…and just like that, an entire month went by in a blink!
New Arrival: We’ve been waiting for a while for this, so welcome to the world, Cyrus William! He arrived this morning around 5:30 or so, after what seemed like a long and arduous labor — he was also about two weeks past his “official” due date, which the midwife says was probably not accurate, but still. The little guy was running on his own clock.
The stats: 7 pounds 14 ounces, 22 inches long.
I just got back from a visit. The baby is beautiful, Ben and Jennie looked tired but are very happy. Anne and Laura have been feeding them and helping them out for days, and they looked tired as well. It’s been a long road.
Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln by Matthew Pinsker: This was a look at Lincoln’s career as a partisan operative, from the early 1840’s or so through his death. I thought it was fascinating (though I could see others finding it dry); much of the general history of the era was background to Lincoln’s efforts and machinations, which were mostly done through various open letters and interviews in the press, along with confidential letters to other party leaders. I especially liked how the 1850’s were covered, it really fleshed out the period.
Platform Decay by Martha Wells: The latest (I think) in one of my not-so-guilty pleasures, the “Murderbot Diaries.” I read this in about a day.
Picks and Shovels by Cory Doctorow: I liked the story, and I usually like Cory Doctorow, but this one left me wishing he wrote it better. He leaned pretty heavily on foreshadowing, especially at the ends of chapters — “little did I know, the situation would change…” It got tedious after a while, which is a shame because with a little editing this could have been a classic.
Right now I’m reading some nonfiction: Endless Forms, a book about wasps by British entomologist Sirian Sumner. This is pretty cool — I’m still not going to like wasps, but I think I’ll end up appreciating them a little more.
Last night we (Anne and I, and her sister Marie) were on the way home from a friend’s house when we saw a huge plume of smoke in the sky. Marie found a news article on her phone — a huge commercial building was burning in Allentown near the river. (Strangely enough, Anne and I rode past this building Saturday morning.) We got a good look crossing the Hill-to-Hill Bridge, so we parked and walked out on the bridge where I took this photo:
The Allentown Fire, Seen From Bethlehem
By the time we got home it was a six-alarm fire. We turned on various news feeds and watched firefighters battle the blaze for more than an hour before going to bed. It was nuts.
When we retired, we joked that we wouldn’t be going on “vacations” anymore, since we were already on permanent vacation; from then on any of our trips would be just “traveling.” Fast forward ten years(!)… Anne and I just did a long weekend ride up to Jim Thorpe, and we’ve been so busy that it felt like the vacations of old.
Day 1
I took no photos on the first day, my camera was packed away and I didn’t feel like digging it out…
We took roads up to Northampton, then got on the D&L at the Cementon trailhead. The trail is sheltered here by trees and cliffs, which was good because the day was sunny and hot. Brunch was scones & coffee at the Slatington Farmer’s Market, and from there it was only about 10 miles to Weissport where we had a hotel reservation. We were so early that we decided to go the extra few miles into Jim Thorpe, and did some people-watching before returning to check in.
Our hotel was (barely) withing walking distance of PJ Whelihans, so that’s where we got dinner. We got caught there by a huge thunderstorm (and Lyft was less than useful), so we waited things out before our walk back to the hotel.
Day 2
We got breakfast at the cafe in Weissport, went back up the towpath to Jim Thorpe and continued on to Mauch Chunk Lake. We were on the lookout for mountain laurel, which blooms around this time of year. We saw some in bloom, not a lot (not even on the Switchback Trail), but the scenery was definitely beautiful.
Mountain Laurel BlossomsLehigh Canal Near WeissportTrees Near Board BottomAnne On The TrailMountain Laurel BlossomsAnne At The LakeBike ParkingGeese And A Duck
On the way up to the lake we took the path through Board Bottom, so on the way back we went down the road into town — there is where we saw tons and tons of mountain laurel, the entire mountain (as seen from the road) was in bloom. Again, no pictures, we were moving too fast.
We ate lunch at Cafe Arielle, which was hard to figure out what it really was, but for us it was an awesome lunch place neither of us had ever been to, one with outdoor seating and a decent beer menu. After that we went back to the town square, did a bit more people watching, and rode back to the hotel, missing most of the occasional raindrops. Dinner was at PJ Whelihans again.
Day 3
The ride home was pretty quiet: we got up early and breakfasted at that cafe again, then retraced our steps back home — we were home and doing laundry by noon, and our busy lives were waiting there where we left them.
So, remember that inkjet printer I got last year? Well it broke: there doesn’t seem to be any dirt or debris or anything in the mechanisms, but every piece of paper jams. I tried a bunch of things but it looks like problem is in the mechanical systems, like a worn rotor or something. Ugh…
…and double-ugh: our other (laser) printer — Anne’s old workhorse from her office — broke as well. Probably a sensor issue but it keeps reporting a nonexistent paper jam.
We went almost a month before cracking, but I bought a new laser printer last week. It’s a Brother DCP-L2640DW: printer, scanner, copier, potential fax machine (but not in your face about it like the last one). The only drawback is that it prints in black and white, which feels weird to not have a color printer but honestly, we almost never even use color, let alone need it.
So we’ll see. It works great so far, but “a new broom always sweeps clean” as the saying goes. This printer cost about triple the last one, so I’m hoping it’ll at least last three years…
One of the things I’ve been helping my Mom with are her finances. I started out with spreadsheets to keep track of things, but about six months ago I switched to using GnuCash, an open-source financial program.
This is a great tool, sometimes a bit more than I need, but sometimes it’s also oddly inadequate: it has all sorts of built-in reports, and they can be customized, but several types of reports are just not available (I am partial to pivot tables). I can export the data I need, but the full export is so complicated as to be almost useless, and the simplified export — they warn about this — doesn’t export certain pieces of data. It was very frustrating.
(For those playing along at home, I was exporting transactions, specifically ones involving expenses, to CSV, and the simplified export would only list one expense split per transaction. Transactions involving multiple splits were thus incomplete.)
I happened to come across some online discussions about GnuCash where people were saving their data into databases rather than the standard file, and were then able to use database tools as well as GNUCash to work with their accounts. Well I like databases too, so…
I decided to use SQLite to make things easier, changed my file format, and opened up the file in DBeaver. The database was a bit convoluted but not crazy, and I tried some SQL snippets I found online to see how it all worked. Then, I wrote a script to export all expenses into a CSV file — it worked like a charm, and I was able to build a pivot table in LibreOffice Calc in like two steps.
The only person who will ever care is me, but I do like to open the spreadsheet occasionally, and just admire it.
Whenever we visit my Dad’s grave, I take a little walk to see if I can find my friend Mike’s final resting place, but I’ve never had any luck. My Mom and I were at the grave yesterday, and I had my usual fruitless search, but this time, on the way out, I stopped at the grounds-keeper’s office and asked for help. The guy told us to follow him, drove out — to a completely different section of the cemetery than I’d remembered — stopped his truck, and directed us to Mike’s grave. So much for relying on memory…
Mike’s Grave in Old Tennent Cemetery
I’d never seen the headstone; the last time I was there was for the funeral, just before Christmas in 2003. Now, twenty three years later, my Mom and I were there to place a rock on the stone. We stood by the grave for a bit, reminiscing, and then we headed home.
Here is something I put together just after he passed, a photo collage for his girlfriend, and here are some things I wrote about Mike over the years (though some of the links in that link may be broken).
We went out last night to the concert at the Rose Garden, but the vibe really didn’t click for us (food truck choices) so we went for sushi at Steak & Steel, where Joe & Laura met up with us. We all walked from there to Red Stag for dessert before calling it a night.
Today I have a little yardwork to do, then this afternoon we’re going on a friend’s “Magical History Tour” of Fountain Hill by bike.
We’ve had a pretty good week: our quartet met last Sunday, Anne and I had Iris a few times and also got in a few rides this week, and last night was opening night at the Velodrome — we went with Joe & Laura. We went to the farmer’s market at the Rose Garden this morning and we’re about to go back there for tonight’s concert (and a food truck dinner). It’s still a bit chilly but life has been good!
