Honey, I'm going to mow the picnic table

We drove to and from Florence to pick up Lily and bring her to our house for the night. It was stormy with thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. Occasionally, the rain would lessen and we could see the tops of the hills clipped by clouds. The travel was often treacherous, particularly as we went through Worcester where the highway is narrowed by construction work. Remember, this is Massachusetts when, even in good weather, lane markings, breakdown lanes, stop lights, turn signals, and speed limits are pretty much just suggestions for other people. So, we had scary moments with trucks to our right, Jersey barriers to our left, and lots of water above, below, and in between.

But we arrived home safely around 10PM and got Lily safely home into our guest room. The house was cool.

At breakfast we gathered at the table by the window and marveled at the lushness of the yard. During the winter we sprinkle bird seed on a picnic table on the back deck, in addition to the seed in the feeders. A few seeds, stuck in table top, have sprouted. If the rains continue, we'll have this soon.

Lily is confident and article, so much so that I'm likely to forget that she is still five. On the way home, we were talking about what we'd have for breakfast. "Mac and cheese?" I asked. I think she took me seriously, or maybe she was just bringing the joke back to me. While I was getting the cereal on the table, she brought me a box of Mac and cheese.

And now, I'm at work. This is a blog about work. This day will go quickly as I try to get my various projects into a known state by day's end - knowing what I know and knowing what I don't know. It was explained to me that there are four stages of wisdom, in descending order:

1. Knowing
   
2. Knowing what I don't know
   
3. Knowing what I know
   
4. Not knowing what I don't know

There are variants on that, theories of complex systems and such. For another day, though. I need to get to work.

A night of music

On Tuesday we had the air conditioners doing the full-tilt boogie. This morning, if we were going to be at home for the day, we'd need a fire in the stove. Which reminds me, I need to clean my father's chimney. He mentioned that the chimney hadn't been cleaned for a couple of years. Imagine that. Two years ago (when he was 89) he was getting on the roof to run a set of brushes down the chimney.

Last night we went to a recital. Michael and Krista were outstanding. Music is about hitting the right notes, but, perhaps more importantly, it's about rhythm. Both pieces were rhythmically demanding and they met the challenges wonderfully.

Several people from our former church attended the recital, cheering on one of the children from the congregation. It's like seeing an flame from long ago. We were alternately thrilled and reminded why we had left that church. But the night wasn't about the adults and their weirdnesses. It was about the kids and their music.

Speaking of weirdness and music, Gizmodo brings us this collection of music and machines and whatever.

This is wrong at so many levels - a squirrel decanter.

Adam and Jennie are on their way to Hawaii. Jennie's mother, Diane, is watching Lily today. We'll pick up Lily this evening and have her with us for a couple of days. Sandra and Lily may have their nails done tomorrow (although probably not like this). Tomorrow night we'll sleep at the camp. Lily will then go to Mike and Lynn's for an overnight on Saturday. We'll return her to Diane on Sunday, but not before we have a Father's Day pizza party at M&L's.

Something old. Something new.

We've recently purchased appliances at Sears, so Sears is now sending us love letters of all sorts. Yesterday we received a packet of coupons for discounts on various products, including jewelry. Thanks, but I have all the jewelry that I need. Sandra and I bought our wedding rings at Sears and they're working just fine.

When I bought this laptop last year, I also bought a 64MB USB drive. For those of you who haven't seen one, a USB drive is a little gadget that plugs into your computer and lets you store and transfer files and programs. You used to need a floppy disk to carry files to and from your work and home computers, for example. Well, the drive that I got yesterday holds 16 times the stuff that my year-old USB drive holds and costs less. I paid just over $60 for a 1GB drive.

As one technology columnist often observes, the future of technology is coming at us so quickly that we can't afford to blink.

I used to visit my aunt and uncle in St. Albans, Vermont. St. Albans in the upper-left corner, on Lake Champlain, and one town from Canada. Up there I could watch the Red Sox games broadcast in French from Montréal. (The Expos hadn't come and gone yet.) One day I turned on the radio and found a station from Plattsburg, New York, across the lake. They broadcasting a baseball game, but it was the Yankees game and they were playing someone like Cleveland. I was shocked. It was as though I had picked up Radio Moscow. Did people really listen to baseball games where the Red Sox were not playing? Was it legal for stations to do only Yankees games? I've calmed down since then, but it still doesn't feel quite right.

As I stood in the check-out line at Wal-Mart this past weekend, I noticed that White Owl is selling flavored cigars. Grape. Peach. Chocolate. Mocho Mint. All of that is just so wrong at so many levels.

The hamster will see you now.

Let me see if I've got this right. Come to Me, ye who are weary and heavy-laden and making more than $25,000 a year.

According to a story on NPR, McDonald's is sending Ronald McDonald on an mission to try to encourage kids to exercise more. Ronald wasn't available for comment, so they went to the next best, Richard Simmons. About Ronald, Simmons said, "He stole my Afro!"

Carpe diem,with mustard, relish, and onions

I've received reports about layoffs at IBM. Several former co-workers were told that they had 30 days to find a new job within the company or they'd be moving on. There had been a flurry of activity in LinkedIn, presaging the news. I may not be able to provide direct employment leads, but I'll do what I can. And while doing that, I can also provide moral support. A few years ago, friend T. was a spectator at the Boston Marathon. (She's now training for an Ironman next month.) A little girl on the side of the road held a sign that said, "Run."

Some 30 years ago, I wrote a poem. It's the only one of mine that I remember.
Keep laughing
or they'll have your heart for breakfast.
Keep laughing
or the leftovers'll yours for lunch.

So, carpe diem.

Dianne Williamson, a columnist for the Worcester Telegram, quotes a Fox news analyst as saying that Michael Jackson “dabbed tears from his nose.” 'Nuff said.

With the help of a bit software called ReplayRadio, I am recording Internet radio broadcasts and then listening to them on my iPod. I've had a favorite set of college radio shows, some from UMass-Amherst, some from a station in Los Altos Hills (near San Jose).

The North Pole is leaving Canada, heading for Russia at a brisk clip. Santa was seen listening to a set of Russian language tapes, brushing up on his ГО, ГО, ГО.

It's now Dr. Steven Tyler. And check out picture #14 while you're at it. (Thanks, Bill.)

In the What-are-they-thinking? Dept., why would Gatorade use the guitar riff from House of the Rising Sun in an ad about an Ironman event in Hawaii?

Of course, if you're in an Ironman, a marathon, or a half-marathon, you can listen to any music you darn well please. Cue the applause as Adam and Jennie prepare for their races on Sunday.

Happy Birthday, John.

"Less is only more where more is no good" - FLW

Sandra returned late Saturday night from her most excellent adventure to Fallingwater. She brought back great stories about the fascinating and quirky details that make up not only this architectural masterpiece, but also the genius behind it. Sandra also reports that Pennsylvania drivers obey the speed limits. We've heard of such things, but hadn't seen them in the wild.

A couple of days ago, my father tripped while carrying a gasoline can and pulled a muscle in his leg. The gasoline spilled all over him. He got home and washed his clothes. As the machine entered the rinse cycle, it stopped. He was left with a load of wet, soapy, almost-not-gasoline-soaked clothes. He is using an umbrella for cane. His friend, E., owns a funeral parlor and has a large selection of canes left by customers who didn't need them any more. We'll be doing my father's laundry and grocery shopping for a while.

Thanks to Adam, we now have an "As Seen on TV" remote motion detector at the camp. It, um, detects motion. It picks up activity within 20 feet or so, enough to detect a car or a person in the parking area and sends a signal to a noise-making unit in the camp. Equally importantl, it's quiet when it's supposed to be quiet.

I was cutting up some scrap wood with the table saw in the boathouse. The wood was just a bit too thick (2x6s) for the blade that was in the saw. The blade bound up and stopped. Brushing away the dust (saw and otherwise), I found the reset button, tried again, jammed it again, and then blew a fuse. My father has some other blades at his house, so this project is on hold for a week or so. I don't know the age of the saw, a Sears Craftsman. It was my grandfather's. The Old Gent, as my father called him, (Vaari, as I called him) mounted the on/off switch upside down on the saw frame. There was a good reason for it, I'm sure, probably like the reason that some gas fittings are reverse-threaded. (I'll rant about reverse-threading another time.)

Our neighbor was out raking the lake on Saturday afternoon. Pollen had settled in whorls and swirls on his shoreline, as it had done on ours. They were having company that evening. So, to ensure that the guests would have a good swimming experience, our neighbor was in the water with a leaf rake, moving the pollen into our little cove.

The local weekly paper prints a report of the calls that come into the police station. While TV news is dealing with issues such as African debt relief, the war in Iraq, and nuclear missles in North Korea, here's what's troubling folks in the Wachusett region:

• 911 report of ducklings in the sewer drain.
• Woman comes in to the police station at 3PM to report motorist driving erratically that morning.
• Skateboarder "with an attitude" at a local school.
• Radio interference.

Last week marked the 70th anniversary of the first public FM broadcast. My junior high school science teacher used to remind us that FM mean fine music, while AM meant average music. This would have been the time when FM played mostly classical music while the good stuff, rock and roll, was on the AM dial.

In the not-just-for-medical-professionals department, here are some clever, if not creepy gauze masks.