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I’ve never really used Garageband to do anything. I figured it was time to change that, so I gave myself a little project. Here’s the result, playing a tenor trombone I effectively haven’t touched in a couple months (yikes!):

Even though our town cancelled Halloween – they literally called and said Halloween was cancelled, though I think they really meant to say they were postponing trick-or-treating activities until Friday – we still celebrated in style. And sampled the treats…

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!

It’s getting just cold enough at nights that the heat doesn’t come on (i.e. house is just above 65), but there’s still a chill in the air in the mornings. So while Adrienne was out hunting down some pastries, I figured I better do a QC on the remaining firewood we have from last year.

Here are some not too exciting photos… first up, a shot of one of the two windows we had put in the attic. This is the north-facing window, which used to have louvers covering the hole.

As you can see the room is slowly transitioning to Adrienne’s storage/activity room/guest room. Next up, the baby room which has a new ceiling. Popcorn ceiling was taken down, existing plaster patched and then a full skim coat.

And finally, a photo of the garden. I decided last year’s garden location behind the garage was not sustainable – not enough sun. The only reasonable place is along the south side of the house, which is sidewalk and then the property line. I thought about building something, but after some research decided on earth boxes. So far, so good. The sugar snap peas are pretty much taking over the far box.

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.

Cherry Blossom trees are in full bloom in Branch Brook park, here are a couple quick photos I took on my bike ride home:

Sadly, the cherry blossom tree in our front yard still needs some time:

Though the rhododendron are starting to show:

Tomorrow: we plant grass!