Beowabbit

(Only about half the photos are in thumbnails here, so you may want to go check out the set on Flickr.)

When I haven’t posted for a long time, it’s hard to get posting again, because I want to fill in all the blanks, but that would be a post so long that (1) I would never get around to writing it, and (2) nobody would ever bother reading it. So I’m going to try to divide things up thematically. This post is about things.

I have a new camera that I am so far very pleased with. It’s a Samsung Galaxy Camera. It does 21x optical zoom (with optical stabilization), and has an automatic mode but also a fully manual mode (except for focus, but you can tap on the part of the image you want the camera to auto-focus on). ( More about the camera. )

I have my car back on the road, which is wonderful! If I’d realized how little it was going to cost to fix, I would have gotten it done a long time ago; I’ve spent several times that much on Zipcars in the interim.

( The car saga, and an auto-body recommendation in Quincy. )

I had assumed the car would be a few hundred dollars to repair. It wasn’t. So today [looks at clock] er, yesterday, I finally bought a powered lawnmower. ( On lawn mowing. )

He was grinning while he clomped around in them, but apparently getting your picture taken is Srs Bzns!

I’ve uploaded some photos from our day at Nantasket Beach a week ago to Flickr. Here they are. Photos of the two of us, and lots of photos of seagulls.

(I feel sure I had a gecko userpic once, but I can’t find it, so I’ll have to use the sad userpic instead of the happy userpic.)

After all the stress of the car Friday night (and again not being able to start it, even with a jumper box, on Saturday), I was very relieved to see plumtreeblossom. We had a lovely Mexican dinner (and lovely margaritas) in Quincy Center, and then went home and watched the fascinating and charmingly low-budget documentary King Corn.

This (Sunday) morning, I called around and found a tow company that came to the parking garage and tried, just as unsuccessfully as I had, to jump-start the car (I suspect there’s some sort of electrical problem like a short), and then towed it to my house. Since we couldn’t get it out of park (which happened a couple times before while I was unsuccessfully trying to start it but turning the key a few times usually fixed it; this time it didn’t), the tow driver showed me the shift release override, which is a handy thing to know about if I ever get this car on the road again.

That is unlikely to happen very soon; I don’t really have money or cycles to deal with this right now. Too many other things need attention.

After that, we had yummy Japanese food for lunch on our way to the Museum of Science to see the gecko exhibit, which was lots of fun. I put some photos up on my Tumblr account. (Sorry about the terrible image quality.) We had a great time! Then we watched an IMAX movie about dolphins.

And tonight at her place we watched another episode of Ken Burns’ The Civil War.

By the way, our copious documentary-watching has seriously expanded our vocabulary for insults. A week or so ago plumtreeblossom sent me a text in which she referred to somebody (not any of you, dear readers; fear not!) as stupid enough to qualify as a mammal-like reptile.

That’s no moon! That’s... well, actually, that’s a bunch of moons.

Anybody with the mildest interest in the history of the technology of transportation, the history of advertising, or the history of Canada should go look at this very very strange vehicle from 1905. (The Shorpy’s photoblog is quite a treasure trove, but this particular one is exceptional.)

You can click on the picture to massively embiggen in case you want to try to figure out whether that thing is steam powered or not or what the weird black box is under the chassis in front of the things that might be batteries with all the little U-shaped handles on it.

OK, I should have posted these ages and ages ago, but here finally are the pictures from my trip with plumtreeblossom to North Carolina last month to meet Rider and Genesis, bcat1’s and spacechicken’s twin babies: Visiting the babies, June 2010 (on Flickr).

(Sorry for the lack of editing and the somewhat austere captions.)

EDIT: spacechicken pointed out that I had a bunch of the photos miscaptioned as to which gorgeous little love-cupcake they depicted. Fixed now.

spacechicken has posted some photos of his and bcat1’s twins to Facebook. Here they are!

Lots of fun lately!

Friday after work, I met plumtreeblossom after work for fried chicken. The Popeye’s in Kenmore Square where we’d been planning on eating was insanely crowded due to a ball game, so plumtreeblossom suggested we turn it into an impromptu picnic. We walked a few blocks with our food to the Esplanade and had a lovely dinner by the Charles.

From there we walked to the Charles/MGH T stop, and on the way we saw a family of Canada geese with three cute little goslings! Pictures on Flickr (scroll down a bit).

After stopping at plumtreeblossom’s house to dump off our stuff and get cleaned up, we went to a combination birthday (yay!) and going-away (boo!) party for Theatre@First stalwart and all-round sweetheart big_jewfro. We were unfortunately too tired to stay very long but we had just a wonderful time. plumtreeblossom managed to drag me into the karaoke room, which I thought I wouldn’t enjoy, but I had a fabulous time. It was a truly delightful party. I hope the Boston area ends up getting big_jewfro and his sweetie back eventually, but wherever he settles will be a big bright spot visible from orbit.

When we got to plumtreeblossom’s house (fortunately only a few blocks from the party) we collapsed right away.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at local favourite The Burren and then went to Earthfest, an annual eco-themed music and marketing event on the Charles River Esplanade. I’d never been before, but plumtreeblossom’s been several times and said this year’s was the most crowded she’s seen. This is a free concert with an associated vast stretch of marketing tents, all with some connection ranging from direct to very tenuous with ecology. Oh, and food vendors, of course. We had a lovely time, but the crowd was very dense and it was a lot of walking and waiting. Lots and lots of cute dogs to look at! And the weather was spectacular. I’ve put a few photos on Flickr.

Saturday evening I helped eisa unload at her new apartment. Due to the large number of people and the relatively small amount of stuff it was very quick, and the traditional pizza was yummy. I’m delighted to have her (and her dogs) back in the area.

Now, I think, it’s time for bed.

PS — During the course of the weekend, plumtreeblossom and I discovered that the longest of the three escalator flights at the Porter Square T stop is exactly one hundred kisses long.