Monthly Archives: December 2003

Who are we, really?

Who are you… ooh ooh.. ooh ooh…. I really wanna know.

Could you be the ***King of England|http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8266043%5E13780,00.html***?

Or perhaps you’ve lived most of your life as a black man, but then you discover that you ***may not be black at all|http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/Nightline/SciTech/racial_identity_031228-1.html***.

What a wild, wild world.

The Trip In Review

Tuesday evening: Becky picked me up at work in Peabody and we drove to the ***Country Inn and Suites|http://gallery.prwdot.org/christmas_03_select/country_inn*** in Frackville, PA.

Wednesday morning/afternoon: hung out around the hotel, did a bit of shopping

Wednesday evening: Christmas Eve church with Mom, Dad, Mark, Kirsten, Nana and Pop-Pop, and Tom at the Schuylkill Haven Nazarene church. After-church party at Aunt Kay’s with the full complement of relatives. Food consumed, catching up and first-time meetings done. Becky presented Peter with Christmas eve gift, ***handmade Christmas-tree pajama pants|http://gallery.prwdot.org/christmas_03_select/matching_pants***. Becky made herself a matching pair.

Thursday morning: Christmas morning in the hotel with Mom, Dad, Mark, and Kirsten. Stockings and gifts exchanged, games played, pools and hot tubs at the hotel utilized. Fun gifts: Spongebob Squarepants pajama pants for ***Peter|http://gallery.prwdot.org/christmas_03_select/peter_spongebob*** and ***Becky|http://gallery.prwdot.org/christmas_03_select/becky_spongebob***.

Thursday afternoon: Christmas Lunch at Aunt Chris’s. More food consumed.

Thursday evening: Christmas Dinner at Aunt Kay’s. More food consumed, gifts exchange, Yankee Swap conducted, much hilarity ensued.

Friday morning/afternoon: Day-after-Christmas “shopping” (read: experiencing) at ***Cabela’s|http://www.cabelas.com/***. They had a full ***African diorama|http://gallery.prwdot.org/christmas_03_select/cabelas_diorama***.

Friday evening: Birthday party for Mom at Aunt Chris’s. Pizza and ice cream cake consumed. Watched Bend it Like Beckham with Mark, Kirsten, Johanna and Chad.

Saturday morning: Depart Country Inn and Suites. Head for Townsend, Mass.

Saturday afternoon/evening: Arrive in Townsend, Mass. Watch remainder of “Unconditional Love” with Ken, Dianne, and Corey. Consume home-made pizza, exchange presents. Corey and ***Peter|http://gallery.prwdot.org/christmas_03_select/peter_zipzap*** play with their ***Zip-Zaps|http://www.zipzaps.com/***.

Sunday morning: Church at TCCUCC with Ken and Dianne.

Sunday afternoon: Lunch at ***Panera|http://www.panerabread.com/*** in Nashua, bowling at ***Brunswick Zone|http://www.brunswickbowling.com/home*** in Lowell. ***Big Winner: Ken|http://gallery.prwdot.org/christmas_03_select/ken_bowling***; ***Big Loser: Peter|http://gallery.prwdot.org/christmas_03_select/peter_losing***. But it was still cool to see a ***Spongebob Squarepants bowling ball|http://gallery.prwdot.org/christmas_03_select/spongebob_squareball***. Headed home to Beverly after bowling.

Sunday evening: Unpacked, settled in, took stock of all of the craziness.

The complete photo gallery for the trip is online in the family area of the gallery. If you’re a family member and don’t already know how to go there, please contact Peter and he will set you up. For those who aren’t family members, I’ve set up a photo gallery with select ***photos from Christmas 2003|http://gallery.prwdot.org/christmas_03_select***. Enjoy!

Heading to Haven

Tomorrow after I get off of ***work|http://www.christianbook.com/***, Becky and I are heading down to ***Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania|http://www.schuylkillhaven.org/*** for Christmas. My mom’s side of the family, the Keefers, have their home base there. Mom, dad, Mark and Kirsten will all be coming out, and it should be great to get to see a lot of folks again — and for Becky to meet some people she hasn’t met at all!

For those who would like to put Schuylkill Haven on the map, below is the route we will be taking from Beverly:

And here’s the rough area map of Haven, with a few recognizeable cities:

We’ll be gone for the rest of the week, so this may be my last post for a while. Merry Christmas to everyone!

God’s Concession

The Beverly Depot is God’s Concession to people who are forced to live in downtown Beverly. Specifically, the 5:40 p.m. express train to Boston helps to take some of the sting out of living in an area that is, shall we say, a bit ghetto. It’s just a leisurely three minute walk from our apartment, and it gets us right into Boston.

Last night we took the express in for a night on the town. We had dinner at P.F. Chang’s, and then headed over to the Oceana Restaurant at the ***Marriott Long Wharf|https://marriott.com/property/propertyPage.mi?marshaCode=BOSLW*** to hear the ***Mike DiBari Trio|http://www.mikedibari.com/***. Mike and his trio had provided the fantastic live entertainment at our wedding reception, and we hadn’t gotten a chance to hear him since then. He has a regular Friday night gig at the long wharf, so we finally decided to take advantage of it. It was great music… we bought his CD and I think ***you should too|http://www.mikedibari.com/index.asp***!

Now it is off to the craziness of the malls for some final Christmas shopping. Ta-ta!

Big Dig’s Big Day

Tomorrow, the last major milestone of the ***Big Dig|http://www.bigdig.com/*** will be complete – the southbound portion of the Zakim Bridge and Central Artery Tunnel will be open. Boston-area travelers will now be able to drive through Boston completely underground, and the construction crews will finally be able to start tearing down the “other” green monster in the city.

Meanwhile, ***this photo|http://cache.boston.com/traffic/bigdig/galleries/artery/01.jpg*** shows the #1 best reason as to WHY the central artery is going underground.

Lord of the Rings on exhibit!

I can’t wait! Starting next year, the ***Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy Exhibition|http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/Rings/*** will be going on worldwide tour! And they have chosen Boston’s very own ***Museum of Science|http://www.mos.org/*** for their ***U.S. Premiere|http://www.mos.org/lotr/***!

Starting July 31, 2004, you’ll be able to check out first-hand costumes, weapons and armor, even the One Ring. There will also be movie-magic related exhibits, including a hands-on scaling exhibit, using forced perspective to make museum-goers appear to be Hobbit-sized.

Sweet.

Lord of the Laundry

Tonight was laundry night. But I couldn’t help thinking of it in terms of Lord of the Rings, seeing as the final movie in the triology is being released this Wednesday.

First, I had to collect the various cloaks and tunics strewn about our lair. Then, carrying an almost unbearable load, I had to exit through the Back Door of Moria. I made my way across the Porch of Peril, descended the Icy Steps of Doom, walked the Treacherous Path (being careful not to look at the lights), and ascended the Snowy Drifts. After descending the Drifts, I crossed into the land of Laundria, into the mighty stronghold of the dark lord Tideomon. Duty required me to cast my burdens into the gaping maw of the Pit of Suds, wait for half an hour, reach IN to the vile pit, and pull the burden out once more! Then, the laundrous burden was thrown into the Fiery Circle, where it tumbled about until all life-giving fluids had been extricated from the very fiber of its being. The grisly task being finished, I carried the still-steaming garments back to our lair, where I wrenched, twisted, bent, and mangled them into unrecognizable forms. In the end, I was able to fit them all neatly back into their hobbit-holes.

Stay tuned for housekeeping part 2: The Two Showers.

Web-chaeology

If you haven’t seen the Wayback Machine before, ***check it out|http://www.archive.org/***. It’s basically a tool that allows you to access an archive of old websites – sites that potentially no longer exist, but were at one point picked up and indexed by a search engine. It can be fun to plug in your own website, if you’ve had one for a while. Or check out the website of your favorite company – compare it as it looked in ***December, 1996|http://web.archive.org/web/19961220034827/http://www.chrbook.com/***, to how it looks ***now|http://www.christianbook.com***.

I’ve done a little personal archaeological dig, web-chaeological if you will, into my own websites’ pasts. I’ve attempted to find reliable archives from past incarnations of my websites, and I’ve collected the best links I could find all together in one place:

***Peter’s Wayback Archive|http://prwdot.org/?p=wayback***

If you have known me for a while, you might get a kick out of reading some of these pages, and particularly in checking out some of the photo galleries. There are some pics out there that I don’t even have in my own archives! The oldest reliable archive I could find dates back to five years ago, December, 1998. I know I had some webpages before that, but they just didn’t turn up in the Wayback Machine.

Enjoy!

Congratulations!

Jeremy and Angela

This is a couple of days late, but we wanted to congratulate our friends Jeremy and Angela on their recent engagement! Jeremy gave us a call on Tuesday night to let us know the good news. We have been very lucky to have them as friends and we are glad to see them taking this next step together!

For those who don’t know the back-story, Jeremy and I met at Gordon College and were roommates senior year. After we graduated, we looked for an apartment together, along with Art Lawry. We found an apartment in Woburn, and I lived there until August 2002, just before Becky and I got married. At around that point, Jeremy started dating Angela, who was living on Cape Cod. Jeremy continued to live up in Woburn and make the trek down to see Angela. Jeremy was my Best Man at our wedding, and Angela was there with him (which is where that photo is from). Since then, Jeremy has moved down to Hyannis on the Cape so that he could spend more time with Angela… but we do occasionally have the chance to get together. Jeremy has been a great friend and I’m so happy to see things coming together for him and Angela.

Congratulations!!