So Monday morning suemac and I decamped for Hotlanta, ostensibly for me to do network work for UF. But we all know the REAL reason to go to Atlanta is for the plethora of vendors of culinary excellence, all designed to separate you from the bulk of your cash and all of your diet ambitions ( Read more... )

Enough pollen for my sinuses to drown me? check.

Ok, let me collect my wits (and my hundreds and hundreds of unread work emails) and I'll get back to you, Good Readers, with the State of The Eight Bit One, post vacation (and pre vacation, as we're off to The Mouse this weekend ( Read more... )

Well, I got the kids out from in front of the computer long enough to go over to Largo Central Park to ride the train. The lines were as long as I've ever recalled seeing them. We had a sort of fun mishap - the car we were riding on derailed, and I got to help the conductor haul the car off the uncooperative truck, rerail it, and reset the car ( Read more... )

Largo's fireworks tonight were worlds beyond Gainesville's last night. Laura and I found a good spot to park downtown to soak in the boomies, and make good our escape afterwards; we had a blast (pun unintended, I swear) and were back to Ray & Dana's in 5 minutes. Brickbats to the female specimens sitting near us on the sidewalk who were smoking ( Read more... )

We're down at suemac's folks', and I'm quite fried by de nieces and de nephews - "All the noise noise Noise NOISE!" Tonight we watch Grinch and the George C Scott Christmas Carol. We're all tearing the house and yard apart looking for one of Amanda's brand new earrings, what she lost somewhere. The Twins™ love their MIGHTY TONKA trucks, as is right ( Read more... )

Home again. Kids in bed, trunk emptied, back seat mostly emptied, radios moved back to the Ford from the Honda, most of the last week's snail mail gone through (the Lee Valley Christmas catalog had some mondo cool stuff - think "Lillian Vernon for guys" only the merchandise isn't cheap junk), and it's not even 23:00. We made the trip, stops and ( Read more... )

lilfish posted some random thoughts. I responded to one. Then the sleep deprivation took over and I started spouting some randoms of my own, observations from the day's trip to Herndon, VA and Washington, DC, to see the two halves of the National Air and Space Museum with Amanda and Laura ( Read more... )

...being a brief consideration of Tuesday...

suemac took Laura downtown to do various DC things™. I stayed home with Amanda because, well, Amanda was not having a banner week. Various patterns of misbehavior resulted in her being verbotten to go on the jaunt, and since Mom had to go out, I got stuck here. Dang; I was really looking forward to taking ( Read more... )

We made it out of Hoggetowne about 8:00 Sunday morning, and hit Mom's house (figuratively speaking, though I was pretty tired by then) about 10:30pm. The intervening 14-1/2 hours don't bear much mention or review - constant kidsquabbles (is that a word? It should be) was the lowlight, and endless swarms of Harley Davidson products topped primarily ( Read more... )

( Just weeding through the SD card on the D50... came across some real gems... )