the glacial-like financial services company to tell me what's going on with the contract I applied for, I received an e-mail from my friend who works there about a job lead with a different division. He forwarded my resume to the hiring manager and sure enough, on Monday I got a call, scheduled an interview, and went in late this morning.

Getting ready for my interview, I checked my e-mail and found an e-mail from the hiring manager for the first contract in my in-box:

"We've had an indefinite delay in our hiring. As you can imagine, budgets are tight these days. If you have another opportunity on the horizon my advice to you is to pursue it. I don't know when I'll be able to reopen my search for someone."

He offered to recommend me for any other positions that I cared to apply to within the company, which I thought was incredibly kind of him. I'll send him an e-mail on Wednesday thanking him for the update and his recommendation offer.

Now, about today's interview...

Here's a series of photos I took back in February on a brief weekend trip to Pittsburgh, PA to visit my friends, John and Sandy, and their 2-year old daughter, Marie. I hung out with Sandy and Marie while John was at work on Saturday. We decided to get outside and play in the snow.

Sandy shows Marie how to make a snow angel in the backyard.

Marie gives it a try but doesn't seem so sure about this.

Yesterday I went to a birthday party for my Goddaughter, Gwyneth. It was a lot of fun: the kids made some origami animals, there was a Barbie-ice cream cake, and presents. Here's a few photos of the festivities:

The birthday girl!	The birthday cake.

I had my second interview at the financial services company in Marlborough, MA tonight and I think it went pretty well. I met with the hiring manager again and we covered almost the exact material we discussed previously. I also met with an editor who works at that office and she seemed pretty nice. She's been a contractor at this company since 1999 and has worked in this group since last April.

I didn't have as good a feeling about it as after my first interview but that's probably due to the realization that if I get this job that once again, I'll have a job.

*Groan*

Even so, I still want it. I should hear from them by the end of next week.

Today I received an e-mail from the hiring manager at the financial services company I had met with last week. He invited me in for a second-round interview to meet his boss and a member of his team. The interview is on Tuesday, March 16th.

This sounds promising, wish me luck.

I had an interview for a six-month contract on Friday, March 5th, with a large financial services company. Their headquarters are in Boston, but this position is at a facility in Marlborough, about 35 miles west of Boston. I think the interview went well. The three phase project sounds pretty interesting: first, leading a team to decide the what and where of using identical data field labels across a range of product web sites which all serve slightly different groups of customers. Next, mine the sites for terminology, compile a glossary, and then help the content teams update their sites; and finally, set and implement standards for language in instructional and procedural text on all of the sites.

Okay, I'll admit it, this probably only sounds "interesting" to me.

Received an e-mail from the National Science Foundation (NSF) today regarding the writer position I had applied for back in December. It was a standard GFY form letter.

Here's my status:

Still nothing from the University of Wyoming or any of the three dozen ESL/TEFL teaching jobs I applied to overseas. That said I've changed my focus to pursuing full-time and contract tech writing gigs again. I've got several leads and have reactivated my network of professional contacts, so I hope it won't be too long before I'm gainfully employed.

As for teaching ESL, well I expect that once I get into a job, find a place to call my own, and then I'll begin volunteering to teach ESL at any one of the local adult education centers. If I don't get too comfortable with the money that comes from writing I'll go abroad after I have a year's experience or, more likely, I'll find a good central/south American volunteer teaching program and put a month in there every summer while using the writing jobs fund my adventures.

Tonight I bought a new wireless phone. It's a flip phone with quite a few new bells and whistles, including a color LCD display and some primitive digital camera features. Yes, I signed a multi-year contract with one of the evil telecom empires. I believe that the terms mention something about providing wireless service and this fancy phone for a minor organ and a percentage of my future income, including any patent and book royalties.

With the new phone also comes a new number as I'm still arguing with my old wireless phone's provider about a number of issues. I can no longer make or receive call from the old phone and have not found out how to retrieve my voicemail messages.

God I love technology! I love the fact that I have a phone that I can use almost anywhere in the U.S. In the same breath, I hate this technology because it has given American business a new channel to maximize profits at the cost of screwing consumers for wanting the new technology. Specifically, I resent the fact that I am held hostage by what seems to be an interminable service contract with my wireless phone provider. I'm pretty pissed off right now and may not be thinking very clearly, but I can't think of another business (other than a few monopolies) where a service provider can require customers to extend a service contract when the equipment used to receive the service breaks. Can you?

I say "hostage" because when my wireless phone took its final gasp this week I called my provider and discovered that because my phone was out of its warranty period and because I hadn't subscribed to their extortion-priced replacement program, I not only have to buy my replacement phone from them, but doing so is classified as an "equipment upgrade," and therefore requires me to extend my contract by one year. Shame on me for not reading the fine print of my contract, but honestly, I am left wondering why mysteriously my local and long-distance providers did not place the same requirements on me when my the cordless phone I used for 10 years in my apartment died? Why should it be any different for the wireless providers? In most cases these are the same high-tech companies who provide the wire-based telephone, Internet, and cable service. What is the difference?!?!

I recently took a road trip to visit friends and family in Pittsburgh and Buffalo. During this trip, much to the dismay of just about everyone who doesn't have one, I filled a few hours of the long car drive by using my wireless phone to catch up on some long overdue phone calls. Don't fret, I regularly use a hands-free headset so I can keep both hands where they belong: one on the radio controls and the other on my beer can. ;)

Anyhow, the inter-state drive from southeastern New Hampshire to southwestern Pennsylvania presented many challenges to my wireless phone's reception. On one such occasion, I was using the phone with it plugged into the car charger. In moving the phone to the farthest reaches of arm's reach in the car's interior to improve reception, I strained the charger cord which in turn yanked the phone from my hand causing it to shoot across the width of the interior, and slam into the bottom of the passenger's door. Go ahead and laugh, I know I had it coming. Thankfully, at that precise moment, I was on one of the many God-foresaken stretches of the Pennsylvania turnpike with no one in front or behind me for miles. I came out of the incident unscathed, though as I would later discover, my phone was not so lucky.

Last night I went over to have dinner with my friends LeAnn & Scott and their children. Here's a few photos I took while visiting:

Clockwise from the top: Gwyneth, Ashlyn, and Liam

Here's a few photos I took on Friday Jan 30th of my niece, Rowan. She's very active compared to just a few months ago. The first few in this group were taken while she was still in her high chair immediately following dinner.

I think this January 28th cartoon by Cam Cardow of The Ottawa Citizen captures my feeling about the current cold weather trend that's been gripping New England:

I found Cam's work in the BRRRRRRRRR! It's COLD Outside! collection on Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonist Index.

The market in Costa Rica seems to be warming up. Today I found a new job posting and applied immediately. The job is with C.P.I. English School in San Joaqu?n de Flores, a suburb of Heredia.

The little bit of research I was able to do on various web sites revealed that this school primarily recruits volunteers for English teaching positions, but I'm hoping that they are looking to hire someone to provide professional guidance to the deep-pocketed travelling do-gooders who spend their vacations teaching English. :)

There's a bill before the House and Senate called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act (Senate bill S.1684 and House bill H.R.1886.IH) which will require insurance companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy. It's about eliminating the "drive-through mastectomy" where women are forced to go home hours after surgery against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and some times with drainage tubes still attached.

Lifetime Television has put this bill on their web page with a petition drive to show your support. Last year over half the House signed on.

PLEASE! Sign the petition by clicking on the web site below and help women living with breast cancer get the care they need and deserve! You only need to give your name and zip code—no address, no phone numbers, no money. You just need to scroll down the page to sign.

If you wish to take an additional action, please contact your U.S. Senators and tell them you want them to support this bill. This is particularly important if you live in a state whose Senator is on the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (see the list of members) where the bill is now under review. Likewise, please contact your House Reps to move the bill out of the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations (see the list of members) and to the House floor for a vote.

Today I was exploring more job opportunities, branching out away from the three or four popular ESL job web sites and I discovered what looks like a great school called Intercultura in Heredia, Costa Rica. On the first page describing their ESL program was a quote that really struck a chord with me:

"Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs. I again realized that we were not different people speaking separate languages; we were one people, with different tongues."
    - Nelson Mandela

This was followed by an explanation:
The words of Nelson Mandela reflect the ideals of the English Department at Intercultura. The English department was developed in order to give back to the community, and to aid in closing the communication gap between cultures on a local and international scale.

Intercultura sounds like the kind of place where I want to work, so I sent an e-mail with my C.V. and photo--as requested--to the hiring director tonight. Wish me luck!

Today, with the passing of Captain Kangaroo, yet another of my childhood icons has left this world. I hope he finds peace and is blessed with knowing how much of a positive role model he created for kids like me. Both as Captain Kangaroo and Clarabell the Clown on the Howdy Doody Show, Bob Keeshan set an example and standard of quality that modern children's television has lost sight of. I hope that someone within the children's television industry will take pause on this occasion and reflect on the lessons that pioneers of kids' television programming such as Keeshan and Fred Rogers, who passed away last year, offered us. I know I learned a lot from watching them and I am certain that today's generation of kids could too.

With this in mind, I'd like to make a bold proprosal to my friends at CBS: Show the public how much you think of American children by running a marathon of Captain Kangaroo episodes this weekend. You don't have to compete with the Super Bowl hype, so take a moment to remind Americans that it is possible to entertain and educate children without the vulgarities and raw stupidity that is so abundant in American television. Just a thought.

Finally I'd like to say to this to the Captain: I will miss you and I'd appreciate it if you'd say 'hi' to Mr. Rogers for me when you see him. Thanks.

When it comes to visiting people with kids there always seems to be a window of opportunity when everyone is healthy that is somehow narrower than what the average astronaut has for re-entering the earth's atmosphere to land a space shuttle.

Last Tuesday night the window of opportunity for a healthy visit was briefly open as I was finally feeling better and my friend LeAnn reported that for at least the next day or two, it looked like her family of five were going to be sniffle-, cold-, and fever-free. Not wanting to waste a chance, I decided to quickly venture to Framingham for an evening of their fine company.

While trolling the Internet for job leads today, I came across this great quote on the U.S. Peace Corps' web site:

"There are three things which are real, God, Human Folly and Laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third."

- John F. Kennedy

Yesterday I was able to get an appointment with my doctor. She confirmed that I indeed have a sinus infection as I thought. She's prescribed two generics for me: Guaifenex PSE and Amoxycilin. Guaifenex is the generic for the brand name Guaifenesin, which you may have heard of. According to my pharmacist there was a brand-name version of Guaifenex that contained phenylpropanolamine which had the unfortunate side effect of causing an increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke in women and less so in men. Needless to say, I am not on that version because the FDA has banned it. The version I am taking is merely an expectorant with some pseudophedrine to stop the postnasal drip. The other drug is an antibiotic that we hope will kill the sinus infection.

So while I'm recovering, please keep the tissues handy and your fingers crossed for me, preferably in that order.

I've been sick more or less since I returned from Buffalo on December 28th. I had a sniffle when I was driving back and it has gotten progressively worse. I made plans to go out with Liz to hit a pair of New Year's Eve get-togethers her friends were having but I ended up staying at home because I wasn't feeling good--stomach ache on top of the sniffles. By mid-New Year's Day my stomach had calmed and my body turned its attention to the full-fledged head cold that settled in my head, like a New Year's hangover fog that won't lift.

Here's a small collection of photos from my trip to Buffalo over the Christmas holidays.

Here's a cute close-up of my friend Debbie's daughter, Allison (age 23 months):

I've just spent the last six hours working on getting my friend Rob's blog, "The Daly Planet" converted from a blogging tool called, imaginatively enough "Blogger," to the one I use for this blog, "Movable Type."

God I am tired.

I'd like to wish everyone a happy new year! Best wishes for a prosperous and healthy 2004!

My friend Liz has been kind enough to host me at her apartment in Dover, NH for the last few weeks, so this week I finished a little thank you present by way of making a pair of Christmas presents for her to give her new boyfriend, Andy. He's a huge Boston Bruins fan, so I made a pair of faux Bruins memoribilia items (click on them for a closer look):

Here's my official 2003 holiday card. It's a photo taken by my friend James while he, Megs, and I were visiting Parc Guell in Barcelona in early November. I think it's a great photo because it had to be one of my happiest days in all of 2003. Here's hoping that the coming year holds more of these types for all of us.

Since I don't have the resources to print and mail this card, I've given you the option of printing it for yourself. If you would like to print it, simply click once on the image and a separate browser window will appear with a higher-resolution version. Right-click on the image and select "Save Picture As..." to copy it to your PC's hard drive. Note: This higher-res image is about 575K in size, so it might take a few minutes to download, depending on the type of Internet connection you have.

Happy Holidays to all!

I'm writing and back-dating this entry a few days, now that I've figured out what day it is. I went to see a performance of "The Nutcracker" last Sunday with my friend LeAnn and her family. It was a great performance and though I didn't give it any thought at the time, I shared a bottle of water with a couple of the kids in our party. Late the next day I was struck ill with a bad bout of the stomach flu. It was horrible--I'll spare you the details, you don't want to know.

Almost every year for the past 10 or so I have made my own holiday card. This year, despite some financial limitations, will hopefully be no exception. Here's the first of several holiday card ideas I'm working on. This is from the Nativity Facade on the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain:

Facing the aforementioned fiscal realities of going abroad in January 2004, I have applied for Writer-Editor positions at the National Science Foundation and NASA, both in the Washington, DC area. I liked the sound of these jobs because they involve writing things other than user and programmer documentation, which is what I've been doing for the last few years. I'm optimistic that the work environments will be better than what I've experienced in my last two jobs.

Upon my return last month I was hoping to find a teaching job overseas that started with the new language school term in January, however I have quickly come to realize that making only $500 a month while teaching in Eastern Europe or South America is not enough to live on while I still have a $275 monthly student loan payment to make--damn that Master's degree!

Just thought I'd share a photo of me and my lovely niece, Rowan. This was taken on November 31st while we were celebrating Thanksgiving at her parents' house in Quincy. She is now 27 months old.

My friend John sent this to me this weekend. After reading it I couldn't help but think of all the times while traveling abroad over the last few weeks that people asked about my hometown and what made it unique from other American cities. Somehow, until reading this, I never considered driving as one of those factors. Check out this list, think of how it compares to your hometown, and ask yourself, "If I were visiting from a foreign country and someone gave me this list, would I want to drive here?" Here's the list, read it and tell me what you think:

At a four way stop sign, wave to offer the right-of-way to other cars. If you are waved at, wave back so they can take the right-of-way instead. When they go, you go at the same time.

Left-hand turns at traffic signals are to be made as soon as the signal turns from yellow to red. Up to three cars may turn on a "Buffalo left."

Having nearly adjusted to the time change and acclimated to the temperature change, getting a bit frustrated by the lack of response from the schools I sent my C.V. to, I completed my first week in the U.S. by visiting several friends, including Amy, Liz, my former deNovis doc team, LeAnn & Scott, Nancy & Karl. It was hectic, but fun. On Saturday night I got a good night's sleep and then headed off to Buffalo for Thanksgiving with my parents on Sunday.

Now that I'm back in the U.S. and have caught up on some of my lost sleep, I've spent some time preparing a few of my photos from London! Take a look:

Here's Big Ben and Parliament:

I never did get my Spanish mobile (cell phone) to work. If you want to reach me, then call me on my old U.S. cell phone number if you have it. If you don't, drop me an e-mail and I'll send it to you or call.

Still nothing from those darn language schools I applied to last week.

On my last day in London I went to Buckingham Palace but changed my mind when the rain started coming down and I saw all of the protesters yelling about Bush arriving on Tuesday. Instead I turned around and headed up the road to Westminster Abbey to kill a few hours in a warmer, drier, and certainly quieter environment.

On Thursday, after two nights at The Regent Palace, a real flea bag hotel--one bathroom per 20 rooms, gross mattresses that must have been bought at a fire sale from a former French brothel, and a housecleaning staff whose idea of making up a room is rotating the sheets 90 degrees to hide the scuff marks from my shoes--I was glad to have the chance to visit my friend George in Eastbourne.

On Day 3 in London (my second full day), I spent most of the daylight hours in the British Museum. in which I could spend a month alone exploring. It?s really quite amazing. Here you can see more Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and Near and Far Eastern artifacts than most people can imagine.

Last night I spent some time in the Internet cafe in the basement of the Burger King in Picadilly Circus and did some job searching. I had time enough to do some adequate research on a few companies and the cities where they are based. The short of it is that I have submitted an application to a company in Poland who currently has positions open in Krakow and Warsaw. I'll keep you posted as to what happens. I still haven't heard back from the Universidad del Mar in Oxaca, Mexico to whom I submitted an application last week.

Today I went to the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. I also walked over to see Big Ben and Parliament, then on to, but didn't go up on the London Eye--the monster ferris wheel that overlooks the city across the Thames. This is a very pretty city, a bit cold, but it is November and I ain't in Spain anymore.

Early this morning I discovered that I have run out of credit on my mobile (cell phone). A conversation with the friendly, neighborhood Vodafone sales rep revealed that any calls I receive while traveling outside of Spain result in my being charged the international roaming rate of 60 cents (Euro) per minute. This is the same cost as if I were making the call myself. I was very disappointed to hear this and the nauseating d?j? vu about this info didn't help either as I vaguely seem to recall that while purchasing the phone the sales woman told me of this little money-sucking caveat.

So today I am leaving Barcelona. I have spent just over five weeks here, enjoyed most of it, but now it is time to relax a bit more and find a cheaper place to live while I look for work. The place to relax is England and the cheaper place to live, in my humble opinion, is the U.S. Therefore I am returning to the Boston area on November 17th.

Just a quick note about the recent lack of photos on my blog. I've run into a few technical snags, mostly a lack of availability of a PC on which to edit the photos I have taken down to a size that will load quickly on the web. My good friend James was kind enough to let me use his laptop PC last week, but after I got the photos to school I found that I had managed to copy the photos onto a now corrupted floppy disk. Not to worry, I still have the originals on CD, but they are over 1 megabyte in size each and therefore will take far too long for me to upload or for you to download.

Now that class is over, several people have asked what I am doing now. Most of my days consist of the grind of getting up, a shower, dressed, quick breakfast, getting out the door, and then going to either the school or the local internet cafe to work on the job search.

What do you know about Barcelona and the strange attraction it holds for anarchists, militants, and general political miscreants? Well, I haven't read much, but I do have a sense that with Franco long gone, the upheaval of the past will remain there and this is now a warm and welcoming city to both the citizens of Spain and foreigners alike. I offer this photo as evidence of their hospitality. My friend James took it today while he, Megs, and I were out for a bit of sightseeing near Parc Guell.

Did you notice that there are two police motorcycles in the photo as well? Curious.

Alright you bunch of smarty pant conspiracy nuts, if you think that I'm hiding in New Hampshire (which wouldn't be a bad thing), then how do you explain the following photos of me at Park Guell in Barcelona? No, I really don't want to hear your theories, just be quiet and take a look at some of the pretty pictures I took this weekend while visiting the park designed by Antoni Gaudi...it's a beautiful place. Some of them are a bit dark or the color is off, sorry I don't have access to Photoshop to clean them up. ;)

I got a "PASS" grade on my course. I'm not thrilled, a "PASS B" would have been better, but realistically I didn't do enough of my paperwork for lesson planning to warrant one, so I'm okay with it. I'm hoping that my professional experience will boost my job prospects.

Good news--I just heard from my brother that the prick of a property manager from my previous apartment has finally sent a check returning my security deposit, including interest!

...and there was much rejoicing in the kingdom. :)

After my adventure with the Spanish medical system this past weekend--helping a friend who got ill (and is now better)--I'm happy to report that I've safely begun my fourth and final week of the course. I've survived the transition from the Intermediate students to the Beginners class, and have successfully taught two 1-hour lessons. Yesterday I was working on question forms and got into a bit of a tough spot clarifying the difference between "how much" and "how many"...can you explain that one?

So Monday of this week was my last teaching practice session with the intermediate students. For my final lesson with them, I had them write some movie plots with vocabulary of ocean travel in the narrative tenses (simple past, past perfect, past progressive, and past perfect progressive). Here's a sample of one of the stories two of the students wrote...exactly as I received it.

I have finally found a computer with both a working floppy drive and an Internet connection!!! What this means is that you can finally see the photos from my only sightseeing trip in Barcelona so far...to the Sagrada Familia. This is proof positive for anyone who thinks I'm really just hiding in the hills of New Hampshire to get away from my ex-girlfriend, Maria. ;)

Here's an artist's rendering of what the final building will look like, or at least one end of it:

A bit of bad news tonight...the property manager for my old apartment says he's going to deduct $325 from my last month's rent deposit to pay for the removal of my rotting, old, gargantuan couch from my former apartment and all the trash that I left next to the house. Have I told you how much I really hate realtors.

Sorry about the depressed tone of that entry on Friday night. As you could tell I was very sleep starved. Today, after 11 hours of solid sleep, plus a hot shower, I am feeling much better. My flatmate, James, and I found a laundromat with dryers (which are VERY uncommon in Spain due to energy costs). I also realized that with the end of yesterday's classes that I have 10 class days remaining and then *SPLASH* into the job market.

Just a quick word about the two tutors for my class. J?em is the lead tutor on the course and Roger is the "assistant" tutor. It's silly that Cambridge University insist on these labels because both men have 20+ years of EFL teaching and school admin experience. They are both very nice, incredibly smart men who are good teachers with great senses of humor.

I've now finished my second week. My first lesson this week went better than the other two, but the one I taught on Wednesday was pretty weak because the subject--greetings and small talk on a job interview--was neither interesting or particularly challenging to the students. Luckily for me, I managed to spark their interest in the last 15 minutes with a discussion of what "genuine" means and whether they thought the characters in the tape we listened to were being genuine. I think that's the only reason they didn't lynch me or fall asleep.

I taught two classes in my first week. In the first class my tutor said I was good but a bit serious. The students responded well to the topic--favorite books. I was pleasantly surprised by the students' choice of books: cheesy romance novels, to "Angela's Ashes," to much more serious books about the political struggles in Chile and finally, one about an American doctor's travels among the Australian aboriginies--sorry, the titles of the last two escape me. In case you wondered, my favorite book is "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Teaching was fun once I got into the rhythm of being in front of strangers and leading the group. I only had to teach for 20 minutes which at some points flew and other points dragged, just like most things.

Thanks to guilt inflicted by my host, Jordi, on the clerk from Air France, both pieces of my luggage showed up at the flat at 11:30 a.m. yesterday, just 30 minutes before I had to leave for my course orientation session.

My flatmate James and I went to the orientation session and met our other classmates for the course. There's 36 people taking the course and we were split up into three groups of 12 and then we'll be subdivided again into teaching practice teams of six. The people in my group--five Americans and seven Brits--all seem very nice and I'm looking forward to working with them.

Wednesday morning I awoke at 8:00 a.m. at my friends' Nancy and Karl's house . They put me up for the night so I wouldn't have to spend my last night in the U.S. on the floor of my apartment and so that I could make it to my final dental appointment on time. After the dental appointment--my teeth are in good shape--I finished, or should say reached a time-driven compromise regarding the fate of the remaining contents of my apartment. My divinely wonderful friend Amy made yet another trip from New Hampshire to Waltham and helped me shovel the last of my belongings into either the suitcase or the stack of bags, buckets, and boxes that either went to her house, my brother's place, or with me in a suitcase. She was even generous enough to efficiently pack my suitcase while I ran away for an hour to have a massage to loosen the knots from my back so I could have a reasonably comfortable 6 hour plane ride.

My car is a 1997 Saturn SL2 with 115,000 miles on it and I'm ready to part with it to help fund my adventure abroad. An earlier sale to a friend of a friend fell through, so I've entrusted its sale to my friend, Stephanie and her husband, Jim.

Here's another set of photos found in my attic this past week. These are also from my 1988 college photography class. This project used multiple images--being one set of photos I took of my friend Kelly overlayed on a set of photos I took of myself. This series is a dream sequence...though I don't remember now who was dreaming of whom. I'm pretty sure it was me haunted by her.

Here's two photos I found while digging through my attic this week. These photos are from my college photography class in 1988. This project's subject had to be people. As I recall I had read about and seen several photos by Cindy Sherman, a famous photographer who dresses herself in different costumes to create dramatic images and thought-provoking scenes. I wasn't prepared to do anything quite so serious, so I used it as an opportunity to experiment with some different costumes to show some aspects of my personality.

The first image is me in a Boy Scout uniform. I was in Scouts for over 11 years, so this is an authentic uniform.

I found this photo while cleaning out a box in my attic the other morning.

When I saw it I thought I recognized some similarities between this photo of me from 1990 and the cover of Jack Johnson's 2000 CD, Brushfire Fairy Tales. The photo of me was taken by my friend Debra while we were visiting Letchworth State Park. Mr. Johnson's photographer has nothing to worry about, I don't think Debra will want to sue him for using her photo composition.

I recently found a stack of Dilbert cartoons while preparing to move. This one came out of the box of crap that came out of my former office the day I left. I went out on disability earlier this year and only wish that my experience was as amusing, painless, and brief as Wally's:

Here's another great photo I found while packing the apartment. This one is of my family in April, 1969 around my first birthday. Going from left to right: my brother Peter (age 5), me, my Mom, and my Dad with the cool glasses.

The sad thing about this is that I have about the same hairline now that I had at age 1...though I probably had more on the back of my head then than I do now.

Here's three photos I found today while cleaning out my attic. Here's me at six months old:

In the process of packing for the move, I found this photo of me from my college graduation party in May 1990. I was feeling very silly.

I've spent the last several days purging and packing the contents of my apartment. I'm exhausted. Today's fourth straight day of packing and moving boxes into storage has inspired me to write a haiku:

Moving really sucks.
Moving really really sucks.
Did I say it sucks?

Here's a photo I found today while packing my apartment. This was a portrait taken by my Dad of my brother Peter and I in 1972. Pete's the one wearing the Cub Scout uniform, I'm wearing the clip-on tie with the smiley face button.

The photo below, showing me and my Grandma B on her 80th birthday, was taken on July 25, 1990. It was about a month before I left Buffalo to start graduate school in Pittsburgh. I was, as I am now, at a major crossroads on my life's journey.

She passed away on August 13, 2001, at the age of 91. Though I miss her, I take strength in knowing that she is always with me in spirit.

I recently applied to a school in Barcelona, Spain to take a course so I can learn how to teach English as a foreign language. At 5:00 a.m. today (which is 11:00 a.m. in Barcelona) I had a phone interview with an instructor from International House Barcelona.

"My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane."
—Graham Greene