Welcome to all the new babies out there! Eric Buhtz to Greg & Marie, Baby Jennings (What is his first name?) to Gregg & Margaret, Abigail Willow Burgess to Susie and Jack, and my new nephew Wes Merrill who arrived on Friday the 23rd to John & Iraida Merrill 
Archive for November, 2007
Welcome Babies!
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007Juror Number One
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007Ben isn’t the only one serving in a jury seat these days. Today, I got to drive to Malden to the Courthouse, and be chosen to serve on a 6 person jury. It wasn’t a bad experience. Got to meet some new people, had lunch with them, and even learned some things about lawyers and the law and such. Just glad I had to serve 1 day and not 18 months! Exhausting day though. Glad that I don’t have drive regularly to Malden!
Groceries
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007Jill and I had a good Thanksgiving. We spent much of it at Jill’s parent’s house. Ed and I got some card games in (we play Magic when we can). Last Friday I had my friends Will and Ryan over for some games too – see I can be social!
Yesterday I went grocery shopping. I figured since I’m not working much at the moment I should help out if I can around the house with errands and chores. I really stink at this since I’m not very self-motivated. Anyway, somehow I got myself out the door to grocery shop. I was kind of hungry and thirsty, which is a bad idea when you go grocery shopping – you spend more than you mean to. But then again, we hadn’t gone in about a month for groceries.
I was curious, so I asked DrBuck (our home-grown financial software) how much we spend on groceries. Our category on groceries includes everything food-related except going out to eat, which is entertainment. Here’s what I found:
So apparently we spend an average of $200 per month on food. That’s more than I thought. One reason might be that our local store tries to be rather “gourmet” even though it’s just your average grocery store. Their prices are a bit high. We could just drive to a cheaper one, but it’s closer and more convenient.
I splurged and got whole milk, which I love. Jill and I normally compromise on milk – she likes that nasty 1% or skim stuff (which, incidentally, tastes like water with white food coloring), and I like whole milk. So normally we get 2%. Jill likes whole milk but she doesn’t like that it is less healthy. But I figured since I was shopping I could get whole milk once
So now I’m drinking a nice glass of it and savoring the fat, cholesterol, and creamy taste. This made me miss when I was a wee lad and had milk delivered to our door in the morning. Everyone did! They don’t do this any more, which I miss. Fresh whole milk delivered to your door tastes great!
My Magic Yarn Ball
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007Tonight I had dinner with my friend Danielle and got to recieve my Magic Yarn Ball! It was fabulous! It as a ball of yarn filled with a variety of goodies. A bunch of us at church did this swap – a lot of fun. Here’s my pic:
Big Update
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007I haven’t blogged in a while, so this will be a bit longer. A lot has been going on in the Holt family, we’ve had a rough couple of weeks. Fortunately it’s not all bad
1) Last Thursday, my employers sat me down in a meeting and told me that today was my last day for my IT job. This was fairly sudden, but my contract was theoretically temporary anyway (three months) and I had been working there 4-5 because they needed me. They said that they simply didn’t have enough money to keep paying me and had to make cuts. I was strangely fine with this and couldn’t have argued about it anyway. They said they liked me as an employee, so that was nice to hear. I do wish they would have given me a little warning so as not to shock me all in one day. I’m still teaching guitar lessons at the same place and that will continue.
Also, all my work got dumped on my fellow employee. She is a nice older lady who signed on like me for part time. Before I left, she was already working close to full time. Now she will have all my responsibilities and will be swamped I think. I feel bad for her but hopefully the school will realize that another person is needed when they have the money. I tried to leave open doors and left on a good note without burning my bridges.
2) We’ve had some problems with our small group. I won’t go into too many details to avoid hurting people, but this is unfortunate because our small group has been much of our source of personal growth during the past year or so. These problems may result in our having to find another one! As it takes lots of time to develop closeness and intimacy with a small group, we’re not excited about this, but we are prepared. Jill wrote me a nice note this morning and said, “God seemed to give you wisdom this week in being able to look at things and respond.” This is very encouraging, as I am normally bereft of wisdom in matters related to relationships and other people!
Jill and I place a lot of importance on small groups, as church services never seem to personally challenge you or hold you accountable to anything. It’s like… an AA meeting versus a large AA seminar. Both are good for the alcoholic, but it’s in the AA meetings that most of the work, challenges, and growth is seen. In the seminar you can feel anonymous and alone, and never get personally challenged to do anything.
3) I like tinkering with my geek setup. Sometimes that’s my guitar amp and settings, other times it’s my computer setup. A couple weeks ago our small group met on the Hanscomb Air Force Base at one of the guy’s houses, and he had these amazing speakers with a Mac Mini and it looked great. I coveted his speakers and when I got home I got the cheapest deal on them I could – around $80 on ebay. They arrived yesterday, and I spent a couple happy hours arranging and setting up. Here’s some pictures of my current geek setup!
Lights off (using some Christmas lights for orange accenting, the blue is LED rope lights attached to my amp)
Same thing, with lights on
The subwoofer is transparent, a nice touch!
Craft Fair Saturday
Monday, November 12th, 2007This Saturday is my first craft fair! It’s at the Congregational Church in Acton. If you have nothing to do…come buy and check things out!
As advertised in Action Unimited, at www.actionunlimited
Fall Flaire! Craft Show
The Annual Fall Flaire! Craft Show will be held this year on Nov. 17, 2007 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Acton Congregational Church, 12 Concord Road, at the intersection of Main Street (route 27) and Concord Road across from the Acton Town Hall. Plenty of free parking in the area, admission is free and readily accessable from either routes 2, 27,62 or 495 .
The show will involve local artisans displaying and selling their handmade wares including items such as felt bags/hats, pottery, glass jewelry, embellished clothing, photographs, stationary, card art, Indian scarves/stoles, blown glass items, painted wooden furniture, Pampered Chef, prints and cards, gemstone jewelry, hand stamped and painted tiles/plates, gourmet cat & dog treats, plastic bag-bags, bookmarks, record bowls, quilts, Christmas cards, hand sewn crafts, charm bracelets, wax candles, Usborne Books, crochet/knit hats/scarves/
sweaters, paper machete sculptures, wreaths & swags, Savoury Lane Snack Bar, handbags, ornaments, decorative edible breads, hand made wooden bowls and utensils, and much, much more!
The one exception to “local artisans†is the table being staffed by ABRHS students selling crafts made in Thailand on behalf of Whispering Seeds, the orphanage which they visited and worked at this past July; All of their proceeds will go directly to feed, clothe and otherwise support the needs of these children.
Please plan to take this opportunity to not only complete your holiday shopping but also support the artisans involved in the fair.
The Grey Jay
Saturday, November 10th, 2007On Friday I got to hike Mt. Watatic again with some kids from school. This is my favorite trail of late because it doesn’t take too long to hike up (about 40 minutes for our students) and has some challenging parts as well as a great view at the top. This time as we hiked we noticed a little bird visiting with us about half way up. He was plump and fluffy and cheerful, very unafraid to get close to us.
Once we arrived at the top we chatted with some other folks up there. One guy said that he had done this hike in hopes of seeing a certain bird – a Gray Jay. He said it is a rare bird to see. Upon describing him we realized it was our same friend from earlier. Thankfully, birdie did come to the top and Mr. Birder got to see him AND, he flew right over to where our kids were having lunch and even hopped right onto their hands to get food. Charming little Gray Jay
from bcadventure.com I learned some neat facts about Mr. Jay:
Grey Jay – Perisoreus canadensis or Whiskey Jack, Camp Robber, Canada Jay
Description – The Grey Jay, also known as the Canada Jay or Whiskey Jack, is grey above and whitish below; the forehead and throat are white and the nape and stripe through the eye is a dull black. Younger birds are a sooty-grey. They have a “whee-ah, chuck-chuck” call and scold, scream and whistle.
Distribution – The Grey Jay (Canada Jay – Whiskey Jack) is resident from Alaska east across Canada in coniferous forests. Also know as the Camp Robber, this playful rascal is a frequent visitor to campsites and summer cottages, and can be easily fed by hand or bird feedding station once you become acquainted.
Biology – Being omnivorous, the Grey Jay feeds on meat, fruit, insects and various vegetable substances. They are attracted to campsites where they appropriate as much food as possible; with its saliva it glues meat, suet and/or hide into balls and hides it among pine needles. It lays 3-5 grey-green eggs in a solid bowl-like nest made of twigs and bark strips, lined with feathers and fur.
IE’s Evil Monopoly
Sunday, November 4th, 2007I just realized a few days ago how bad our blog front page looks when you click “Blog” on Internet Explorer. It is too wide and doesn’t include the blog text. I can’t figure out why. It looks great on Safari, Firefox, and any other STANDARDS COMPLIANT browser you load it with.
When you create web pages, you typically have to code for all browsers… and IE, because IE interprets things differently than other browsers. Why? You’d have to ask Microsoft, who makes this horrid browser. This is a pain in the butt for web developers because it takes lots of hours to make your site look good when you have different ways it will be interpreted. You even get companies like Netflix who are so lazy they only code for IE – forcing everyone to use it to use the service. This annoys me.
The problem with just saying, “I’ll just ignore IE” is that it’s usually what people use “out of the box” on their PC’s because of the annoying way Windows is set up. It takes effort to ditch the browser and download Firefox or Safari and make them your “default” browser. If you do, IE gets jealous and makes absolutely sure that you’d like to cheat on it with a much sexier browser.
Until IE is made standards compliant (that is, interprets code the way a browser is supposed to), we web developers are stuck with coding for two different kinds of browsers – those that work, and IE.
For now, since I can’t figure out why IE breaks our blog page, I’ll just encourage everyone to download Firefox or Safari!
http://www.apple.com/safari/
http://en.www.mozilla.com/en/firefox/
Fortunately, these browsers are becoming more and more prevalent:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
