April

April / May 2004

The month started off with a visit by Janet and Bill Garber. We immediately put Bill to work in the yard spreading seven yards (= ALOT) of bark mulch. But they did get to see newly renovated Jones Tavern and the Faulkner house.

We also saw this freaky woodpecker whacking away at a local tree... it's chicken-sized.

But mostly April was about computers. With the addition of a new laptop for Kate, dubbed "Hedwig," and my new desktop (right) immediately dubbed "Voldemort" (because of the evil black exterior, eerie glowing lights, and flashy "Z" across the front), we now have eight computers in the house. The desktop was kind of amusing; I ordered it (and Kate's laptop) from IBuyPower.com, a small retailer that builds custom systems to specification (highly recommended, by the way... saved thousands). I went for the cheapest case that automatically came with a 420 Watt power supply, as I'm running a high end Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card. Well, the case (as you can see) has a large transparent window and lots of neon lights that glow brightly whenever the machine is on. This lead to a heated debate between Will, who felt it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen, and Kate, who wanted to cover it with a sheet to avoid displaying extreme tackiness. My official position is that it was the cheapest solution and how it looks isn't important. I rarely turn out all the lights late at night just to see how cool it looks in the dark.

This also provided the opportunity to do some networked gaming (we have 100 Mbps ethernet wired through the house) with my brother and his kids (four of the computers are set up in the kid's "office").

In other news, Brie's track team (the girl's team) finished the season undefeated. Brie did the 100 meter dash and the 4 x 100 meter relay. The boy's team only lost one match, so everyone was pretty pleased.

Will in the meantime continues to play Lacrosse and has started doing USTA sponsored tennis tournaments. His current standing is 150 for his age group in New England.

Memorial Day weekend (still ongoing while I type this), we went to the Paradise City Art Festival, held in Central Mass. Pictures below. The question is, is it Art? You can vote using the hyperlink on the bottom, then see the tabulated results from other voters (I'm tabulating them by hand, so it will be a day or two before your votes are added)

But, before that, and a little out of sequence, there was the Memorial Day Squirt Gun Party...