all the news that isn't

Adrienne recently told me Google’s street view cars have made a second pass by our house – but the first since we’ve been living here. Evidence below.

I know all of you felt listless these last few days, since this very blog has been not working.

Actually, I just noticed this morning. Don’t know exactly how long it’s been down (other than some time after my Dec. 9th post). Odd. I was a bit worried as it was showing a database error. And while I do a weekly backup of the blog content, I’m a bit lax on backing up the all important SQL database.

I share because I know you care.

Anyway, after looking into it, it appears somehow a space was entered into the database password in my config file, so the solution was as quick and easy as the delete key.

So if you made it through all that, here’s a small reward. Last night we went to the local county zoo to check out their Christmas lights. It’s not quite the same without snow (are you listening, Mother Nature???!!!), but it was a nice little venture out.

Peacocks sleeping in the trees!

My beautiful wife!

When Adrienne and I first arrived on the East Coast in early August of 2005, we stayed in a suburb not too far from our current home. One of the first meals we had was at a little Italian restaurant there, and the experience remains with us both. It was a classic local place, where the waitress called you “hun” in her Jersey accent and knew all the customers. The food was great and the portions HUGE.

To mark the anniversary of our arrival, I’ve tried to get us back there at least once a year around that time. Turns out last August was a bit busy for us, but we finally got there yesterday after a hike in a nearby reservation. We got the same waitress as we had the very first time. (When we walked in and Adrienne saw her, she immediately got excited.) Mallory got a high chair (in which she looked hilarious, it so big and she so little). We order the Tony salad for one (it’s big enough for two) and one entree (we’ll still take half of it home). While we’re feeding Mallory her solid food dinner, the waitress comes by and remarks how she’ll be eating meatballs in no time.

Throughout the night I can’t help but think this is our Lino’s (Rockford restaurant used for Tallacksen special occasion celebrations) and wonder how that tradition began.

Anyway, here are a couple photos. Sorry for the crappy cell phone pics.

I’m sitting here listening to Bruce Springsteen sing about Santa Claus coming to town as I type this…

First official winter Nor’Easter hit last night, bringing snow to the area – before Halloween! The state of NJ declared an emergency, and the concert I was to record last night was cancelled (albeit 20 minutes before it was to start, meaning I still had been there for 6 hours of setup and soundcheck). Lots of trees down on my way home, so I suggested we go out for a walk to check the neighborhood. Naturally, we all had to get bundled up:

(from here on known as the purple starfish cosmonaut outfit) (sorry for the blurry photo, very low light + fussy baby…). Had some large-ish trees down, closing down streets.

Interesting to see the Halloween displays covered in snow and mush. (Click the photo for the big version so you can appreciate the detail of the setup.)

With most of the leaves still on trees and bushes, they were bearing a lot of weight and looking pretty sad.

This morning’s light gave us a better look at everything. Looks like we only had one big branch snap off the big pin oak in the front. The neighbor’s bushes to the left are about as half tall as they should be.

Here’s looking the other way down our street.

Here’s our patch of bamboo as seen from the train tracks. There’s still some standing, but most of it is bent over under the snow.

We’re still having large clumps of snow come off trees and hit the house, so it sounds like we’re being bombed. But otherwise we seem to have survived pretty well. Time will tell how the trees regroup. A nice practice for winter!

Short story is the clouds made for not optimum conditions – they reflected so much light from the city that you could only see the Tribute in Light (barely!) through a lens.Look on the right side of the photo. This is the best one I got, argh. It might help to click on the photo to make it bigger.

The place we went to is Eagle Rock Reservation, which has a very nice lookout point on Jersey and NYC. It also has a 9/11 tribute, and had quite the crowd there tonight as expected.

And since we got crappy photos of the tribute, here are some Mallory pics to make up for it.

And one from I think yesterday. Two well-deserved naps!

Yup, we went to the parade. A quaint little affair right in downtown Bloomfield. Out in these ‘burbs where anti-town consolidation attitude runs high, every little town has their own parade. Certainly there are bad things (mostly inefficiencies) about no town wanting to share resources/consolidate, but I do appreciate how in the middle of the biggest metropolitan area in the US, it still kinda feels like we’re a tiny little town. It’s somehow reassuring that life can be normal. Anyway, here’s the crappy cell phone pic with my wife’s beautiful head! 🙂 We kept our distance, finding a nice spot in the shade on a nice spot to sit in front of the town library. I think that’s the high school marching band going by.

Today I was doing some work outside the house (specifically looking into how to get rid of some pesky squirrels that have finagled their way into our siding) and noticed two trees severely leaning. These trees have been dead since we moved in, and it’s been in the back of my mind to get them down at some point. But while the trunk is on my side of the fence, the trees go through the fence and the whole of the trees are on my neighbor’s side. And they were leaning so much so they were depending on support of other trees and the neighbor’s house. It appeared one of the windy days this past week was enough to uproot both trees. I talked to the neighbor and asked if he minded if I took the trees down. He didn’t so I got to work with my bow saw. Heh heh. Without too much trouble I got both trees down (we’re talking six to eight-inch trunks here, 30-40 feet height. But here’s the weird thing: I figured the fence was cut around the tree. No, it appears as though the tree actually grew through and around the fence! Check it out:

Here’s the shot before I went and rented a chainsaw:

And after:

Now, you may wonder: where was Adrienne to help you during all this? She, of course, was out in Oakland, getting her picture taken with Santa Claus!

Well, she was in San Francisco for work, then flew up from Oakland to Portland (then home to Goldendale) for the weekend for a surprise visit. Then she’s back in San Francisco on Monday for more work, and flies home Tuesday. I think. I guess Microsoft was running some promotion for Live(.com) where you get your photo taken with the Jolly Old Man at the Oakland airport. And she had some time to kill. Kinda bad lighting, if you ask me. But it was free!

So needless to say I had to fend for myself for dinner, so pizza it was! I tried out the recipe from the latest Cook’s Illustrated, which was supposed to be akin to what we’d call a New York slice.

I thought it was decent, but Adrienne would think the crust too thick. Eh, to each their own. And since she wasn’t here…

Happy Weekend, one and all!

And no, we didn’t let the cats out. We’ve seen wild turkeys hanging out in our neighborhood before, even as close as in the street in front of our house. This morning they passed through our back yard. I counted eight all together. And pardon the messy yard; we had a very windy day a couple days back and I have yet to pick up some of the neighbors garbage that came over to visit.

Always fun to park beside a carbon copy of the vehicle you’re driving.

Ok, so it’s from NY and close inspection revealed it was an automatic, and a much messier owner! On this occasion we found ourselves in the parking lot of a buy buy baby store (in dreaded Paramus off route 17 – you can’t understand it until we take you there). Never heard of buy buy baby? Neither had I until now. Take a Bed Bath and Beyond (triple Bs, get it?) – its parent company – and instead of pots and pans, fill the store with diapers and strollers, and you’ve got a buy buy baby. Adrienne was doing some shopping for a baby shower. I never knew how much stuff one needs to have a baby! How did parents of yesteryear get by?! 🙂 Anyway, while Adrienne searched high and low for items on the registry, I amused myself with the 6-program electronic rocker, featuring emulations of car rides, kangaroo rides and riding in a boat, amongst others. And the stroller aisle looked like a used car lot to me – and this was only half of them!

Sheesh. These ‘burbs wear me out at times, maybe I should go back to the city!

As per tradition (does one time before count as tradition?), Adrienne and I ran the Ashenfelter 8K Classic Thanksgiving Day morning in Glen Ridge, the next town over. With more than 2000 runners, there was a good amount of Thanksgiving cheer! I don’t think either of us were quite as prepared (training-wise) as last year. But we ended up just a bit more than a minute slower. And I really think we could have done a good bit better, had Adrienne let me push her more (yes, we mostly ran together or at least within sight as I kind of paced Adrienne).

Another cool note: to register you just send in your check and form and the night before you pick up your packet with your number, etc. Adrienne ended up with badge number 1747 and I got 1748. After the race we checked the race results and what place did I finish? 1748! Adrienne actually crossed the finish line before me, but the time (and thus place) are (correctly) calculated from the time you cross the starting line, so I ended up being a couple seconds faster. Adrienne placed 1749.

Not a bad way to start off Turkey Day, even if it’s not quite a Turkey Trot.

And yeah, we’re too cheap to actually purchase the photos, so you get the screengrab with the watermark.