Halloween...

As requested....some live shots.

CitySquare Deal Signed!

Sounds like demo of the mall will start in the spring...I can't wait!

Saturday Night...

A rainy, wet, miserable day. It was great having my Dad around - we were able to get lots done.
Caroline learned how to walk while pushing her little cart yesterday. Too cute.
Trying to get a post up...I got called into work for tomorrow...

Thursday Night

Caroline is in bed and we're watching the Series. Tigers are up in the top of the second. Pudge just tagged from first to second. That's HUGE. Excellent baserunning. McCarver still talks too much, but it's getting to the point where he's sort of like static on a radio. I just tune it out.
On baseball tangent...Jeff Suppan is pitching. Jim won us a case of Coke and a really nice can opener at a game in Pawtucket the night before we got married by knowing where Suppan was chosen in the last expansion draft. Not that we're real big Coke fans, but we still have the can opener and I have to say I think of Suppan when I use it.

It's a pretty light blogging night. The nurses at UMASS are back on the job. I had an appointment there this morning and can attest that it was not a happy place to be. The MD that I was supposed to see "called out" and it happened to be just before his first patient was scheduled at 10AM (this was me). Because of this there wasn't time to call the patients to cancel them - so they just waited until we showed up to tell us that there wasn't a doctor to see us. Coincidence?

No new pictures of Caroline, but she continues to become more and more mobile. We caught her trying to go up the stairs the other day. I just got behind her to make sure she was safe and she was able to make it all the way up the stairs by herself. She attempts to scale everything and anything that is in her way and gets very testy if you try to help her at all. She's going to do things and she's going to do them her way. Reminds me of someone that I know...

I should be ironing right now and doing something productive. But I heard a wise woman say "Don't should on me" recently and if I think of that I really don't feel too badly about sitting on my butt.

We were able to make it to the Centrum yesterday for the rally with Duval Patrick and Bill Clinton. We weren't exactly active participants, but I've never seen a president before (ex or otherwise), so I figured that this was my shot. The whole thing had a revival feel to it. There were tons of people and little babies and lots of men in suits trying to look important. For some reason people in Worcester love Bill Clinton. I mean really love him. Like he's a rock star or something. People haven't forgotten that he was here after the fire at the cold storage warehouse.
Caroline had a great time at the rally. People we standing and cheering and singing and while we stood the back corner of the Centrum (so we could make a quick getaway if she got crazy), she really enjoyed the oppourtunity to be loud and clap when everyone else did.

Okay - time for bed. More pics later on in the weekend, hopefully...

How About This?

My Mom sent me this post that she found on the FLCC website. He's famous.
Pretty cool.

Oh - I'm feeling better - sometimes the world is still spinny and my head hurts, but it's improving slowly. Sinus/allergy problems suck.

Some Other Random Things...

Lots of posting tonight - the order is going to be weird because I can't think backwards like Blogger makes me to actually get these in a logical progression....

For some reasone, Caroline has picked out and started to use a pacifier lately...
How to contain a child so Mommy and Daddy can get some raking done...
Crawling is tough when you're dressed like the pink and purple Stay-Puff Marshmallow girl
Ready for extended deep sea diving (or going out in the yard to play in the leaves)
Mommy...tooo.....much....love....have to get away....
Okay - so the jersey is a bit outdated...but if you reverse the numbers and reverse the team - it's still applicable. And he's still a cool player.

Sunday Night

Sunday night again. The lunches are made. The ironing isn't done - but enough done to get us through the next couple of days. Caroline is down and we're sitting to watch the World Series. Only one more week of baseball until we have to trudge through the desolation of the winter months until Spring Training begins. Gotta like the Tigers. Kenny Rogers does remind me of the old junk ball pitcher from the movie Major League, though. It HAD to be pine tar on his had. Rosin doesn't look like that. According to Matt, it's pretty common knowledge that a lot of pitchers put (or have the catchers put) a ton of different junk on the ball. He named names. Not that it matters...

Had a great day at Sunday school this morning. The kids were great. It was so cool to see them get excited about the Gospel. We had a children's liturgy and we were talking about how different Jesus was to be someone in a position of authority, but to be a servant at the same time and how that was the thing that made him legitimate. They had such great ideas about how they could serve. They were so honest and I think I saw some lightbulbs go off in their cute little noggins. It was so great.

My Mom came out this weekend to help out. In the past two weekends we have had so much help from our families and neighbors. It has been really great. Nothing says "I love you" like taking care of your child, bringing dinner or a clean bathroom! THANK YOU.

Okay - it's getting late and it's almost time for bed.

A little cutie pie

All gone!

Mmmmm....Pancakes

Cat Post

Now that it has been almost ten months since a kitty cat post, Junior and Smokey were feeling rather neglected. They are doing well. Smokey has gained some weight and has now returned to her fighting weight of (almost) seven pounds. Junior, unfortunately, has also gained some weight and we're trying to get him back to where he should be. Here they are this weekend looking quite comfortable....

My company Gets a Little Boost From Telegram

One of the owners of my company is mentioned at the bottom of this Bristol-Myers Squibb piece from the Telegram & Gazette - they are putting a new plant in Devens, which is a "driver's shot" away from our new plant and we were able to grab a little spotlight...can't complain about that!

Rambling...

Tuesday night. It's rainy and cold, but not nearly as bad as it could be.

I'm sitting in front of the television watching the game. McCarver is still driving me nuts, but at least I don't have to listen to him and his Derek Jeter Love Fest.

Thanks to my wonderful husband I was able to find the camera and will post the gorgeous flowers that the family got to celebrate Caroline's nine month birthday.

I also intend to do some more blogging on Buck O'Neil. I was saddened to hear of his death last week. I realize that Ken Burns was probably one of the best things that happened to Buck, but somehow I think his passing would be a little easier to take if he was in Cooperstown where he ought to be. My Dad got to meet him a few times and always came away impressed just by his presence. I'm re-reading his autobiography and am continually amazed by O'Neil's grace and appreciation of life - even when he was rarely handed the best of circumstances. Here is one of the pictures that my Dad sent me that he took the last time he was able to see O'Neil. I beleive it was this past summer. Looking pretty good for ninety-four, huh?



Okay - it's getting late...it's time for us to fire up the laptop to we can go to sleep to the sound of the game. Go Mets (even though it's lots of fun to say Pujols over and over again)! This may be juvenile - but Cardinals are PONDSCUM! (Hi Uncle Mark - I love you) =-)...

Old School Sesame Street

With the birth of Caroline and her subsequent love of Cookie Monster that we've discovered, we've had a bit of a renaisance of sorts with the show - the older show. Me more than Karen, but still we both have some Sesame Street memories of the show from the 70's.

Well, click on the link above (and here for a cast photo from 1973 sans Mr. Hooper. And Snuffy, natch) and see that they've come up with a DVD set covering the first 5 years of the show - all the stuff the a Gen-X'er like me will remember - Ladybug picnic, I Love Trash, Big Birg butchering Mr. Hooper's name. If I find a Youtube of any of this I'll add it later; the company that I am contracted to filters youtube out...but lookie what I found: Maria has a blog.

Monday

A sick day. Yuck. At least I'm in front of the computer and the world isn't totally spinning around (imagine the worst bed spins ever combined with the worst hangover ever and then feel that way for days...it's been real fun, I tell you). But I'm feeling a little better ( I think). Let's hope it continues...
Caroline and I went up to New Hampshire over the weekend to get her away from all the dust that would be flying around the house as the insulation in our attic was being changed out. It was a good thing we did it - apparently the gentleman asked "How old is your house again?". He was thinking the insulation had been there (installed incorrectly, mind you) for the past forty five years. NO WONDER we get so darned cold in the winter.
We did also get some pictures of the gorgeous flowers we got to celebrate Caroline's nine month birthday. A bit cheesy, but we figured that nine months in and nine months out was a pretty big milestone. I would gladly put those up, but I can't find the camera. My housekeeping skills have bit the big one in the past few weeks...oh, well.
BUT....we did get some nice pictures taken up in NH by Caroline's Grampy. Caroline is continuing with her "shushy face". She does this when she's mad, concentrating or doing something that she knows she shouldn't be doing. She could probably get away with more stuff that she knows she shouldn't be doing, except the "shushy face" is partnered with very heavy breathing - so you can hear her coming from a mile away!

Downtown Worcester Gets More Good News

The old Berwick Furniture Company at the corner of Main & Madison - where Chandler Street ends at the Mass RMV bldg - will help remove most of the city's downtown blight by adding 45 apartments, with 40 slated for lower-income families. Reading further in the article, it appears that the company which bought the building is also bought out all that empty property behind the building, as well as some other nearby properties:

EDFC [Economic Development Finance Corp. of Dedham] also plans to build a new 60-unit Beacon Place condominium complex behind the former Burwick building.
...
...EDFC also has purchase-and-sale agreements to buy two more nearby properties: A building at 661 Main St. that is owned by Caravan Co. Inc., and a building at 2 Ionic Ave. that is owned by the Worcester Boys Club, according to Worcester Assessor’s Office online records.

All good news, since this area is on the other side of all the other development already happening or slated to happen in Worcester over the next few years...plus, these are all brownfield redevelopments of one form or another...

Glad It's Not Us...

Buffalo is getting SOCKED!!!! The earliest that I ever remember getting snow is the week before Halloween. HERE is all you never wanted to know about lake effect snow.

So far, besides some flurries - Rochester hasn't seen much (than goodness).
We may get the occasional hurricaine here and people may talk funny - but at least there isn't so much snow!!!

Busted!!!

She looks guilty, doesn't she?

See Daddy waiting in the back left corner for her to come back? She wasn't heading back anytime soon.

There were much more fun things to do than to get dressed and go to bed...

Duh.

Autumn

The crazy part is that this pile of leaves isn't even an eighth of what we still have to rake up. And they haven't even really started to come down yet. I can hardly wait to get to the rest of them...

The good news is that Caroline likes the leaves. The bad news is that she thinks they taste good. Oh, well - thats less Benifiber that we'll have to put in her baby food.

We Can Link to The Telegram Now!

K bought the Sunday paper yesterday, and we were thumbing through the paper and saw a big old article about Devens being voted on as it's own municipality this coming Oct 24th...and, so, I took a shot to see if the Telegram had done away with their rediculous policy of not being able to read articles on their website UNLESS THEY WERE PAPER SUBSCRIBERS. Dumb, dumb, dumb policy.

Well, they've now fixed it, thankfully. You can now dig around the site and read full articles...my guess is that the entire site is like this - of course, I don't have the time at work to really look this over!

But, now, we can offer this link: www.telegram.com

Good night, and good luck.

Sunday

Something tells me that this post will be sort of an ongoing update. I'm trying to get some stuff up now (we've had some picture requests) before Caroline wakes up from her nap. Then it's outside to do some raking and to catch up in general on all the work we haven't done because we haven't been here.
We were up in Burlington, VT since Wednesday night. My company was nice enough to send me to the Sports Medicine Symposium at UVM (even though some of what was discussed is a stretch from what my current practice includes now). Some of the lecturers were fascinating and I know as soon as I start to get into some of the stuff that was discussed on injury prevention, concussion management and shoulder surgeries that the baby will wake up and I won't be able to finish - so I'll go on (and on and on) about that later...

Burlington is gorgeous, if a little overpriced. It was homecoming at UVM - so I think there were more people there than usual - but we had a great time on Church St and at the park overlooking Lake Champlain. So - here are some pics...