Garden going great guns

More or less – check out this early August bean harvest. We pulled about 4 more baskets this size over the course of August: IMG_0537.JPG

Lots of spicy dilly beans for me (Susan’s been busy canning). Most of our other crops have done equally well – all the berries (straw, blue, black, raspberry) did from good to great, the spaghetti squash did great, the delicata did ok, the pumpkins are coming along nicely, and while our zucchini and cucumbers succumbed to some sort of blight, we got a good many before that happened. Tomatoes still struggled with the blight but we got quite a few this year, and our peas carrots, cabbages and beets all did great. Broccoli was again a bust due to bad harvesting timing. Our asparagus is finally producing enough to make meals of it (3 or 4 this year), and our radishes did fantastic…except we picked them too late. The biggest bust of the year is the apple crop, where we have almost none, but last year was a bumper crop and supposedly that leads to poor years the following season, so we weren’t surprised. We’re still debating what to add next year (this year was strawberries). My preliminary vote is more blueberry bushes, but rhubarb is another possibility.

Take me out to the ballpark…

… We did. We had a grand old time at our annual Sea Dogs game today. The weather threatened but held off until after the game and the home team won an exciting game that included them holding on to their lead in the face of a bottom of the ninth no outs bases loaded comeback attempt by the opposing team. Great stuff!

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It must be fate…

Walking through Greenfield, MA this weekend , I noticed a vacant storefront with a for lease sign in the window. Check out the entryway. No one else thought it was fate and we should pursue the lease, but it was good fodder for a family laugh.

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Father’s Day 2014

Was spent at our friend Dalia’s Bat Mitzva. We had a blast, despite Brady and I both coming down with a stomach bug. A few photos say it better than I can:

Laura and Brady doing the funky chicken at the Dalia Goldberg Bat Mitzva

Kids Dancing (unfortunately the best shot I got)

The Hamilton Kimballs at the Dalia Goldberg Bat Mitzva

A family photo taken by Frank. Note Brady’s expression – this was shortly before Susan took the kids back to the hotel because Brady was feeling poorly. It took me a few hours to catch up to him.

Less unhappy news

To counter the somewhat grim health story about my son that precedes this, here’s a photo of this year’s flowers blooming:

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They’re thriving. When we first moved into the house, only 2 came up. There are 5-6 stalks each with 3-4 flowers on them this year. As you can see, they’re gorgeous.

I was quietly pleased and amazed this week…

… when a job candidate casually mentioned that he had married his husband in New England during an interview. If you had asked me 10 years ago if I would have considered it possible that a candidate for a job would feel confident a remark like this wouldn’t be held against him by one or more of the strangers he was interviewing with (there were 7 of us) I probably would have laughed. This little vignette represents more to me about how far we’ve come than all the states passing ‘gay marriage’ laws – it’s social progress, writ clear and large in the casual way this kind of stuff, reviled in my youth, is now so accepted.

Microsoft….does the right thing?!?!

Microsoft introduced a point system for purchases when they introduced the xbox (or 360? I forget when it began), a system that was mostly reviled by gamers. They announced over a year ago that they were ending that system in favor of straight cash purchases for their online stores, just like most everyone else uses (ie Amazon, Apple, Google Play, etc).

Both Sony and Microsoft sell debit cards at retail for making purchases in their online stores, so kids without credit cards can buy games online. Retailers periodically run specials on those cards, especially around the holidays, so you can get $50 for $40 or whatever.

Several Christmases ago, I stocked up on these cards when Target ran a $50 for $30 sale or something along those lines. I added those credits to my respective accounts, and then my Xbox 360 promptly died. My $50 of Microsoft credit has been sitting in limbo ever since, as I had no plans to replace the 360. Imagine me shaking my fist in irritation at Microsoft. Then imagine me bemused to receive an email from Microsoft letting me know that my points have been converted back to actual cash $$$ – I’m now sitting on $49.15 in credit for Microsoft’s stores. Bully for them for doing the right thing and me for getting my funds back.

Next, imagine me shaking my fist in mild irritation again when I discover I can only spend these funds in the Windows 8 and Windows Mobile stores, which I do no business with.   :-/

A tip of the cap to Michael Shea

To my view, Michael Shea was a greatly under-appreciated author. Sadly, he died recently, before the rest of you lot woke up to his talents. He wrote across a number of genres. The works I really enjoyed were fantasy/horror works that are thematically and stylistically similar to the work of Jack Vance and early Tanith Lee. Thanks to Michael for Nifft and the vividly imagined and described worlds he adventured in.

English: Sf author Michael Shea at The Variety...

English: Sf author Michael Shea at The Variety Preview Room in San Francisco (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My childrens’ daycare center (Woodside Children’s Center) finally gets a website

…thanks in part to me:

Amherst, Massachusetts – Woodside Children’s Center website

Amherst College more or less owns the Woodside Children’s Center but keeps it as a distinct entity for liability and other reasons. Historically this has meant they couldn’t take advantage of many of the services the college provides to employees and the various offices and departments, including my department’s services. That recently changed, and we spun up a simple little WordPress site for them so they can have a home on the web. Time for them to party like it’s 1995 😉

Tragically, despite one of my employees doing the bulk of the content work on the site, no pictures of my children ended up on it, at least not yet, which I teased him about when it went live. On the other hand one of the children of a board member, who’s also a tenured faculty member, did end up on the homepage, so truth be told he made the smarter choice.