I just played a game with a program called 20Q. It’s really neat. I read about it on jnkmail.com. You think of an object and it guesses what it migh be by asking 20 questions, like the game you might play on a long drive. It’s pretty good. I was thinking of a steam iron, and it took it 28 questions to guess, so I won. But it learns from each game it plays.
Today Nathan and I went to Walden Pond with my friend Beth. It was such a perfect day for such a trip. It was so beautiful.
Nathan loved the water even more than his last swimming day. He splashed and kicked and laughed. I saw another baby about his age sitting by the water’s edge just playing with a shovel. Nathan sure seemed a lot more energetic than that! He was pretty excited to try and put every pebble he could find in his mouth.
A mama duck and her two babies came within about 2 feet of Nathan and me as we were sitting in the water. They were quite brave. I’m not sure which of us wanted to grab one of them more.
Here’s the bathing beauty:
I downloaded Freeverse Board Games a while back, at Becky’s suggestion. Occasionally Lisa and I play Mancala against each other via the wireless network. Sometimes the neighbor’s girls come over and play. You can also play against other people online. I’d been dying to try it, but I only wanted to play mancala or battleship. I logged onto their server and saw scores of people playing hearts and chess and stuff. Difficult, time consuming games. No one would play my loser games with me. So I accepted an invite to play checkers. Oh man, it was embarrassing. I’m a terrible checkers player. I was getting totally demolished! Then the software crashed - it just up and quit and I was spared defeat, sort of. My opponent probably thinks I rigged the whole thing. Oh well. Anyone want to play Mancala or Battleship? Tic Tac Toe, maybe?
I’ve mentioned my play count obsession before in this blog. I am currently listening to a smart playlist that contains songs that have been played 9 to 12 times. This is a sweet spot, because I obviously don’t usually skip them when they come up, but they are also not over played like the top 25.
Now playing: Love on the Run - Chicane
The latest issue of the Neponset River Watershed Association’s newsletter has an article about rain gardens - gardens that are designed to conserve water. Rain gardens are planted in a low area where water flows, or right under the downspout from a roof gutter. The plants are versatile, they can handle intense water or dry weather. The soil is specially mixed to collect water then slowly return it the aquifer. The NepWRA has set up a demo garden at Pequitside Farm in Canton. Since we were down in Canton to go swimming anyway, we decided to pay a visit.
Well, the garden really wasn’t much to look at. I can see why they didn’t include a photo in the newsletter. I think it will look nice in a few years, once the perennials fill in some more. I did a little weeding while we there, they could really use some mulch. As far as we could tell there wasn’t anyone at the farm, which is some sort of historic site - the barn whose roof was supplying the water for the garden was beautiful.
I still really like the idea. We don’t really have room in our garden to add something like that, but maybe some day. Here are a couple of inspirational articles:
Rain Gardens by Karen Cozzetto.
Gardening with Water Quality in Mind by Amy Middleton and Sarah Clark.
World famous bloggers James and Becky are doing a blog-a-thon to raise money for the international gay & lesbian human rights commission and Canine Assistants. They are posting every half hour for 24 hours, starting at 9:00 this morning. Take a look, they’re having a lot of fun. James is answering “Ask The Gay Guy Anything” questions (which you can post) and Becky is composing Haiku. Check it out.
Nathan went for his first swim today and he loved it. We drove to Ponkapoag Pond, about 10 miles south of where we live. Ponkapoag is in the Blue Hills, and the gate is nearly impossible to find unless you’ve been there before. There is a small grassy beach, the pond was pretty warm, and it’s not too crowded. Nathan floats well. We were both really proud of him. We’d been worried he would hate it. He had fun splashing and watching us swim towards him. A few more trips to Ponkapoag and he’ll be ready for the Atlantic when we go to Maine in August.
I just got my first evangelical Christian spam message. I really hope they don’t seize on idea of spamming us sinners until we see the light. Endless offers of penis enlargement pills and low low mortgage rates are bad enough with out being threatened with hellfire and damnation every 5 minutes!
I ate lunch at the food trucks in the middle of MIT’s campus today, where I enjoy watching the construction of the Stata Center. A hipster from Japan walked up to me and asked if I could help him find the classroom where Matt Damon solves the math problem in Good Will Hunting. I told that to the best of my knowledge all of the interior shots were filmed in a high school in Canada. He said, “OK, how do I get there?” so I started from scratch and explained that he could see the exterior view of MIT from the movie, but the indoor scenes were shot in Canada. “The country?” he asked. He was really sad.
I wish I’d told him how he could go to the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square where Matt and Minnie have coffee and the outside of Minnie’s dorm. But then would I have to explain that the Tasty, the Bow and Arrow and even the Baskin Robbins have all disappeared? Should I have directed him to Bunker Hill Community College so he could see the building where Robin William’s character worked? Maybe it’s best I just let him shuffle off….
I repaired all of the image links in the archives. So the old Nathan photos are back in place. It was fun seeing all of those old posts, and realizing how much has happened since November. My next step is to repost the posts from May. I’m afraid June is pretty much gone. I’ve already forgotten what if anything happenned in June. It seems like years ago.