It's not that often that I mention New Hampshire news. This story combines an invention from NH with a famous NH mountain. From NH Public Radio:
Yesterday marked a milestone in the history of the Segway Human Transporter. The brainchild of New Hampshire inventor Dean Kamen made its first official climb up Mt. Washington, the highest mountain in the northeast.
One more try - With the beating our lawn took during the early summer dry spell, Michelle and I were about ready to give up. When we moved in last summer we had a sprinkler system put in. Last fall we aerated and overseeded. TruGreen had been doing their scheduled treatments of fertilizer since last fall. And still the lawn thinned out by mid-July. It's come back some now but there's a lot of crab grass and still some bare areas. We were seriously contemplating overseeding with clover. Clover does have a few advantages. It's drought resistant. It puts nitrogen back into the soil. It aerates the soil. It sprawls and fills in everywhere. The main downside we saw was attracting bees if it's allowed to flower. In any case TruGreen spoke with Michelle today and they talked us out of it. They're going to do a soil analysis and see if perhaps we weren't just too acid and in dire need of some lime treatments. I don't know what took them so long. They're also going to aerate and overseed again next month. I think that they knew a clover lawn would be the end of their service routine with us.
School is back - Claire started school yesterday. That morning I took Abigail with me and Claire. We went to 7:30AM Mass at Milford's St. Patricks. We had a quick stop at Santos Dumont where I got the girls a roll and I had a hot drink. Then we headed off to school. It was a zoo that first morning! We parked about half a mile away and walked in. It took a while to find Claire's new teacher. Then I had to break the news to Abby that we had to walk back to the car. I dropped Abby off at the house and headed in to work. Michelle has picked up some good materials for teaching Abby this year. Michelle knew where to go for useful supplies since she homeschooled Claire during the early years as well.
Rt. 101A/101 smooth again - Today I drove home from work in a reasonable time of around 20-25 minutes. For the prior three days the home commute has been aweful, nearly an hour. I realize that's a typical commute for my Dad and Chris, but the commute between ARC and our Milford home doesn't take that long. The previous two days were marked by car accidents that pinched off driving lanes. The day before that just seemed like the lights got mis-programmed. Normally they are timed so you don't hit them all. Monday you just seemed to hit them all. You've heard the New England expression "ya caaan't get theya from heya". Well in the case of heading west from ARC, if the main road (Rt. 101A) is stalled, it seems like you can't get there from here. Whenever there's an accident, it always seems to be in the first 2 miles of leaving ARC which is where the road is most congested. Once you get further out the cars start peeling off the road to head into their homes in Hollis, Merrimack, and Amherst.
Hey Suzy, now that you've been in school a bit, how is it going? How are you finding graduate level classes? Do you feel like you get any more respect than the undergrads?
Highlights of Cheaper - If you are not familiar with the story, the Washington Post did a nice writeup on "Cheaper by the Dozen" (the book, not the upcoming movie). Consider it more background than Cliff Notes.