This Came Through

This picture came throught after my father resent it. It's not the best of Caroline, but Matt won't mind the extra publicity, I'm sure.

Oh - and Caroline's new word of the day is : WHALE. Everything is a whale.

It's Getting Late...

...so this will be the last post of the night. Here are some pics from last weekend in Rochester/Syracuse that my Dad just sent me...

Caroline liked hanging out with the golf clubs and the hockey pucks at the garage sale.

More evidence of this kid's love of hockey pucks. Maybe we need to sign her up for Mighty Mites this winter.

Matt hanging out with Caroline before the game. Hopefully I can get a better pic to replace this one - it didn't come through on the e-mail for some reason.

Another pic that's just too cute.

Getting sleepy (finally)

SAVE ME FROM THESE PEOPLE!!!!

This Weekend in Pawtucket

We got to see Matt in Pawtucket on Saturday and Sunday nights. The games were good - Syracuse won both. It was so nice to see Matty. The ushers were gracious enough to let us into the bullpen section so we could see him before the game, even though our tickets were in the grandstand. I thought it was funny that the main usher at the bullpen asked me a couple "questions" to make sure I wasn't a stalker. Here's an example of how effective ballpark security is...

Usher: Who are you here to see?
Me: Matt Leahy - he's the bullpen catcher.
Usher: How do you know him?
Me: He's my baby brother.
Usher: Okay - go ahead - just don't eat any of the food out there.
Me: Thanks.

I paid him off after the game with one of the cookies that I made for Matt (peanut butter with chocolate chips - pretty good, if I do say so myself). He seemed appreciative and let us right out to the pen area on Sunday. =-)

Another bonus of being able to hang out by the pen before the game was that it's all gravel out there. And Caroline LOVES playing in gravel. It kept her entertained for almost an hour - both nights! She was filthy-dirty by the time the games started, but who cares?!?! She was so covered with ketchup by the end of the night that we barely noticed the dirt, anyways.

We stopped her just before she tried to eat the stone.

Instant entertainment - just add rocks.

This was the best picture we got of Matt all weekend...

Monday Night Catch-Up.

Here are a couple pics from the Red Sox game that Caroline and I got to take Pops and my friend Liz to a couple weeks ago. We got to see Dice-K pitch. He is something else, let me tell you. I'm still not sure if he's worth the 58 million or so that they spent on him - but he looked pretty darn good (at least from our seats near Pesky's Pole).

Some quality time for Caroline and Pops at the ballpark

She did end up getting to be a little-bit monkey towards the end of the game - but she lasted for the whole thing.

The scoop on Dice-K near the end of his complete game.

Friday Fix (a few days late)

It was HOT on Friday. After Caroline and I got some laundry done and completed the grocery shopping, we filled up our pool and took a dip. She took a dip, rather - I just dipped my feet - still way too cold for me. She had a ball playing with her boat. She also enjoyed sniffing my new chive plants and saying "ahhhh" after she was done smelling.
Too cute, I tell you. Especially in her droopy drawers suit.

And You Know What ELSE Sucks?

THIS!!!!

After three years, Bat-Girl is hanging up her cleats. While I totally understand her reasoning (baby Dash is such a cutie), I will miss it a lot. Especially Lego-vision.

They Paved Paradise...

...And put up another stupid CVS.

That's what's going in where Cactus Pete's is.
A CVS.
No, there isn't the Park Ave Pharmacy across the street or a Brooks Pharmacy a quarter mile up the street or a CVS less than a mile away in Tatnuck Square. Not to mention Mahoney's Pharmacy or the Walgreens that are two miles away.
Yup. What this town needs is another pharmacy.

Sheer Stupidity.

We have been true to our word and not gone to the Tatnuck Bookseller since they closed their Worcester branch (don't ask me how they won the "Best of Worcester" award - they're not even located close to Worcester - they're in Westboro - they must have bought off somebody at Worcester Magazine to get that award). I'm seriously thinking about pulling our prescriptions from CVS.

Any ideas on where we can go for our date nights now? We want to avoid chains and stick with places with local ties.

Wither Cactus Pete's?

Pete's is, frankly, our favorite place to go to during the week when we want to not cook, for several reasons:

* It's close to home
* Wednesdays thru Fridays kids eat free
* Great desserts to go along with their other fare
* good service

Of course, there's one more thing which is dear to me: they serve Wachusett

But, there are rumors abounding that Pete's is kaput by the end of the summer...any real news on that? I check the cactus pete's website (they have a sister restaraunt in Vermont) but when I type in "cactuspetes.biz" I get this. So, that's ominous that their website is gone...

Caroline's Jackson Pollack

BUMPED: Linksys WMB54G Wireless Music Bridge - A Piece?

UPDATE: I pulled the power on the thing after giving a hard reset, and then followed the directions of a couple of various posts around the internets. See below the original post...[Warning: tech speak coming below] In short, throw away the instructions, and don't use the CD that it came with.

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And by 'piece' you know what I mean. I have been struggling with this thing since we bought it. It's a great idea: a bridge from your PC music to your audio system that does not have any issues with digital rights management issues - meaning, you dont break copyright, cause HOW it transmits the audio does not affect whether you have iTunes or anything else that may be proprietary (like mlb gameday audio) since it simply shunts the audio through the router instead of through your audio driver on your audio card on your PC.

But it's been a nightmare to operate, and now it simply is not working. It's rediculous. And I'm not the first person to think so.

If anybody has any experience in this area, it'd be a great help.

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HOW TO MAKE IT WORK:

Go to the linksys website, and download the latest driver here. DONT install it yet. Plug in the bridge directly to your router in an emply ethernet connection - DONT plug it into your PC directly - you can still find it inside your internal network. DONT allow your DHCP-enabled router to assign it an IP dynamically - DO force a reassign of the static IP the default .210. DO use the MAC address that is on the status html page and NOT what is on the bottom of the thing - that is the MAC address for the RJ45 connector and NOT the wireless MAC addy - and DO add it to your MAC filter. MANUALLY assign all the details needed - static IP, subnet mask, and gateway. manually input all your details for your wireless network. DO change your password. DO keep applying all the changes as they come. When done, unplug the bridge from the hard connection and wait about a minute for it to find the wireless network. DO ping your bridge to make sure that it's connected. NOW, INSTALL the driver and ONLY the driver - DO NOT USE the utility. Once installed (it hangs at 40% and 70%, but not for as long as at 40%), turn on the bridge utility and see if it can switch between your PC and the bridge. DO make sure that you're not playing audio when you turn on the utility. At this point, it should work. I've tried it once tonite; we'll see about tomorrow.

Friday Fix

This is what I woke up to this morning. In case you've been wondering - the crocs are a big hit. She has worn them to bed the past two nights and brings them to us to put on if she's not already wearing them.