Jeanine and I drove into Somerville late this morning to join the kids, and Nico’s girlfriend Teddy, at Parlor Sports to watch the Chelsea-Arsenal soccer match. This “pocket-sized” sports bar claims a capacity of 45, but I counted close to a hundred patrons who were packed in like sardines, most of them standing. Fortunately, Maya secured a table for us well before the game started and warded off all would-be chair thieves until we arrived.

Jeanine ordered the final piece of furniture to complete her office. Over the last week, she has purchased a queen-size sofa sleeper, a comfy reading chair with a matching ottoman, and an area rug. Motorized blinds should arrive mid-December, and the furnishings by March.

Building a desk for Jeanine has had an enormous ripple effect throughout the house. The standalone filing cabinets that she was using previously have now made their way to my electronics shop in the mechanical room. Placing them under the workbench located there required me to build shelving above to accommodate the items I had stored below. This freed up enough space to give my test equipment (oscilloscope, waveform generator, programmable power supply, and digital multimeter), as well as my soldering station, a permanent home on the bench top. When all was said and done, I could not justify keeping two Hewlett-Packard instruments that I have had since my early twenties. One is a triple-output power supply, and the other is a function generator. I haven’t used either in over a decade, and I am determined to find them an owner who will put them to good use.

The hunt for a Christmas tree was the order of business this morning. Maya, having forgone all manner of warm clothing, was quick to identify a candidate. Kyle deemed it too skinny and continued the search. Just about the time Jeanine joined us after her workout at the gym, Kyle declared victory, and all parties concurred with his choice. It proved to be the perfect height and width for our space, as confirmed once in situ.

Later in the day, Jeanine and I went hunting for a far more elusive item—the perfect reading chair for her office. Her fanny sampled dozens of options in three different stores. She has narrowed the possibilities to a handful and will return to her favorites tomorrow to evaluate fabric options.

Despite the chilly weather, I was able to coax an outdoor family portrait with the full crew during a break from food preparation. In a departure from tradition, we ordered a boneless turkey breast rather than the whole bird. Even more unusual, I was charged with cooking it, possibly due to my knowledge of the steam-cooking options on our oven. It should be noted that I have never in the course of my life cooked a turkey, or chicken, or pigeon, for that matter. Undaunted by my assignment and aided by temperature monitoring probes and several YouTube tutorials, I will give myself a B+ for the effort.

Joining us for our Thanksgiving Day meal were our friends Barbara and her mother, Cathy. Everyone contributed to the meal in one way or another, and we were grateful to enjoy it together. I am thankful for my family, our good health, and the fact that my diet starts tomorrow.

Having used the credenza I originally built for my office to complete the return section of Jeanine’s new desk, I am now working on a replacement. It is about 1/3 larger than the original, and I think the proportions work much better as a standalone piece of furniture. I hope to have the full carcass assembled and finished before tomorrow, so I can take advantage of the extra hands that will be available to help me move it into my office. I enjoy building things out of bamboo because I love the appearance and the fact that it can grow back so quickly. A new shoot can reach its full height in about two to three months, and some can grow up to 35 inches a day under ideal conditions. Not only is it renewable, but it is also extremely durable. No building material is perfect, however, and the disadvantage of building with bamboo is how heavy it is and how quickly it dulls even the toughest carbide blades. I estimate the finished credenza will weigh in excess of 200 pounds. It is both a relief and sobering to realize that it will never be moved again in my lifetime.

For the second time in a week, we have enjoyed a spectacular sunrise over the river. Such scenes are not uncommon but extremely fleeting. The color lasts for less than 5 minutes, with peak intensity lasting for less than a minute. I ran for my camera and outside to the riverbank the second I saw the sky lighting up. Jeanine followed me from the bedroom but opted to photograph from inside the house using me in my bathrobe and slippers as a foreground object. I think her image may be the better of the two.

Last week, I shot a very similar image but managed to reformat my memory card before downloading it to my computer. I then spent more than an hour with a file recovery program to no avail. I am grateful for being given a second chance.

After a heavy rain, the river rises only to fall several hours later. If this coincides with an overnight drop in temperature, it is possible to wake up to “ice petals”. These frozen structures suspended just above the water are supported by plant stalks or tree trunks. They can range in size from a few inches to nearly a foot, depending on the diameter of the scaffolding.

Also of interest on the river this morning was a cormorant perched just above the water. I under-exposed to capture a silhouette, and I really like the composition.

This afternoon, my soccer team, the Concord United Dragons, secured the Division 1 Championship for our over-62 age group, soundly defeating our arch rivals from Everett by a score of 5-0. We have never beaten them so overwhelmingly, and it felt good to do so. Several members of their team play extremely dirty soccer, happy to injure one of us rather than let us score. Last season, when we faced them in the finals, the game ended after 8 minutes when one of their players had a heart attack. He was revived by a doctor who plays for our team, and we agreed to end the game and declare both teams co-champions. You might assume that saving the life of their teammate would have earned some goodwill, but that was not the case. The rehab work I have been doing on my hip has paid off, and I was able to play pain-free for the first time in months. My goal now is to drop some weight so I can return to the pitch in the spring with less baggage to carry around.

It would be fair to say that our attempt at furnishing our living room has been fraught with missteps. First, we had to replace a brand new couch at the urgent behest of our children, who summarily rejected our choice because it was unsuitable for sprawling out. Today, we said farewell to the coffee table I fashioned from an oval glass top and a bamboo base. It was notorious for bruising the shins of many a guest who failed to see the transparent surface. Today, we replaced it with “the pebble,” a design that complements the other organic shapes in the room. With any luck, there will be no further changes to this space.

On an unrelated furnishing note, Jeanine and I went on a shopping excursion in search of a sofa sleeper for her office. She wants to create a cozy space where she can sit with friends and provide a comfortable bed for a third pair of house guests as the need arises. We found a model that we both like and are down to the fabric selection process.

We woke up this morning to sublime light on the river and the season’s first frost. One of the things I love most about living in New England is the changing seasons. Fall is by far my favorite, with winter and spring tied for second place. It is not that I dislike summer, but I find it to be the most boring. Perhaps this is the photographer in me speaking rather than the warm-weather-loving homosapien. I have lived in California twice in my life, and despite the consistently lovely weather, I always found myself missing the changing seasons. Today feels like winter is on the way, and I am looking forward to the river freezing and the occasional blankets of pure white snow.

When Maya’s friend Grace asked if I would take a corporate-style headshot of her, I was more than happy to do so. I have known her since she was a wee-bitty high schooler, and I consider her one of my honorary daughters. She is an environmental engineer and will leave shortly for several months at sea aboard a research vessel. It was fun being back in my photo studio again, and I really enjoyed our session together.

I started the fabrication of 9 additional drawers to add to the 105 I have already built for various cabinets throughout the house. They are, without a doubt, the least satisfying objects to construct, demanding high precision and mindless repetition. Each box requires 6 perfectly-sized parts, a left and right side, the front, and back, made from 5/8″ 11-ply Baltic birch plywood, a bottom made from 3/8″ Baltic birch, and a 3/4″ bamboo drawer face. The box is joined with lock miter joints, which are very strong, easy to assemble, but very sensitive to even small machining errors. Tomorrow, I hope to enlist Jeanine’s assistance to glue up all of the joints. Because the joint profile is so convoluted, it takes time to apply glue to each surface, and all four corners must be mated at the same time. Having a glue buddy makes the process go twice as fast, which is important since the glue starts to set as soon as it is exposed to the air.

Two years ago, my cousin Gina and her husband Vincent were gifted with a subscription to “Storyworth” – a company that helps you to write a memoir for the benefit of future generations. Today, she shared their stories with close family. In addition to learning much that I did not know, especially about their early years and family roots, I enjoyed seeing photos of relatives I had not seen before. Pictured above is my paternal grandfather, whom we affectionately called Poppy. He was a professional sculptor with a kind and gentle soul. Below is my father, on the right, with his siblings, Ernest (Ernie), Antoinette (Bieg), and Gina’s mother, Jacqueline (Jackie).

While I have done a pretty thorough job of documenting my life for the last 20 years by way of this blog, it occurs to me that my kids and possibly Jeanine know little of my childhood. Perhaps, one day, I will try and document some of my early memories, and if I am feeling very ambitious, try to summarize nearly 10,000 blog entries into a somewhat more digestible form.

So much for my plan to surprise Jeanine with the new office desk she has been patiently waiting for. Nico helped me apply the finish last night after I worked feverishly over the weekend to complete it before her return from Martha’s Vineyard. First, it took over six hours to lure her to the second floor. I told her I had captured a field mouse and placed it in a cage in her office after earlier ploys did not work. This was very believable because I had, in fact, captured six mice earlier in the day. They had made a nest in the electric meter pedestal next to our driveway. More on this later. When she finally entered her office, looking for a mouse in a cage, she failed to notice the desk entirely. To be fair, I had constructed a mock-up that was the same size and shape to verify that she would be comfortable with the design. When it became apparent that she was not going to notice the new desk while still focused on the search for a mouse in a cage, Nico offered up a clue that leveraged her keen sense of smell to open her eyes (“Do you smell varnish?”). So much for my grand gesture.

Now to the mice. For the last week or so, our driveway sensor has been giving false notifications. The infrared sensor is located on the pedestal, which supports our electric power meter and a pair of security cameras. I decided to pull the cap off to examine the wiring for possible issues. What I discovered was a mouse hotel. Two guests made a sprint for the forest while a half dozen remained in their cozy quarters. I pushed the woolly mass into a deep 5-gallon bucket, where they now remain under house arrest while I figure out what to do with them.

Further investigation revealed that the wiring for the driveway sensor was fine, which led me to look into the sensor itself. I discovered that the enclosure was full of water, which was the root cause of the problem.

My soccer team will move on to the championship finals next week after defeating Lexington in the semi-finals this morning. We gave up a penalty kick in the 3-1 win and dominated possession for most of the match. Having failed to do so earlier in the season, I took an official team photo after the game.

Jeanine is enjoying herself on Martha’s Vineyard, and Nico just returned from Idaho. Wrestling practice starts tomorrow at Concord Academy, and he will be presenting at Sudbury High School for the Bionic Project, so he will be spending the night here to shorten his commute.

Jeanine is visiting a friend on Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend. I am hoping to surprise her with a completed desk for her office when she returns on Monday. It is an ambitious goal that may be thwarted by the late delivery of drawer hardware. Nonetheless, I set out in earnest this morning. Pictured here is the primary desktop under construction. An “L” shaped return will be provided by a double-wide filing cabinet. Initially, I had planned to make the desk a “built-in” by attaching it to the wall. This would have saved a bit of the very expensive bamboo plywood at the cost of future flexibility and ease of installation. In addition to the top, I completed the three-drawer cabinet that will support the left side of the desk. Tomorrow, I plan to tackle the bookshelf that will support the right side and also apply the finish.

When I was a young man, I could easily carry a 3/4 inch 4×8 foot piece of plywood unassisted. Those days are long gone. Over the winter, I will be building a new desk with drawers for Jeanine’s office and a new bed with integrated nightstands, headboard, and shelving. Moving 12 sheets of bamboo plywood, each weighing ~90 pounds, from the garage to my workshop proved to be quite a demanding job. I used the pictured contraption to move one sheet at a time. The task took the better part of two hours and will take the place of today’s visit to the gym.

Yesterday, I learned that another one of my high school classmates passed away. That makes 8 over the last three years. I feel fortunate that I am still able to do the things I do and am reminded to make the most of every day. In discussing this with a friend, I had occasion to retrieve a photo from ten years ago that I did not publish on the blog and I thought I would celebrate that memory today.

I have my parents to thank for the many positive traits I inherited. Flat feet are not one of them. For years, I purchased shoes with arched insoles, assuming this would help address my skeletal-muscular defect. I finally learned that the only way I could be comfortable was in shoes with dead flat insoles. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to find such footwear that also meets my other criteria for function and style. When I do stumble upon a shoe that works for me, I have learned to buy three pairs. Pictured above is my collection of lightweight trail shoes. After much wear and tear, the pair on the left is now relegated to yard work. I wear the pair in the middle almost every day. The pair on the right are brand new, and I will not start using them until my everyday shoes get demoted to yard work and my yard work shoes wind up in the trash.

This set of shoes is likely to last me 6-8 years. The reason I buy them all at once is that most companies revise their product lines every couple of years, and I want to avoid the lengthy process of finding another set that meets all of my criteria. To me, this seems like a logical solution. To others, a reason to question my sanity and/or intelligence.

A few weeks ago, I had an ultrasound, which revealed a couple of 3mm kidney stones and an 8mm bladder stone that I had to look forward to. Today, I passed the bladder stone. Mercifully, the 8.4mm long stone was only 4mm in width.

Jeanine attended the School for International Training in Brattleboro, VT, where she obtained her Master’s Degree in Intercultural Management. Last night we hosted a dinner party for a few of her former classmates. Phil, on the left, is a lawyer who now lives in Sydney, Australia, and will be staying with us for two nights. Dan lives nearby in Groton and does small construction projects while he is not building custom “catios” (outdoor, multi-level, open-air enclosures for cats), which are apparently in high demand. Jeanine prepared a delicious mushroom-based stroganoff that was out of this world. Lively conversation took as well past 11 pm, and I was amazed that Jeanine, who usually falls asleep by 8 pm, was still going strong.

Yesterday, the pair of GMRS radios I ordered arrived. They allow me to receive FM radio stations, NOAA weather forecasts, police, fire, and medical, as well as air traffic control and ham radio transmissions. I can receive all of these, but can only transmit on a specific set of channels. This type of radio requires a license to operate, but it is very easy to obtain and covers all members of the family. In essence, these are short-range walkie-talkies that also allow you to simultaneously monitor two different frequencies and cover a huge band of the radio spectrum.

I set one radio up to monitor Concord Police and Fire Dispatch. The other one is set to monitor air traffic control at nearby Hanscom Airfield. Because Concord is a sleepy little town, I did not imagine there would be that much action on the radio. The Fire Department responded to three false alarms, including the new Chipotle in town, the Concord Academy Science Building, and the Concord Children’s Center. All three were false alarms. I was very impressed by the speed of response. Each time I arrived, the firefighters were already heading out. The first call came when I was at home, so I decided to head over to Chipotle for an early lunch. The second two came while I was driving in town, allowing me to quickly divert to the scene. I was very impressed.

UPDATE: Later in the evening, I heard another call for a return visit to Chipotle. Four false alarms in one day.

I finally got around to setting up a proper photo studio in the basement today. Most of my time was spent suspending three rolls (grey, while, and black) of background paper from the ceiling. Each roll is 9 feet wide and can be individually raised or lowered with pull chains for quick background color changes. These will be used for portraiture and large product photography. I also mounted a 4’x4′ light tent on a mobility base. In the foreground is my camera stand, which allows me to rapidly position my camera almost anywhere in the studio. Think tripod on a mobile base with an arm that can reach out over things. Two battery-powered strobes with soft boxes complete the all-wireless setup. Slightly more compact than my studio in our last home, it is more than adequate for the type of photography I expect to be doing going forward.

Behold the tiny White-Brested Nuthatch. These birds are known for their ability to climb down trees headfirst, a behavior that distinguishes them from other birds like woodpeckers. Their diet consists of insects, seeds, and nuts, and they are found throughout North America in deciduous and mixed forests. They get their name “nuthatch” from their habit of wedging large seeds or nuts into tree crevices and then “hatching” them open with their bills. I spotted this one after waking from a long post-soccer-match nap. We finished our season with a 5-0 win and are now on to the postseason playoffs, which will start next weekend. I had a very nice pass to one of our best players for an open shot on net, but he failed to finish and deprived me of the assist. On a positive note, the combination of rolling out my leg muscles and a healthy dose of Ibuprofen allowed me to play free of hip pain.

For the first time in our 35-year marriage, Jeanine spent the entire day in her pajamas. I spent much of it experimenting with a new flash for my camera, using her as an unaware subject. The photo above appears straightforward, but it is actually quite challenging to balance the bright outdoor scene with the darker interior. Jeanine and I are relatively active, but something about the weather, the phase of the moon, or the prior week of gym workouts left us quite content just lounging about for the day.

Jeanine and I hosted a potluck dinner for the soccer parents of Maya’s teammates at Concord Carlisle High School. It was wonderful catching up with everyone, and the food was great. Jeanine prepared lasagna, possibly my favorite Italian dish. Little did we know at the time that these friendships would have endured over the years.

It took me a moment to connect the automated UPS delay notification I received with the tragic plane crash of flight 2976 in Louisville, KY, on November 4th. It appears that a catastrophic engine failure on takeoff caused the crash, which killed the 3 person crew, 9 people on the ground, with another 12 missing and presumed dead. My heart goes out to the families and friends of all who have been impacted by this horrific accident. I also feel guilty that a package for me was processed through the UPS Worldport facility in Louisville while workers there were grieving for their community and lost colleagues. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to return to business as usual after such a tragic event. When my package arrives, one of 22.4 million per day delivered by UPS, I hope to greet the driver and share my condolences and appreciation for the work they do.

After one year of normal use, our milk frother stopped working. Specifically, the frother spring stopped rotating even though the heating element continued to work. My first impulse was to repair the unit. When the problem became apparent, it was clear that a fix would only be temporary. The root cause of the failure was a poorly designed seal that allowed heated milk to penetrate the front bushing of the motor, where it became encrusted around the shaft. I have ordered a replacement, which employs a different design with a totally separate stainless steel vessel for the milk. The frother is magnetically coupled to the motor in the base, making the current failure mode impossible. Only time will tell how robust the new unit is.

The Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, located in Boston Harbor and operated by the MWRA, is one of the largest and most advanced facilities in the U.S., serving over 2 million people in 43 communities. It treats up to 1.2 billion gallons of wastewater per day—removing more than 85% of pollutants—before safely releasing cleansed water into Massachusetts Bay via a 9.5-mile outfall tunnel. The plant also generates energy from methane produced during sludge digestion, supporting on-site power needs.

Jeanine and I completed the 2.6-mile walk around the perimeter of this island in very high winds. We did so in the early morning after dropping Marie and Rose at the airport for their return to Minnesota. In addition to being a state-of-the-art facility, it is actually quite beautiful from an architectural perspective.

I just purchased a new, more powerful flash for my camera, which triggered a rethinking of my portable lighting kit. As a result, I posted several strobes and lighting accessories for sale this afternoon. My rule for camera gear and computers, and tools in general is that nothing collects dust. If I upgrade or add to my kit, then I take a hard look at what is replaced and what can be sold.

My sister-in-law, Marie, and my niece, Rose, are staying with us for the weekend while doing college visits in the area. After discovering Nico’s synthesizer in the basement, we were treated to a lovely concert. The acoustics in the house are such that her singing could be heard throughout. I managed to make the brief recording featured above.

I left the house early for my soccer match, while Jeanine, Marie, and Rose drove into Boston to have brunch with Maya and do some sightseeing. My team faced Medfield, our toughest opponent in the league, and had to settle for a scoreless tie, which was good enough to earn us a first-place finish for the season and qualify us for the playoffs with home-field advantage.

Kyle shared this photo, taken in Miami with friends from high school who are there to attend the multi-day wedding of their classmate Dave Lishanski. His bride’s family is from India, where celebrations involve vibrant attire, extensive food, music, and dance, with specific ceremonies varying by region and religion.