We went to a wedding reception for our friends Jeff & Andrea today. They got married a while back, with a big party later. Today was “later.”
This photo is not my best of the evening, nor perhaps the most interesting, but it does capture the feel of Adolphus Busch Hall at Harvard, the venue for the evening’s festivities.
May 15
“Doug, why are you taking a picture of the phone? Isn’t that the same phone you’ve had for years?” Well, it is and it isn’t. I found an additional handset for our phone system (which already has 2 cordless handsets) so we can have one on each floor.
Notice that this one says “handset 3.” The best part: $30.
May 14
A funny thing happens when you move a big CRT TV like ours: it goes out of alignment. The TV is facing a different direction with respect to the earth’s magnetic field, and plus I suspect getting jostled around on the truck and stairs didn’t do it any favors. In this picture, you can see that the text is crooked — it’s not the photo, it’s the actual picture on the TV itself.
I dug up my instructions and notes on this TV’s service mode and corrected this issue tonight.
May 13
We went over to Michael & Sabrina’s tonight for the Lost season finale. We brought cookie dough from the cookies-in-a-jar mix that Sabrina had given us as a housewaming present.
May 12
We lost power tonight, just as I was starting dinner. I plugged in the rotisserie motor, turned it on, and pow, it stopped. I figured I had blown a circuit breaker, but no, a truck had hit a light pole. Fortunately, I was able to simulate a rotisserie by turning the chicken 1/4 turn every 5 minutes or so. And so Lis and I had dinner by candlelight.
We didn’t get power back until about 9:15 pm.
May 11
Lis bought fresh fava beans at Russo’s. We were supposed to have them later in the week, but I was so excited at the prospect that we had to have them tonight. Plus they go really well with beef.
Did you know that fava beans are the only old-world (European-native) bean? The rest came from Asia (soy), Africa (black-eyed peas) or the Americas (most of the others).
May 10
A number of the systems in our new house are in good condition and functional, but dated. The kitchen is, of course, the prime example, but today’s entry concerns the alarm system. As near as I can tell, it was put in 24 years ago (prior to the previous owners), and was state of the art for the time. Here I’m showing the back of one of the door/window units.
But now, only the original, expensive service company is willing to monitor it, so we are replacing it. We’ll gain a few features — pet-friendly motion sensors, water detector in the basement, etc — as well as more modern monitoring features.
May 9
You know how, in a certain genre of crime movies, the evil-but-likeable villain kills somebody in a motel room, and stuffs the body into a plastic trash bag in the shower?
Our master bath’s shower has had this trash bag in it for the past few days (full of dated wallpaper, not body parts, I promise) and I can’t help but think of that kind of movie every time I see it.
May 8
The new house has a pretty huge amount of closet space, though some of it is not that useful. Lis has been asking me to put up shelving in this closet since we bought it, last weekend. Tonight I got it done.
May 7
When I walked into work this morning, I was drawn to the view from our big conference room, as I often am. But today the view was totally different:
This is Boston Harbor. In the fog. Can’t you tell?