A Photo Essay: Cape Cod Sunrise

This morning I left the house at 6am.  Yes, I did it for fun.  I find that when I'm on vacation, it's nice every once in a while to go watch the sunrise.  Then to find a few geocaches.  I'm compulsive like that.

This week for Thanksgiving we went to Cape Cod to visit GG and Great Papa.  It was our first trip that direction for Turkey day, and we made a great time of it!  They are so wonderful.  After having three days of Turkey Dinner, I think I'll have to reduce my portion size next week... especially since after each meal I enjoyed a "sampler platter" with a sliver of three or four pies.  For the week: apple, blueberry, coconut cream, pecan, and pumpkin.

Anyway, here's a selection of pictures that I took this morning on our walk down to Cockle Cove and Forest Beach.  Later, we hit the bicycle path to go find some additional geocaches.

Forest Beach, Chatham, MA.  Sunrise at 6:42 a.m.

The air was fresh, the sky was clear enough to get some color.

Brother-in-law Sean came with me for the morning jaunt.

Chatham-style vandalism: Let's paint scenery on the "Stay off the seagrass signage."

Shells washed ashore en masse on this beach.

Our hike down the rail trail was equally relaxing.  Sean found his favorite pillow.

Down on the Cape, it's intriguing to see more moss up in the trees than on the ground.

Yes, that's me.  Approaching the Tree Cemetery.

Hot and Cold

When winter starts to roll around and we start to prepare for various Winter Festivals, the people of New England start to moan and groan about the potential for a bitterly cold winter.  It's one of those unifying things that we go through every year that provides us an opportunity to show up to work in snowpants and work boots a half hour late, then we compare stories about how long it took us to shovel the sidewalks and driveways.  Then the people with snow-blowers and plows smirk about how effortlessly their snow pile has been growing.

One of the winter-onset aches is the cost of home heating oil (we heat with natural gas!) or how many cords of wood a wood stove can go through in a winter.  We chat about thermostat settings and tolerance for bundling up inside as compared to setting it at 70 and just forgetting it year-round.  We talk of winterizing our windows/doors/basements.  We talk about how little sunlight we get in the wintertime (dusky around 4?!  What!?).  Most of the time, it's not that we don't like the winter, but that People like to complain.

There is a comparable discussion that happens at the onset of the two or three hottest weeks of the summer. At that point, it's a rush to the basement or home stores for window air conditioning units to help take the edge off the summer heat.  In my geeky mix my enthusiasm for thrift, record keeping, and seasonal analysis, I have generated the figure below:  The Seasonal Variations in Gas & Electric Utilities for our Half-Duplex.  (1100 square feet, two story with basement.)

Three Years of Utilities for the Jacksons, normalized to cost per day.

In interpreting the above plot, there are a few things to note:

Sep-09 Given an ancient freezer from a friend moving across the country. It added about 50 cents per day to the electric cost average. Old compressors in fridges and freezers are notoriously inefficient, so if you have appliances made before 2000, you should consider replacing them.

Mar-10 Had baby. We abandoned our previous trend of having the house chill down to 60 while we slept and began using an electric heater to warm just the sleeping spaces. We also had various houseguests after Blake was born, and used more electricity.

Jul-10 For the opposite reasons as March, we wanted to cool down the house for the nursing mother and baby, so we ran the air conditioner quite a bit more than our previous summers. Well, we air condition for the hottest month anyway.

Spring-11 Well, throughout this spring, Jen learned how to quilt. She had quilted before, but during this spring she REALLY took on the hobby. She found it therapeutic, relaxing, and fulfilling, and allocated a budget of time and funds to this awesome skill. With quilting comes IRONING, which is a 1100 Watt heater that gets alot of use when quilting.

Jul-11 Sold the old freezer, and bought a smaller, more efficient chest freezer. Regained the much of the 50 cent per day advantage.

Jan-11 Looking at the RED line for natural gas useage, keep in mind that we had killer snowstorms: 1/12/11: 15inches, 1/21/11: 7inches, 1/26/11: 10inches , 2/1/11:10inches. It was unrelenting, so our gas heating spiked that year a bit higher than normal. To back that up, I'm including the average daily temperature from the gas company bills from those heating months. It's clear that the 2010-2011 winter was consistently colder than our disappointingly warm winter last year. We only had like 4 inches of snow for the whole winter last year. It seems like last year's moaning and groaning was largely for naught.

2009-2010	Avg Tmp	2010-2011	Avg Tmp	2011-2012	Avg Tmp
Nov	51	Nov	49	Nov	49
Dec	38	Dec	34	Dec	45
Jan	30	Jan	29	Jan	34
Feb	32	Feb	29	Feb	38
Mar	44	Mar	38	Mar	46
Apr	53	Apr	45	Apr	52

So there you have it.  Any other observations you care to make on the above data?  Comments welcome.

July 4th overview.

Ian's first Pony Ride on the Burlington town common.  He had on the right hat for the job.  Blake had a horse his size ready to carry him, but he refused to sit on the poor creature.

Much to Blake's chagrin, Ian also got to ride the train.  Blake got shortchanged due to age.

We went to see the lightning show at Wakefield.   It was awesome.  The fireworks were pretty good too.  Ian thought "they were spectacular"  (he learned some fireworks terminology by watching How It's Made), but Blake just scrunched his eyes closed.

Sometimes it's just tough to be two, isn't it?  We still had a great day.


Not my video, but glad someone put it on YouTube.  This was how much of the fireworks show went.

 Neat, huh?

Here's some stills extracted, for your pleasure, from around the 28 second mark.

And here's one of the finale.

I wonder if the lightning contributed to this preferred fireworks watching posture?  (Blake kept his eyes firmly closed... not asleep, though.)

Yeah, we lucked out that we were on our way to the car before the precipitation really started coming down.

Unseasonable Snowfall.

Somehow, over the last 12 months, we've gotten more than our fair share of snow in these Northeast parts of the country.  I think we had 72" at Logan airport last winter, or something in that neighborhood.  We took images of our snow in our yard taller than our Outback.

So far this snow season (what!?  Snow season before Christmas!), we've already had a big fluffy--which I mean the big silver-dollar sized heavy clumps-- snow for Halloween before the leaves fell, which toppled no less than 6 trees within 100 yards of our house (none of which damaged anything!).  Many of the neighboring towns "postponed" trick or treating until the next weekend when they could restore electricity to the neighborhoods.

As we drove up to Maine Wednesday, we noticed powder on the ground as we proceeded northward, and were pleasantly surprised to see about six inches of powder at the grands' house.  I took a walk on Thanksgiving morning to capture the essence of the snowfall.  It was 24 degrees Fahrenheit around sunrise, when I went out.  For the record, I think the snow looks much better in Maine than it does in Massachusetts, as it has so many more elegant evergreens upon which to drape.

Breakheart Reservation

Jen made me a deal that if I let her sleep in on Saturday morning, she'd clean the kitchen.  So at 7:15am when the boys woke up, we had our oatmeal, got dressed, and went out hiking/geocaching at Breakheart just North of Boston.  I had only been there once, but never exploring.   This serves as a photo journal of our morning adventure on Saturday.

Ian took my picture with Blake.  I kind of have to put myself wherever he's pointing. :)

We found a geocache.  Good reason to stop and have a break, eh?

Ian was surprised to see this car on top of Breakheart Hill.  I was too... but with a straight six like that, how could it not make it?

This is how Blake got forward looks strapped to my back.  And that's the vein the Red Cross sometimes uses to take my blood.

This is how you grow crows feet.  Contort your face in as many ways as possible, and the wrinkles will just stick.

I am surprised that Ian looks like he's 22 in this picture.  While I am plenty eager to go on adventures with a man-son, I am happy to have my little boy for now!

Note:  As soon as we sat down at the top of the hill, Blake insisted that for his break to be official, he needed to take off his socks and shoes.  So be it.  I'm sure the granola bar tasted better with the breeze between his toes.

Hydration is especially important when you are strapped to someone's back.

Here's an action shot while hiking down the paved trail.  Okay, so it's in the suburbs, not in the mountains.  It's close to home, though, and has plenty of miles of trail!

The boys at the Upper Lake.

Blake thinking, "Dad, I want to go splash in that..." and it wasn't too long after the click of the shutter that I had to quickly prevent such fun.  I don't mind splashing, but it would help if he had a bit better balance first.

Here's Blake receiving wisdom from heaven.  Or at least a very interesting camera shot with glare.

Ian thought this flume was awesome.  Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, it connects the upper lake to the lower lake.  He gave me the grand tour of where the water goes.  Smart kid!

This is several miles into the hike.  Turns out when a 5 1/2 year old hits his limit of walking, he starts crawling.  I guess I had forgotten that, since we haven't done much hiking this year.  Last year, we had vanilla wafers to keep the feet motivated.

And here are the happy hikers just before the home stretch back to the car.  Some of us are more alert than others.

A Fair is a Veritable Smorgasbord

This post is about a week late, but I've been sidelined for most of the last five days or so....better late than never, eh?

We went to the Topsfield Fair--and I love fairs. Like, in ways that I can't even articulate. So I absolutely cannot even begin to describe how disappointing it is to go to a fair and Not Even Be Able to Stomach The FAIR FOOD. I'm sorry, but fried dough is one of the great pleasures of life, and I nearly cried when I looked at the vendors and realized that it didn't look good.

And that, folks, was my big takeaway from the fair this year. That, and the fact that a person who is fighting second trimester morning sickness should know better than to walk into a building labeled "POULTRY BARN."

But considering the fact that I love fairs--pregnant or otherwise--I had a great time. Joe and Ian had a blast. From the cow sculpted out of butter to the pig races to Ian making his own beeswax candle, it was a fantastic evening.