Recently in At Home Category

I have to say, I am extremely proud of her. Aside from one clearly anxiety riddled dream last night she has been nothing but excited to be going to camp. Last night she dreamed that at the end of camp we had moved, forgotten to leave the new address, and forgotten to come and pick her up. I would say that is fairly standard "first time to camp" jitters.

Once we got there she was her usual self doing her best to amuse her bunkmates and make new friends. No sign of any anxiety.

Of course we won't know how things go until we go to pick her up next weekend. We can send messages in to the camp but no messages come out from the campers, only the staff and then only if there is a problem.

I really don't expect there to be a problem although I will admit to feeling a little melancholy on the way home. Our little girl isn't so little anymore.

I'm hoping that the upcoming week will be busier and that there will be something interesting for me to do.

I would have loved to spend some time on these sailing vessels while they were under sail but that was not an option today.

On the way home I kept thinking about the a show on The History Channel several years ago (when they actually showed shows about history) called "The Ship". The premise was that they took a crew of modern people with little or no sailing expereince and put them on a replica of the H.M.S. Beagle and sailed along the coast of Austrailia to Indonesia retracing the third voyage of the Beagle. I would have jumped at the opportunity have participate in that experience.

Instead of doing all the stuff that I need to do I hopped in the car and just started driving. I had no real destination in mind and just went where the road took me. An hour later I found myself down by the shore parked in the parking lot of a city park in a nearby city. I locked the car (with my cell phone and pager inside) and just started walking.

After 45 minutes I found myself at the water across from the shipyard just sitting. I sat for almost 2 hours doing nothing but thinking, watching the Coast Guard patrol boats cruising in and out of the harbour and enjoying the sunshine. It wasn't as good as the seawall back where I used to live but it was pretty damn close. 

Eventually I found myself a little more relaxed, with a little more clarity of thought, and able to return to another busy afternoon of shuffling kids from one activity to another and working on the chores that I dodged in the morning.

It looks good but I'm looking forward to getting back to work to get some rest.

As it ended up we didn't finish our respective chores until almost 1400. After showers, lunch, and an hour drive we would have arrived at the planetarium less than 2 hours from closing. That just didn't seem like it made a lot of sense. We decided that we would instead go out for lunch and do something close to home.

My oldest daughter and I both have celiac disease, which means that we can't eat gluten (wheat, oats, barley, rye) or anything that has been exposed to it. This makes finding restaurants a bit more challenging as we need to make sure that the menu has food that the two of us can eat. One of the restaurants that does this pretty well is P.F. Changs, a chain of chinese restaurants. As we were driving out to find lunch I asked if anyone would mind driving   far 45 minutes and having a late lunch/early dinner at the nearest location. The kids didn't care and my wife was up for the adventure and we headed off with the kids trying to decide if we were having "linner" or "dunch" (they never did decide).

The restaurant is next door to a fairly large mall and after we located it and found a parking place it was clear that I was going to have to go along with one of my wife and kids favorite activities after lunch, shopping. 

Lunch was fantastic, Changs Spicy Chicken, their gluten free version of General Tso's Chicken, the service was mediocre, but we all had a pretty good meal and were glad that we came.

After our meal we headed over to the mall. As luck would have it there was an Apple Store in the mall and the kids and I were able to hang out there playing with Apples new iPad while my wife perused the shops. I couldn't think of a better way to handle it. 

I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the iPad and, although lots of people are having a hard time seeing it as a new type of technology with a unique use I was able to see it for what it is, an awesome content consumption device. It's not going to replace my laptop for content creation, nor is it likely to replace my iPhone where I consume content and manage my life. Do I want one? Yes. Do I want one right now? Probably not for a few months. As much as I like cutting edge technology I no longer have a job that requires me to be that close to the bleeding edge that I have to have the latest and greatest device as soon as it is available. I expect that I will get an iPad sometime in the next 4-6 months and that the platform will mature as the unavoidable bugs are squashed and new software and accessories are released.

We headed home well after the end of rush hour and stopped on the way at Trader Joe's to see what gluten free goodies they had in stock. 

When all was said and done our jaunt out to find something for lunch had us getting home at almost 2000. everybody had a good time and we are chalking it up as a successful day for the MacMedic family.

The applications were complete and we had what we thought was all the supporting documentation. Off we went to the pharmacy to get pictures taken. The pharmacy tool the pictures but refused to cut them into the 2"x2" size required because the post office had been rejecting the ones that they had been doing as being incorrectly formatted. No big deal I guess.

When we arrived at the post office and got to the front of the line we splayed out the documents in front of the clerk only to be told that we needed pictures of both sides of the adults drivers licenses to prove citizenship. I went quickly back through the directions that printed with the passport applications and showed the clerk where it said that a current or expired passport could also be used. "They're wrong" was the reply. Realizing that we were going to get nowhere we cut our losses and headed to my office where we made the multiple copies of both of our drivers licenses that would be required and headed back to the post office.

Different clerk this time, the first one seemed to slow down his processing of the package he was shipping. Same paperwork plus the copies of the drivers licenses put down. This time the problem was that the pictures hadn't been cropped to the appropriate size. Wait, can't you trim them here at the post office? Well, yes, but it should have been done by the photographer. A little back and forth and the clerk disappeared to trim the photos herself. OK, this is promising. 10 minutes later she is back at the counter ready to process the paperwork. One at a time the applications changed from our stack of paper to hers. Birth certificates for each of the girls, copies of my drivers license, copies of my wife's drivers license, the now trimmed pictures, and a separate check for each application.

30 minutes later we are on our way out to the car. The applications have been sent off priority mail with a return receipt. My wife is just amazed at how difficult the process had to be. Easier to get into the country illegally than to get out as a law abiding citizen was what she complained about. I have to say, she has a point.