December 22, 2003

Welcome to Winter

Posted by Scott at 07:02 AM

Winter Solstice - Well, it's officially winter now. Considering we've already had two decent sized snow storms, it seems laughable to call it official now. The kids have been able to sled in the back yard for a couple of weeks.

Weekend - We had a nice weekend. Claire had a "fun day" gymnastics class where Gymnastics Village takes out more of their "fun" equipment and focuses less on flips, tumbles, and balance beams. Saturday evening we had the Martinez's over for dinner. Their son Matthew is about the same size as Timothy but about half a year older. Seeing him walking made us think about how soon Timothy will be doing the same. That brought about some mixed emotions! On Sunday afternoon we drove the kids to the Merrimack Burger King to get them out of the house but away from the malls. They loved it because that BK has a large indoor climbing playground. It was difficult to get them to sit still long enough to eat their food. On the plus side, it wore them out. ;-)

Things breaking - For a short spell it seemed like everything was breaking. Being the week before Christmas, the last thing you want to worry about is repairs.

  1. On my drive home Friday, the "Check Engine" light lit up on my car. That panics me because sometimes that warning can be serious! Since I had just been for an oil change two days earlier, I went back in to see if they had mistakenly forget something. They did a quick once over and gave it a good report. I then took it down the street to have the car's computer code read out. It says it has a problem with the emission control system. It's likely that a sensor went out and needs to be replaced. Whew!
  2. Then on Saturday when Michelle was trying to rescue Timothy from some trouble, she accidentally tipped one of the couches. The back of the couch snagged on an open cabinet door and tore the fabric. Luckily it's on the back side, but still we need to look into how to patch it.
  3. Later that evening Claire wanted to watch a movie while the rest of the kids wanted something simpler like Dora or Blues Clues. I offered to let her watch a movie in our room. We powered on the television and opened the DVD slot. The DVD drive proceeded to go into seizures of opening and closing the DVD slot. Some sensor or plastic gear drive has failed somehow.

Thank goodness things settled down after those three events in 24 hours. I don't think we could sustain that kind of "needs fixing/repairing" rate.

Floppy drive - In a strange bit of irony, I've ordered a USB external floppy disk drive for my Macintoshes. Apple has almost prided itself on not needing a floppy drive. Most data movement comes in via CD-ROM's, Firewire, USB, and ethernet (Internet). Why would you want a pokey old floppy drive? Well, the simplest way to get digital music onto the Yamaha Clavinova from a Mac seems to be to drop the music file (MIDI, XG, etc) onto a floppy and load it into the piano. Yes, the piano has a floppy drive. Don't all pianos?! *grin* Knowing my luck, Yamaha will produce a Mac OS X version of their new "File Utility" about a month after I buy the drive. Then you could just download the song via the piano's USB port. Yes, the piano has a USB port. Don't all pianos?! OK, enough of the sarcasm. Yes, it's a geek piano, but it has been fun to play.

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Comments

Hey- in your last entry you said you would post details about Timothy's doctor appointment...I keep looking for that!
I'll try to call you later, I know I'm never home when you call. Sorry.
Lyssa

Posted by: alyssa at December 22, 2003 09:51 AM

It was briefly mentioned in the "Update" section of that entry. I wrote:

"Michelle made it on time and had little trouble seeing the doctor. He didn't have much new information to add but it was important that this consultation take place because this is one of the two doctors that will be operating on him over the next several years."

That's really about it. Sorry to leave you hanging. Michelle came away learning little that was new. It was a lot of effort with little benefit to us. It turns out that it was mainly about transitioning his ear/jaw maintenance to "THE" Dartmouth Hitchcock hospital in Lebanon. Monitoring of that condition will no longer happen in Nashua's Dartmouth Hitchcock clinic. He will still see his regular Nashua doctor for ordinary pediatric issues but this particular specialty issue is now going to be in the domain of their Lebanon facility.

It's kind of like transitioning from Gottlieb to a more specialized/research-y Chicago area hospital. Dartmouth-Hitchcock in Lebanon is associated with Dartmouth University (also in Lebanon) -- one of the "Ivy League" universities in the northeast (Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, etc...)

About the only encouraging thing that I forgot to mention is that the doctor thought that the misalignment of his jaw was rather slight. As he grows there *may* be no need to do anything about it. It's all speculative at this point. It depends on how his bones develop over the next few years.

Posted by: Scott at December 22, 2003 03:54 PM

Apparently I don't scroll down to see UPDATES. Sorry- I'll try from now on!
We're going to go get Andt ow. He went to St. Charles tostay with Johnny on Saturday night, and now we are going to meet half way at a Portillo's for dinner and then bring Andy home. He and Johnny really have fun together, but there is plenty for him to do here at home, so we gotta get him. He has practice tomorrow night for Christmas Eve Mass- his line is "Please respond BABY JESUS HEAR OUR PRAYER" TJ is the editor for the little story they'll be doing at Mass, and Cass is playing the guitar. I can't believe Christmas Eve is in 2 days!
We did get your package the other day.
Oh, help me if you can, without getting too deep.. we have been discussing with out older kids that Dec. 25 is when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, but that he was probably not really born on Dec. 25. Can you back me up on this? I'm sure I could find info about this on my own, but you are kind of my quick Catholic resource!
Thanks!
Lyssa

Posted by: alyssa at December 22, 2003 06:30 PM

Lys,
I am really surprised that you didnt come to me for all your questions concerning Catholism.

Chris

Posted by: Chris at December 22, 2003 09:30 PM

Yep, Dec 25th is not the definitive birthday of Jesus. Somewhere between 300 and 400 AD the Roman church settled on that date. Various reasons have been speculated, most related to celebrations of the surrounding cultures, but it's highly likely that it is not the true birthday.

Hey Chris, have you helped Alyssa get QuickTime on her computer?

Posted by: Scott at December 23, 2003 12:19 AM

Opps,
I didnt know I was supposed to. Anyway, Lys just goto http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/ to download quicktiem and tehn you will be able to view th movies Scott sends you.

Posted by: Chris at December 23, 2003 07:16 AM

Sorry Chris, I didn't mean to imply you were supposed to. When I last spoke with Alyssa, I recommended she ask you to do it the next time you visited -- not that I'm trying to make more work for you than you already have. ;-) I just figured that perhaps you would be more comfortable installing it and it would only take ~5 minutes.

So can I assume you were able to decode the mpeg's I sent you? I realize that they are far from works of cinematography, but I just wanted to see that the path was there to email short bits of video. Video seems a lot less standardized than other forms of media. I wonder if there is a Quicktime to Windows Media Player convertor out there?

Posted by: Scott at December 23, 2003 10:41 AM