Good morning! It's an exciting one for the kids as it's their last week of school. Abby performed with the band for the seniors' graduation ceremony on Saturday. This means that technically Claire's class now “rules the school”.
Timothy and I went to the YMCA on Saturday. It was gorgeous weather for a father-son drive to Merrimack. I did run into an older driver who for some reason had it in for me. I'm not sure what I might have done to initially tick him off when he cut me off, but he either was Driving Miss Daisy when in front of me or closely tailgating me when behind me. Thank goodness for the older TDI's option to kick in a bit of a diesel smokescreen when necessary.
I did a Step interval class. Timothy practiced his tennis. On our way home we stopped at the Home Depot and at A&E for some Italian sodas. At the Home Depot we picked up six more Cree white LED bulbs. We had initially bought three for the family room a few weeks ago after reading this review. It's been a few weeks now and Michelle likes them. They are a bit pricey, but they're significantly more efficient than even compact fluorescents, last longer, are cool to the touch when running, and don't involve mercury. For 6 Watts you get the equivalent of 40 Watts of incandescent light. That borders on night lights in terms of power consumption and yet fills the room with light.
Later that afternoon Michelle, Timothy, and I went to Confession. I'll probably bring the twins next weekend. From there we took everyone to Chili's for dinner. The girls and twins misbehaved a bit at the end. We'd told them they could go outside while we waited for the bill. It was such nice weather we didn't to make them wait inside. They used that opportunity to walk across the way to Target. Michelle, Timothy, and I walked out to the car, drove around the restaurant, and no sign of 'em. We caught up with them at Target and Abby did buy herself a summer blouse while there. When we got home we didn't stay up late because we had to get up early the next morning.
On Sunday Claire and Timothy had to serve the 7am Mass. I was the lector. It was a bit bittersweet. On one hand we honored an older couples' 60th wedding anniversary. 'Twas a bit sad because Michelle and I have always hoped to someday be one of those old couples celebrating our 40th, 50th, or 60th. I was also shocked to learn that one of the backbones of our parish had a heart attack last weekend. He is in the hospital with a stint, recovered, but still under observation.
Since everyone had done a great job getting up early, I took the family afterwards to Cafe on the Oval for a Father's Day breakfast. Even at 8am that restaurant was full and moving fast. When we got home we relaxed as I rented “Oz The Great and Powerful” from Amazon. We all enjoyed it. Early in the afternoon Michelle, Timothy, and I worked on replacing the mailbox. In the middle of last week one night some older kids decided to sack our mailbox off of its platform. I looked over the new mailbox and the old platform. The old platform was made of a sturdy plastic but was ruined. Michelle and I went to the County Store of Milford to pick up the wood and screws needed to mount the new box.
I spent some time later that afternoon looking into some difficulties with my MacBook. It's been acting very sluggish lately. The disk isn't full and there are no background processes sucking up the CPU. I did some of the usual things like running the Disk Utility with Repair Disk and Repair Permissions. I also did a few of the tweaks mentioned here. I am a bit concerned that I didn't enable Trim Support on the SSD for several months when I first got it. Apple doesn't make it easy if you buy a third party SSD. I might be paying the price now.
After dinner I relaxed with my lil' ChromeBook. I really can't get over all that it does for $250. Light, snappy, long battery life. It's kind of like the way people felt when the first iPads came out, except it gives me the keyboard I really want and I don't have to hold it. And it has the option to run Ubuntu Linux for those times when running browser based web apps doesn't cut it. Abby worked on her homework. She's had quite a lot this past month. One more week Abby and soon you'll have your cousin come out to visit. After that you, he, and the three boys get to fly out to the midwest for two weeks. Just hang in there.
On the Michelle front we are in a bit of limbo. She was pulled from her most recent clinical trial after only two rounds of treatment because it didn't look effective for her. I'm sure this week they'll be scheduling her for the next trial. In the meantime she's been taking antibiotics because of neutropenia. This particular antibiotic seems to make her occasionally dizzy or light headed under certain circumstances, like getting up suddenly or bending over. My dad says not to worry: he gets similar symptoms just from being old. «grin» It's been a bit emotional working on medical power of attorney forms. I'm sure it's not too emotional when you are just filling out one thinking you'll likely not need it. It's more so when you think you will someday.