Today we trekked up to the Mount Washington Valley to hike the Imp Face Trail. The weather was perfect, the hike was challenging, but very rewarding in the end. The view was spectacular:
ppp|
Happy Hikers and a Fabulous View|ppp
I am now finished with the reorganization of our photo gallery.
Hopefully it will be more manageable for me and easier to browse for you. You can browse an album called ‘Events and Gatherings’ if you’re looking for party photos, event photos, or that sort of thing. Or, you can wander around the globe by using the ‘Travels’ album. Admittedly, some of the ‘Travels’ albums are contrived… I created a France album, but the only thing in it is the photos I took when we were at Charles de Gaulle airport for half a day on our honeymoon. Of course, that can just serve as an incentive to go there ‘for real’ some day. 🙂 (Becky has been there with her family, and is much more travelled than I in general. But we don’t have any of her “pre-us” photos online. Yet.)
As always, you may also use the search box at the top of the main gallery page to find specific albums or photos. I’m sure there must be a way to put the search box on every gallery page, so I’ll look into that.
I’ve also attempted to make some album names more uniform, and I’ve split up some albums that were previously together in order to make the fit in the new scheme. If you think something is missing, just let me know.
Go check it out!
Who can identify the source of the quote in the title of this post? It was one thing that came to mind today as we enjoyed Captain Bill’s Whale Watch.
By all accounts the day was great. The weather was great, and we saw about seven fin-back whales, and three humback whales. There was plenty of “fluking” (where the whale’s tail flips up out of the water just before it dives), lots of “spouting” (where the whale blows air and water out of its blowhole), and even one really incredible “breach” (which is where the whale actually jumps completely out of the water and flips over on its back). The breach was amazing to see, and unfortunately it happened at a point when I didn’t have my camera ready. So I didn’t get a photo. But I did get many other photos. At one point, two humpbacks swam right under the bow of our ship! It was really amazing, and certainly well worth the $0 we paid. 🙂 I’d have to say that it would even be worth the $35 to see it once in your life. God’s great whales are truly amazing. Now I want to go get a copy of Hovhaness’s And God Created Great Whales.
After the whale watch, we had lunch at Virgilio’s Bakery & Deli (“Bread of the Fishermen” Since 1961). The sandwiches were big and delicious after a long whale watch. Later in the day, we learned that when George Clooney was in Gloucester filming The Perfect Storm, his favorite sandwich came from Virgilio’s!
After lunch, we walked over to Cape Pond Ice to meet “The Coolest Guys Around”. They were also involved in the Trails & Sails event, and were giving free tours of their facility. We got to see where they stored massive blocks of ice, as well as the port where fishing vessels can take on loads of crushed ice for preserving fish on long voyages. We’ve got some photos of that adventure, too.
By the way, if you haven’t noticed already, I have started to reorganize our photo gallery. Most everything has been moved out of the ‘Year-by-Year’ gallery and into one of two galleries: “Events and Gatherings” and “Travels”. Travels is organized by country and state, and Events and Gatherings is just one big album containing things like graduations, parties, athletic events, etc. Everything from 2004 and 2003 has been moved, and most things from 2002 as well. Still a few albums to go, but I’ll get to it when I have time.
All in all, it has been a very exciting Saturday. Stay tuned for news on the adventures we have planned for tomorrow!
This weekend is Trails and Sails, where a bunch of communities in Essex county hold free events highlighting area history and culture. Many area companies give away a limited number of tickets for attractions on which they normally charge admission. Last year, for example, Becky and I went on a free trip on board the Schooner Lannon. The day was very foggy, but it was still a neat experience!
This weekend, we wanted to try something different, so we’re thinking about going on a whale watch, something neither of us have ever done! The question is, “Which Whale Watch?” There are two competing whale watches giving out 50 free tickets each:
qqq|Search for the Whales, Gloucester
Time: Saturday 8:30am also Sunday at 1:30pm [Note the time change from the online brochure (print brochure is correct)]
Location: Gloucester
Hosted by: Atlantic Yankee Whale Watch
Event length:4 hours
Age requirement: 2 and over
Participant limit: 50
Join Atlantic Yankee Fleet for an exciting whale watch. Through our association with CORE (Center for Oceanic Research and Education), our goal is the preservation of marine life and their habitats through education and stewardship. Leave your harpoon at home and join us to mingle with nature’s gentle giants! Bring sunscreen and rubber-soled shoes, and dress in layers.|qqq
… or …
qqq|Whale Watch with Captain Bill, Gloucester
Time: Saturday 8:30am also Sunday at 8:30am
Location: Gloucester
Hosted by: Captain Bill & Sons Whale Watch Fishing and Cruises
Event length: 3.5 hours
Age requirement: All ages
Participant limit: 50
Join Captain Bill and his crew for ed-venture in whale watching that you will never forget! We guarantee sightings and have a whale museum and public education exhibit for you to browse dockside. Captain Bill has been providing exciting and educational whale watching for all ages since 1959. Bring your Non-slip shoes, sunglasses, sunscreen, and a camera.|qqq
Yankee Fleet sounds more professional and scientific, and they have a pretty decent looking website. Captain Bill, on the other hand, sounds much more kooky and fun, and he guarantees sightings! Both places normally charge $34/person for their Whale Watch, so in terms of dollar value they would be the same. Both leave at around the same time from the same location. Yankee Fleet won the “2004 Governor Leadership Award,” whatever that is. Captain Bill’s claims the best whale sighting rate around. Yankee Fleet has a “hydrophone” so that you can hear the sounds of underwater life.
Help us decide, readers – Yankee Fleet, or Captain Bill’s? Leave a comment!
Many congratulations to Chip and Kim for winning Amazing Race 5! It was really a bit of a miracle that they won – they were pretty far behind after some very strenuous athletic competition, but out of sheer luck, the fact that they were the last to make airline reservations turned out to be their key to winning. After the other teams had already booked a flight from Calgary to Dallas, that flight was delayed by two hours due to a foggy forecast. Chip and Kim discovered this when they called to make reservations, and they were able to book an alternate flight that arrived in Dallas just 15 minutes earlier than the delayed flight the rest of the teams were on. That gave them the edge they needed to get to the finish line first!
Becky and I couldn’t be happier that our favorite team won, but this morning we were disgusted to see Colin and Christie, our least favorite team, upstage Chip and Kim on CBS’s Early Show. All four final teams were on the show, and after a brief interview where he stated that they were given a “bad edit” that portrayed Colin as a “maniac” and Christie as a “submissive girlfriend,” Colin got down on one knee and proposed to Christie, right on live TV! Blah, blah blah.
As for the other teams, we’re happy to see that the Bowling Moms got as far as they did (fourth place) – what an inspiration to their kids and families! The best all-female team in Amazing Race so far. And Brandon and Nicole…. eh. Never really cared about them. They can go back to being silly Christian models, and maybe some day they’ll get married (p.s. you two, you’d better book separate rooms on that vacation you won!).
So this morning I was importing some older CD’s into iTunes so that I could sync them with my iPod. I have iTunes configured so that when a CD is inserted, it automatically grabs the song titles from the ‘net, extracts all of the audio content from the CD, and then ejects the CD when finished. It plays a little sound when it’s done so that I don’t have to keep checking to see how far along it is.
Well, this morning I kept coming back in to find iTunes showing a message “Some of the songs on this CD have already been imported. Do you want to replace them?” I wasn’t quite sure why that would happen, so I chose “Yes,” then left and came back later. Each time, it repeated the same message for the same CD over and over.
Not until the fourth time I was prompted did I realize why this was happening. I have an external CD-ROM/CD-RW sitting on my desktop behind my keyboard. I happened to have pushed my keyboard back far enough so that it was right in front of the door of the CD-ROM drive. So, every time the CD was ejected, it popped out, hit the keyboard, and was automatically pushed back in. iTunes thought it was another CD to be imported, so it tried to re-import all of the tracks, and that’s how I got the message.
Gahh. Time to wake up and get to work!
How about a nice tasty pack of “I hate those stupid commercials!” Though McDonald’s Chicken Selects do look sort of tasty, the people in those commercials certainly don’t make me want to be associated with them. Will they turn me into the office dolt if I eat them – guarding my Chicken Selects with fervor, and uttering such phrases as “Step slowly away from the deliciousness?”
Would I think differently if it was an ad for Taco Bell? Well… maybe. Probably. Yes. There’s little Taco Bell could do that would discourage me from eating there.
Apologies to our readers from outside of McUSA.
Firefox, the cross-platform web browser, has registered over 1,000,000 downloads in the ten days since its 1.0 Preview Release! I’m glad to see that the world has come to the realization that there is a choice other than Internet Explorer, and that they’re downloading a very well-made browser to replace it.
You can do the same – if you’re viewing our website (that is, you’re not reading this by way of an RSS newsreader), just scroll down the page until you see the ridiculously huge Firefox banner ad on the left. Give it a click, and follow the links to download Firefox! The link on that banner helps track just how many people have downloaded Firefox by way of the ad on my website. So far, that number is two… a small number, but when added together with the thousands of other promoters, it means a lot!
If you’re a Mac user, feel free to experiment with Firefox. It’s pretty good, but I would still recommend Safari as the best browser on the Mac. Either one is certainly preferable to IE.
Of course, don’t let me stop you from switching to Mac OS X so that you can use Safari… now that would be excellent.
Congratulations to The Amazing Race for winning the Primetime Emmy for “Outstanding Reality-Competition Program”. They were up against Survivor, American Idol, Last Comic Standing, and Apprentice. I certainly think they were the best of that bunch, and personally AR is my favorite show on TV. The locales are fantastic, the race is real and challenging, and you really get to see the contestants use their minds and bodies to complete each leg of the race. Besides that, Phil is one of the best hosts ever. 🙂 Jeff Probst is just a bit too smug-looking for my taste.
The Amazing Race 6 final episode is on for tomorrow night. Chip and Kim are in first place after last week’s episode, which I’m very happy about. My second favorite team, the “Bowling Moms” Linda and Karen came in second, having slowly worked their way up the ladder over the last several legs. Long-term-dating-Christian-model (not model Christian, mind you) couple Brandon and Nicole (gag me with a spoon) came in third. Colin and Christie, my least favorite team, came in last place. Unfortunately, the producers saw fit not to make that leg an elimination leg, so they are still in the race. My wish is for them to be squarely beaten in the final stages of the race. With their last place standing at this pit stop, and their lack of fundage for the next leg, they will have a difficult time at it. They’ve consistenly been the most powerful team, however, so there’s always the possibility that they can pull off something amazing.
Amazing Race 6 does still appear to be scheduled for an October 2 premiere. I’m still not sure how they’re going to pull that off with only a week and half in between seasons, but I suppose if they were filming AR6 while broadcasting AR5, it could work.
We shall see!