Addiction

I have a confession to make. I have an addiction, it occasionally gets in the way of me leading a productive life, but more often that not, it makes me the subject of ridicule from my wife and child. When it rears its’ head, they both just look and me and shake their heads, my son will occasionally break out in out in derisive laughter. That is hard to take from a 13 year old. I suppose I could seek some sort of help for this, but I’d prefer to deal with it on my own.

My addiction: Solar powered yard lights!

See, you are laughing too.

This is serious.

I have it mostly in control bet every so often it rears its head and I have a deep personal battle of the will.

It started out simply enough; the back yard can be dark at night, and there are no lights on the rear of the house. I bought the first two as sort of nightlights for the path from the gat to the door. They weren’t very bright but they did the trick and those sufficed for a couple of years. As we improved the yard with plantings and replaced the cyclone fence with a wooden one, the lighting needed upgrading as well. I went on to my favorite online auction site for electronics Ubid and found a couple of sets of 4 for a few dollars a piece. The new ones were sleek and shiny chrome, and the LEDs we re clear white and much brighter than the original ones, when the garden fills out they look really cool glowing in amongst the plants at night. Being the lazy sot that I am I didn’t bother to being them in during the winter, but I found that they looked equally cool at night in the snow. Since then I have often eyed the lights in various stores, thinking how they might look in the yard.

They are now a couple of years old and the weather has taken it’s toll on them; the batteries don’t take a charge as well, and the solar cells are getting flakey from being exposed the elements 24/365. It is time to replace some of them and maybe even add to the total.

I returned to Ubid earlier in the spring and again found a set of four for a couple of dollars apiece. These ones are color-changing no less, now how cool is that? I placed my order and waited. When the order arrived I found that they had accidentally doubled it sending me 8 instead of 4. Double Cool!

Suddenly I am seeing sets of solar powered yard lights every store I visit. Home Depot has them, the grocery store has then even the drug store is selling them. The worst of all is Costco; they must have a dozen sets. There are the copper ones that look like antique coach lanterns, and there is the French Provincial ones with curving sensuous shapes. There is a set that looks like champaign flutes where the whole body of the light is illuminated. There is even as set that is reminiscent of the old bubbler Christmas tree lights.

I want them all!

Having lusted after them on previous visits, on our last visit to Costco I couldn’t resist and purchased the set that had been tugging the hardest at me. Mrs. looked at me with bemused chagrin as I put them in the shopping cart. This was a set of 4 lights; each copper shaft with a small colored glass ball with an LED inside, surrounding the ball is a copper figure of either the sun or the moon. Did I mention that the light change color too? They look almost magical as they glow and change in the dark. I can’t wait to get them out in the yard when the plants start coming up.

I am afraid to go back to Costco, because I know that I will not be able to resist those champaign flutes ones, and we are due for another trip this week. On the other hand, maybe I’ll just swing by after work and pick up a set.

If I have my count correct, I have about 20 working solar yard lights. That may not seem like a lot but you need to understand that the yard is only 25 feet on a side. We know people with larger living rooms than our yard! One part of me says is it totally out of control, and another part says the more the merrier. It is a serious internal battle, and I am worried that the ‘more’ side is winning out.

I think that I might be getting a little eccentric in my middle age. This has me worried as well. Just the other day I was talking with the boy and mentioned that one of the denizens of the neighborhood was a ‘character’ and he replied, “Well you know dad, you are a bit of a character too.”

Out of the mouths of babes, or at least 13-year olds…

I am doomed, I tell you, doomed.

More Plumbing fun

As I was writing that last entry, little did I know that the plumbing in the main bathroom was planning a revolt! The diverter that switches the flow from tub to shower suddenly got very hard to turn and would not completely switch from tub to shower. Again with an old house you never know what you are going to find when you embark on repairs. I disassembled the faucet, with a little help from a rubber mallet and in spite of my vast collection gaskets and washers, nothing in my stock fit. The next stop, on the next day was a to the local Home Depot, when I showed the core to the clerk. He said that they didn’t carry that part but suggested some possible solutions. I shuffled through the washer and gasket selection, choosing a few that I thought might work with some alterations I also checked out what replacement faucet assemblies were available. I didn’t relish the thought of replacing it, but I was fully prepared to do so if necessary.

After dinner on the next night I settled in to attempt repairs. With the help of my trusty Dremel tool, I shaved and drilled the washers to match the worn ones. With great anticipation I reassembled the faucet. Victory denied! It still didn’t work correctly. After several tried at taking it apart again and tweaking and readjusting (and spraying my self with water) it was obvious that nothing I could do would make it work, so I gave up, consigned to the task of replacing the entire faucet assembly. I returned to the Home Depot the next day. But before springing for the new faucet assembly, I returned to the parts department, where upon I discovered a book that listed a wide variety of faucet cores complete with illustrations of each one. Clutching my worn part in one hand I went through the book page by page comparing it to the photos. Wonder of wonders, the part was listed in the catalogue! Miracle of Miracles, the part was in stock, although buried on the rack. Mentally dope-slapping the clerk who had told me the previous day that the part was unavailable, I left the store a much happier guy. That evening I was able to install the replacement core in about 15 minutes, familiar as I now was with the assembly procedures. The best part of all; the thing worked perfectly when I was done.

There is a lesson in there somewhere let me know if you figure it out. I was just pleased that I didn’t have to do a major repair.

As a footnote, as I was taking the garbage out to the curb at 7:15 this morning, I ran into a gentleman who had grown in the house from 1937 to 1961. He is now a college professor but occasionally stops by the neighbor hood just to see what has changed. we chatted for a few minutes, he mentioned that he was happy to see the house still standing after so many houses had fallen to disrepair and were demolished in the 70's. I joked that I was surprised as well as it was a money pit and that the house required constant attention to keep it from falling down. He retorted that some things never change, it was a money pit back when he lived there and he remember his father and his brothers doing the same thing 50 years earlier.

Picture: First Church of Roxbury, built in 1803 is the 5th 'meeting house' to be built on this site. It is the oldest wood frame church in Boston The 4th meeting house on the site (1746 - 1803) was the location from which William Dawes departed as one of the three riders on the night of April 8, 1775 to warn Lexington that the British were coming. The other two riders were Paul Revere and Samuel Prescott.

Running as Fast As I Can

Let me see if I can rescue this blog. I started this entry almost a week ago, but time and inspiration has transpired against me.

3/30/09
So spring seems to be in the air finally, the light is right anyhow, all we need is the warmer weather. We have been opening the windows a crack just to get some fresh air in the house. It is just a little too chilly yet to really open them wide and air the place. Other signs of spring: I have a sudden urge to clean. It might be the change in the light; suddenly all the dirt and smudges show. The previous Sunday I was wiping the kitchen counters after breakfast and looked at the cupboards. Before I knew it I had the Murphy’s Oil soap out and had was scrubbing down the cabinets from top to bottom. I think that the same thing must have affected Mrs. as she decided to scrub out the refrigerator after we got home from the grocery store. Now if it would just inspire the boy in the same way.

Whatever the force is that dives the urge to clean also seems to be awakening all sorts of slumbering urges. All of the ignored home maintenance and repair projects are also coming to the surface. I had planed to take care of at least one of the indoor jobs over the winter break, but entropy set in and I accomplished almost none of what I had planned, the bedroom remains unpainted, and the wall in the lower bathroom still has a large hole in it resulting from the major plumbing repair job last fall.

Of course there are the outdoor projects now are added to the list, and that doesn’t include the garden and yard projects. The front porch needs some TLC, and the shed over the back door has some rot at the bottom. Both are projects that have either the easy solution or the more complicated one. In both cases, I can disassemble them and rebuild them using mostly new materials or only remove and replace the badly worn or broken parts. Both have their advantages, the first solution is more expensive, and also means it should last longer before the next deeded repair. The latter solution is should be faster and cheaper but living in a 135 year old house, one never knows what surprises on may find when you start taking things apart. One can easily end up doing the complete rebuild anyway. Thinking about all the projects that need to be done around the house, I could easily take the summer off and do nothing but home repair and maintenance. It is kind of tempting; I think I will check my vacation accrual.

Before undertaking any major projects, I still need to get thru the next few weeks. There are multiple events every week until the end of the month. The previous couple of weeks were no different, with the added complication of the boy being on spring break for tow weeks both Mrs. and I were able take a few days off to keep him busy, but he also spent a few days home alone as well. He doesn’t seem to mind that, but it isn’t something I like to do if it can be avoided.


So in the last couple of weeks a wide variety of events have taken place in the theatre we have seen a local community school talent show, an a-cappella group competition, a student production of Into the Woods and a lecture by author and nutritionist Michael Pollan. The latter was sponsored by the campus office of special events and was expected to be a very popular event. In the planning stages, to make sure that it was well attended, they distributed 50 % more tickets than there are seats in the theatre. When I found that out I protested, asking them what they were going to do when 700 people showed up for a and event with only 600 seat. They suggested that they just stand in the back. I explained that state law dictates that the fire department dictates what the capacity of the space is and that state law does not allow us to exceed that. Having worked in theatre for most of my adult life and having been a theatre manager for the last 7 or 8 years, audience safety is rule one, and the particularly hit home when a few years back when a night club in Rhode Island burned down killing over 100 people. It is one area in which I will not compromise. They were finally convinced that they needed to have overflow spaces for the potential 300 additional attendees. The day before the event, I got an email from one someone in the upper levels of the administration asking if they could forgo the reading of the fire safety and evacuation procedures before the event because it seemed ‘amateurish’. I explained that is wasn’t my call and that it was required by state law, and then emailed them a link to that statute in the state code.

I don’t think I made any friends with the organizers on this event.
It just galls me that the administration would bring in a speaker whos' principal theme is food safety, but then will turn around and want ignore all the safety rules set in place to protect the audience at the same event. I don’t think anyone got the disconnect.

For all the trouble, the event went off very well. They begrudgingly abbreviated the fire safety announcement, but did it never the less, and the over flow spaces were packed nearly to capacity, with a total attendance in all spaces at well over 800! I felt vindicated after that.

Picture: Dillaway-Thomas House: built around 1750 is was the parsonage for the First Church of Roxbury. It served as General John Thomas headquarters during the the seige of Boston 1775-1776. The city almost tore it down in 1927, in order to build a school on the site. The residents protested and the school was built around the house.

The Slab and other Stuff

Standpipes Waiting
The calendar says that spring begins today and there is a little bit of spring in the air this week, but it isn’t June yet.

I am trying not to write about the weather, but this time of the year living in New England IS about the weather. Though spring be around the corner it is never too late to snow, and we have had two snowstorms in the last week or so. Two weeks ado Sunday we had an overnight storm that dumped close to a foot of snow on the ground. That shut down the city for a day, by midweek it warmed into the 50’s and melted most of the snow. But come Monday, it was cold again and we got another 2 inches or wet sloppy snow. And then once more we re back to warm weather, currently it is in the low 40’s and rain.

But that isn’t really what I wanted to write about. More it is the secondary phenomenon related to all this snow that I call ‘the slab’. This is when a given car owner is too neglects to sweep the snow off the roof of their car. On the day of a fresh snow, this isn’t really a problem if one goes driving around it generally blows of the roof of the car creating a mini blizzard behind the car as one goes down the road. It is when the vehicle has been sitting for a few days and the weather has been through a couple of freeze / thaw cycles that it really turns into what I call The Slab. The layer of fluffy snow has turned into a solid slab of frozen crystallized snow, and if you are lucky and the thaw cycle was warm enough, there may be a couple of inches of solid iced on the bottom. At this point it can weight hundreds of pounds if it is on a large car or SUV.
A Mini-Slab

The fun part comes when one drives down the road with the Slab on the roof. If the roof of the car is smooth, that mass of snow and ice can let loose at almost any time; favorite points are on curves or at stops. A sudden stop can send the slab sliding down in front of the front windshield, sometimes taking out the wipers as it slides. A sudden start can leave it in a pile on the road forcing the car behind to drive over or around it. More spectacular is for one to take a curve fast and dump the load on into the oncoming lane. Hopefully the mass doesn’t hit another car but merely crashes to the road. He most terrifying version of the slab is found on the roof of semi trailers going 70 miles per hour when it suddenly catches the wind, flies into the air, breaks into chunks and then scatters about the highway. It is kind of the cluster bomb effect if you happen to be following closely.

Ah, life in the fast lane. I am not sure why I went into all of that – it has just been in the back of my min for some time.

Beyond that, life ha been following it’s own rhythm. The day-to-day routine has been the theme. Work for me has been pretty busy with multiple events most every week. There was a brief pause this past week with spring break upon the university where I work. At the same time it is the boy’s spring break as well. I have been able to take a couple days off and work from home, which means emails and telephone calls, but with things slow at work that is pretty easy to do. The trick has been to keep the boy busy, other wise he will spend most of his waking hours at his computer in Second Life, where he has a 2nd and 3rd and possibly 4th life acting out fantasies related to Star Trek, Dr. Who and Stargate. It is fine in moderation, but we know how members of the family can be about certain things. The concern is next week, which he also has off, but I am back to work being busy with multiple events. Mrs. is planning to take a couple of days off to tend to him next week; we will see what they have planned.

Speaking of the boy, we got his mid term grades a few weeks ago, and he was crashing and burning in math and science. About the same time we got an email from his math teacher telling us that he had only gotten a 29 on his most recent test, and she wanted to set up a conference with his advisor and us to see what we needed to do about his falling grades. We knew what to do: no drama next term, it was going to be study hall in the afternoons and we were going to sit over him while he did his home work to make sure that he was doing it all and doing it correctly. He protested mightily saying such things as, ‘I am going to be an actor, what do I need algebra for?’ you can guess how far that argument went. After several arguments over several days, we agreed that we would not restrict him from doing the spring play if he got it together and got his grade back up before the end of the term. He was satisfied with that compromise. A few weeks pass, and his grades arrived the other day. Miracle of miracles, he did manage to get his grades in science and math back up. It was up to a C, but it was passing grade. His teachers in both subjects commented on his sudden turnaround. For now he has earned the right to participate in the spring show, and we are still going to meet with his teachers, and formulate a plan to make sure that he doesn’t backslide.

By the way, my counter argument about actors not needing math went something like this, when I was about his age, I wanted to be an actor too, I went to college and studied theatre and acted, but to make money to go to school I started working in the scene shop at my college. I found out that I was much better at technical theatre that I was at acting, which in turn lead mea to career as a technical director, production manager and theatre manager, and without decent match skill, I never would have accomplished that.

Playing Catch-up.

Ok, where was I?


Dear blog it seems that I have been neglecting you lately, It hasn’t been willful I assure you; life has been a little busy lately. Both work and family have been keeping me going most of the waking hours, and when I do have some time I am usually just to tired to actually write. On top of that, I have come down with one of the many colds that are going around, and that succeeded in sapping both my physical and well as intellectual energy, such as it is.

Let me think what has gone on. As I mentioned, work has been pretty busy. Last week there were 3 different events in 2 days, this week wasn’t quite so busy, but I have been having lots of meeting with the various groups who are putting on events. Sometimes I have a little trouble keeping them straight, I have been working with two groups that are producing similar events, one for the Caribbean student population and another for Latin American Student Association. There is a little crossover between the two groups, both of the contact people are young women with an accent, and for the life of me I keep confusing which group I am dealing with. Life is tough!

Beyond the usual student organizations doing their culture and dance shows, there have been a couple of different events that have broken the monotony. The first of the bunch was a puppet show being presented as a fundraiser for the children’s school that is part of the early childhood development program at the university a nursery school. Unfortunately it was an early Saturday morning event, that seems to be the best time to do shows for kids I was out of the house by 9am I arrived the puppeteers were already setting up, being an itinerant company they were well prepared and self-sufficient. I chatted with them while they were setting up. I have always had an appreciation for puppets. In my early career I worked and technical director for what is now a leading children’s theatre company and as a result I fell in with a whole variety of performers and other people who worked to entertain children. In amongst that community were a number of puppet people. I can honestly state that I got that know some of them and their puppets pretty well. More that once I found myself having a conversation with a particular puppet as opposed to the puppeteer behind it. I am a sucker for suspension of disbelief. Anyway, we had a little common ground to chat on. They were doing a piece called the Dragon King based on the Chinese folk tale, and while the dialog was recorded and sounded a little forced, their actually puppetering was quite skill full, and the puppets were particularly beautiful, in fact they left me a little slack jawed when I saw them the first time backstage. The pictures taken with my cell phone don’t really do them justice.

In the same weekend the theatre also hosted a local film festival. There were a few student entries along with some professional contributions as well. The most intriguing of them all was a student production called Honk: No Noise is Illegal. It is a 12-minute short documenting the annual Honkfest that is held in nearby Somerville over Columbus Day weekend. The event itself might be described as a community marching bad festival. But that would be understating the events, which more approaches what would happen if you had an anarchist convention with marching bands. I couldn’t find a copy of the movie online but here is a video that captures some of the energy of the event.


The films followed by a live musical performance by jazz drummer Terri Lyn Carrington who just happens to be a local girl gone famous. She is now teaching at Berklee College of Music. It was nice to have professional musicians on stage.


I wish that those were indicative of the event that have taken place in the theatre, but that is not the case. We did have the University president speak about the financial state of the school. The news while not good didn’t turn out to be as bad as some had expected. The schools endowment has lost 25% of its value like so many other institutions, (some of that to Bernie Madoff) but unlike the big brother school in the neighborhood like Harvard and MIT, thanks to some conservative use of the endowment, the cuts will be minimal. There are no big layoffs planned, and other than some belt tightening no major cuts are planned, at least for the time being.

The big thing that has been keeping me occupied the past two weeks it he boy and the school play. His school mounted a very ambitious production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, in which he was cast as Oberon. If you don’t know, Oberon is the king of the fairies, and it is a pretty big role, and he managed it quite well. His performance was appropriately regal and he had a good grasp of the language. The latter is sometimes difficult even for adults when dealing with Shakespeare. The boy seems to have some ability, dare I saw talent for acting; he is able to find the ‘moment’ where the text and the character meet, and he seems to have pretty strong stage presence, and he likes being on stage. In everyday life he is a little shy and reserved, and the stage seems to be where he can let lose a bit. That sounds like a familiar scenario. The big issue with this particular character was what to do with his hair. Waist length hair on a 13-year-old boy does create some costuming problems. Fortunately his mother, resourceful as she is every day in dealing the mop, came ups with a solution. She formed two braids at his ears trailing forward and then wrapped them around the front of his head pining them at his hair with about a thousand bobby pins, the addition of some gold bric-a-brac and viola a crown! A boy and his crown

I think I am back on a regular schedule now, between all the events at work and taxing the boy to and from rehearsal, I think I may have some time of my own in for the next few weeks. Spring break begins this weekend at the university where I work, and the boy has that week and the next off from his school for break. Mrs. and I have been scouring our schedules up the days to decide who takes what days off to tend to him and see what days we can take him to work with us. This is always a bit of a trial. In past years we have sent him off to the grand parents for at least part of the time he was off. That really wasn’t an option this time. I foresee lots of museums in the future.

I mentioned a while back that I was thinking about blogging about music, and hat comment brought positive reviews from for a couple of readers. In turn I have been giving it a lot more thought and I am working on an approach and trying to decide just how and whom I should write about. I read a number of music blogs and I am often impressed by the writing and insights that they bring to the topic. I don’t know that I am capable of that, but I will try to bring my own thought, likes and dislikes. May taste in music is varied and leans to the obscure, so we shall see how it goes.

Let me wrap this meander up. And hopefully I will get back on a regular schedule with a little more focus as to topic and subject matter.