Fast paced weekend

It was a pretty intense week at the old office, several proposals and PowerPoint presentations kept me hopping so by the time Carol and I got home Friday evening my brain felt like it had been through a veg-o-matic. Once we checked out the household we loaded the dogs up in the truck and took off for Windham. Carol wanted to pick up some mulch for a weekend flower bed project so we stopped and ate a couple of sandwiches at Subway then swung over to Lowe's Garden Center. She bought rubber mulch, a new one on me, and a roll of ground cover to put under the bouncy mulch. I hope the dogs or the cat don't jump between the flowers or they may bounce a ways. Actually the rubber is thin and shredded. Once home and evening chores were taken care of we had the Redsox on TV and watched an episode we had missed earlier in the week of "Lie to Me" on Hulu.com. Hulu is a pretty cool website where you can watch many new and old TV shows, movies and documentaries for free with acceptable amounts of advertising. After we watched the show I was browsing through their "recent additions" section and came across a documentary on Don Rickles, "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project", "An Emmy winning docu-comedy about the famous stand-up comedian Don Rickles with interviews from Robin Williams, Chris Rock, Sara Silverman, Clint Eastwood, and more", released in 2008. This ran for an hour and a half and I enjoyed it very much. History and interviews intertwined with a performance of Rickles at one of the casinos in Las Vegas. It seems that I'd been watching Don Rickles for a lot of the early half of my life and he is still going strong today as you can see in this production. There was a lot about his personal life and the people that are his friends both famous and behind the scenes. Even his mother who was involved in his adult life as many of us are with our own mothers. Seeing scenes with Johnny Carson, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. brought back memories of a lot of shows we watched growing up, and era of television never to be matched again. I'd lost touch with what Rickles was about now a days and now I've caught up much to my benefit. I recommend this movie to the young and old. Meanwhile, the Sox were on the TV playing the Yankees and this began a sports theme for the weekend. The series with the Yankees, both Friday night's and Saturday afternoon's games were wild with great hitting and less than stellar pitching and the Redsox winning the those two games and the now the final game of the weekend series is taking place as I type this. The NFL draft was taking place yesterday and today so I checked in regularly to see who the Green Bay Packers were adding to their roster. The Boston Celtics playoff game today with the Chicago Bulls went into double overtime and unfortunately the Celts lost to even the seven game series at two wins each. Also today's NASCAR race was one thrilling joyride, which often enough is not usually the case. This one came down to the last lap and included an airborne crash at the finish that blew me away. Look up this video of the finish on the web if you haven't seen it. Amazing that no one was killed. Besides all this going on the weather was the best there's been so far this spring and due to a couple of side computer projects I'd work on I didn't spend as much time as I would have liked outdoors but that will change beginning this weekend.

Made any movies lately?

This weekend Lois wanted some help with how best to setup a slide show made up of a large variety of pictures of from over the years for her town's volunteer fire department's annual banquet. Carol had given me a head's up a couple of days before so I thought we'd suggest a different approach than the usual PowerPoint type production. On Windows XP and Vista computers is a nifty little program called "Windows Movie Maker" (WMM) (I'd bet there's something similar on the Apple computers). I'd used it a couple of years ago to make a little film clip take off on the "Survivorman" TV show from a piece of video I took with my digital camera. It starred Patches and myself. With WMM you can drop in video, photos and even music onto a timeline, add titles, text over the images and credits at the end among other things. In a short time Carol and I took most of the pictures from our Memorial Day Weekend hike last year, added a couple of tunes I had in mp3 format and created a seven minute vignette of our excursion. It's fun to watch and plays on Windows Media Player. The size is about 60 MBs so would fit on a memory card quite easily. So Lois came over with her laptop, we showed her what we'd done and with a little bit of guidance she had her "movie" very well under way including some interesting musical choices that are relevant to the department's activities. The banquet is this coming Sunday, Carol and I are quite anxious to hear how it is received. Did I hear "Oscar"calling?!?

The Caravan has landed...

Right back in our driveway. After all the yard work last summer and fall we're now able to park it next to the garage on the shade side. Now we can officially start planning our Memorial Day weekend trip.

A Sign of Spring

I continue to recover from my cold just in time for the weekend. Saturday is one of my favorite milestones of the season, the retrieval of the camper from winter storage.

This photo is from October 2007 when at that time I left it outside the building it would be stored in while they slide smaller rigs in before bringing ours in. Same routine as last October. So I'll get it home, level it up then Carol and I will each sit at the dining table with a cup of coffee happy to have the Caravan home.

A turn for the better... I hope!

I woke up this morning feeling like a hangover from a two day bender. No, I've never been on a two day bender - I just figured it was twice as bad as a one night bender, anyway, the blogger continues... After being on cold medication for two days my condition seemed to have taken a turn for the worst, my throat was sore. I considered staying home again but what I had going on at the office involved verbal commitments I made on several projects so I had to give it a go. By mid-morning I was doing OK but by noon I was running low mentally and energy wise. I decided to spend lunchtime laying back in my car, seat reclined, sun shining I managed to sleep about 15 minutes during the 30 minutes I spent there. I then wandered to a nearby purveyor of various coffees and grabbed a medium French roast - black, and returned to my cube. Not bad, I picked up the pace a notch, forgot a long time before about the sore throat. The cube neighbors were restless so we all kept up a lively repartee. Some unexpected work requests came, were dealt with and left. Before I knew it quitting time was at hand and I'd wrapped up the "must haves" for the day with energy to spare. Though I still feel a little raw in the throat with a bit of nose/head congestion it feels like I may be on the mend. Feeling OK is under-appreciated until you're feeling under the weather.

Head cold...

continues... I turned out a lot of work today in spite of the fog bank that was the space between my ears. Not the recommended means of operation to be sure. Between the cold medication I was taking and coffee I was up and down all day and I mean that in more ways than one.

Is this a medical clinic or an animal park

Came down with first cold I've had in over 2 and half years. All up in the sinuses. I'm using Tylenol Cold which comes with both daytime and nighttime pills. I stayed home from work today to rest up and try to shake this as quickly as possible. Aside from that and Easter this place is beginning to become a wildlife refuge. Yesterday morning it was wild turkeys in the yard - I had to spooked them twice to chase them off, their poop is quite the mess and Patches has been known to roll in it... please, not that again. Then tonight these young deer grazed for a bit right near the house. A little later there was what I think was some kind of bird, a grouse or something forging around the yard, not very big but plump, brown with black stripes down it's back kind of dark.























photos taken with my cellphone.

Happy Easter

Greetings and wishing you a Happy Easter. Today Ian and I drove to my sister Doreen's house where with a large part of our family we gathered for Easter dinner. Carol eventually joined us as Lois dropped her off with us on the way home from visiting their mother. Including Doreen's family of husband Marc and kids Harris and Deanna, brother David brought his son Danny and daughter Melissa, sister Kathy and her daughter Lindsey with boy friend Joe and brother Dennis and his lady friend Debby.

We all brought something to the table as the center piece was a large ham prepared by Doreen and Marc accompanied by mashed, an assortment of vegetables which included some very tasty parsnips. The desserts were Mom's annual Bunny Cake and Doreen's "Death by Chocolate". Talk about a chocolate high.

Kathy's son Jim stopped by briefly as he had to work this afternoon as did David's wife Carolyn who had to work into the early evening. Not with us today but in our thoughts were David's daughter Jen, living in Massachusetts, Dennis' daughter Sarah on study abroad in Europe and son Eric and our sister Judi who lives in Florida and her family.

Fitness freaking

Payed my first workout visit to Planet Fitness today. I signed Carol and I up earlier in the week. They bill themselves as the no "Judgment Zone" of fitness clubs. They are also inexpensive compared to the other national chains. Not a lot of staff wandering around and doing whatever it is they do at the other places. More of a do-it-yourself place. They do have trainers that do individual or group sessions but you pay extra for that. At the Windham, Maine location the equipment and facility seems to be up to snuff, good variety of equipment. I'll have to visit a few more times before I'll know if it gets crowded. I spoke with an acquaintance of mine that was there this afternoon, he's there weekdays at 5am and he said it's pretty busy then. I haven't figured out any particular schedule for myself, I want to get in at least three times a week. Whenever I get in there you won't see me there at 5am!

Busy weekend ahead

Thrilling stuff here... more work on the town's annual report. I've receive most of the proofed individual reports so I'll be updating the content. Not a lot of hours available today and tomorrow to work on this. I'm going into Windham today for a little while and tomorrow is Easter dinner at my sister Doreen's house. Throw in that I'm dealing with the onslaught of a cold, I haven't had one in over two years! Maybe I can dodge this one though it feels like it has a strong foothold.

Ian is home for the weekend and Carol is gone for the weekend, she and Lois have gone to visit their mother. If all works out on the trip home they may be able to join us at Doreen's for dinner.

I have several blogs in mind just a matter of freeing up a bit of time and some brain cells and I'll get on it. As sister Judi is fond of saying, "TTFN".