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Trimming the Tree

We were a little late this year putting up the tree. I've been renovating the dining and living room since this summer which is why you haven't seen to many updates on the old blog. I found all sorts of surprises and what not that are taking more time than I thought to overcome. However, the room is almost done. I still have to sand and paint the trim and we still need to replace that nasty carpet. We are not sold on the color scheme in that room. It could be the fact that the color of the carpet just clashes badly with the walls. Perhaps when the carpet is gone it will look better?

Morgan and Kumar's Christmas Special

This year Morgan was in a "Holiday" Concert because you can't have a Christmas concert anymore - that would not be politically correct. So this video is anything but PC. Enjoy!

My new hobby

Sorry, I didn't post anything in November. I've been rather busy with the holiday and working on the living/dining room. I've got a lot of raw video to edit of the kids and what we have been doing so stay tuned. In the mean time here is a hobby I am thinking of taking up. It might be a little on the expensive side.

Morgan's Halloween Birthday Special

Morgan's birthday is on Sept 11th but she wanted a Halloween party. We felt most parents would not be able to find a costume in Sept so we waited for Oct. She turned 7 this year which made me feel a little old until one of the parents at the party said "Its was tough when I turned 40" I really wanted to say "I wouldn't know" I decided my comment would not be appreciated.

Tower Hill

Over the labor day weekend we went to Tower Hill. It's a botanical garden, which does have a hill but there is no tower on the hill or near the hill so I don't know where the name came from. My guess would be they wanted something that would make you think of England. Which it did for me since its the name of the tube stop near the Tower of London.

The garden is setup to make you think of an English botanical garden. It reminded me of what Kew Gardens just outside of London would have looked like while it was under construction. You see the management at Tower Hill have this 8 stage plan and they are starting contruction on stage 4. They would like to be done in 2038 or something like that. So I guess I'll wait till then to go back. What they have done is very nice and I think it was time well spent.

Rocket Man 2: Bigger is Better

Morgan and I made better 2 liter bottle rockets. We added fins and nose cones. They flew much better then regular bottles, but their flight path was very unpredictable and we ended up spending a lot of time searching for the rockets. We really needed to make the body of the rockets longer and attach our fins better. We also tried adding water to the rockets and that helped make then go much higher.

Anyway Morgan had a great time even though we lost her rocket that day. I did eventually find her rocket which had landed on the far side of the house in a trash can. What are the odds we would hit the trash can?

Story Land 2

Okay here is the happy sappy video you were expecting. Before you watch it you must know two facts

1.Since Micheal Jackson has passed away Morgan has become a fan of his music. She knows the chorus to Annie are you okay. I don't have any Jackson songs but I do have the remake of her favorite song so I played that even though it does not tie into the video at all

2.Katie's dad created a theme song for King Kone based on the King Tut song sung by Steve Martin. Basically just replace King Tut with King Kone and you have the song. Alright now you have the inside story. Enjoy

Story Land

To kick off the summer we packed up the wally wagon and drove up to the white mountains to check out story land. Now anyone who has talked to me or seen my facebook comments knows I was dreading the vacation. Who wants to be dragged up to a small amusement park in the middle of the woods geared towards small children then asked to shell out too much money for crap we don't need. To make matters worse Katie had me practically drive up to Canada and come back down, so the trip took forever. It was not scenic as planned as it rained the whole time. In the end it was not nearly as bad as I had feared. The threat of rain kept the crowds down so at least we were not sitting in lines for too long. The bed and breakfast we stayed at was nice. It only rained at the very end of our stay at Story Land so we were very fortunate.

On our way back we stoped at Clarks Trading Post but only checked out the gift shop. Did you know they want 17 bucks for an adult! That is crazy! The whole Clarks trading post 'adventure' is outdoors and it was threatening to rain so we decided to skip it. We then ended up in Merrimack were we got ice cream at the legendary King Kone stand and then checked out the Anheuser Busch Brewery. Sadly there are no Ompa Loopa's or a river of Bud Light. However, there were free samples at the end of the tour.

In keeping with my torture theme I have made a video based on a suggestion for the US department of defense to use as an alternative to water boarding - the threat of being forced into going to Story Land and outlet shopping is far more effective then the simulation of drowning any day. Gwen was very troubled when she watched the video for the first time so caution is advised.

This Old House

I was sick and tired of our closet in the "master" bedroom. There is nothing master about my bedroom other then Katie and I sleep there. The closet is a walk in closet but it is not organzied well so you can only access the front half. The back half becomes a black hole where stuff gets lost. Plus the old plaster is starting to crumble, so its time to rip it out. Here are the highlights.

American as Apple Pie

We had a lot of photos from Easter so I have broken them up into two videos.

Did you know that apples are not native to North America? I didn't but I recently saw a PBS (public broadcasting station) special on New England Native Americans during the time period the first English settlers where settling the area in the 1630s. Anyway the Pilgrims brought apples, and used to eat apple pies for breakfast. I totally agree that Apple Pie is a breakfast meal not just a desert. Of course their pies didn't have nearly as much sugar as a modern apple pie.



As many of you know I had a very tough time finding the supplies needed to die eggs last year while we lived in London. Apparently that is not a tradition they observe. I called around to several grocery stores and not one had white chicken eggs. I did find duck eggs which were a little larger then chicken eggs and more money but they did the trick. I don't recall how we came about the kit to die the eggs. I think Katie had it shipped over. The stupid things we do for kids.

Rocket Man

Morgan and I made a 2 liter soda bottle launcher powered by compressed air. We didn't do anything special to the bottle like fix a nose cone on it or anything. I figure that is a another project for another weekend. Plus we only had one bottle and I didn't want her to accidentally put a hole in the bottle and ruin the experiment.

Oh and we found out that if you fill the bottle with 1/3 water it goes much higher or further depending on your perspective. It seemed like adding more didn't do much for you and at some point the performance degraded. I suggest if you make one of these that you do not aim it straight up as the water then rains down on you.

Next time I'll aim at the street in hopes of hitting a car. We shot the rocket many more times then you will see in the movie but Morgan's filming skills still need some practice.

If you look to the right I added a new feature called "Followers". I'm not exactly sure what it does, but its nice to know people are watching my videos. I also added a RSS feature as well. Hopefully these new tools will help notify you when I have added a video.

Egg-tas-tick

I've been spending this cold winter doing a lot of inside home improvement projects. Painting, fixing walls, a little electrical that type of thing. This weekend however, I decided Morgan and I would do some experiments. Good quality educational time together. I don't know if she actually got anything out of it but she enjoyed it. We made contraptions to hold an egg and keep it safe while being dropped from a high point on the highschool bleachers surrounding the football field. Football is an important sport at my old highschool. Let me correct that American Football is important. I don't even know if they have a soccer team(football to everyone else).

Wha??? You call that a snow storm??? Rubbish!

London gets a few inches of snow and the whole place shuts down. Pathetic the whole lot of you. Man I wish I was there so I could see it. I imagine I would have been the only one to show up to work not thinking it was a major event. Then I'd wonder where everyone was. Of course I still wouldn't of logged into the phones. I'll never forget what Jodie (UK co-worker) said to me when I had less then a month to go. You do know how to log in to the phones - don't you? My response "I'm supposed to log in?" Oh well I wasn't about to start then. I'm not much for the phones. Ah memories

Xmas 08

Here it is...what you've been waiting for. Another real video. For Christmas I received a camcorder so I can start doing different types of videos. Pretty snazzy!

It was a year ago now that we arrived in London on Jan 1st 2008. I had to work the very next day. What a disaster. I was so jet lagged and my clients were not in the mood to give any slack. I think my successors learned from my lesson and they have given themselves time to adjust.

The person who is there now was shocked to find that London is basically closed on Sundays. Most of the stores are only open for a few hours in the middle of the day. Its most annoying, but its one of those things you get so used to that we planned around it. I never thought to warn her. Opps.

There are many things I miss from London. I miss being able to hop on the tube or bus and get around. I miss not having to shovel snow, and not having to drive 30minutes to get to a store. We can't find fish and chips that taste anything like that greasy chip shop on bethnal green run by the Asian couple. Lets not forget about the Indian take away. You just can't find that here in the sticks. Most of all I miss having stuff to do. There was always something going on and something to see.

One thing I no longer miss is the BBC. We signed up for Direct TV and one of the channels is BBC America. I get to see my favorite show Top Gear. Joy!

The Ice Storm of '08

Okay, I'm sorry I haven't posted in some time. The holidays and winter weather have kept me away. A few weeks ago we had a freak ice storm that sent us back to the stone age. Here is a poem describing the incident. I can not take credit for it but I thought funny.


Twas two weeks before Christmas and all through the town
it rained and it froze and the trees all fell down.
The wires that were strung on utility poles
snapped like a twig and the houses all froze.

We got our selves nestled all snug in our bed
while visions of warmer days danced in our head,
and me in my thermals and Pa in his cap
stayed huddled together for a bone chilling nap.

The moon on the ice made a crystalline glow
and we thought to ourselves, just how long can this go?
When what to our wondering eyes did appear
but our son with some coffee and donuts and cheer.

We could see our white breath in the darkness above
and deep under the covers I searched for my love.
His feet, they were frozen and so was his head ---
made me think to myself that he just might be dead.

The days passed so slowly, we must be insane
as we waited and wondered and called out by name
"On Thursday, on Friday, on Saturday (shit!)
on Sunday, on Monday, on Tuesday (please quit!)
on Wednesday, and Thursday and Friday (oh dread!)
the kerosene fumes must have gone to our head.

To add to the pleasure of winter's delight
two snowstorms came by - 18 inches of white.
The snowing and blowing made things bad to worse
and we prayed to the heavens our pipes wouldn't burst.

Pa’s eyes now were sunken, his expression --- not merry,
his cheeks had a pallor, his nose like a cherry.
The odd little smile on his face wasn't fun
and he often was mumbling "go get my gun".

Then a rap on the door, and the fireman said,
"Are you sick, are you sane, and is anyone dead?
There's a shelter, there's warmth, you can come if you're able,
we have showers and kindness and food on the table" ---
and we looked at each other and thought --- "what the heck?"
yeah ... eleven days later you FINALLY check!

On night number twelve we heard the faint roar
of a convoy of trucks and we ran to the door.
To the top of the poles, to the stretch of the cable ---
please bring us your power just as fast as you' re able!

They spoke not a word, but went straight to their work
and the power came on with a hum and a jerk.
They heard us exclaim, as they drove out of sight ---
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!
WE HAVE HEAT! WE HAVE LIGHT!