Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to the Dad's that stop by this blog.

Ian is home until Wednesday. With Carol away yesterday when Ian arrived he and I went out for supper and eventually settled in the living room where we watched the Sox and a movie, Yes Man starring Jim Carrey. Quite funny, enjoyed it quite a bit.

Chilling with the pets

It's a talk to the animals night here on Ledge Hill, Carol is away with Lois visiting family up north for the weekend and will be attending the Swedish Colony's Swedish Midsommar Celebration. For me tonight, a little blogging, watch some Redsox baseball, a little reading, maybe a movie DVD amongst other possibilities. Though I left work early the dogs have been in the pen during a very heavy period of rain. They should dry out by Wednesday.

It has been a good week, work has had a good pace, getting my workouts in at Planet Fitness, began an online tutorial on building a website using a content management system (CMS), lunch at Marcy's. The CMS that I'm trying to learn is called Drupal. I'll need it for my part-time job as we update our website from an outdated Microsoft FrontPage to a more multi-user friendly method for people to add content using their web browser. Long over due. With a wet forecast for the weekend there may not be many things to do outside but I have plenty to keep me busy whether inside or out.

Who says they're no true Mavericks anymore?

I saw one today.

I had just gotten a couple of blocks from the office today when my eye was caught by a very familiar yet long ago sight, a Ford Maverick. I'll bet I haven't seen one for over thirty years when I was provided a four door during a repair of my own car. I know - what's the big deal, not like it's a Mustang, a GTO or a 57 Chevy. Just a mass produced car that came out when I was in my early teens. What I really remember was seeing the advertisements constantly on the evening television shows. The hook at the time was that you could drive a new Ford for less than $2,ooo ($1995). A personnel nostalgic moment.

phoning ahead

After going into the office for the morning yesterday I swung over to the mall to check out cellphones firsthand that were available from my carrier at their biggest store in the region. The young salesman was trying to steer me to the "smart" phones which include special service plans to account for internet and other high data transfer capabilities. I ended up asking to see the Sony Ericsson's as the one I have gives me what I want at this time, so an upgraded phone with the same system makes the most sense to me. Also I'm not switching just yet, maybe a month or two at least. Presently what I have is a two year old W580i. It's been a good phone and comes with several organizational programs, camera, video, FM radio, mp3 player and does have some internet capabilities if I chose to use them. The one I'm leaning towards is the W760a, a little wider, bigger screen, higher megapixel camera, better keyboard and pretty much the same operating system features. I did walkaway with the salesman's biz card, I'll lean it against the computer screen when I place the order online.

If I'm losing my mind it must be Friday

Do you look forward to Fridays? I don't. Generally I try to only look to the day ahead of me but today I lost my mind to Friday. The work I was doing was from all over the place, with all kinds of expectations. Sprinkle in a smattering of interruptions, blend in phone calls from the netherworld, weird requests from familiar contacts. I was able to get a lot done even with the craziness but by late afternoon I was mentally toasted - I'm going in tomorrow morning, Saturday, while it's quiet and I can think and sort out where my workload is at, try to get a couple of things done so Monday and Tuesday commitments are in good shape. It's too bad in a way, the weather for Saturday is suppose to be sunny, Sunday is rainy, probably should go in then but I'll forget too much from today that I need to review and make lists from.

Right smack into June

June is well underway and should prove to be a busy month in it's own right. Carol and I continue managing to get three workouts a week in at Planet Fitness. On Monday Ian began his research project and moved into an shared apartment that is sublet to him for two months. He was home briefly for the weekend as he attended an OA event at the local boy scout camp, there's another one this coming weekend. Before heading back to New Hampshire today he joined us as we attended the baptism of our nephew and his wife's son. They had a get together at their place afterwards where he grilled up chicken and beef kabobs with other goodies to eat. Yesterday was yard work day and we tried to get control of the lawn with minor success. I also tried out the new fire pit for the first time without burning down the house or any local villages. Back to today, after returning from the cookout I had a quick nap then tried to get both the PT Cruiser and the truck vacuumed and washed. Successful on the PT, the truck... well it's a truck, who cares?

More than one way to get cozy on a June evening.

Well come on... the ball isn't going to throw itself you know!?!

Her we are at the baptism.

Some of the guests at the cookout enjoying the lake and sunshine.

Ian enjoying a conversation.

Carol, Lois and Ian.

Self made stimulas program

Still making an adjustment from the high winds of labor over the last month or so to finding ways to keep somewhat productively busy. There hadn't been much regular work coming my way at the office this week. A little bit for several small proposals and practically nothing for ongoing projects. This has given me time to install some software upgrades I've been sitting on since early April. The Adobe Creative Suite 4 is the big star which upgrades me from CS2. It's the standard version which is plenty of horsepower for the work I do. This package includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat Pro 9. The other upgrade is actually my favorite general all-round graphics software, CorelDraw, this is version X4 (actually 14). I upgraded from version 11, I have version 12 on my home computer. I can do a lot of work quickly with it which is a suite of software itself as it comes bundled with Photo Paint and CorelTrace. Though good, Photo Paint is not as good as the gorilla in industry, Photoshop. But it works well with CorelDraw. CorelDraw works as both a linework illustrating program with page layout capabilities. For page layout nothing beats InDesign. The industry standard for computer illustration is Illustrator and try as I might to learn to like it the ease and speed I work with CorelDraw makes it difficult to switch. The problem is that graphic designers in other offices use Illustrator and don't even have CorelDraw so sharing my files with them though not needed often is barely possible though CDraw can save as Illustrator files but the conversion is not perfect. Because of this I feel compelled to try to get better at Illustrator, it just doesn't feel natural.

The Marvelous Month of May

In spite of how busy I was May was a terrific month. Sure we had plenty of rain and cool temperatures. The blackflys were ravaging, picked off a few deer ticks here and there. Meanwhile, The leaves on the trees came out, flowers have bloomed, been mowing some grass, these things I crave after a long winter. Carol did some planting around the deck we built last year, Ian finished his Junior year at college, the dogs and cat passed their yearly physicals. Carol finished Ian's kilt which he wore to a Camporee. We went camping for a long weekend and I started a new SciFi book. Every time I step out of a building I look around me, glance up to the sky and take a deep breath of spring air. Can't bottle it so I'll enjoy it by the moment.