June 30, 2005:  So the long weekend is almost here and damned if this week could go by any slower.  Not a whole lot is new since we spoke last, still hot and humid as hell.  It's actually been raining at least a good portion of each day since the weekend so all that work I put into the yard got washed away, grass seed and all.  It remains to be seen if enough of it stuck for some grass to start growing.  We haven't been able to get back in the pool since the weekend with the rain we've been getting, hopefully I can get in a quick swim tonight.  My old roommate Brian is coming up for the long weekend, I guess we're going to take a ride up to Franconia Notch, NH to bike the 8 mile path through the notch, maybe ride the Canon Mountain tramway, and check out the scenery a bit, Gregg might even end up joining us too.  We might stay up there that night but probably just come back and hang out at our place.  Sunday we are going to Todd and Carla's 4th of July/Wedding Celebration in southern NH.  Hopefully we'll have good weather, it looks like everything is going to be outside, Isis is even invited.  Speaking of the craziest dog in the world, the air conditioning in the house went out yesterday before we left for work.  We had to leave the windows open so the dog wouldn't die in the furnace we call home.  When the repair guy came to fix it our landlord came in to close all the windows and turn the AC back on.  She took Isis out of her crate while they were fixing it and she just followed them around.  We have the webcam watching Isis all day and she didn't know to turn it off so we got to watch all of this after we got home.  We told her that she could take the dog out but it might be tough to get her back in her crate.  She ended up taking her over to her house after they were done because just as we predicted, she wasn't getting back in that crate.  Classic case of taking advantage of the babysitter, like having popcorn AND ice cream for a snack when Mom and Dad are gone.  On the video you see her bend down and point into the crate, Isis just lays down right in front of it and looks at her.  Probably doesn't sound all that funny but remember we are in Massachusetts now and have no life anymore so it makes us laugh.  I painted the tool shelf I built for the bike stand yesterday, just have to finish up the edges tonight and I'll snap a few updated pictures, not much to see but it all keeps me busy.  I guess it's time to run, have to get home and clean the house for the weekend, nobody has slept in our guestroom for a while so it has become a storage room for our camping gear, my toys, and a bunch of other stuff that didn't find a home anywhere else in the house.  Have a safe and happy 4th of July!!!

June 27, 2005:  What looked to be a hot, boring weekend actually turned out to be a lot of fun.  Yes it was still hot as hell but we made the best of it, the pool and central air helped out a lot in that department.  Saturday I had promised our landlord that I would help her replace a couple of the pieces of slate sidewalk that the contractors broke when removing the underground oil tank in our front yard two weeks ago.  So after my normal Saturday morning chores, vaccuum, dust, trash to the dump, I was able to get the old ones out by myself and she came over and helped me lay the new ones down, these things are like 36" x 40" and weigh like 90 lbs.  After getting those in place and level it showed that the others were all messed up.  It was at least 90 degrees out by then so we called it a day.  Well, she called it a day but I can't stand leaving something unfinished so I went ahead and reset the other 6 stones and almost melted in the process.  I easily drank a gallon of water in the two hours it took me to finish.  When that was done I had to remove some dirt and grass that was keeping the pool gate door from opening out, what looked like a little dirt ended up being 4 wheelbarrows full, again with the melting and large consumption of water.  After that I got to spread all that topsoil in the yard where the plow guy ruined the lawn, rake it out, seed, and then water it.  When all was finished I cleaned the pool and finally got to cool off just before Lisa got home from work.  Sunday we had to run a few errands, swim floats from Walmart and a pair of Keen sandals for Lisa from EMS.  I got a pair a few weeks ago and would wear them everywhere if I could, we also had a coupon we couldn't pass up.  Lisa's friends Rachael and Amanda came over for a swim later in the afternoon, it was so hot we actually stayed in the water for a while and it was barely 74 degrees!  When I was a kid we would swim in April if the ice was out, now I'll barely get in the water unless it's either 100 degrees outside or the water is above 80.  Just after the girls left we had one of the most hardcore thunderstorms we have seen in years, it must have rained at least a couple of inches in under an hour.  We sat in the garage watching it come down until the gutters started to overflow and soak us.  After the rain had mostly stopped I got the ladder out and unclogged the gutter, man it would be nice to be doing all this work on our OWN house!  I don't mind doing it if I'm not doing anything else, it takes the lowest priority for sure.  Lisa spent her evening doing some laundry and homework in the air conditioned house and I was in the garage building a tool tray for the bike stand Gregg and I built last year and of course almost melting and drinking a liter of Gatoraide.  I added pictures of it to the 'Projects' link on the left.  So all in all it was a good summer weekend, we'll talk again later this week. 

June 24, 2005:  I think that time may not go by any slower than it does on a Friday afternoon when you're at work and it's 80 degrees and sunny.  Who am I kidding, I'm on call this weekend so I can't actually do anything fun anyway.  Another week gone by, 7 weeks of classes left for Lisa, yes we are counting.  Even though it's only the first week, things are already getting crazy for her.  We haven't seen each other for more than 15 minutes since tuesday, no joke.  Part of that is my fault because I drove all the way to NH to ride the FOMBA mountain bike trails with Gregg and some friends of his from work and didn't get back until midnight.  Lisa had a lot of studying to do so I would have just been in her way if I was home.  I used to ride a lot but haven't ridden very seriously in a few years so I was worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up or would end up hurting myself.  I didn't seem to lose the technique but my stamina isn't what it used to be.  We rode three trails and about halfway through the last one I was really starting to feel it.  I wasn't sore but I just had no energy, my legs just wouldn't go when I needed them to.  My body was starting to respond to my brain with a significant delay, unfortunately that delay was noticed most when trying to unclip out of my pedals to prevent a crash.  I ended up upside down in the bushes with the bike still attached once and ground my left forearm against a nice big rock soon after that.  That isn't good, cuts on right arm = scars, cuts on left arm = tattoo damage.  It looks like someone swatted me with a cheese grater, hopefully it didn't cause any permanent damage.  Needless to say, arm guards will be delivered next week so that won't happen again.  It looks like the weather is going to be great for the weekend, maybe the pool will warm up a bit, 70 degrees last time I looked.  Well, if anything fun happens this weekend you all will be the first to know, enjoy. 

June 19, 2005:  Another break is over for Lisa, she starts her last quarter of classes first thing tomorrow morning.  Eight weeks from now she will be on break again for a few weeks before she starts more internships.  We have to start thinking about where we want to end up after graduation, it's going to be here before we know it.  It's going to be somewhere out west for sure, most likely Seattle or maybe even Alaska, we'll keep you updated.  We got a bunch of stuff done this weekend.  Friday night we went out for Rachael and her sister Danielle's birthday, yes they are twins, and had a great time.  We both ended up having a few too many drinks, which is like 4, but had a lot of fun.  Lisa had to work Saturday all day and I had to get her car's windows working again, rotate it's tires, go to the dump, and clean up the house a bit, all with a horrible hangover.  I get the WORST hangovers from drinking like 2 or more drinks, trust me when I say it sucks.  The car stuff went much better than I expected it would, only took a couple hours to do the splicing in of the new connectors you see here on the left.  Some of the wires were corroded so bad in the connector that it even crept up the wire under the insulation so I had to clean the wire with a scotchbrite pad to expose the clean copper for soldering.  It only took about three hours to replace the connectors and replace the whole harness in the door.  The passenger side door didn't even need to be fixed, it wasn't corroded at all.  That was awesome because it means I get to return the parts I bought for that side, all $160 of them.  So now Lisa can get fries on the way home from school again and Isis can hang her head out the window too, everyone is happy again.  Today I helped our landlord open the pool and get the filter system running.  The water was surprisingly clean under the cover, and cold too, 68 degrees near the top where the thermometer was.  Hopefully we get another week of really hot weather so the water warms up a bit, I'm not hitting it until it gets at least 10 degrees warmer.  Last weekend on our trip to NH we picked up new ski boots, we plan on getting in a few trips this winter before we move away and our old boots were, well really old and uncomfortable.  I didn't need new skis but Lisa did so she has been doing some research.  She decided on the Burnin' Luv by K2, they are out of a new line they make for women, they are pretty hot looking too.  We were lucky enough to find a leftover from 2004-2005 at a shop near our house.  We were talking with the guy that helped us and he mentioned he kayaked, we said we just got back from a trip up north and he asked if it was lake Umbagog, we were like yeah, totally.  I said that I grew up near there, he said his son used to teach up there.  As it turns out, he was my biology teacher 1 of the few years here taught there, talk about a small world.  Have a great week.

June 13, 2005:  We had the best weather ever for the best weekend ever!!!  Camping went really well, we didn't forget anything and what we brought all fit in the boats.  We had a nice campfire, made dinner and breakfast, went for a short paddle late in the evening and stopped for a quick swim on the way back to the boat launch.  It was a 4 mile trip to the site and the same back the next day so we got a good amount of paddling in for the weekend.  The new tent and the rest of the gear worked perfectly.  Lisa loved her boat, this was the first time she had it in the water, and I got more comfortable with mine.  The bugs were as bad as they could have been, we went through almost a whole can of bug spray trying to keep them away.  We got lucky with the weather too, didn't even rain on us once.  We didn't end up seeing a single moose the whole weekend but we did see a pair of loons on the lake near our campsite.  We heard them screeching all night long too, they make such an interesting sound, I'm sure you have all heard it before in movies.  Most movies with scenes that take place outdoors at night have that sound in the background.  Lucky for us that was about it for wildlife this weekend.  I asked if they had seen any bears this year but they said bears haven't been a problem yet.  We were able to get back to my folks house on Saturday before it started raining.  We went to North Conway for dinner and a little shopping and stopped at Glen Ellis Falls on the way back, you can see the pictures on the left.  Sunday we went to Franconia Notch to hike through 'The Flume'.  It was super humid and very hot but was near 30 degrees cooler in the gorge, check out the pictures to the left.  We drove back today and picked up Isis at the Inn for Dogs.  We took her for a swim down at the lake to cool off and since we got back home she hasn't moved an inch, they sure do tire her down when she's there.  It will probably take her a week or two to catch up on sleep.  Speaking of sleep, that's where I should be right now, have a great week!

June 5, 2005:  It looks like summer might show up here in MA after all.  This weekend was awesome, in the 80's both days, we had to turn on the central air and everything, and it worked too!  We were told it hasn't been used in at least 3 years but it worked great.  It was a busy week but a pretty productive one, Lisa's boat came in on Tuesday so we had to make a quick trip to CT to pick it up.  The boat is even more than we expected it would be and didn't even get damaged in shipping as they mentioned it might.  Even though it's the same color as mine it looks completely different.  They are both red to yellow fades but her fade spends about 4' orange before it ends up yellow when mine is more of a direct change to yellow.  It's cool because their the same but different.  We got the rest of the stuff ready for our camping trip to NH.  I made a reservation for a campsite on a remote shore of the lake, should be pretty cool as long as the weather is good and the bugs don't carry us away!  So far it looks like everything we need to bring is going to fit in or on the boats.  We had to pick up a couple more things but now we will be set to do a full backpack trip for at least a couple days.  We needed a water filter and some utensils, also a lighter sleeping bag and pad for Lisa.  She spent the day studying and I found the rest of the gear and tested out the stuff that hasn't been used in a while.  The stove and lantern work great and the new water filter is really easy to use and service.  We even got a couple of those dehydrated meals for dinner and the stuff we will need for breakfast too.  A couple of things are still in the mail but they are all due here by Wednesday so we should be a go for the trip if nothing changes.  I even got the tent set up too, it was even easier than I thought it would be, spacious, and should be pretty comfortable too.  Lisa has finals until Wednesday, then a day to recover before we take off.  Isis is going to the Inn for Dogs, hopefully she does as well there as she did last time.  We will probably worry about her but they take good care of the dogs and give them lots of attention, which is exactly what she needs.  I'll try to get pictures of the boats up before we take off and we will do our best to get tons of pictures when we get there.  Have a great week, we'll talk again soon.