Beach House, Fireworks

We finally used our Beach House deal, and had an excellent dinner with equally excellent service.

After waddling home, we started hearing fireworks from across Old Barnstable Road. It was a very impressive display, and almost made up for the ones we missed on July 4. In some ways, it was far superior: no traffic and no parking hassles.

Ron admitted this topped the sound of gunshots that he heard sometimes from his apartment in Berkeley.

This morning, I visited C.L. Fornari’s gardens in Sandwich, a fundraiser for the Barnstable UU church. They’ve only been in that property for five years, and it’s amazing what she’s accomplished in such a short time. Really inspiring.

St. Johnswort, Hood Latch

The St. Johnswort is flowering again. I don’t remember that from last year.

Morning glories started blooming.

I mowed and weeded yesterday at Edgewater. Pulled the extra post in the back yard out of the ground. Someone went to a lot of trouble to put it there, but why is a mystery, like the boat mooring that the septic installers got rid of for us last year.

Bought an inexpensive little bluetooth speaker so that we can listen to music from Ron’s Mac or his iPhone. Sound quality isn’t great, similar to a radio, but it’s nice to have music outside and in the living room.

Saw Peter yesterday. He looks MUCH better, more like himself. James was elected to Student Council! Not bad for his first week of middle school. He had to get 20 signatures to qualify.

After I had the oil changed in Fairhaven on Friday, I didn’t notice until leaving work that the hood hadn’t latched properly. It bounced all the way from New Bedford to Sandwich to Mashpee. On Saturday, I figured out how to fix it. I don’t know why no one explained it before, it’s not that complicated.

The part that “catches” the latch had seized up and just had to be freed with a screwdriver. It seems the spring and the cable are okay (knock wood). We cleaned and oiled it, and it seems to be okay now.

Finally got the O-F and PANA domains to point correctly. The PANA site is now reachable through a test domain, lonesomeroadsoftware.net

Rain, Rain

I am furious with myself for not transplanting the grasses from Edgewater. We’ve had some really good, soaking rain today.

I’ve been in a funk, some of which might be fixed with an adjustment in meds. I was so tired and hungry when I got home yesterday that I could have strangled Ron for an unfortunate and unintended screw-up over supper.

We did make it to this year’s final Distinctive Voices lecture at the Jonsson Center, though, grabbing some good coffee and the last two chairs. The subject was NCLB, pro and con. The person speaking is obviously a public school advocate, and he was a tad biased, I think.

Fried Clams

I ran some projections today, and it looks like we aren’t far off on our federal tax withholding for 2012. Big relief, so we celebrated with a couple of fried clam plates from Cooke’s. I washed the truck. Ron turned the compost and watered the whole back border garden. Did a little cleanup at Edgewater to prep the area for planned transplants.

Around 1, we drove to exits 4 and 5 to see if any year-rounders were waving at the tourists. No one was there so we didn’t stick around. Turns out, we were in the wrong place: the crowd was at the Oak Street overpass. Next year we’ll know.

Labor Day

I plan to go to one of the mid-Cape overpasses today to laugh at the traffic.

For the most part, we’ve missed the worst of it this year. There was only one set of ugly incidents, in fact, on Mother’s Day. I wish those rude drivers and especially their nasty passengers nothing but ill.

Our loud neighbors were out in force last night.

The weather has been quite nice, though. We’ve kept the windows open most of the time.

Sealcoat

By chance, we were just finishing up some heavy yardwork at Edgewater when the driveway installer dropped by to see if he could sealcoat. So, both driveways are done at this point.

We cleaned up a couple of patches of weeds and were able to get to the transfer station before it closed. We noted with dismay that the metal scrap area is closed.

Brought Emme back for a visit.

Joomla

I’ve been experimenting with Joomla. It’s not as intuitive as WordPress, but I think it’ll be okay. I actually figured out how to create categories and articles and nuke pages without looking at the documentation, which says a lot for the UI.

My big mistake was to install the sample data when I set up the site. That took a small bit of work to delete.

Next I want to experiment with some free templates.