Today Susanna and I took a day for ourselves. My Christmas present from her was a gift certificate at the Spa at Norwich Inn – not too far down the road from us. We headed out the door shortly after the boys left for school.
Our first appointment was a yoga class (and not I am not very flexible at all… I would probably benefit from some more yoga) followed by swimming and enjoying the hot tub/sauna/steam rooms. After a wonderful lunch at the restaurant upstairs, we had an afternoon massage session, followed by more time in the hot tub/sauna/steam room.
We finished up around 5pm, with plenty of time in the day to enjoy the cold Connecticut weather.
What a perfect way to start the week! It also means a short 4 day work week.
Susanna is snuggling in bed. The boys are playing on their electronics, and I am playing on the computer. Targa and Tucker are sleeping. After breakfast we will put down the electronics, and enjoy what looks to be a beautiful day. I’ll just pretend that I’m outside when I’m sanding the ceiling in the hallway.
Will enjoying a slow Saturday morning on the couchBen trying to get in some game time while his iPod charges
There was nothing really special about this morning. We put Tucker out early. Targa was still sleeping in Will’s room.
The weather was cool and rainy, and Tucker was barking to get back inside not too much later. When Targa got up, he went out and Tucker followed. That was the start of the problem.
I brought Targa back in a few minutes later, but Tucker was nowhere to be found. He hadn’t returned 45 minutes later when it was time for the boys to head out to the bus stop and me to work.
We waited at the stop. I waited for my neighbor to arrive. The plan was to ask her to put Tucker back in the house if she saw him during the day. But before I could ask her, I saw a slightly overweight beagle mix wandering down our road. Just in time.
So, thank you Tucker for making the morning just a little bit more stressful than it needed to be.
It felt like a somewhat disorganized holiday. At least it did for me. The boys arrived this morning, so we took it easy for most of the day. Plus, I think I’ve been spending too much time playing on the computer – I was going to take a break today, but Will wanted to install Linux on his netbook and download games. And that took a little assistance. But the day wasn’t all wasted on the computer or chasing other shiny objects that my ADHD latches onto.
I did get the hall ceiling painted, and the light installed. The light is flush to the ceiling, and the raking light highlights the imperfections in my drywall work. The ceiling looked good before the light was installed, but I will need to try to smooth out the ceiling a little more this week, and repaint the ceiling. There is a huge difference in how smooth a surface looks with a raking light compared to the same surface with normal ambient light. That is life. A bit of a bummer, but not a huge pain.
This afternoon we went out to the Ledyard Middle School and went sledding. The sledding hill was perfect, and the weather was reasonably warm. I didn’t bring a good camera, so I only have pictures from the iPhone.
Will sledding backwards down the hill. He didn’t start out backwards, but wound up facing the wrong way half of the time.Susanna and Ben heading down the hill (and almost into me).
We also took a look at a mooring for the boat on the Niantic river. Last year we parked at the Submarine Base marina. The marina is reasonably priced, but a mooring is still cheaper. And the Niantic river looks much nicer than the Thames. Though it is covered in ice right now. It is just nicer looking ice. We will get the mooring for the season for about the same price as two months at the marina. The drawback of the mooring is that we will need to row out to our boat. I didn’t plug the boat into shore power once last summer – so I don’t think not having electricity will be much of a problem. Maybe I’ll get a solar panel to charge the battery.
A view of the river where the mooring will be (once the ice melts)
Will and Ben enjoy a quiet moment on their iPods this morning.
Susanna and I get another quiet day at home thanks to a layer of snow and rain. The last couple of extra days at home I had been motivated to get lots of projects done.
Not so much today. I kind of feel like sitting around and taking it easy. That is, between shovelling the driveway. I learned my lesson last week, and shovelled before the rain started and the snow got heavy. But I probably should still go back out and get rid of the layer of slush that has accumulated over the past couple of hours. It will be a lot less fun to clear out once it freezes tonight.
We had the boys over this morning for a couple of hours – we had the day off, and their mother had to work. Will spent some time helping me shovel; Ben and Susanna completed a jigsaw puzzle. Both boys got lots of time to just hang out and play on electronics.
Okay, I really didn’t improve the Internet today; we just improved our connection to the Internet. I know, I just was complaining about how the boys spend too much time on their electronics yesterday. And undoubtedly this blog is not what I would call an “improvement” to the Internet.
We unplugged the satellite dish last spring in anticipation of being furloughed last summer. And we have remained unplugged from cable/satellite since then. We are reliant on Netflix for DVDs and streaming. When we got the satellite several years ago, it came bundled with DSL. Yes, DSL is a bit slower than cable. But it works. And it was inexpensive. And I’m trying to spend less time playing on computers and more time living my life (so, what the heck am I doing writing on this blog?).
This month, Comcast was having a good promotional rate on their Internet service, so we decided to upgrade to Comcast over DSL. The boys had a half-day today. Since Tucker and Targa have proven to be poor adult supervision in the past, I was going to have to be home for the afternoon. What a perfect chance to get Comcast to install Internet. Of course, I didn’t plan the timing perfectly, and the Comcast installer was nearly finished by the time I would have had to be here to meet the boys.
The new speed test after installing Comcast Internet
So, I tested my Internet speed with DSL prior to the install. Latency was pretty high, with a 58ms ping time. The download speeds were 2.5Mb/sec. The upload speeds were 0.42Mb/sec. As you can see from the right, the new speeds are much better, with 28Mb/sec down and 5.7Mb/sec upload. The real test will be when streaming Netflix, but so far I can’t really complain. Now time to go download some big files.
I have never been much of a singer, or any sort of musician. I think much to Susanna’s disappointment, but if you ever heard me sing you would understand my reluctance. So it is nice to see Will and Ben at least try music. Ben has been playing trumpet all year; Will sang in the 5th grade chorus and put on a concert tonight.
William singing in his 5th grade concert.
One of the joys of parenting is the short notice events. I think the school is pretty good about sending notices home, but there is a disconnect between the school and the parents (of course life is much too exciting to pass on notes to parents). And I don’t make a huge effort to check updates on the school’s web page; but it is more fun to blame the kids than take responsibility for scheduling.
Typically Will or Ben will let us know Wednesday or Thursday night about an event planned on Friday night that they want to attend; after we have spent the evenings earlier in the week making our weekend plans. This time we got a little more heads-up. But not really. Two weeks ago Will mentioned that he had a concert coming up, but no details. At least not until yesterday.
We made the concert. But not without a little struggle. Will told me tonight that he needed black pants for the concert. Luckily we had his dress pants from the wedding. He also needed a white shirt, and we had his dress shirt from the wedding. But he chose to wear a white t-shirt instead. More like an under-shirt. But what can one do. It wasn’t worth a huge fight. I think he was more interested in getting five minutes in on his computer than he was in getting dressed nicely. I think it is time to cut down on electronics… again…
The concert was nice. It was crowded – lots of family and not quite enough seats. The 5th grade class sang 4 songs at the start of the concert and were followed by the middle school chorus and then middle school band. Next year we will get there a little earlier to make sure we get good seats. And will make Ben wear a nice shirt. But that shouldn’t be a problem. I thought about recording the concert. But I figured it wasn’t worth the effort to make a poor quality iPhone video mostly of the back of the woman’s head sitting in front of me. Anyway, I really wanted to just sit and enjoy the music.
Will’s and Ben’s blog books/journals printed at Lulu.com. Each are around 100-pages hardbound.
Will and Ben have been writing in their blogs for nearly 2 years by now. Will has written over 8,100 words in 204 posts. Ben has written 6,400 words in 155 posts.
I told the boys that if they wrote in their blogs (or rather, submitted to me forcing them to write), that I would get a book printed each year from what they wrote. Last year I got a soft-back book from Lulu.com. This year I took all of their writings over the past two years and published a hard bound book from Lulu. The books arrived today, and the boys were excited to open them. The books are a sort of journal of what they did over the year. Neither really keeps a journal or scrapbook, so this is a way for them to go back and look at what they did over the past couple of years.
We will see what the next year in blogging brings! Hopefully another two books. Now to get moving with getting this blog printed into a book.
