Tag Archives: work

April Fool’s, Joke’s on New England

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Well April arrived in New England with a sense of humor, as a small snowstorm moved in overnight, leaving us with about four inches of heavy snow to welcome spring. Fortunately, it did not cause too much trouble and it was well expected for a few days. It was an awfully pretty drive into work to be sure. Everything had the look of being dusted with a decent amount of powdered sugar.

It did, however, make for the best packing snow of the season. So, Hadley finally got to make a snowman or, in this case, a snow woman. She has been asking all winter. Every time she awoke to new snow she desperately wanted to make a snowman or have a snowball fight. Yet no previous snowfalls had left us with quality packing snow, until today.

Needless to say the kids quite enjoyed the day. Plus, it was not terribly cold, so they could get some quality playing in for the day, at least until they got too wet. Apparently, Fritz was the first one to have enough and proceeded to wait by the door, which ended the fort building festivities.

Photo: Dining Together on Radioactive Snow Photo: Snow Fort

Still, fun was had by all and it will likely be the last of the snow for the season. The temperature is supposed to rise nearly to the fifties in the next couple of days. Even by the end of the night quite a bit had already melted.

My First Major Publication

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A few weeks ago I mentioned that earlier this year I had my first essay published in an actual book, which was kind of a cool experience. The book is entitled The Pressures of Teaching and it can be bought in stores, although chances are better online. You can even preview a copy of it, although my chapter is not available in the preview.

What is even kind of cooler, however, is that the publisher, Kaplan, will be running an ebook promotion, beginning Tuesday, January 4. So anyone with a Nook, Kindle, iPad, or eReader can download a copy free for a limited time. I am sure that it will even work on an iTouch or computer with a proper ebook app, although all of the details are not yet available.

I should mention that I already got paid for my contribution and receive no additional compensation or royalties from the publisher for sales of the book. However, I would be delighted to hear what people think of the work.

Lastly, in another promotional effort the editor, Maureen Picard Robins, has begun a blog with the same title. As luck would have it, the first post she wrote references my essay, which also is pretty cool.

So, if you get a chance, download it on Tuesday and have a read. As I mentioned, I would love to hear what you think.

Pre-First Night Trip to Boston

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One of the local events that is a huge draw in Boston is First Night, an elaborate New Year’s Eve celebration of the culture and community of the city. While many other cities and towns across the nation now hold First Night festivities, Boston is the original and standard bearer. It is really quite grand and kicks off well before midnight, starting around 9AM and carrying through to midnight fireworks.

One of the cooler features are the marvelous ice sculptures, no pun intended. They are enormous and beautifully ornate. Since heading downtown with 2 million other people really isn’t in the cards for us. So while I was busy completing some work, Keri and Ali packed up the kids and headed east to see if they could catch a glimpse of the sculptures the day before the official unveiling.

The trip on the train was apparently quite fascinating for our little man, as revelaed by the intense studying visible in this photograph.

Unfortunately, the trip proved to be less than fulfilling on the ice sculpture front. Since the weather has started to warm a bit, it would seem that preservation is of major importance. Also there was some work still to be done. Consequently, most of what they got to see was this.

Ali sardonically referred to this part of the trip as “Gumdrop.” This is a kind of kidsafe code for an excrement expletive, as well as being a reference to one of our infamous exploits to exotic local sights. Sadly in the transitioning this site to a new platform, the images from the original post have been lost. I’ll have to look into digging some of those photos out again.

Nevertheless, they all managed to still have some fun. Hadley got to walk around the city and covered a whole lot of ground. It proved to be quite a journey for both of the kiddos. They were pretty wiped out from it all.