fff|ggg|lynch_park/P1020358|Lazy day at Lynch Park|ggg|fff

Today, we leapt at the chance to spend time outdoors in the sun and warmth! We drove to ***Lynch Park|http://www.bevrec.com/lynchpark.html*** here in Beverly, ate lunch, tossed the frisbee around a bit, walked around the park, and ***took some photos|http://gallery.prwdot.org/lynch_park***. It was great to get out there and get some sun after such a long stretch of “blah” weather.

Tonight we’re headed to a wedding in Cohasset, and then we’ll be on Martha’s Vineyard Sunday and Monday. We hope all of our friends in the USA enjoy their Memorial Day weekend, and for everyone else, enjoy your regular weekend! 🙂

fff|ggg|grab_bag/P1020340|What is this?|ggg|fff

So… what is this bright stuff flooding through my window? Does this mean that spending the weekend on Martha’s Vineyard might not be such a bad idea?

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Whee!

One: I have worn my raincoat every day for the past week.
Two: I have not worn my sunglasses for the past week.

Here’s to hoping there are some clear, sunny days on the horizon.

Update
I just had a cup of hot cocoa tonight. It was good, but… IT’S MAY 25!!! Hot cocoa?? And just what is up with having to turn on the heater??

Since I know that a number of Beverly residents read this blog, I just wanted to pass along a Public Service Announcement regarding ***Lynch Park|http://www.bevrec.com/lynchpark.html***. With great ocean views, beautiful gardens, expansive grassy areas, and even an ice cream shop (Dick & June’s), Lynch Park is undoubtedly Beverly’s best public park. It’s a great place to hang out in the summer. (And it’s also a great place to have your friend Beth Bray take your ***engagement photos|http://gallery.prwdot.org/engagement_photos***.) Starting June 19 and running through August 14, Beverly Recreation will be doing semi-weekly movie nights. You can see the schedule for movies, along with other BevRec events, at the ***public calendar|http://www.localendar.com/public/bevrec***. For example, the original Star Wars movie will be showing on August 14. 🙂

From May 21 through Labor Day, parking at Lynch Park is restricted. For non-residents, parking is $5 on weeknights and $12 on weekends. For residents, parking is free with a valid Beverly vehicle registration. You can either get a sticker on your first visit, or show your registration every time if you don’t want a sticker on your car.

Here’s to the quickly-approaching summertime!

fff|ggg|blue_hills/P1010335|Blue Hills|ggg|fff

Today, Becky and I took advantage of the very nice weather to go on a hike at the ***Blue Hills Reservation|http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/metroboston/blue.htm*** just south of Boston. Blue Hills was one of the first areas purchased as part of the Metropolitan Parks Commission in 1893. It is now a part of the Massachusetts ***DCR|http://www.mass.gov/dcr/*** system of parks and preserved lands.

We did the first hike on ***Ranger Pete’s Suggested Hikes|http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/metroboston/trailwatch/rangerpete.htm***. This was a good warmup hike for the season. The weather was perfect, and the length and difficulty of the hike were sufficient so that we felt like we got a good workout. There are some nice views of Boston and the surrounding area from the top of the various hills in the Blue Hills range. Just a warning to anyone who is interested in attempting it, there are a number of steep descents with some VERY loose rocks, so watch your footing.

Interesting side note: The top of Great Blue Hill is home to the ***Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory|http://www.bluehill.org/***. The BHMO is the oldest continuously operating weather observatory in the United States. The first reading was taken on January 31, 1885, and readings have been taken continuously ever since.

I took a few ***handfuls of photos|http://gallery.prwdot.org/blue_hills?page=1*** on the hike (of course!).

In the past several years, I’ve taken the opportunity to attend meetings of a number of Boston-area special interest groups. These are groups where people interested in various specific topics meet in person to discuss whatever is on their mind. I enjoy getting to meet people in person who I’ve previously only met on-line, as well as getting to meet completely new people. I’d like to introduce you to some of those groups, and share some of my thoughts on the motivation (or lack thereof) for attending groups like this.
Continue reading →

Well, there was supposed to be a ***Boston Weblogger meetup|http://blog.meetup.com/3/events/?eventId=3946716&action=pastdetail*** at 7 p.m. tonight, but apparently we’re supposed to get some snow, so it was cancelled. It’s 8:38, and I have yet to see any snow up here in Beverly. Frankly, I think people around here get way too worked up about snow warnings. When they say that total accumulations will be 5-10 inches by daybreak tomorrow, that is not a lot of snow. Just drive safely, don’t panic, and everything will be fine. But whatever… everyone has their own threshhold for snow. I just expect New Englanders to be a bit hardier than this.

In the meantime, here are some fun photos for you.

Keyspan blocks the street

This photo was shot looking out of our parking lot up the street. I had barely enough room to drive by their truck and the hole they had dug into the ground. I knew that when I saw the spraypaint on the road a few days ago, that trouble would be a-brewin’…

ggg|grab_bag/IMG_0161|Keyspan blocking the street|ggg

Food and… ‘food’

Becky and I had dinner at ***Taco Bell|http://www.tacobell.com/*** and then picked up some groceries at the Market Basket in Salem. Among the things we didn’t pick up:

Ground Buffalo

ggg|grab_bag/IMG_0164|Ground Buffalo|ggg

Ostrich Filet

ggg|grab_bag/IMG_0163|Ostrich Filet|ggg

Who buys this stuff? And why? (And where in Newark, NJ are there ostrich farms?)

When they say off-street parking, I’m not sure this is what they have in mind:

ggg|grab_bag/IMG_0157|Nice job…|ggg

ggg|grab_bag/IMG_0158|Nice job…|ggg

I saw this in the morning as Simon and I were leaving to work at the ***warehouse sale|http://www.christianbook.com/html/cms/general/company_events.html***. But I didn’t have time to stop, so I called Becky up on the phone to ask if she could come out and take it when she had a chance. My sick but brave wife was good enough to go outside and snap some pics of this fabulous parking job. The truck is actually parked in a guest parking space in our apartment building’s parking lot… unfortunately, the guest spaces are half-covered with snowpiles, so this person did some, shall we say, creative parking.

Hee hee.

Today at Boston.com there’s an ***article|http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/02/20/bloggers_of_the_hubunite_and_bring_your_toys_to_dinner/*** on the Boston Weblogger Meetup that I attended last month. Thanks to ***Steve Garfield|http://www.stevegarfield.com/*** for ***pointing it out|http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2005/02/if-you-dont-go-out-nothing-happens.html***.

Speaking of Boston Webloggers, there’s another meetup coming on ***February 28|http://blog.meetup.com/3/events/3946716/***. I’ll probably be there, though my RSVP is officially ‘Maybe’ at this point.

This has been a pretty big storm, but it hasn’t been quite as bad as the Nor’easter of December 2003. The temperatures during that storm were higher, with wetter, heavier snow, which is much harder to plow. The inches of accumulated snow were probably about the same, but this year it was very light and fluffy and easy to move.

Here’s a photo comparison… December 2003 on the left, January 2005 on the right. 🙂

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Update
We’ve heard several mentions on the news of some big snowstorm in February of 2003, but we couldn’t quite recall the details. Well, thanks to a little searching of our own blog, I pulled up some blog entries for the storm of February 17, 2003 (which was nearly as big as this one and the one in December 2003): ***here|http://prwdot.org/archives/000692.html***, ***here|http://prwdot.org/archives/000693.html***, and ***here|http://prwdot.org/archives/000695.html***. For some odd reason, there are no photos from that storm. I might have to dig back in my iPhoto Library to see if I perhaps took some, but never uploaded them. However, I did find some photos from a snowstorm that happened about ***10 days|http://gallery.prwdot.org/snowy_friday_03*** before that one.