Punderings

What is it about going away from your home to someplace else that can be so relaxing?

Spending the weekend at the in-laws – which is fun, because my in-laws are great – and while I did a ton of stuff yesterday (and didn’t even take a nap on the couch like I almost always do) it still feels relaxing. Heck I even enjoyed myself cleaning up the dinner table and putting away the dishes and sweeping the floor.

(OK, correction: I did just take a nap, although it was on the bed upstairs with Roxanne while she napped instead of on the couch.)

We love coming to Mim & Dud’s ‘on vacation’ though. We only come down for one night or a weekend usually, but it’s still thoroughly relaxing. There’s something about being at a comfortable friend’s or family’s house that can be relaxing. Not always, of course: there’s the not too busy weekend where you have to do something all the time, or the not-quite-comfortable relatives that you have to visit but you don’t really want to visit. But when it’s someplace comfortable, it always seems like more fun, even when you are doing chores.

Of course a big bonus is the food. I’m one of those people who live to eat, and sometimes we seem to go directly from after-breakfast cleaning up leftovers snack directly into appetizers for lunch. Mim always has something nice planned for dinner. Last night we had dueling pork roasts since lots of other folks were coming over to see Roxanne.

Roxie loved seeing her cousins – she ran back and forth chasing them and pushing toys and stealing cookies (which she didn’t need) for a while. It was a lot of fun!

My condolences to the Jagielski family on their recent loss.

The sense of community and friendship at the ASF is one of the reasons I keep contributing there. I’m glad and honored to be part of the Foundation.

And they say that like it’s a good thing.

So what’s happened to all the DJ’s? Or rather, where did all these internet-radio-station-in-a-boxes come from?

It’s not like it’s a completely wild concept these days with computers running stuff, but it was still odd and unsettling when one local station (WBOS) proudly announced on it’s commercials that they were getting rid of the DJ’s to play more music. It was like the best thing since having 2 stereo speakers instead of mono. I just can’t think what it must have been like for the voice talents recording those announcements, knowing that they were basically announcing the layoff of many local DJ’s with the commercials. I stopped listening to that station for quite a while in protest.

They’re quickly becoming overly slick in their setup and marketing. It’s amazing to see this many different radio stations being transformed into completely automated little boxes, including in-depth and integrated websites with concert listings, listener lines, request forms, etc. Hell, you can call in your request to these stations, and if your song gets picked (who knows how), the computer automatically plays your voice recording before playing your request. A bit different than the old days where a human answered the call and did a nice back-and-forth during the intro.

The thing that really gets me – and is the real reason I bothered to write this – is the over-the-topness of their marketing. Apparently the new trend is to spend marketing thought on station names – there are a whole bunch that don’t use call letters, just marketing names – and the marketing names are all people’s names. Trying to make you think that actual humans work at the station regularly. Yeah, right: the only people working there now are ad execs and sysadmins. Ugh. Cf. Ben-FM in Philly too – at least their call letters actually appear to be “WBEN”.

The really wierd thing is I can’t even figure out what the call letters are of 93.7 Mike-FM in Boston are anymore! I didn’t happen to hear them on the hour, and it’s certainly nowhere obvious on the website. And unless I missed some radical FCC changes lately, the official call letters are not “MIKE”.

Oh well. Not like all the DJ’s were worth listening too – but some of them were; heck, I used to listen to WKLB just because I like the DJ’s. I wonder what the larger impacts are on the DJ and voice talent market now that computerized audio is completely commercialized.

Next weekend mom and Roxie went to a friend’s place in NC (which was a great trip, Roxie got to see her horse) so I drove & ferried down to Long Island to see my grandparents. Not terribly exciting, but it was nice to see them. Got to help out a bunch fixing an old lamp (grandmother’s favorite), cleaning up and removing a dead tree. I just hope we can keep the place in the family, since Roxie likes it now, and I know she’d love it when she’s old enough to run around and swim on her own.

The return trip was surreal. I got an 8am ferry, which meant I left before anyone else was awake – plus the ferry was mostly empty. I took a picture of my favorite lighthouse before camera batteries died. Then I sat downstairs and enjoyed the irony of reading some Jack Aubrey while taking a modern ferry. Then drive straight off the ferry and straight into Logan to pick up mom and Roxie, who had literally just stepped out onto the sidewalk a minute before I got there. Amazing timing.

Mom had a training class in Philly at a fancy hotel, so dad and Roxie followed her to keep the family together. Besides the obvious missing the family, I figured it’d be a lot easier for me to entertain her during the days by myself than it would for me to get her to sleep through the night by myself.

The flights were fine, even on one of the ‘budget’ airlines. We even swapped for an earlier return flight since we got to the airport several hours early without any hassles. Roxie was excited in the terminal and in the plane, then mom fed her as we took off, then she fell asleep. A great way to travel – as long as the flight isn’t longer than her average 1.5 hr nap, that is.

The hotel was fairly swanky, and that was where the training class was so it was terribly convenient. We just did Chili’s the first night, since we didn’t have any inspiration and they’re usually pretty good (read: quick service) for families with children. Roxie still had to run around a couple of times before we finished though.

We spent one day basically driving around and trying little bits of things. I planned on the museum, but she fell asleep in the car so I ended up driving over the bridge to NJ so she can say she’s been there. (The real reason was that dad wanted to see BB-62 moored there – but there’s no place to drive near it, oh well).

That night we went to pod, an uber-hip restaraunt we had walked by in University City. Oh, my, my hips hurt after eating there – very good sushi (Roxie only had the plain rice) and actually quite fun decor. Expensive, but worth a try if you’re nearby and want to see and be seen.

Next day we drove up to see some relatives north of the city. I meant to spend a couple of hours and have lunch; we ended up staying all day after it was obvious Nancy, at least, loved having the kiddo around (and after she took a long nap). Then a long drive back and forth to see some of mom’s friends in the area for dinner – which was quite nice. They have a 6 month old, and it’s amazing how you just can’t judge anyone else’s kids (or parenting styles) against your own, no matter what. It just doesn’t work – it was amazing the differences between how they do it and how we do it. I got to geek out with their dad who’s in hardware design, and he actually explained what Six Sigma is all about.

It’s amazing that it’s really not that big a deal – basically just actually following a lot of the measurement procedures everyone says they do but don’t actually do, and then conciously using those metrics to improve. Oh, and some statistics too.

Next day was a half-day class, so dad and Roxie did a short trip to Reading Terminal Market to walk around and shop. Pretty cool – it’s a combination of Haymarket inside a giant Quincy Market (if you’re a Bostonian) or Pike Place Market inside one building (if you’re from Seattle). I think Roxie really liked it: I’d take her by a stall and point out all the cool stuff they had (whatever it was there). Then we’d start walking to the next stall, and she’d be saying and signing “More! More!”. She just liked seeing stuff. Of course things she recognized were coolest: fruits and veggies, fish, and the lobsters (since they moved).

Then we did a short visit to the Please Touch Museum, a place designed for little kids to play with. Pretty cool. We both liked the Alice in Wonderland exhibit – dad, because it was so well done, and Roxie, because they built a hall of mirrors. She also loved the farmyard exhibit, because it had fake veggies you could ‘pick’ (including plastic ears of corn) and a row of chickens in a henhouse that would mechanically peck at the ground – “More! More!”.

Even though we took the back roads to the airport to try to find cheap gas for the rental car (we did: more than 20 cents cheaper than the place by the airport) we still got there early enough to score an earlier flight to get home to see the cats. Whoo-hoo, nice trip!

Yup, I’m clearly not going to be able to hold on to my sanity if I don’t manage time a little better, so I’ll start back up here to dump those little – hopefully worthwhile – nuggets I come up with from time to time.

EDIT: Ha! Well, I’m really back now. Of course ‘now’ is in January 2006, but then again, I’m not getting paid to do this.