What's been going on?

Apropos of nothing herein.

It has been nearly a month since I have added anything here. I guess in part that I just haven’t been in a writing some times the mundane events in life are just that, and I find that I just don’t have anything to say about them. That being said let me see if I can catch up a bit without going thru a blow-by blow of every event.

The first topic is usually the weather, which has been absolute shit for the last month. As of a week or so ago, the Boston Globe was reporting that we were experiencing the cloudiest June since 1903. I don’t know if that record was actually breached, but it is the topic on every ones mind. On an average we are having one day of sun for every five days of rain. The rain of course is usually on the weekends. The upside of this is that the yard is looking better than ever before. I reseeded large patches of the lawn in the spring, and they are doing great, what in past years has been a scrubby patchwork lawn is actually looking pretty lush. Of course is it also a little over grown because the weather won’t cooperate to allow me to mow it. Our plots in the community garden are also doing quite well, although I am sure that the plants would like a little more sun than they are getting. The weeds love all the rain too unfortunately. The Mrs. and I spent a couple hours on Sunday dodging raindrops and weeding. The results from 320 square feet of garden space were wheelbarrow full of weeds. We are starting to harvest a few herbs from the garden and there is some broccoli that will be edible in a few days.

Not my lillys but I walk by them all the time.

Next topic: the boy. He finished school on the June 12, and the 13th was his 14th birthday. He thought it was an appropriate way to celebrate the end of the school year. The last week of school was almost like he was already on vacation. I think he had but one day of actually classes, two days of that week were half days with various events at the school of which parents were invited. And one day was ‘skip day’ on which there were no classes, but one of his classmates decided to have a party. I was a good thing that work has been light for me since the term finish for me as I spent a lot of that week ferrying him to and from school and other social events. There was one day that week that I made 4 round trips to the school and back. Thankfully it is only 3 miles from the house.

He started his summer program this week, leaving us two weeks to keep him entertained or otherwise occupied in the interim. And you wonder why I haven’t updated the blog in a while. I took him to work a couple days and had him help me unpack some new equipment I purchased. His mother took him to work with her a couple of days, I took of work a couple days to do stuff, and somehow we filled the time the available time. The summer program is designed for Native American kids living in Boston to give them a link the their native heritage. It is sponsored in part by the Indian Center and Harvard University. He has been attending since he was 6 years old and it is something that he looks forward to every summer. It is mostly run by Harvard students most of who are also of Native heritage. It has been hit or miss over the years, but is currently on a ‘hit’. It is a nice mix of just fun stuff to do, swimming and games and the like along with workshops and field trips centered on their common heritage. Among the projects this summer are workshops in traditional drumming, dancing and jewelry making, and the summer will be finished by a trip to Washington DC to the American Indian Museum. I am jealous.

As for me, I have been plugging along I have a list of outdoor projects that I need to get to but the inclement weather has been preventing me from doing so. The major project is rebuilding the entry shed over the back door. It has some serious rot issues around the base that need to be attended to before the fall. I just need a few day s of good weather so that I can dismantle portions and rebuild it, but no such luck so far.

I am currently involve involved in car issues. The beast, as I have taken to calling the Dodge Grand Caravan that we drive is misbehaving and is doing it’s best to avoid actually being repaired. We are planning to drive down to the cape for the holiday to attend the Wampanoag pow wow at Mashpee. But if I can’t get the car in condition for a road trip we will be spending the holiday weekend locally. It has two issues, one is a clunk in the front end the feels like the drivers side wheel is coming loose. The second is that transmission which is not shifting correctly. Solving these has required daily trip to the mechanic since Thursday, it took two trips to solve the ’thunk’ but we are still working on the transmission issue, it seems to be an electronic sensor issue but we have not been able to track it down. So far it has only cost $550 but we ain’t done yet. Say a prayer and wish me the best.

Also seen on my daily travels

I won’t go into too much detail about the other technology failure issues that I have faced in the last couple weeks. Let me just say that a hard drive failure on my computer was made less catastrophic by the purchase a week or so prior of a 1TB outboard hard drive for back up. The replacement hard drive cost a mere $70 for 320GB, replacing the original 80GB drive. I was down for maybe a total of 36 hours including the time to reformat and rebuild the files. Salute to the Mac Time Machine for making the process relatively painless.

Now I notice that the CDR drive in my ‘puter isn’t functioning. Is it something in the stars?

But to finish on a happy note: the boy received in the mail the other day a letter from the head master of his school. It was an official “Head of School’s Letter of Commendation’ for his work in drama.

It read: ‘P.. deserves special commendation for his contributions to the Schools drama program this year. A three-season ‘varsity’ player P.. has demonstrated his acting talents and range by bringing to life the characters of the Baker in Into The Woods, Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Phil the Techie in Ax of Murder. P.. is a true ensemble player who leads by his quiet, focused discipline and his love for the dramatic arts.’

Transitions of a sort

It is the season of changes and transitions. The most notable of which is of course school starting. At the university where I work, classes have been in session now for a couple of weeks and everything has fallen into the routine that will prevail for most of the term. The couple of weeks before their return was a frantic time while preparation were being made all over campus. As a result, the place looks better than it does at almost any time of the year, as the grounds are beautifully manicured and the building are fresh and clean and all the new equipment is in the classrooms. This year the campus art gallery down the hall mounted a larger than usual exhibit that filled the lobby in part. Called Paratrooper II, it makes a pretty bold statement and fills the entire lobby of the art gallery. One of the little benefits of working in the building that I do, is that I get to enjoy and ever changing displays of art.

Speaking of ‘art’, I am now back to riding the subway to work everyday, and much to my delight, one of the mural teams has done a number on the my local subway station. That station was built in the early 1980’s and is of what might best be called fortress style architecture; brick and concrete. It is a functional but not particularly welcoming building. The last time I had take the ‘T’ there was a crew painting over some of the concrete surfaces out front. The walls having been the victim of graffiti in the past, I assumed that this was just an attempt to give the walls a more easily cleaned surface. It was a nice surprise to return to find those walls decorated with murals of local scenes. There is a folk-art quality to them, but it makes them all the more charming.
The mural crew is a summer job project that hires high school and college students who design and paint the murals. Surprisingly, the so-called graffiti artists don’t tag over the murals. There are a couple of murals in the neighborhood that have lasted for almost 20 years without being defaced.

As other transitions go, the boy finally started school last week. His start had been delayed a week because of construction at his school. There was almost a month between his last day of summer program and the start of school. That was a burden. The Mrs. and I were taking turns bringing him to work with us, and then letting him stay home by himself occasionally. It was a great relief to get him back in school. He was not so excited as us; resigned is more the case, but at the same time he is seems interested in his classes. He was particularly please that he made it into jazz band where he will be playing guitar. This will be interesting, he doesn’t know much if anything about jazz at all we listen to lots of music in the house, but jazz is not high on the list. Additionally, his guitar training has been almost exclusively classical, although he has done a lot of ensemble work, so it will be interesting to see how he integrates into the group. I think it will be good growth experience for him. I think I will sneak Mingus, Parker and Django onto his iPod.

He is doing drama again as his after school project. They are doing ‘Into the Woods this term. It is a special reduced script for school, which is mostly just the first act. It turns out that he is the only boy so far. He has yet to have a big role in play, so this will be a big challenge for him. There are a couple of roles that he could do the largest is that of the narrator, which doesn’t require any singing. I am not sure that he is ready to sing solo in public. But we shall see. He does seem to have some acting ability. I was surprised and pleased with his performance in Harriet the Spy last spring, he had a small role, but had two little solo scenes down front center, and he was really into the moment and brought the audience with him. I am excited to see what he can do this time.

And further transitions, the boy now 13, is now becoming somewhat fashion conscious, at least to the degree that he concerned about his ‘look’. In the past he was happy with a pair of jeans and a t-shirt the latter of which he has possibly100. He has taken a liking to shirts with actually collars and buttons on them. Since we hadn’t really invested in any new school clothes, he and his mother took a trip to Target and picked out a half dozen button down shirts and some new jeans and he seems quite pleased. If he gets too fussy about his ‘look’ I may have to teach him how to iron his own shirts. So far he doesn’t really seem to care if he wears them wrinkled, but the sleeves do have to be rolled up to just the right length. I think this is another rite of passage.

And speaking of rites of passage, while us no-churchgoing heathens don’t have any bona-fide rite of passage, many of his classmates do. And he attended another one this past weekend; a Bat Mitzvah party, and in the great tradition, this one was another big blow out. It the Hard Rock Café located downtown at Quincy Market, which had been closed for he evening for that event. It seems that is his classmate is the daughter of one of the members of that venerable Boston band Aerosmith. For all I know, he may be one of the partners in the Hard Rock Café, but certainly with Aerosmith’s renewed popularity in part due to them having their own version of Guitar Hero, I am sure that they could afford to rent the restaurant for the evening. I have not met the girl’s father, and I must admit that I was never an Aerosmith fan, and I would be hard pressed to name any of their songs. So in one way I was relieved to not run into him that evening. We did have a nice chat with the girl’s mother when we dropped the boy at the party. We hung around the area and had dinner and a few drinks while he was partying, and picked him up when it was over at 10:30. He was wiped out when we arrived, (I understand that he is quite the dancer), he was barely able to stay awake on the subway ride home, and he fell into bed, and slept for 10 hours.

We were not quite so lucky in the sleep department. About 2:30 am we were awakened by some commotion on the street. A couple of cars were parked across the street and the occupants, two couples and a couple others were having a loud conversation, laughing and arguing. Hoping it would subside shortly, I was dismayed as more cars arrived and more people were gathering on the sidewalks laughing and shouting. It seems that some one in the neighborhood had decided to have an after-hours party, but the guest arrived before the party giver did. Not in any frame of mind to confront 12 or 15 people on the street and now nearly 3am, I called 911. The police arrived shortly, and quieted people down, but didn’t really do anything to disperse what was by now a gathering of 6 or 8 cars and more than 20 people. Eventually either the party giver finally arrived and the crowd dispersed, or I fell asleep out of exhaustion, or both, but I was pretty cranky the next day. Ah, the joys of living in the city.