Month: July 2006

Back from phase 2 of my whirlwind tour of east coast points of interest. Zach and I just got in from attending the National Cohousing Conference in Chapel Hill, NC. Cat is staying an additional day to attend the board meeting on Monday, then returns tomorrow night.
We had a great time, flying down Thursday morning into SUMMER IN NORTH CAROLINA. Man we thought Boston knew how to whip up humidity. This stuff was like walking through tapioca. Fortunately, all the areas were air conditioned, so we only needed to get drenched when walking to or from the dorms. Or out for a meal. So, a mere 4-5 times a day.
Zach thoroughly enjoyed the plane and bus rides, and met up with some great kids at the conference, so for the most part we just saw him as an occasionaly blur zipping by while we were doing sessions or socializing. I of course helped run registration using CONGO, which would have gone better if, er, I had not left the server in Logan Airport while boarding the plane on Thursday. The Logan police have recovered it and it’s enjoying a vacation in their offices, but it sure did result in a scramble at the event on Thursday afternoon. Much of the hardware I brought with me wasn’t used (like the printers), but all in all we got most of the system running on my laptop.
Unfortunately, all of the UNC Chapel Hill campus (where the event was held) was without wireless access, so we were unable to get any laptops online. They did have ‘public access’ terminals in the student union we could do webmail on, but it was hardly convenient for blogging and socializing online. Guess that was sort of the point, huh?
I have many pictures and other bits to share, and in 5 days we all leave again for a reunion at Simons Rock in Great Barrington, MA. Should be a nice weekend of music and socializing. Then I get a break for 2 weeks, and head down to Tampa for another convention. Summer 2006 is turning into quite the busy schedule.

(Written saturday on the Treo – typos may abound…)
All set up! If I had my druthers I think i’d have preferred something less than 85+ degrees and 90% humidity with occasional rain squalls for setup day, but ya takes what yas can git.
Parking last night in town was tricky. Where do you park 30′ of vehicle+trailer in a small city? We managed to find a sidestreet and with a silent hope the house we parked in front of didn’t contain the type of family that lay claim to the strip of concrete that happens to be in front of their house, we trooped back to blk’s place. I remembered to bring the battery pack in for the night and, making sure all my gadgets were plugged in and recharging, we turned in for the night.
Thurs morning found the van and trailer untouched and we hauled it around to the house to load up. The event site wasn’t open for setup until noon, so we lounged about until it was time to go. Driving time was about an hour and a half, so, after picking up lunch, we hit the road.
The site is sort of rolling hills. Going by what blk has said I was expecting to be the only non-tent but we ended up flanked by a pair of land zeppelins to one side (one of which ran a generator all night) and another popup on the other. Several small tent pavilions were set up as well.
We got the trailer situated back in the trees and unhitched just in time for the next rainshower. There are few greater joys than setting up a camper trailer during rain (note sarcasm). It actually went fine… The trick was not dumping water on the beds as the ‘wings’ were opened. Success on that front. After the trailer was set up I installed the battery into the trailer power system and lo! We had lights! Our domicile was complete.
A lot of my fears about noise and heat and neighbors et al remained mercifully unfulfilled. A couple key points do come up though…
Camping with 100 folks mostly falling into the 40-60 yr old crew is vastly different than camping with the 20-40 crew. The most noticeable metric is come 1am? Everyone is in bed asleep. Compared with my other group camping experience, this is unheard of. Far be it for me to complain.
We’re almost in West Virginia, which means the area is very urban and doesn’t suffer from the ‘there are pockets of wilderness’ problem common to New England. Here you can drive for hours and see only hills and forests and valleys with occasional farms.
The drawback with being in the ‘country’, or at least this crew here, is the food tends to the basics of ‘hearty, heavy, and plentiful’. On the one hand, its food I like so I’m certainly not starving. On the other, I feel like I should go jogging for an hour after each meal. Maybe I’m just not made out to be a glutton.
The privately owned campsite has been built up through several years of events and now sports several fixed buildings and a very well designed shower / water system – a large shower area with several garden hose type hand sprays, hooked up to 2000 gallons of trucked in water and a gas on demand water heater, all on a poured concrete floor. For camping showers, it doesn’t get much better 🙂
All in all things have been good, modulo the normal bits regarding camping in July. Thursday was quite humid, but got down to tolerable at night, thankfully. No wet clothes, no searing heat, insects at tolerable levels (apparently due to a fairly aggressive spraydown the site gets a week before the event).
More posts as time permits 🙂

From Foxs Syrups Website (Granted, the website is 4 years out of date, but still!) :

U-bet Plastic Bottle at November 01, 2002
We are pleased to announce that we are changing our packaging to a NEW plastic squeeze bottle.
After 75+ years in glass, we have decided that in order to better serve you, our customers, we must change our packaging. Be assured that our product has not nor will ever change at all. We are committed to the same standards of excellence that we have always strove to achieve.

A certain someone once got me an entire case of u-bet chocolate syrup in the 32oz glass jars. They lasted almost a year. I’d be mighty sad if the wonderful glass jars are no more!

So, with this splufty new monitor, I’d say I have about 2/3rds of a ‘home theater’. As such, why not have a movie viewing night?
To keep things family centric, I’m planning on doing Chronicles of Narnia starting around 6:30, preceeded by a well-selected cartoon. Families, kids, popcorn all welcome. We’ll most likely follow it up later for the adult crew with something more adulty. Any suggestions?

It’ll come as no surprise to anyone that I’m someone who enjoys alone-time. On that Myers-Briggs thing? The ‘I’ gets pegged and glows orange. Others may argue, and possibly rightfully so, that I’m one of the most extroverted introverts around, but when it comes to “What do I want really?” – frequently it’s “I want to be alone.”
This week, in a fit of randomized events, things came together that allowed me to head up to my favorite refuge for a few days of quiet alone-time. The practicals of this cosmic convergence aren’t all that interesting – a long holiday weekend approaching, Zach having an overnight sleepover at his camp, an infininately understanding partner who recognizes and supports my antosocialness, and the ever present job that doesn’t require me to be anyplace in -particular-, as long as I’m productive.
So, off I went. Thursday saw me speeding north toward our refuge in the hills. The house has been in Cat’s family for about 50 years now, progressing from a small shack up to what some would call a compound. Regardless of the configuration, it had the things I find most soothing, most conducive to my away-ness. It was quiet. I was the only one there. It had a coffeemaker and a broadband wireless internet connection. It was my Utopia.
So the last 2 days have had me sitting quietly with my laptop, a tasty cup of coffee at hand, the local radio station playing classic rock on the kitchen stereo, and me being… productive.
The last bit came as a hoped for, but not necessarily expected, result. While I certainly like ‘getting away’ and being on my own, if I don’t actually produce anything, the afterglow fades quickly into the overwhelming list of things that STILL need to be done. And just being on my own with no distractions is no definitive recipe for productivity. I can easily manufacturer a thousand distractions on my own.
Not so this time. The combination of the space, the wide-open schedule, the laptop, and the amazingly cool, clear weather have all combined to let me get into my ‘groove’ – the term I use to mean “the brain is working, problems are being solved, the complexities of what the work at hand are meshing well, and I’m not getting distracted”. A fellow with an unpronounceable last name termed this mode “Flow”, and wrote a book about it.
But there’s more to it than that. Flow or groove or whatever you want to call it is great, but it needs a larger environment in which to thrive and return. In my office at home, I can groove along for a few hours, then need to go… somewhere. A walk, a bike ride, something, and hope that lets me slip back into Groove when I return, which doesn’t always work well. Here, however, I can step outside, and I’m on the shore of a mile long lake, with wind, trees, and the ever-present slap of water on the docks to remind me that the world is still fine, take a rest, you can go back when you’re ready.
Snapshots and images…

• A storm moving along Thursday night. The clouds were perhaps 200′ up, but no rain. The lake angrily tossing up waves under the steady gusting wind. The clouds churning over my head as the entire front slid by. The clouds had the look of a steady ocean wave, constantly collapsing on itself, leaving tendrils and whirls behind.
• The quiet of Friday morning, the lake smooth as glass, dotted here and there with early morning fishermen. The sound of someone’s voice, realizing that it was one of the fellows in the boat, almost half a mile away, quietly talking to his fellow angler.
• Hastily closing the windows as another storm came in last night, then standing on the dock as the gusts washed over me.
• Waking in the morning to just the sound of wind, water, and trees rustling, making morning coffee, and sitting on the chairs out on the waterfront, watching as the boats on the lake slowly change from morning fishermen into jetboats and skiers, like a shift change at some loosely structured business. Later there will be sailboats and kids on innertubes, and as it gets dark tonight, with the inevitable quieting of the breezes, the deck boats will put in their appearance.

It has been a great few days, but I’m also looking forward to the arrival of the rest of the family, they should be here soon. Another 4 days here, socializing, playing, and with a little luck, sailing.
I feel a bit like Lazslo in Real Genius. I haven’t actually spoken to anyone in 2 days, I wonder if I’ll remember how.