Claire on board - I'm sitting here in the Manchester airport. Claire has just boarded the airplane and so I must sit here until it takes off. Hopefully this all goes as smoothly as it did last year. It'll be strange not having Claire around the house when I come home tonight.
Adelphia strikes again - The good news is that Adelphia has upgraded our area's television lineup. I'm pretty happy that we now get FoxNews and EWTN. The bad news is that while they were messing around with our lines, all cable modem internet service on our block has been down. It's been five or six days now which is why I haven't updated much recently. It's not the lack of desire; it's the lack of ability. I built a new web photo album this weekend but haven't been able to upload it. Argh! If it isn't up by tonight, I'll bring it with me to work tomorrow and do a quick upload from there. It makes me glad that I moved the hosting of BilikFamily.com out of the house.
I'm a perfect square - The bad news is that today is my 36th birthday. I'm on the downward slide to 40 now. *smirk* The good news is that when I went to the eye doctor last Friday, my eyes are actually better than they were when I was in high school (when I was first diagnosed as needing glasses). As we age our eyes tend toward far-sightedness but I've always been a little near-sighted. My prescription dropped by about a third from my existing glasses. It's no wonder I felt like I had eagle eyes when I wore my glasses -- they were over-prescribed. I guess that teaches me about the consequences of waiting so long to visit an eye doctor.
Swope visit - After yesterday's nap we drove out to Derry, NH to visit the Swope family. It had been over a year since our last visit. Moving to Milford has made them even further away than they were before. On the drive out we stopped in briefly at the Black Forest Cafe and Bakery to see if their cookies were as good as NH Magazine said they were. I concur!
Mosquito Magnet - I also got the Mosquito Magnet assembled and running. At first it wouldn't run and I was getting a bit frustrated. I learned that you must turn on the propane very slowly. I had just cranked the knob as if I was turning on a water hose. This surge triggered the pressure regulator to cut off the fuel supply. From there you must use a special gadget to relieve the pressure and reset the regulator. Once I did that, I started the procedure from scratch and things worked fine.
A lot of web searchers are interested in the performance of the mosquito magnet. Now that it has been running for a couple of months this summer, it seems to have turned the tide in the war against mosquitos and black flies. Who can tell for certain? What started out as a damp spring which caused an explosion of mosquitos turned into a dry summer for about a month and a half. This dry spell coincided with my initial use of the trap. We've now had another spell of rain but the mosquitos seem to be held at bay.
I have to replace the propane tank every three weeks which isn't too high a recurring cost. I have a large yard and a lot of kids. It wasn't worth having the yard if the kids didn't want to go outside. Now that they aren't being eaten alive, they play outside whenever weather permits. So even though the initial cost was a bit steep, I think it's made for an enjoyable summer.
Posted by: Scott at September 9, 2003 11:31 AM