I’ll definitely post links so you can download my MIDI software and the DOSBox configuration for it to run sweetly. I’ll try to do so before another month goes by…

Well, I didn’t get it out before a month went by - but I got it out before six months went by (that counts for something doesn’t it?).

Download your copy of Apriori Enterprises MIDI Compozer right here. See below the jump for more info on this little program.

Along with finally making this program available (not that anyone has really be waiting for it…), I also have some new tracks to share. The first is actually a new track: Gray. I composed it fairly recently (past couple of months). The second is an extremely old track: A Night in Giza. In fact, this is the first full song I composed digitally. I think I was in ninth grade (’round about 1991). By the way, I did not write my software when I was in ninth grade. I used other, much crappier software in high school. I wrote my program in college because I had “outgrown” the other program (which was shareware and cost me something like $3 for a 5.25 inch disk).

I also decided to post some other music I wrote back in high school. These, however, are not digital compositions. These were recorded with an analog 4-track tape recorder using real musical instruments and microphones. I’m posting the least embarrassing tracks, but keep in mind they were all recorded around fifteen years ago. I’ve grown tremendously in my guitar-playing skills and song-writing/composition. So one of these days I’d like to get my hands on some decent recording equipment (or figure out how to turn my computer into decent recording equipment, which is probably the better/cheaper route to take) so that I can make some more recent recordings that are more representative of what I write and play.

First up is a strange little number. The recording quality is pretty low (please bear with me). You could probably tell from the unreal sound of the guitar that this one is an exercise in back-masking. Just in case it isn’t obvious from the music, listen for the spoken word (which is my old next door neighbor, Keith Groover, saying something silly like, “drink milk because it is good for you”). Without further ado: Untitled #1.

Next up is, in fact, the exact same strange little number. The recording quality is better. I kept the older one though because I thought it sounded cooler. This version is missing something (something other than the backwards voice - which also happens to be absent): Untitled #1, Reprise.

Alright - now for some real music. Here is a brief snippet from a track I laid down with three other high school students at a place in Greenville, SC called The Fine Arts Center. I went to this place for a half-day every school day my junior and senior years of high school. My junior year was spent in visual arts. I went for drawing, but I had to take other visual arts classes there so I also took sculpture. While in the drawing class I was first exposed to Adobe Photoshop, and it was love at first sight - except for the icky, one-button mouse on that stinkin’ Mac… I still have some slides of original abstract works I created in Photoshop back then. Anyhow, my senior year I went for electric guitar performance and studied jazz improvisation. This effort was a group project to re-interpret Mile Davis’ So What. Our interpretation was a kind of dreamy, soft rock fusion thingamajig. The clip is very brief because my only tape of this recording was accidentally cut short (a friend of mine borrowed the tape and accidentally taped over part of this tune).

This next piece was a spin-off of another project from my senior year at The Fine Arts Center. When studying the seven modes, we were charged with picking a mode and writing a song. I was the only one brave enough to pick the unresolvable Locrian mode. The piece was well accepted, and I got a good grade on it. I later recorded it. I borrowed my neighbor’s acoustic guitar (Keith Groover again) for this track. The name of the track is Sleeping Alone.

For music theory geeks: It feels like it resolves to B minor in the end because I essentially “cheated” when writing this song. Although you’ll not here a single F# in the entire song, it is implied. When the tonic chords are played, the diminished fifth is intentionally absent (which tends to imply F#, the perfect fifth). So the song sounds less like B Locrian and more like B Phrygian that drifts in and out of F Lydian.

I will now leave you with a final track. I have to admit that the beginning, played by a clean-tone guitar, was somewhat plagiarized. There was another student at The Fine Arts Center (Joe something - can’t remember his name; he wasn’t in my class for very long) who had written something pretty much just like this. I dug it and worked it into a song of my own. Never fear: the vast majority of the song is all original. I never named this track, so we’ll just call it Untitled #2.

MIDI Compozer

Words of Warning

Keep in mind that it is a DOS program (hence the discussion of DOSBox in my last post about it), and it doesn’t support a mouse (all keyboard interaction). Ctrl+K is your friend until you figure out the keys (not that anyone is likely to actually try this out… but just in case). The ZIP also includes a Word Document that contains all of the directions.

It is pre-configured to use a General MIDI device. You don’t really need to worry about this if your are using DOSBox vs. actual DOS because DOSBox will use your sound hardware and emulate the General MIDI interface if necessary (it works like a charm under Windows anyhow, and I believe users with other operating systems should find it similarly great).

How to Run

You will find several ways to run this program:

• On Windows, you could double-click on either the COMPOZER shortcut or COMPOZER.EXE. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t expect this to actually work. The software won’t run if it doesn’t detect the right hardware, and it most likely won’t (it is trying to detect pretty archaic hardware).
• On other platforms, run it in DOSBox. You can use the provided compozer-dosbox.conf file for Windows. This configuration may need to be tweaked for other platforms.

Limitations

I wrote the software originally for a Yamaha OPL2/OPL3 synthesizer card (aka Adlib music card). The OPL2 only supported ten voices. The OPL3 was stereo and supported twenty, but each voice could only be defined as 100% left, right, or mono. So this program supports only ten voices on an OPL3 but provides full pan support from left to right. The General MIDI support was the last bit I wrote (once I finally got a General MIDI card for my computer). General MIDI supports sixteen tracks, each track with umpteen simultaneous voices (though actual hardware often limited total voices to between 32 and 256). I chose not to re-write the program completely for General MIDI, so you only get ten distinct notes total.

If you choose percussion then you only get six distinct musical notes at a time and four distinct percussive notes at a time. Again, this has its roots in OPL2 hardware limitations.

If there are any brave souls out there who try to actually tinker with this (I’m not actually expecting any), I can send you some sample music files so you can see what a song looks like without having to go through all of the trouble of writing one yourself. It may also give you some ideas on how to make “dense” music work with so few voices.

Starting over a week ago, our next door neighbor, Pat, has been having a six-foot privacy fence installed. This should prove to be a blessing. She has the most obnoxious pack of four little dogs - they bark at everything all day long. They bark at us when we are outside. They bark at our dogs when they’re out during the day. They bark at their own shadows in the evening sometimes it seems.

The fence encompasses a huge amount of land. Her house is situated rather off-center in her plot of land. With a fence all the way around, clearly delineating the property, it looks a bit lop-sided since the fence extends so much further to the east (to the left if you were standing at the street looking at her front door) than it does to the west. Unfortunately, despite the impressive perimeter, it fails to surround the mess in her yard. She used to have two big PODS next to her driveway, but there is now only a pile of debris. The fence does not hide it from our view. So we’ll be planting some leyland cypruses over there to shield us from the unsightly scene.

Pat is the nicest person next to which a home-owner could live. She has a garden and has been very helpful in the past, loaning us her lawn equipment from time to time. But she isn’t quite as chatty as of the last couple of yeast. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve done something to upset her, but perhaps she’s busy with other things. Despite her beaming generosity, we have still secretly spurned her annoying dogs and her less-than-beautiful yard. So the fence will be a welcome addition.

The Rain Barrel

Last weekend we built a rain barrel for one of the downspouts on the front of our house. We have one that empties by the front porch, behind a large bush. The bush makes the perfect cover for a rain barrel:

We managed to build one for only $20. Unfortunately, we didn’t take pictures when we were building it - otherwise I could show you the step-by-step to saving yourself a bunch of money (apparently rain barrels can sell for upwards of $100).

We started with a 32-gallon RubberMaid trash can - only $15 from your neighborhood Lowe’s or Home Depot. We then bought fittings from the plumbing aisle: one brass faucet threaded to accept a hose on one end. The other end of the faucet was threaded, too. The threads screw into a piece of PVC, which is then connected via PVC cement to another piece of PVC that has a large threaded tail with a large flange. We drilled a hole in the bottom of the barrel, through which the threaded tail fit. A little plumber’s putty around the threads, a rubber gasket, and a very tight nut securely fasten that piece to the barrel.

We had to do some surgery to the downspout to make room for the rain barrel. It involved removing one of the elbow ends, cutting the main line (since the barrel is several feet tall), and then re-attaching the remaining elbow. You can see from the pic that we also cut a hole in the plastic lid so that the downspout reaches right in (look to the left of the blurry face):

The weather refused to produce moisture for an entire week after we had the barrel readied. But Saturday it rained. It didn’t even rain that heavily, but the barrel filled up all the way nevertheless. It was overflowing Sunday. It probably overflowed a lot because it really rained on Sunday. It continues to rain today. Here’s the state of the barrel now - still full and overflowing:

The John Butler Trio

This past weekend we went to a concert with two other couples. One couple, Karen and Cliff Jones, accompanied us on the last concert we saw (you can re-read about those misadventures here). The other couple, Paul and Melanie Manning, are more friends of ours from my workplace. We met them in the evening at the Landmark Diner, down the road from the amphitheater in Chastain Park. From there were caravan’ed to a parking lot in the park and begun the tailgating festivities. The festivities mainly consisted of eating Chinese food (for us anyway - the Mannings brought sushi; the Joneses brought sub sandwiches) and telling tales of mischievous kids, of which we all get our fill.

After a dinner in the parking lot, we meandered to the amphitheater. The John Butler Trio was the act that Malin and I were most excited about seeing, and they did not disappoint. In fact, they were awesome. They played a good set of songs, a long set, and were really fun to watch. John Butler makes his acoustic guitar spit out truly unreal sounds with the occasional aid of a slide and an overdrive pedal. They had one of the members of Arrested Development join them on the stage during one of the songs. They rocked the house. The only regret was that they didn’t play one of my favorite songs, Daniella.

After the trio came G. Love and Special Sauce - the same act as our last musical outing. This time G. Love played a slow and sleepy set. A highlight was when he drifted into a rendition of Jack Johnson’s Rodeo Clowns. We left a little early because Malin got really tired and wanted to go. We had already seen G. Love and knew we’d survive if we missed the last few songs. Karen and Cliff also had to go to relieve their baby-sitter of duty. Karen is a huge G. Love fan, so she was more bummed to have to take off early. After speaking with Paul this morning at work, I learned that we only missed three songs. And, due to the curfews they have at Chastain Park (it is in a very ritzy neighborhood that doesn’t like loud rock’n'roll concerts going on late at night), there were no encores. When G. Love left the stage, the night was all over.

We arrived home at a reasonable hour and went straight to bed… (I’m still recovering from a cold that I’ve been fighting for over a week now)

The Lord of the Rings

Last night, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy could be seen on network television. We weren’t sure how much of it would be suitable for Will to watch, but he was too excited by it for us not to try. It was quite a choppy evening. Even being “edited” for network television, it has still has more than enough violence in it (including the occasional beheaded orc or impaled villain). Luckily we’ve seen all three films (and even own them on DVD), so we knew what was coming. Our frequent changing of channels right when the action started going seemed to really frustrate Will, but we assured them that they were fighting too roughly for him to watch. The second film, The Two Towers, was the worst. He saw considerably less than half of the film due to the constant battling with Orcs and the long battle of Helm’s Deep.

He did not get to see the end of the film - partially due to the violence and scary sequences but mostly due to the fact that it did not end until 11:45pm.

And to think that today he didn’t want to watch 102 Dalmations (which was playing on some channel earlier today after he got home from school) because - get this - it was too scary. Wonders never cease…

You may have noticed from Malin’s posts that we’ve gone green. Last weekend we spent most of the day Saturday working on readying the ground for a garden. Malin has been spraying grass killer for a few weeks on a couple of big, square patches of land in the back yard. This past weekend saw the legwork of preparing the ground. We rented a big ol’ tiller, tilled up the dirt, raked out the dead grass and weeds, and hoed the dirt into lanes.

Malin’s mom and her boyfriend (her mom’s boyfriend, not Malin’s) came over to help out. Since we sold the Blazer (months ago) we no longer have a way to get a tiller home from the rental store. Heck, I doubt this thing would have fit in the Blazer anyway. Randy has a trailer for his work which pulled it to our home more than adequately.

The tiller was very large and had lots o’ power. So much power that it really seemed poorly designed overall. It didn’t have the kind of features needed to easily handle the power. For one, there was a single gear shifter and single clutch (hand operated pedal) that controlled both the drive wheels and the tines. This meant that there was no way, for instance, to engage the tines without the wheels. It was possible to do the other way around, however, because the transmission offered special gear selections that did not engage the tines. Add to that the fact that there was a center open differential between the two axles. Yes, this means that when the tines were not moving at all that the wheels were moving doubletime. So, when you hit a lump of hard dirt, the tines want to stop because they can’t chew through it and zooom!!! the things takes off like a go cart as the drive wheels start spinning double speed. And it zooming around like a go cart is bad. You need it go slowly so that the tines thoroughly till the hard, virgin earth underneath. So Randy gave me a hand with it. We must have looked ridiculous: two full grown men man-handling this piece of lawn equipment. And even with both of us hanging on to it and keeping it on mission, it still tried to get away from us a couple of times.

If only it had had a second pedal for engaging the tines and wheels. Then you could engage the tines and make them dig and only engage the wheels often enough to keep the thing moving forward without letting it zoom off. A hand brake lever may have been suitable, too. I wonder if there is any money in inventing better yard machines… It doesn’t seem like it would take much to greatly improve the usability of these things - all the way to the point where even an older or weaker person could handle it without assistance.

So we got the yard all dug up. We’ve also added some fittings and splitters to the outside faucet so we have hoses that lead to the garden as well as a natural area in the front yard all on one timer, a dedicated hose to the back deck for use with an immersion wort chiller (for making beer), and two extra spaces for any additional watering needs…

The three weeks prior to our garden-creating excursion was filled with lots of automotive maintenance - everyone’s least favorite subject.

• Week 1: Malin’s car needed new brake pads and new rear rotors.
• Week 2: My car needed new brake pads and had to have the front calipers rebuilt. Malin’s car needed four new tires.
• Week 3: My car needed a new clutch.

And the saga continues… This week, I had to take my car back in because the mechanic put my car on the lift improperly when replacing the clutch. The result was a bent piece of metal connected to the chassis to which the plastic fenders bolt. This caused the passenger side fender to have an unsightly gap as it stuck further from the other body panels than it should have. Also, the clutch pedal felt funny - the pedal’s travel would stop/slow right as the clutch was fully engaged and then pop out the rest of the way. So this week they had to fix the fender, and they were able to fix the pedal by bleeding air bubbles out of the hydraulic lines (which should have been done when they put the clutch in last week).

And next week, Malin’s car has to go in to get a radiator leak fixed and have a CV boot replaced. I’m not looking forward to that since I know it could be expensive depending on where the radiator leak comes from and whether or not the CV joint has already gone dirty or dry from the torn boot. And to top it all off, the A/C in my car isn’t working worth a crap. Luckily, it’s nearly Autumn. I’ll put up with the miserable heat for a bit longer, and then I can wait until next Spring or Summer to fix that (which could also be expensive if, for instance, the compressor has to be replaced).

It wouldn’t be so bad if gas prices weren’t so high. So the cars are basically taking moolah from us in two ways lately: more expensive fuel and more-than-usual repairs this year.

Speaking of cars, I was looking earlier in the week to replace the desktop image on my PC at work. Currently there is a pic of a Nissan GTR thereupon. I ran across this picture of a Maserati Gran Turismo - it is a smokin’ hot car:

I put it on my desktop at home for the time being - until I get around to putting it up at work and then finding another picture of Will for the home desktop (Malin disapproves of not seeing Will’s smiling mug on my screen).

Speaking of Will, he is now back at school. July 28^th was his first day back. It is nice to have the place to myself in the morning when I work from home, but I wish his school were closer (driving out there and back twice a day isn’t the best way to conserve fuel…). He enjoys it, and Malin needs the morning time lately because she has been busy as all heck… (two photo shoots this past weekend, one earlier in the week, and two today).

The other day she saw The Dark Crystal on sale at the store and picked it up for Will. I almost forgot how crazy and creepy that movie is. It is slow - slower than I remember from seeing it as a kid. Also, the puppetry isn’t nearly as awesome as I remember (like the fact that when the Gelflings talk, their lips barely move at all…). But some of the other visuals are fun and cool - like the Skeksis and especially the Garthim, which are wicked cool antagonists… Will only watched about half of it before he got tired of it and decided to turn it off. He still hasn’t returned to it to finish watching the rest of the movie…

Speaking of Will finishing something, we will be finishing Harry Potter and The Sorceror’s Stone this week. At the rate we’re going, tomorrow night’s the night. Tonight we read the next-to-the-last chapter. Often when I read it to him at night, he seems like he isn’t paying attention, but sometimes he surprises me by jumping up and saying something about what I just read. Only a few times has he fallen asleep while I read.

And now to wrap up our tale: it all ends with disease, as does so much else in the world. Will brought home some nasty germs from school that have had all of his feeling like trash for the past couple of days. I went into work yesterday, thinking I’d get over it once I got my mind off it. But that didn’t happen like I planned. I actually felt worse and worse as the day went on and ultimately had to leave early. I think the end is finally near. I feel much better now than this time last night, so I’m hoping that one more good night’s rest will heal the whole crew here.

That about sums up our past few weeks. Hopefully everyone else’s went at least as well (for instance, just as well but minus the car troubles and sickness).

The party was a good time. Malin, unfortunately, was a little late to the party because she had a photo-shoot that had been scheduled before we even knew the date of the party, and the shoot couldn’t be moved. I can divulge more about the party later - as you can see from the title of this post, the rest of this rant is about a fine dining establishment, not a pool party.

The evening before our anniversary, Saturday, was our night to go out and celebrate. We had reservations at what we think is the absolute best restaurant in Atlanta: Quinones. It is part of the same building (and same company) as Star Provisions and Bacchanalia. Star Provisions is a little market that sells meats, cheeses, coffees, and other culinary delights and also has a sandwich bar that serves excellent sandwiches (and good desserts, gourmet pizza, etc…). Bacchanalia is a very nice restaurant behind Star Provisions. In fact, you have to walk through the shop to the back to get into the restaurant. But underneath them is Quinones. Take Bacchanalia, jazz up the menu to ultra-fine levels (not stodgy or elitist, but fun and capricious), change the a la cart menu into a chef’s tasting menu, and up the ante on the dining room decor. Now you have Quinones. I don’t mean to say that the menu at Bacchanalia is not already fine dining. In fact I’d say the opposite - it’s probably our second favorite in Atlanta (second to the delights that await one in the restaurant below it).

This meal was the best we’ve had there. Take a look for yourself here. In addition to the courses listed, the chef also sends out a “gift” - an amuse bouche. This evening it was a small sip of corn soup, a house-made pork rind, and a fancy “cheese poof”. By cheese poof I mean a delicious ball of flavorful cheese inside a ball of crispy puff pastry. Not a bad start.

The highlights were many:

• The foie gras, blackberries, and peanut streusel was an interesting twist on peanut butter and jelly - and the summer fruit consummé was a delicious elixir that pushed the whole dish into sweet land (the shores of savory land so distant as to be unseen…)
• The oyster was the best oyster I’ve ever eaten. Luckily for Malin, it was cooked (deep-fried - but very lightly so as to retain 100% of the raw oyster fresh-from-the-sea taste but warm and with a thin and light, crispy coating). I say that because she has expressed an aversion to raw oysters (although if she were to try one, it would probably be at this restaurant).
• The stuffed quail: to die for.
• The veal with crisped sweetbreads: to die for twice - maybe even three or four times.

After a long and very filling evening, we decided to make one stop on the way out. Malin had heard about a “gastro-pub” in Buckhead, and we decided to check it out: Holeman and Finch Public House. The place looked promising; we’ll have to return during the day when we have an appetite. They have house-made sausages and house-cured pork legs hanging all over the place. And Will would have been really impressed by our server.

I have attempted making bread in the past - and failed about as miserably as one could possibly fail. This time I prevailed and made the most delicious bread that has ever existed: Brioche. It is more like cake than bread, but it has yeast so bread it is.

I made Monte Cristo sandwiches out of it, and then Marla (the devil dog) stole one of my sandwiches. And now we don’t speak so much (Marla and I).

On to my weekly (or perhaps biweekly) edition of “The Humphries Save the Planet”. This week we have canceled our trash pick-up service. You heard me right. We recycle and compost so much of our waste that we barely produce much trash nowadays. We have also started using cloth training pants for Will at night, so that cuts down even more. And I don’t feel like going straight to eco-hell for throwing superabsorbent polymers full of my son’s pee into the landfill (for it to sit and not rot until long after his grandchildren are in the ground, probably covered in superabsorbent polymers full of their grandfather’s pee…)

On personal hygiene: I am now willing to tell the internet I have not washed my hair with shampoo in over a month. Yes, you heard me right: NO SHAMPOO. In an effort to rid the house and myself of chemicals, I have switched to baking soda for almost all of my personal washing needs. And I have to say I really like it. I don’t smell, and my hair is not greasy or rank (or hippy dippy either). The switch to using it on my hair has taken a bit of trial and error as everyone’s hair is different, and mine is thick and long. So I use a bit more than some, and I leave it on for a full 2 minutes. Then I use a bit of apple cider vinegar as a conditioner (which really makes it soft), and I am done. Baking soda is by far the best deodorant I have ever used. Once I realized that I could mix it in some cocoa butter lotion, it is easy to apply (and I still don’t smell). I don’t mean, “hey, I don’t smell so bad!” No, I mean, “hey, I have been working in the yard all day in July in Georgia and sweating like I have been digging a ditch in the Sahara for five days, and I don’t smell!”

More info:
If you are interested in no ‘poo, go here.
How about home-made deodorant?

Malin took her camera along, and Will loves being in pictures (several times, he stopped and insisted that Malin take a picture of him right then and there). So this post has a decent number of photos…

Getting There

We had a bit of a rough time getting to the airplane. First, on auto-pilot, I drove towards the airport instead of towards our park-and-ride facility of choice. After doing a loop around Hartsfield-Jackson, we finally managed to get to our park-and-ride facility. And… naturally… it was full. I’d seen them full before only once - during spring break. I wasn’t sure why they were so busy now. I suppose it was just after school got out for summer, so perhaps a lot of families decided to fly to an early summer vacation destination, much like ourselves. They gave us a coupon for one free night at another facility up the road (same owners of course).

We drove up the road and parked, hopped on the shuttle to the airport, and made it all the way to the airport before realizing that we had left something in the car: Will’s booster seat. We didn’t need his seat for the airplane so much as for the rental car once we landed in Boston. The shuttle driver was nice and happily drove us back to the car and then back out to the airport.

We were finally at the airport - all of our junk in tow! The next bit of fun we had was getting our boarding passes. We had Delta e-tickets, so the shuttle driver dropped us off at the Delta terminal, and we walked up to an available kiosk for check-in. As Murphy’s Law would predict, we were unable to get our passes from the kiosk. As luck would have it, our seats were on a “partner carrier”: Continental. Even though we booked the flights through Delta and Delta and Continental are “partners”, we still had to lug all of our junk to the other side of the airport (Continental and Delta are not on the same terminal) to check-in and get boarding passes.

Thankfully, we had left home early enough to allow plenty of time in security lines. That meant we were early enough that all of the mishaps so far didn’t cause us to miss our flight. In fact, since we were lugging around so much stuff (a three-year-old and a booster seat is what really did it), we were let into the special, short security line that is intended for disabled passengers, passengers traveling with infants, and others with special needs.

This, of course, is the view from the plane - somewhere over the U.S. eastern seaboard, between Atlanta, Georgia and Newark, New Jersey (we had a connection at Newark, continuing on to Logan International in Boston).

Before long, we arrived in Boston, Massachusetts.

Getting Acquainted

After we landed, we took a shuttle to the rental car facility. Very shortly after we got everything squared away and had packed the rental car, my brother, Jake, showed up (he missed us by a few minutes meeting us at the airport, so he took the same shuttle to the rental car facility to meet us).

We got on the road to go to the hotel and unload the car. Traffic was rough - rush hour on Friday. We finally made it to our hotel (which was not really close to anything - about 10 miles north of Cambridge up I-93). We chose an out-of-the-way hotel, in Woburn, because of the price (the amount we saved on the hotel was more than enough to pay for the rental car to allow us to get from Woburn to everything else). After being buckled into an airplane for a few hours and then in a car for an hour, Will was ready to expend some energy, as you can see from the photo on the right.

We decided to go to Cambridge Brewing Company for dinner, and Jake invited a friend of his to meet us there. We had a little difficulty getting to Cambridge because of the fact that our hotel was nestled in between I-95 and I-93. To make things more confusing, I-95 and I-93 have the same exit numbers in this area. Unlike other cities where you can tell you’re on the wrong interstate because of the direction it runs (North-South instead of East-West or vice versa) or because the exit numbers are way out of range, in Woburn I-95 and I-93 both run North-South and intersect one another at exit number 37. That’s right: the exit from I-95 to get onto I-93 is exit 37, and the exit from I-93 to get onto I-95 is exit 37. So naturally, we started down the wrong interstate in our journey to Cambridge. After some frustrating time had passed (”How could Google maps be so freakin’ wrong!?!?!”), we discovered our mistake and were finally on the right way.

Dinner was good, and the place made a nice variety of interesting and tasty ales. Since we were in Cambridge, Jake walked home, and we drove back to the hotel.

Getting Around Town

Saturday was a busy day. We woke up and ate breakfast at the hotel. I think this was Will’s favorite breakfast place because they had make-your-own Belgian Waffles and fresh apples - two of his favorites. After breakfast, we went to pick up Jake, and then we stopped at the Samuel Adams Brewhouse for a tour. After the tour, we ate tasty sandwiches and cookies for lunch at Flour Bakery, near the kid’s museum.

Before we could eat, however, we had to find it. This would prove challenging as Boston has to be the very worst city in the country for driving around. The roads are not on a grid. At first, I didn’t think this would be a big deal. After all, downtown Atlanta isn’t on a grid either. But Boston is really, really not on a grid. Typically, in a city with a lot of one-way streets, the directions alternate: left turn only, right turn only, left turn only, etc… but not in Boston. If you need to turn left, you can count on coming across three right-turn-only streets in a row. You can also frequently count on a complete lack of street signs. Need to turn right onto some particular street? Then you better know what the intersection looks like because many intersections are signage-free. For many reasons, driving around Boston was a huge pain… So out of total frustration, we decided to park and just walk to lunch. Because we planned on going to the park after lucnh, we parked in Chinatown. It is centrally located: lunch to the southeast and the park to the northwest.

The restaurant was close to the kid’s museum, but we didn’t actually go to the kid’s museum. Will had seen the one in Seattle, and they were similar enough that we didn’t feel the need to go to another one. Instead, we walked around Boston. We walked a very short part of the Freedom Trail.

The part of trail we walked ended at the Boston Common park. We had walked around a good bit at that point, so we took a rest in the grass:

After our walk, we decided to eat dinner at a Thai restaurant near where Jake lives in Cambridge. We then called it a night.

Getting Into College

Sunday was Father’s Day. To celebrate, we left the hotel to meet Jake for brunch at the Exchange Street Bistro. The place was pretty fancy but reasonably priced. The meal was good, but not perfect. The French toast I ordered was way too decadent. It was stuffed with (i.e. layered with stuff in between each slice of toast) peaches and blueberries, which were good. But it was also smothered all over with mascarpone - which tasted good but was simply too much. I think a light dollop of mascarpone on the top and some more conventional topping, like butter pecan syrup or maple syrup, would have been more to my liking. Malin ordered Crabcakes Benedict and Jake ordered Eggs Benedict. Their meals looked good (and from the few bites I had off Malin’s plate, tasted good too). Unfortunately, however, one of the poached eggs served on  Malin’s plate was way overcooked (it looked more like a hard-boiled egg than a poached egg - dense with a dry, chalky yolk instead of a runny yolk).

The rest of the day was spent in Cambridge, touring colleges for Will :)

First we drove over to the MIT campus and visited the MIT Museum. This place was very cool. The bottom floor hosts The Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery. The day we were there, this gallery included interactive exhibitions on MIT’s City Car concept and their engineering contributions to oceanography. The latter featured a simulator allowing visitors to control a robot (an unmanned, remotely-controlled, undersea vehicle) that was, by far, Will’s favorite exhibit.

Upstairs features a very large space with some very cool exhibits. The first gallery focused on robots. This gallery was a big disappointment: don’t get me wrong, it was interesting. But when you have a three-year-old that has really gotten his hopes up for seeing robots, this exhibit simply couldn’t fulfill that level of expectation. The robots were all behind glass cases, and none of them moved. Will was not impressed. The next gallery featured two exhibits: one on holographs and the other featuring intricate, mechanical sculptures/artwork from a mechanical engineer named Arthur Ganson.

These sculptures are phenomenal. I wish I could describe them better. They ranged from spindly, wiry contraptions to elegantly moving machines, and all of them were very cool. You’ll just have to check it out for yourself to understand what I mean.

After MIT, we visited the campus of Harvard University. The campus is quite attractive and makes for a nice walk. We walked past the library and the law school and took pictures of ourselves on the steps in front of the buildings:

We were also obliged to visit the statue of John Harvard - and rub his toe for good luck:

In one of the buildings (can’t remember which) they had a very old mainframe on display - one of the first big computers, complete with a large array of knobs for defining the inputs to your program (in decimal) and a punch card reader. Will was mesmerized by it, wondering, “How does one play Lego Star Wars on this gigantic contraption?”

After a thorough trip through campus, we finally decided to meander back to our car. During the walk back, Malin snapped this amusing shot:

Will fell asleep in car on our way to dinner. This night we stopped at a staple for tourists visiting Boston: Legal Sea Foods. It was okay. The food was decent, but overpriced. It reminded me a little of Cheesecake Factory… Will woke up just in time to eat some dessert. After dinner, we called it a night.

Getting To Waltham and Back

The next day, Jake had to work. We were to pick him up from work in the afternoon. There was shops and such at which Malin wanted to shop, so we drove from the hotel down to Cambridge for some shopping.

The first stop was supposed to be a quick stop at IHOP. We had an extremely aggravating battle with squirrelly roads, unlabeled streets, and traffic. It took forever to finally find the place, and everyone was thoroughly irritated with one another by the time we finally got out of the car (both from hunger and from arguing about how the hell to get to the restaurant). Big honkin’ stack of flapjacks to the rescue!

The next stop after breakfast was a vintage fabric store. Will and I played at a really cool playground (the Gore Street Playground) while Malin searched for cool material.

After that, we drove up to Somerville to hang out at Davis Square. There were several shops that Malin wanted to visit. We rounded out that trip by picking up some desserts from a place named Kickass Cupcakes. With a name like that, how could we not go in?

We split one of our cupcake acquisitions in the car on the way to go pick up Jake from work.

We then had even more fun with the Boston area roads. For instance, on-ramps from the surface streets in Boston onto I-90 are very poorly marked. Many of the signs don’t even indicate that it is an interstate - they say “Massachusetts Turnpike” instead. We never did exactly figure out the next steps. We had directions, from Google maps, for getting to the Watch City Brewing Company. We got off the interstate and then went in search of the streets it indicated - to no avail. We finally decided to just drive around, taking streets that lead us in the right direction. We did finally cross a street whose name we recognized from the directions, and we were able to get to our destination from there.

Watch City had a tasty selection of ales and quite good french fries. After a short time there, we were off, back to Boston. Our destination this time was The Barking Crab for a spot of dinner. Dinner here was good. I think it was just as good as Legal Sea Foods, but a little more reasonably priced. I also really liked the fact that they didn’t take themselves too seriously here; the restaurant was much more casual than Legal Sea Foods.

After dinner we drove to the North End - home to Boston’s Little Italy. We parked and walked around. It was very crowded, and there were a slew of restaurants that all could have made great dinner destinations had we not just eaten. On the recommendation of a co-worker who used to live in the Boston area, we made a stop at Mike’s Pastry shop. Will and I split some delicious gelato, and Will and Malin split some chocolate-dipped, puffed pastries.

At that point, it began to rain, so we called it a night. We said our goodbyes to Jake, since he’d be at work the next day when we’d be on our way to the airport.

Getting Ready to Leave

Tuesday was our last day there. We had some time, however, before we had to get to the airport to leave. So we revisited a few places in Boston before going home.

Our first stop was the Boston Public Gardens. Here we are, standing at the gates just outside the gardens:

While in the gardens, we took Will on a swan-boat ride. I do not recommend this. It is a very short, boring, slow ride around the pond. You’ll have just as good of a view, if not better, for free by simply walking around the pond. After the boat ride, we did just that:

After a swan-boat ride at the gardens, we drove back up to the North End to get a daytime view of Little Italy. We walked around and got a delicious sandwich from a Salumeria. Will and I decided to wait outside while mother dearest went inside to grab some grub:

Will didn’t care for the sandwich, so on the walk back to the car we let him pick out a slice of pizza from a deli/bakery that was on the way:

Getting Home

Our ordeal getting on the plane back home was even more stressful than on the way up to Boston.

First, we had to return the rental car. This should have been easy: our paperwork from the rental car facility even had a photo with arrows on it. Unfortunately, I found the text beneath the photo - pertaining to when I would see this - to be a little confusing. So I ended up getting off the highway too soon. Then, after arguing a little bit about how the heck to get to the place from the surface streets where we now found ourselves, we headed off and did, in fact, manage to find the place.

A quick shuttle to the airport and we were ready to go! This time, we knew to check-in at the Continental counter, not Delta. Their kiosk system wouldn’t accept my e-ticket number, so I had to ask for assistance. The woman that helped us informed us that our flight was a little late. That meant we would miss our connecting flight (through Newark again was the plan) and have to take the next one which would put us back in Atlanta about three hours late. I was visibly irritated by the situation so the lady did a little extra to help: she moved us to a direct flight on a Delta plane that left nearly an hour earlier than our original itinerary (we were early, so we figured we could make it without a problem).

Unfortunately, we had to walk over to the Delta counter to check-in. We were able to check-in at a Delta kiosk, but unable to choose seat assignments. This was bad news because none of our seats were together - the boarding passes had us spread out all over the plane. So we decided to rush to the gate to get the seat assignment fixed before the plane took off.

Naturally, as Murphy would have predicted, we hit another snag: Malin and Will got tagged for the “extensive” search at the security line. So we had to wait a bit longer than everyone else as Malin had to stand in a big, dark box that scanned her. And then they had to open all of her carry-ons and inspect everything. They were rubbing around the luggage with a tissue and then running the tissue through a scanner (I assume to check for dust or residue that would be left behind had we packed explosives).

Just as the security folks were finishing their scans, Will’s backpack broke. The zipper completely failed. Malin had to clutch it tightly to prevent its zipperless opening from dropping all of its contents as we hurried to the gate. As we arrived, boarding was about to begin. I was pretty pessimistic about our chances of getting our seat assignments fixed this late in the game… Luckily, I was proven wrong. The lady at the gate heard our situation and printed new boarding passes in the blink of an eye. Just as we were handed our new boarding passes, the call to board the plane was issued. We immediately jumped in line and had a smooth ride home.

Here we go: another installment of “The Humphries Save The Planet.” I started composting, and it is not the first time. I tried this at our old house when I had the veggie garden in the backyard. I never got the swing of it though. I went the Martha way, which is to say I had a big wire bin next to the garden and put all of our food scraps in (instructions on that method).

As you could see from the picture in the link, manual labor is a key part. And time - lots and lots of time before you can use the compost in the garden. I had lusted over these nifty things, but as you can see from the price tag I was not about to do that (even if it did give you compost in six easy, non-manual-labor-filled weeks). So I had been thinking on what to do for a while and, feeling guilty every time I emptied the coffee filter or threw lemon rinds in the garbage pail, I knew I could do something easy and cheap. I finally came up with something on the drive to the lake last week. Upon our return, I decided to look online one last time to see if my plan would work. I ran across this great video (which is what my plan mainly consisted of - except I used a drill, and my hair looks way better than hers).

I purchased my trash can from Lowes for $13.00, and Will helped me drill the holes in a pretty pattern. Then we loaded it up with the brown and green matter that we had saved over the last two days, wet it, and gave it a spin. Soon I will show you my black gold!

Here is a list of things you can compost:

• Animal manure
• Cardboard rolls
• Clean paper
• Coffee grounds and filters
• Cotton rags
• Dryer and vacuum cleaner lint
• Eggshells
• Fireplace ashes
• Fruits and vegetables
• Grass clippings
• Hair and fur
• Hay and straw
• Houseplants
• Leaves
• Nut shells
• Sawdust
• Shredded newspaper
• Tea bags
• Wood chips
• Wool rags
• Yard trimmings

One last note: I am truly amazed at how much smaller our weekly trash that goes to the street is because of recycling and composting. It has gone down by at least two-thirds and is the most obvious change we have made during this process. This week it is my goal to put up recycling bins for the bathrooms - an easily overlooked place that is full of paper products just being thrown in the trash.

A few years ago, Josh and I decided we would change a habit or a product here and there in our daily lives - in an attempt to become more conscious of our affect on the planet and to just be more conscious as humans in general. One of the first things we did was to replace most of the bulbs in the house with compact fluorescent bulbs. Now you may say, “Most? Why not all?” The simple fact is that we wanted to make these changes without compromising too much (mainly due to the fact that very small bulbs and bulbs attached to dimmer switches don’t agree to well with CFL). We are Americans after all, and if we do it this way then we can convince others to follow along. Because if it is not easy and cheap then it is not sustainable for the laziest among us.

Along the way, we have also taken this idea to the food we eat, and we have slowly been changing into more conscious eaters. This means more vegetables, more fruit, no junk food in the house, no soda in the house, eating at home as much as possible, and, finally, cutting out a whole lot of processed food. We still eat out and drink like fish (Josh makes beer after all) - we even drink soda and go to fast food joints, but only once in a while. Even then, we try our best to keep it somewhat healthy. This was probably the hardest for me as Will loves Chik-Fil-A and - I mean - who doesn’t? He still begs, but I resist.

Ok, back on topic! So this year we decided to step it up a little more: first we started recycling, and then I decided to get rid of all the harsh chemicals to clean the house. NO, I did not stop cleaning! I traded them for more earth-friendly ideas. Now I know I could have gone out and bought green-wise stuff, but I really felt that was just not being very conscious. I decided Bleach, Baking soda, and Vinegar are all I need, and I must say it has been a smashing success. I have a spray bottle with water and a few drops of bleach (chlorine free) for cleaning the counters and hard floors. Important note about bleach: you only need a few drops. You don’t even need to be able to smell it for it to disinfect your counters and what not. Baking soda is a miracle powder: it has gotten the toughest dirt out of the bottom of my shower, cleaned the grout in my bathroom, and whitened my laundry. The best part of all: it is way cheap! More info here on the wonderment of the BS. Vinegar: in a word - URINE. If you have a dog or a child then you know what I am talking about. Vinegar breaks down the enzymes in urine instantly, and dogs will not mark again if they can smell it. We could talk about all its other great features, but read this article instead. Oh, and the smell is gone once it dries.

Ok, the point of this post! I have decided to start posting about my newest experiments into going green. I am always trying something new to see if it will fit into my life and save me money (lest I remind you about gas prices). Not everything I do will sound sane or even doable by all, but maybe it will give some of you the info you need to try something new.

Next week: composting on the cheap!

Will has begun to disperse his Star Wars obsession out to a couple of other subjects: Harry Potter and Indiana Jones. As Malin has mentioned, we’ve let him watch the first three Harry Potter movies. He won’t be allowed to watch the others until much since they get into PG-13 territory. He has yet to see an Indiana Jones movie, but still has managed to be completely fascinated with him. It’s really funny to hear him talk about it and mix up his characters, “I’m Anakin Jones!”

A recent favorite activity of Will’s is to play various games on the computer at Lego.com. They have games ranging from Lego Star Wars to Lego Indiana Jones and everything in between (Knights vs. Wizards, Robots and Spaceships, etc…). He would spend all day doing this if he could. We try to not let him though, interrupting his office potato habits by taking him to the pool, taking outside to play, or reading books to him.

Last weekend we were in Boston to visit my brother, Jake. We actually spent most of our time around Cambridge (which is where Jake lives) and slept in Woburn (a 15-minute drive from Cambridge) where the hotels are much, much cheaper. Malin has yet to download photos from her CompactFlash cards to the computer, so I’ll post again later with details and pics. (Hopefully, less than 4 weeks will go by this time).

Yesterday we spent time in town, going to a Japanese book store in Smyrna and then to Decatur to walk around/shop/eat. We got a chance to eat lunch at the 5^th Earl Market, and decided that it is definitely a better destination for fancy sandwiches than Muss & Turner’s (no offense meant to Muss & Turner’s). It’s hard to compare them to Alon’s though because they are so different. Alon’s is much more of a market whereas 5^th Earl Market (despite the name) is more of a restaurant (and thus more like Muss & Turner’s in that respect).

In any event, we split The Moat. It is a big ol’ BBQ sandwich that includes a “white” BBQ sauce. The white sauce is basically like the white sauce (aka yum-yum sauce) that is available at most Hibachi (Japanese steakhouse) restaurants. It is good and tasted good on the sandwich, but I still prefer coleslaw as a BBQ sandwich topper (call me old-fashioned, I guess).

We brought a big Tonka dump truck for Will to play with in the sand. We also brought his “tools” - a plastic toy shovel and rake, made for sandbox play.

He made several trips from the house to the beach. The first afternoon we were there, shortly after arriving, Donna took him and Catrina (Audra’s and Jason’s young cousin) to the beach to play. We returned again the next morning, and again in the evening, and again the next day, etc…

During some down time before the wedding, the three of us (Malin, Will, and me) went for a stroll on the beach. Malin took many pictures of us on the beach. When we walked under the pier that was near the house, she handed me the camera and asked me to snap some in order to get herself in some pictures. The first photo up there on the right is shy Willie getting a piggyback ride from mommy. The one below shows the two of them looking for shells under the pier:

There were actually lots of seashells to find down there. Just a few feet away from where they’re standing was an alley of crushed shells that seemed to run the whole length of the beach:

Tiring of my photography skills (or lack thereof), Malin eventually reclaimed her camera to prove that I was actually at the beach with the two of them:

She also got some great shots of Will playing in the sand. This one is my favorite:

The rest of the vacation centered around the wedding and our preparation of food for ourselves and the other guests: a low-country boil on Saturday, crab cakes and fish’n'chips on Sunday.

Unfortunately, we had to leave the beach on Monday. I can’t wait to go back… perhaps later this summer?