I’m wicked early for something… For a change.

I used a little comp time today to get my self up to Salem, NH for a talent show that a certain pair of ridiculously talented kids are appearing in.

And surprise of surprises, I made it up here about half an hour early.

To celebrate, here are two pictures of a blimp that I took out of my office window yesterday. One does not make use of the iPhone’s crummy digital zoom, the other does.

My step son is all happy that today is the end of the last full week of summer. I bet you $1.00 that he feels differently next year at the end of his pre-third grade summer vacation.

When it comes to school vacations he is still a rookie.

I heard a traffic report after dropping off the kids at their dad’s house. It said 93 South was backed up from 133 to River Road. I drive right through the middle of that. I decided to get off 93 early and take route 213 East to 495 South.

I hit a traffic jam on 495 South that was just about the same size as the one on 93 South that I was trying to avoid.

Oh yeah.

I read an article today that included a number of pictures of Earth taken from great distances. A couple from the moon, one from a probe traveling to Mars, one from Mercury, and one from Saturn.

I will now repost the pictures because the NASA nerd in me thinks they are unbelievably awesome. After that I will post a link to the actual article.

Enjoy

This is what the Earth and the Moon look like from somewhere like Mercury.

See that very faint blue dot in between the two very faint outer rings? I hope you said cheese when they snapped that.

This is what we look like when you blast off toward Mars and take a second to look back over your shoulder.

Remember this old Apollo shot?

Here’s the updated version, from Japan’s lunar orbiter.

Now read the article and check out the awesome images again.

Enjoy, again.

I’m curious if this code is going to work. The test I ran seemed to think it was still 2009.

I needed that.

I came home and Jen was cooking dinner. Steak Tips. Delicious. We sat at the table for a while and discussed some really cool things she’s discovered at work. Yes, we talked about HTML during our date. We are definitely nerds.

After dinner we perused on-demand looking for romantic-date-night-friendly-comedies and pretty much found nothing. While scrolling through the mostly crap offered by the pay-movie channels we found a serviceable non-romantic comedy and settled for it. We hung out on the couch, arms around each other like youngsters at the theater and just enjoyed being together. (You know you are wicked old when you start using the word youngsters.)

It was a wonderful quiet night of stress freedom that we both really needed, and really enjoyed. Thank you sweetie, lovey, wifey.

Oh yeah, the house appraisal was scheduled for yesterday. Now we can start stressing again. WOOHOO!!!

Today began as another crummy day, but it mellowed out a bit. Regardless of how the business hours went, I have something really great to look forward to tonight:

Date night with my lovey.

Coming home now, sweetie! See you soon!

I truly am mentally deficient. I keep proving it to myself over and over again.

Next weekend isn’t a three day weekend. Next weekend is Game Night in Nahant. The weekend after that is a three day weekend… and it looks like we might get to meet Maria’s baby. WOOHOO

I came to work today with the sincere hope that today (Monday) would be better than last Friday. Friday sucked. Usually Monday sucks, but this time Friday sucked. It was painful.

I was hoping Monday would vindicate me.

The network has been down for a couple of hours. I’ve been sitting here waiting for it to come back.

Nothing.

Monday is sucking too.

Wow… that was a quick weekend. It was over before it started.

We went bike riding on Saturday and my step-son managed to ride without training wheels. It only worked when he got a push to start off. He still has trouble starting on his own, and he hasn’t mastered turning yet. My step-daughter successfully rode standing on the pedals, and one handed (not at the same time, of course). Big steps taken by everyone.

Yesterday we wanted to ride again but the rain washed that out. Later in the afternoon we went to Mike and Tammy’s and hung out with them and their daughter, who gets cuter by the minute.

The big news was signing the purchase and sales agreement on Friday. Now we have to wait for the appraisal and the mortgage. Nothing major there, just more money than I can even fathom. >gulp<

Next weekend is a three day job. I can’t wait. I can’t wait. I CAN’T WAIT!