PeteCarpenter.com

10/27/2008

• Our Roomba arrived last week and I’m completely in love with it. You press a button and let it go and it just figures things out. It does a better job at vacuuming that I do, even going under the sofa and coffee table and other furniture that I can’t get to. It drives right over rugs and over thresholds and figures out how to get everywhere in the room multiple times. Plus, it’s pretty quiet, and the kids aren’t even phased by it. Welcome to the family, Rosie.
• I must say, I sort of dig the new format of Rolling Stone. They just changed the shape of it from the large, stapled format to the traditionally sized bound magazine, much to some people’s outrage. It works for me, though.
• The Lovely Tess and I made a visit to the Children’s Discovery Museum yesterday, and you really can’t beat their Sunday morning deal. $6 for me and free for her for all of the fun that we can handle. Although for her, all she really needs is a flight of stairs to go up and down and she’s happy.
• We’re still about 4 episodes behind on Mad Men so I can’t read about what happened on the season finale last night. I would love to catch up this week, but it’s finals week for me. Where is the justice in this world?
• Now, the last of the computer drama. I finally figured out that the source of all of my problems was a bad USB card reader. Seriously. My old computer was completely fine. So after all of the hair-pulling and repairs and new computer purchase, it was a $10 card reader that was responsible. Unbelieveable. Well, in the interest of household sanity, I decided to keep the new computer and the old one is sitting in the basement running Ubuntu and acting as a backup server. Plus, the new one is all slim and sleek.
• We’ve been getting so many storage vegetables in our farm share that we’ve had to set up a root cellar in the basement. And by root cellar I mean a paper lined box on a shelf. Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and turnips so far. But I gotta say, I’m not a big fan of turnips. I’ll have to find a good recipe for them to change my mind.
• Is it election day yet? I’m so ready for this thing to be over with already. Let’s do some voting!
• I think I dreamt in Powerpoint last week. Not good. Although I do enjoy a nice Powerpoint animation as much as the next guy.

This thing is just awesome.

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10/20/2008

• The above moment was the response to “Tess, where’s your nose?”
• Well, at least I get to go to bed at a decent hour now. There’s always next year.
• Have there ever been that many people watching the Steve Harvey Show at one time?
• I eagerly neglected vacuuming this weekend as my shiny new (and free) Roomba is on its way. I really don’t enjoy vacuuming, so this will hopefully be my new best friend. We’re still deciding on a name for it. The Lovely Suse thinks it needs a strong male name because it’s all sleek and black. I want to name it Rosie.
• I finally gave up. After spending way too much time and too much money trying to resuscitate my PC, I’ve finally thrown in the towel. It still wasn’t working right and I’ve just had enough of it. I ordered a dirt-cheap refurb Dell 530s for not much more than I was spending to repair the old one. I swore that I’d never buy a Dell ever again, but frankly, I just don’t have the time to deal with it anymore. I use my MacBook for most things these days anyway, so the home PC isn’t being taxed too much. Hopefully this will do the trick.
• Speaking of tricks (and treats), the Lovely Tess will be a chicken for Halloween this year. That is, if we can get her to wear the costume. She’s not such a fan right now, but she has the chicken dance moves and the clucking down pat. We still have a week and a half to work on it, so we’ll try to ease her into it.
• How awesome is Amy Poehler?
• Who knew? I would humbly accept the position, I suppose.

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10/13/2008

• A picture perfect fall weekend in New England: Sunny skies, leaves changing colors, temperatures in the upper 60’s, and I spent the majority of it in a windowless classroom. Oh, the injustice. At least I got to enjoy yesterday.
• The Lovely Suse and I enjoyed a very nice anniversary dinner at Hamersley’s. One of Boston’s great rooms, the place just has a glow about it. The food ain’t too shabby either.
• It was a sad day yesterday as I took down the patio furniture and pulled out what was left of our tomato and herb plants. The Lovely Tess will be disappointed as she’s grown accustomed to getting out of the car, walking over the tomato plants, picking off a cherry tomato, chomping down, and covering herself in tomato seeds. I hope she doesn’t hold it against me. We also finally got around to cutting back our oregano and are in the process of trying to dry it in bunches. We’ll see if it works.
• For those of you who care, our PC is back working. Don’t hold your breath though.
• Our oven is once again working after replacing both control boards in it. Of course when I went to use it the first time nothing worked as I neglected to hook up one of the wires. Whoops. So far so good. Still, don’t hold your breath.
• we turned the heat on last week for a couple of mornings. Don’t be mad at me. It was damn cold.
• We said goodbye to Vickie this week. Vickie was one of these and we had her for about five weeks as part of a pilot program. I can’t say too much about her sa I signed a strict confidentiality agreement, but I’m looking forward to having one of her cousins in our home very soon.
• I’m loving apple season, but not as much as the Lovely Tess is. Her newest trick is to climb up on the sofa and take an apple out of the artfully arranged basket on the console table behind it. That girl loves her apples. Apparently when the Lovely Suse was booting up her MacBook this morning, the Lovely Tess said “apple”. Other new words this week include “cracker” and “Nana”.
• I”m very excited for an afternoon playoff game for once. I can’t stay awake for these late night games anymore. Yes, I am this old.
• I enjoyed a fun night out at Solea with my classmates on Friday night, but I think the idea of tapas was lost on some of them. More than once I heard “They keep bringing us all of these little appetizers. When are they bringing out the entrees?” I, of course, took advantage of this and ate everything in sight. You snooze you lose!

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10/8/2008

• Sorry for the late post this week. To say I’ve been busy would be an understatement. There are playoff baseball games to watch, you know.
• Speaking of which, I will refrain from making the obligatory “Why can’t the MLB start playoff games earlier?” routine. It’s a fact of life. Get over it. If you want to watch your team in the playoffs, be prepared to live off of 4 hours of sleep a night. If not, the world will still go on and you can get your beauty sleep. I won’t tell anyone.
• Saturday was pretty much the perfect quintessential New England fall day, so apple picking was required. We hit up Shelburne Farm for our annual outing of eating about 40 apples and succumbing to the alluring aroma of freshly fried cider donuts. Seriously, if there’s a more glorious thing than a still warm cider donut, I haven’t found it yet. The Lovely Tess enjoyed her donut as well, further proof that she has inherited my sweet tooth.
• This coming weekend is our 5th wedding anniversary. Seriously? Has it already been five years? I will celebrate it by spending the day in classes. Arghghghghghghhg.
• Oh, my stupid PC is still broken. It was fixed, after 4 trips to Microcenter, and then it was broken again. I’ve seriously considered just not fixing it and selling off the old parts, or buying a Mac mini or something. I don’t really need a PC, do I? In the end, I will of course fix it because that’s just what I do. It’s quite pathetic, actually. Because I know how to build them myself, I refuse to just buy a cheap Dell or something. Instead, I waste a week (or in this case two) going back and forth to the store until I get everything working right. It costs next to nothing to do, but the pain of continually slamming my head against the wall is just not worth it anymore. This is the last time. Seriously. Maybe.
• The Lovely Tess has learned to answer questions with yes or no. Although the answer is almost always no, no matter what the question is. “Do you want to take a bath?” “No, no, no, no.” “Do you love pizza?” “No, no no, no.” Do you eat your own boogers?” “No, no, no, no.” We can amuse ourselves for hours with this game.
• We also learned that the Lovely Tess is a huge flirt at school. She goes around kissing all of the boys and then making them do things. We are in some serious trouble with this one.
• I paid $3.09/gallon for gas yesterday. I was pretty sure that it was a typo, but it wasn’t. Did I miss something? Did they already start drilling in Alaska?
• The next time I wear a suit, I’m going to try to pull off a pocket square. That is an advanced move that I’m not sure I can handle, but I’m willing to give it a shot. There’s something classic about a pocket square that I dig, probably from watching so much Mad Men.

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