Author: doug

We’ve been seeing a lot of these black bugs flying around our yard. They look and act like fireflies, but don’t light up. Today I caught one to get a better look.

Evidently there are non-light-producing fireflies, and I think this may be one of them.

We went to see the 48-Hour Film Festival awards. I took this photo sphere of the venerable old Somerville Theater before the festivities.

Jeff, Kat, Bob, and I attended a Wild and Sour beer festival at Boston’s Cyclorama. This was a most enjoyable fest: not too crowded or loud, a lot of interesting beers, and few enough breweries that we could try something from each of them. The attractive venue didn’t hurt.

The little keyboard & cover Lis uses with her iPad died: several of the keys stopped working. She bought a replacement, and I thought maybe I could fix the old one and turn it into a backup. It was held together by so much glue and hidden screws that I destroyed it in the process of taking it apart. And maddeningly, I did find the problem: some broken-off bits of some of the key mechanisms stuck under some of the other keys. If Logitech had designed this thing for repair, I could have fixed it. Ah well, at least we’ll be able to recycle the battery.

 

We went to Boston Symphony Hall for a presentation of Cirque de la Symphonie. The show was awesome, and Symphony Hall is such an elegant and well-designed space.

We’ve worked hard to make our back patio a great place to sit and enjoy some peace & quiet.

The cold & wet spring has been good for our garden when it comes to vegetation, but maybe not so much for flowers. But this clematis is finally starting to show its colors.

Continuing on the theme of re-painting patio furniture from last weekend: today I refurbished our old wooden patio chairs with a coat of solid-color deck stain. I can’t believe how much better they look.

I also melted a bunch of paraffin wax into the stump-table you see here, in an effort to protect it from the elements. I hope it does better than the epoxy I used for my last attempt.

We replaced our rotting garden bench with a used one from Craigslist, and today I gave it a fresh coat of paint.

The whole thing is aluminum, but I used a textured spray paint for the faux strapping to make it look more like fabric.