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A couple of days a week I drive into downtown Boston. My journey takes me on Route 1 and then into the new 93 tunnel. Lately, I have been extreemly sensitive to the poor driving habits of my fellow drivers.

I’m not even going to talk about cell phones. They’re not the problem as far as I can tell. The problem is the arrogance of other drivers. They seem to feel as if they are the only car on the road. I see cars running red lights, swerving in and out of traffic, and neglecting to use their turn signals.

That is my biggest gripe. Everyone with a US drivers license must pass a driving test with the DMV. During this test they must drive, and use their turn signal when they hope to change lanes or turn. So, my question is, WHY HAVE THEY FORGOTTEN THAT THEY MUST USE THEIR BLINKERS???? I drive. I use my blinker. I don’t even think about it, it just happens. When others change lanes without their signals, they are putting themselves and others in danger. Do they expect me (or others) to be psychic and just KNOW that they’re going to turn? I’ve even had someone cut me off by changing lanes infront of me without their blinker…and then when they realized how close I was to their car they had the nerve to send me a less than polite hand signal. How was that my fault? AHHHHH!!!! JUST USE YOUR BLINKER!

That has to be my biggest pet peeve of all time. But on a better note, I would like to send a big shout out to Cheryl C. We don’t know each other, but she is a toll collector on the Tobin Bridge. She is always cheerful and polite and makes appropriate small talk at the booth. Most importantly, she keeps her lane cruising along, never backing up into traffic. I think she deserves an award! Yay Cheryl!

Pastors and Pastor Wannabes

For the Pastors and Pastor Wannabes out there, check out the ***Pastor’s Resource Center|http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/cms_sp?sp=71810*** at CBD. It’s a collection of products and resources for Christian pastors and others interested in preaching. It’s a very well put-together portion of our site (not that any portion is put together badly, but this one is particularly nice). Our prices are great, too, so hopefully you will want to buy some stuff.

For those who are curious, I and the other developers don’t actually write the content you see on any of those pages. We write and manage the back-end content management system that is used by our product editors in order to create their pages.

Articles

In the left hand side of the page, I’ve added a new section of my ‘articles’. These are full-length discussions of various technology issues. At the moment, there is the “Photo Shootout,” a review I conducted of six online photo printing services, and “Blogging With The Mac,” which I presented last week at the ***MacWoburn|http://www.macwoburn.org/*** meeting.

Check them out, and if you feel so inclined you can discuss them on the ***World Wide Wood discussion forums|http://prwdot.org/bb/***.

News Bites

Wednesday, May 19: I gave a presentation to the ***MacWoburn|http://www.macwoburn.org/*** Macintosh User Group on “Blogging With The Mac.” The presentation went well, and the attendees had some good questions about blogging in general, as well as the Mac OS applications I had reviewed in the process of preparing for the meeting. For those who couldn’t attend, I have a complete website available which details the essence of the presentation. It includes reviews of six different Mac OS X blogging applications, and you can find it ***here|http://prwdot.org/blogging/***.

Saturday, May 22: Becky and I went down to Hyannis to visit Jeremy and Angela. We had a delicious dinner and then went out to get some ice cream at the opening night of ***Four Seas Ice Cream|http://www.fourseasicecream.com/*** in Centerville. I had peanut butter chocolate chip, while Becky had a pink-colored mint chip. Yum!

I brought along a couple video tapes so that Jeremy and I could continue our regular viewing of ***The Shield|http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/the_shield/***. We’ve been getting together to watch it since its debut in March of 2002 on FX. It’s admittedly quite an intense show (“too intense for network television”), but we’re strangely fascinated with it, along with millions of other viewers. If you haven’t been following the series, it’s probably a bit too late to tune in now, unless you buy the DVD’s and try to catch up.

Upcoming: We’re going to be out of town for the next three weekends, which should be fun. Two of them involve ***Martha’s Vineyard|http://www.mvy.com/***, and one involves ***New Jersey|http://www.state.nj.us/***. We are also planning a road trip to ***Ohio|http://www.ohiotourism.com/home.asp***, later this summer, to see my family, with a side trip to “***camp out|http://www.niagarakoa.net/***” at ***Niagara Falls|http://www.infoniagara.com/***. (Note the quotes around camp out… though we may be sleeping in a tent, it’s far from roughing it.)

In the meantime, it’s ***business|http://www.christianbook.com/*** as usual for me, and for Becky her new job with ***SPNEA|http://www.spnea.org/*** will be starting soon! If you haven’t already, stop by her entry a couple of posts down from this one and leave her a note! 🙂

Send Us Email!

Check out the left side of our page – you should see a new “Email Us!” link. It’s at the very bottom of every page, too. Feel free to use that whenever you want to send either of us (or both of us) email. It should make the task easier and more fun, as you won’t have to bring up your email client or log in to webmail to send it!

Enjoy!

Good Things

1. ***The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities|http://www.spnea.org*** called to offer me a job today. I will soon be working at the Harrison Gray Otis House museum in Boston. Things are moving in the right direction.

2. Aunt Christine’s Strawberry Cake recipe. ***Amy|http://waltondammerunprwdot.org/g/*** asked for the recipe, and here it is…

qqq|Mix {1 White Cake Mix, 3 Tbs. flour, 1 package Strawberry Jello}

Add {3/4 cup oil, 1/2 cup water, 4 beaten eggs}

Stir in 3/4 cup strawberries (I used a 10 oz bag of frozen strawberries due to the season) Reserve the rest of the strawberries.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

ICING- Combine remaining strawberries with 2 cups of confectionary sugar and 1/4 cup melted butter. (I used a hand mixer) (my icing was chunky and strange looking, but was absolutely delicious, don’t fret!)|qqq

It’s not easy being green

We all know that the gas prices are going up, up, up. It seems that every time I pass my favorite gas station the numbers have climbed. Given the circumstances, I guess I can understand why the prices have to go up, and, actually, the high prices aren’t the biggest bother to me. I consider myself a pretty frugal person. I’m really good at cutting coupons and planning my grocery shopping so that I get the best deals. I hardly ever buy anything at retail prices. At gas stations there are no ways to get a break on the prices. No coupons, no buy-one-get-one incentives, no sales.

The answer to saving money on gas is, of course, just to use less. Or to use what you have in a more efficient way. I’ve compiled a list of links that may help you to reduce the amount of gas you burn while running your daily errands or commuting.

***fueleconomy.com|http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/drive.shtml***
***The Environmental Health Center|http://www.nsc.org/ehc/mobile/refuelin.htm***
***EarthEasy|http://eartheasy.com/live_fuel_efficient_driving.htm***

I think that most of these say basically the same things, but repetition is good for the memory!

Back from Hiatus

Yes, I deserve a whack on the knuckles. I’m sorry I’ve been so delinquent. Here’s somethings I’ve been thinking about lately.

*This week, it became legal in Massachusetts for same-sex couples to attain marriage licenses from the state. Monday was a day of joyous celebration and vicious opposition. I have many thoughts on this issue that I won’t bore you with here, but I do want to send one message out to the Gay/Lesbian population. PLEASE, please, fight just as long and hard to save your marriage when times get tough as you did to attain the right to marry. Marriage is a privilage. Don’t abuse it.

*I went for the first time to the Beverly Public Library’s Scrabble Club tonight. There were 5 other players there, all of them much older than me. They were nice, and very good at the game. I held my own, however, and kept my scores close to my scores at home. Although these players were great, and compete in tournaments and such, I think I like playing at home better. The skilled players are all obsessed with using two letter words to get super high scores. Peter and I like to find interesting words or long words or such. Our scores may be lower, but the game is much more interesting. {a side note for those from Townsend} One woman there reminded me very much of Judy Hancewicz. Not as nice or as funny, but she tried hard to be! 🙂

*I’ve found another neat site for those addicted to knitting. ***Magknits|http://www.magknits.com*** is very much like ***Knitty|http://www.knitty.com*** and has lots of interesting articles and patterns. It inspires me.

*Tonight is the last episode of Law & Order in which Detective Lenny Briscoe will appear. I know he wants/needs to move on (to a spin off?) but he will be greatly missed.

Gastronomical

Today was the day – I absolutely, positively had to fill up my car’s gas tank for the first time since the fuel price hike. Luckily, I needed to be on the other side of town where the cheapest gas station is located (American Petroleum at 586 Cabot St. in Beverly). Here is how it broke down:

15.602 gallons of gasoline to fill my tank @ $2.019 dollars per gallon for 87 octane (the lowest price *anywhere* around here!) = $31.50 total!!

*sigh*