Cold, Cold, Cold

It is just frigging cold here. It was 11° F (-12°C) this morning when I left to take the boy to school at 7:45am. It is supposed to be colder tomorrow, dropping to close to 0° overnight. The car doesn’t warm up until after I have dropped the boy at school, and the cup of hot coffee I brought with me for the trip is cold before I have traveled 6 blocks. But by the time I get back home, the car is toasty, and I am warmer than I probably will be all day, and I am reluctant to get out of the car.

When it gets this cold, the furnace just runs and runs trying the keep the house warm. Finally I drop the thermostat to 66° to give the furnace a break, I only wanted the house at 68°. I turn it down to 62 at night, and it wakes me every time it turns on it the middle of the night, trying to keep the house at that temperature.

I worry about the boy being warm enough as he ventures home from school, first on the school bus, then as he waits in the cold for the city bus that will drop him 6 blocks from the house, from where he will have to walk a windy path up hill.

I worry about the pipes freezing, and the car not starting.

For my own trek to work, I am trying to be good and take public transit but that is a painful proposition as well; a six block into-the wind walk to the subway station, up to a 15 minute wait for the train, outdoors of course, and another half-mile walk to campus on the other end of the trip. Then do it in reverse at the end of the day on then is it dark.

Mrs. takes the train to work too, although at a different time than I. I don’t worry about her so much, she knows how to stay warm. The other day however, when I got home she had not arrived yet. I asked the boy if mom was home, and he said ‘No, she called and said that she lost her T-pass and she is walking home.’ Shocked, I called her cell phone but it went right to voice mail. It is only 3 and a half miles, but it is all on the means streets of Boston and there is no direct route. Not much to do but wait. When she finally arrived I asked her about walking. She said that she told him that she was walking back to the office to find her T-pass, and was going to be a little late. She was unsuccessful in finding the pass, but she walked back to the subway station, purchased a ticket and took the T home.

I quizzed the boy about her message and he admitted that he didn’t remember very well what she said told him. Sometimes I just want to smack the boy.


Here is a little Little Feat performing Cold, Cold, Cold to warm you on a winter day.

Dog Days of Winter

It took us a couple of days to get back on schedule after almost two weeks on holiday. It was a particular problem for the boy who we had been letting sleep in until 8 or 9 in the morning when we normally give him first call at about 6:30am. He is definitely not a morning person, and it can take him a half hour or more with repeated calls for him to actually get his feet on the floor. Wednesday morning when I went in to call him for the 3rd or 4th time I found him asleep, head in his pillow but on his knees with his butt in the air. It was a tempting target to swat him to wake him but I resisted. It wasn’t so hard for me and the Mrs. to get up early again but I think more to the question was whether we were ready to go back to work. I have been frequently waking at 4am for some reason and I am not sure why. There is no burning issue that has me tense or preoccupied. I think I am just getting over heated. I guess I just have to quit cuddling so close with Mrs. under the flannel sheets and down comforter. Anyhow when that happens I get up use the bathroom, check my e-mail and settle back in bed, turning my light on low and reading for a while. Inevitably Mrs. alarm goes off just about the time I am falling back to sleep. Like the boy she needs multiple reminders t hat it is morning, so the alarm starts ringing about an hour before she actually needs to be up. The result is that when I wake early, I seldom really get back to sleep soundly for the rest of the night.

The New Year brought a round of bad news. I heard that a good friend from high school passed away from cancer on Christmas Eve. My all-seeing mother spotted the obit in the local paper and forward it to me. I had nor been in touch with George in a number of years, both distance and time had sent our paths in different directions, but we had been very close in high school, participating in drama together, and we both shared similar tastes in music, art and politics. On top of that I also received word from another old high school friend that she had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that affects the blood vessels. While her spirits are good and she is confident that she can beat it, the diagnosis is not good. The two incidents have brought home that sense of mortality that is becoming all too common for me. At this age, I wonder if every ache and pain is the sign of something more serious than just an ache or pain of aging.

More bad news; I got the annual report for my retirement account. It seems that I have lost $60,0000 last year without even trying. That takes into account the contribution that I have made as well as the university’s contribution as well, otherwise the number would have been worse. I was feeling like my account had begun to recover from the last down turn, but it was nothing like this. I wasn’t planning on retiring in the next few years, at least until the boy is out of school, but even that looks like it is in question now. Given everything, our financial situation is pretty good. I’d like to think that our jobs are pretty secure, but in these times, you just never know. We have been trying to refinance our house for several months without much success, perhaps with the interest rates dropping and some of the federal programs coming around, we might have better luck.

Given all the bad news, there is a little life around the house. We were given an Aero-Garden for Christmas. They are a little mini hydroponic garden that you put on your counter. The plants come in little pods that you insert in holes in the top. After that you basically add water, plug it in and hit the go button, and nature takes over the rest. After 2 weeks we have seven budding herb plants. We have been watching them grow like they were little kittens or something. It just goes to show how desperate we are for something green as we head into the dog days of winter.

This time of the year always seems endless. After the holidays, there really isn’t anything to break up the monotony of the winter except, ah .. March. The local news reports that December had a heavier that usual snowfall, and that we should expect more of the same until ah .. March. I purchased a 50lbs bag of sidewalk salt two weeks ago, and have already gone through nearly half of it. In a normal winter that is usually enough to make the entire winter with a little left over for that first early snowfall in November.

I am tired of shoveling snow already. We just got the latest batch on Saturday night, another 4 inches. The difficulty with snow in a city like Boston is that there is nowhere to put it when you shovel. Our house is on a corner and set right at the sidewalk with no front or side yard. Additionally there is no parking strip between the street and the side walks. To shovel a path on the sidewalk one has to either pile it against the house (not a good idea) or pile it along the outer edge of the sidewalk. Then there is the matter of getting ones car dug out, but now there is a pile of snow between the cleared path and the car. But you need to be able to get to the car, and where are you going to put the snow that is on the car? You could put it in the street, but the plows are just going to come along and plow the car back in. So what happens is that the snow gets piled at front and back of each car, creating individual cleared parking spaces. Having spent possibly hours digging ones car out, residents become protective of their parking spaces, using any variety of items to mark their spaces while unoccupied to prevent others from usurping them. The most popular marker is a traffic cone purloined from a construction site; second most is an ancient chair of some sort, and usually well past its useful life. Followed by milk crates, trashcans or large plastic child’s toys, much of which will be left out after the snow has melted and become just so much more trash on the street.

Sometimes I long for the rainy winters of the Northwest, although even they have been having severe weather this winter with heavy snow at Christmas, and now heavy flooding as it melts.

I am going to go watch the little plants grow for a while and dream of spring.

Holiday Spirits

The Christmas photo 2008

I must say that we had a hard time generating the holiday spirit around here this year. If it weren’t for having the boy we might have tried to avid it all together. But try as we might the Christmas spirit finally did arrive a few days before the actually day. The hot buttered rums and a couple extra days off from work may have helped. Until the last few days the Mrs. and I were still asking each other what we wanted for Christmas. For the boy it was another thing all together. He had a pretty extensive Christmas list and we did our best to if not follow it at least spoil him, with toys, trinkets and clothes. Virtually every gift under the tree was for the boy. The one gift that didn’t fit under the tree was a new guitar that we bought him. An IbanezAES20, he had seen in about a year and a half ago when we were shopping for a full size classical guitar, it is an electric/acoustic in black with a distinctive diamond shaped sound hole. We ordered it online, and it arrived via Fed Ex encased in 3 boxes. To make it more playful for him, I wrapped all three boxes and enclosed them, as they were when it was shipped to us.

We went to Fanueil Hall and downtown crossing on Christmas Eve to do a little final shopping see if we could catch some good sale prices. The weather was nasty; cold and snowy but it was very Christmassy. Mrs. found a nice pair of slippers for me, (the only thing on my list) and we picked up a few other items for family and friends, and the boy got to visit his favorite store, Newbury Commix, a purveyor of music, video, Comics, action figures and all things tasteful for teens. He had some Christmas money to blow, we suggested that he might spend some of it on gifts for family and friends, but he chose to purchase an action figure of the 5th DR. Who. Ah the priorities of 13 year-old boys! While passing thru Downtown Crossing, we saw one of the more notable local affects of the ‘Economic Down-turn’ at the site of the former Filenes. Macy’s had bought the store a while back, and big plans were made to refurbish the store, (A historic site) and convert it into new retail space which was to include a hotel and at the same time put a little polish in Downtown Crossing. Unfortunately funding dried up and now instead of a thriving department store with it’s legendary bargin site ‘Filene’s Basement’, the city is left with a large hole in the ground for the foreseeable future.

Filene's Basement

Christmas Day dawned sunny and surprisingly warm with temps in the 40s. The boy let us sleep a reasonable amount of time and we were able to get some coffee in us before he dragged us to the tree. As I mentioned, he made out like a bandit and was surprised thrilled with the guitar. The wrapping entertained him, and kept the suspense going for all of us. I don’t suppose that a 13 year-old boy needs to own 3 guitars, but he shows a real interest in the instrument, and wants to break out from the classical training that he has been getting, so this will give him another tool to work with. The rest of the day was quiet, as the usually are these days, having no family close-by. I did track down my family in Seattle who were all gathering at a brothers house for dinner, and spent at least an hour chatting with most of them on the phone. I miss those family free-for-all gatherings on the holidays, coming from a large family, with a large extended family, those busy loud holiday were just a fact of life, As much as anything, I wish for the boy to be able to share in some of the that experience. I guess if I want that we are just going to have to travel out west one of these Christmases.

The days following Christmas have been spent keeping the boy as busy as possible. We did a little post Christmas shopping, and spent an afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts, and have watched a lot of movies on DVD. Mrs. had to go into work at the first of the week, but was also suffering forma holiday cold, so she took a sick day off. The weather has been the usual variety. It warmed up after Christmas with one day reaching over 60°F, which melted all the snow. But as I with this on New Years day it is barely 20° out and we have an additional 6” of snow on the ground. The temp dropped yesterday and a storm blew in mid-day, which scuttled our plans for New Years Eve. Instead we spent it huddled on the sofa under blankets watching the Star Wars movies.

The streets are now clear, and we are about to head off to participate in one in a new years day tradition, bowling with a couple of friends! None of us are any good, but it gets us out of the house. When done we will return home to a pot of split pea soup that is cooking in a crock-pot.

Baby, it's cold outside.

Freshly Fallen


I guess I haven’t wandered by here in a while,
and so much for occasional short entries. Maybe over the holidays I’ll be able to do that, because I certainly haven’t been able to do so this past week or so.

The big talk of the last several days has been the weather. Since Sunday two weeks ago, we have seen pretty much every variety of weather that one might typically experience in late New England fall, giving credence to that old adage, attributed to Mark Twain ‘If you don’t like the weather in (fill in the blank) wait ten minutes”. We started off the week with subfreezing weather and a dusting of snow, or first of the season, that was followed by a couple of days of warm but very windy weather reaching nearly 60°F. just when we were getting used to that, the temperature dropped again into the low 40’a and we had 3 days of drenching rain (and I cleaned the downspout again this time it finally took). To the north and west of here the temperatures dropped to subfreezing while the rain continued to fall, resulting in a treacherous ice storm, with the rain freezing on trees wires, cars and roads, making travel dangerous and taking down power lines all over the region leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity. Some of these people are still with out power almost a week later.

The ice storm was followed by another short warm spell with temps again getting into the 60’s. It was small relief for those who were suffering from the ice storm in that as it thawed all the ice on the trees branches, some of them sprung back from the reduced weight of the ice and took more power lines out. Here in the city, that wasn’t an issue, and we had a couple days of sunny warm weather. We got right back to the usual wintry fare. We woke to about an inch of snow on the ground today but as the sun came up the falling snow turned to sleet and freezing rain. You've gotta love New England.

Addendum: I started writing this a few days ago and got sidetracked with other things. Since then we have had a double whammy of winter storms. As winter started Friday so did the winter weather with a snowstorm blowing in a little afternoon (fortunately, after the completion of Yule Fest at the boys school.) It snowed pretty much for 48 hours; the first portion dropped about 8 inches over night and into Saturday morning. The pace of the snow letup after that but continued to fall until Sunday evening, adding another 4 inches on top of what was already there. I was able to get the car dug out for our Saturday night outing to see Ritchie Havens at the MFA. The additional snow thru Sunday made the side streets more impassable, so our planned shopping trip was made by via the T. It was not a bad idea over-all but it slowed the travel portion of the trip considerably both due to the weather and the fact that far fewer trains run on Sunday than do in weekdays. By Sunday the temp had dropped in the 20’s and the snow had changed from fluffy places to little wind driven ice balls, which made the trek to and from the subway unpleasant to say the least.

That takes us to Monday when the sun came out but the temps are now in the teens at night and 20’s in the daytime. The sidewalks are now slick with ice. (I should have shoveled one more time after we got back from shopping.) And there are huge ice cycles forming on the west side of the house where the sun hits it during the day and melts the snow on the roof. I dug out the car (again) and shoveled out a space for it down the street away from the house. The last time we had big ice cycles form one of them broke loose and was launched by the slope of the mansard roof square into the windshield of the car breaking it. I don’t need that again. It is supposed to warm up to the 40s on Christmas Eve, and maybe rain. Just imagine the mess that is going to make.
Waiting for the sun.

Waiting for a plow.

Catching up

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, life has been pretty busy in the previous couple of weeks, and I hardly had time to sit and write, let alone do much else. The last event of the term was last night, another dance / variety show presented by a student organization. Classes end Monday. So now that life has calming down a little I have time again and I thought I would go back and revisit some of the things that have happened while I was too busy.

It is now a quiet Sunday afternoon, and I am sitting here watching the first snow of the season falling, the forecast if for just a light dusting up to as much as an inch. It is definitely a sign of the season to come, but as we already had a few inches on the ground at this time last year, I am not feeling too bad about it.

So let me see if I can remember a few of the significant events of the last couple weeks.

Several months ago I had posted a video on Youtube of the boy and his guitar classmates performing a piece called Tutu Tango at their spring guitar recital. It is a fun piece that they really like to play and they were dead on for the performance. I posted it mostly for a family and a few friends to see, and I think it had a total of maybe 35 hits after 5 months. A couple weeks ago, I got a Youtube email that some one had saying that I had a comment on the video, and an email in my Youtube inbox. The email and the comment were from the composer of the Tutu Tango, one Derek Hasted (fortunately I had credited him in the video when I posted it), commenting on how much he enjoyed the performance. In addition he also posted a link to the video on the website of the Hampshire Guitar Orchestra in Hampshire England for which he is the musical director. So the video of the boys went ‘viral’ and in the course of a couple of days is suddenly had over 250 hits. Not spectacular, but not bad for a classical guitar video featuring four 13 year old boys. I let their guitar teacher and the parents of the other players know what had taken place, and they were all thrilled to have been noticed by the composer.

I posted the video in my old Yahoo360 blog, but here is it again for all my new readers… (A little joke there.)



I think that I mentioned that the boy was in the school musical, Into the Woods, in which he played the Baker. I did manage to find time to see the show between all the events that I had to tend to at work. I was a ‘proud dad’ by the end of the performance. The role of the Baker is big role and a tough one to play and he did an admirable job. He had complained in the past about only getting small roles in the plays, so this was his big chance to shine, and he really stepped up to the challenge. Not only did he have to sing a couple of solos, but there is also a love song duet with the bakers wife in which they must sing to one another at the same time that they are holding hands, ending in a final embrace. I must say that both performers pulled that off well, which can be difficult for some adults, let alone 13 year olds. The two of them managed to reach a level of reality that seem to show real emotion and affection. Bravo to them both. The boy definitely knows how to find the ‘moment’ as it is called, where character and motivation come together to give a performance its reality.

Next play up is a Midsummer’s Night Dream he has his eye on several roles in that. There is Puck of course, as well as Oberon, and Bottom, he could probably have his pick of roles, I think his Puck is tops on the list followed by Bottom. We will see how it shakes out; auditions are this week.

As I mentioned, that previous couple of weeks were very busy at work with several performances each weekend, most of them are student variety / dance shows, and frankly they all start to look and sound the same. The one event that did stand out was the music department’s gospel choir concert. It is notable not only for the great music, but also for the shear size and power of the group. It has grown dramatically in the last couple years from about 90 students to over 200. Part of the rehearsal earlier in the day was spent just getting people on and off stage quickly. The theatre capacity is just over 600, and the gospel concert always sells out, with little back stage space available the singers have to enter through the aisles very quickly as to not create a safety hazard. Fortunately that all went well, and the concert was a big success.
A Packed Stage
So that is the highlights from the previous couple of weeks. We are back to normal life such as it is, and I will resume posting and pissing and moaning as before. I think I will try to do shorter entries, with single topics and see if that works better.