Nico scored in his match today to help his team to a 4-2 win. He did complain of knee pain after the game so we will have to monitor this as the season progresses. Kyle’s team won all four of their matches aggregating 19 goals for with only 2 goals against. I am still sidelined while my knee recuperates. I leave for Santa Barbara tomorrow and will not post again for a few days.
Overcast skies and light rain made for interesting light and with my long lens already out I decided to do a little birding.
While waiting for Kyle’s soccer tournament to begin I happened upon this pair of turtles in a nearby pond. The boys played well and opened the first of 4 games this weekend with a decisive 5-0 win.
1 Tennis Ball = 1 Happy Dog + 1 Happy Girl
Mother and daughter enjoying nature in their own ways.
Maya left this note for her brother Kyle and I could not stop laughing when I came across it. She chooses a happy penguin motif, leads with a guilt trip and closes with a demand for restitution. Gotta admire her style. I will have to follow the story to see if and how her brother responds.
Over a dozen aircraft and 1500 firefighters have been deployed to battle the Jesusita wildfire. Santa Barbara, an otherwise idyllic setting is unfortunately subject to these fires and this is the second major one in the last 6 months. Everyone here is concerned over the welfare of our California colleauges.
Sonos west coast headquarters is located in Santa Barbara less than 2 miles from wildfires which have destroyed several homes and caused the mandatory evacuation of 13,500 residents including many of our employees. A slight shift in wind direction or speed can dramatically change the course of the fire and we are watching it carefully given our office lies within the recommended evacuation area. I am traveling to Santa Barbara next Monday and hope the rain we are having here will follow me there.
Work and family demands left no time for a photo today so I dipped into the archive. Nico in his first tuxedo taken while the family was in France attending a wedding. He balanced atop a pedestal in front of the chateau where we spent the week.
This morning a colleague and I visited with a Sonos customer to observe and take notes as they unpacked and setup one of our new systems. Seeing this first hand is invaluable as we fine tune our products to maximize out of the box satisfaction. We walked and took local transit to the downtown Boston location and I grabbed this shot along the way.
Kyle’s church youth group and the chaperons who will be traveling with them to Transylvania this summer to visit our sister church there. Kyle’s soccer team suffered a very disappointing 2-1 loss, Nicolai scored a header to help his team to a 2-0 win, and I was on the sidelines this week nursing my injured knee.
Jeanine and I also cleaned up for a neighborhood social event. Photo courtesy of Maya.
Neither Kyle nor Chloe seemed very interested in being photographed, but I do rather like this shot which I caught between poses.
Kyle and Chloe just before leaving for the CCHS Sophmore Semi-Formal Dance.
Maya helped her team to a 5-2 win today showing fine form throughout the hard fought match. Pound for pound she may be the toughest of the Calabria’s on a soccer pitch.
Jeanine poses with her new beds. Later on we fill them with compost and top soil. Tomorrow they will be ready to plant.
The entire family pitched in to complete Jeanine’s new vegetble garden. I started by leveling three pads for the raised beds which Jeanine helped me to set in place. The kids transported and installed wood chips around the beds to create a three foot wide path on all sides.
As an early Mother’s Day present I built three raised garden beds for Jeanine. Tomorrow I will install them in the rototilled soil in the background. Each bed is 6ft x 3ft x 1ft tall. She would also like me to make her a new composting bin. I am trying to talk her into an elevated drum based design but she seems to be leaning towards a more traditional multiple bin approach.
Jeanine’s dear friend Aliza (center) celebrates her 50th birthday with a potluck dinner. Jeanine prepared an almond espresso chocolate cake which was simply out of this world (we got to sample the left overs).
I changed up my commute this evening and took Memorial Drive which follows the Charles River. While stopped in traffic I grabbed a quick shot of two women crew teams training on the water. Telephoto compression makes it appear that they are very close and that the river is very narrow. Just the opposite is true.
Although we get four distinct seasons here in New England, spring is by far the shortest. In a matter of a few weeks we enjoy an explosion of color before everything turns green. This scene is of the horse farm that is across the street from our house.
My favorite piece of art was without a doubt Renoir’s, Dance at Bougival. The woman in the painting reminds me of a young Jeanine.
Strategically placed throughout the museum were some 50 magnificent floral arrangements created by local designers to complement their surroundings.
With Jeanine and the kids returning from Minnesota this evening I elected to stay in Boston until their 10pm flight arrived. The Museum of Fine Arts was celebrating Arts in Bloom with a special evening open house and I am really glad I took advantage of the opportunity to visit the museum for the first time.
Last week, we both scored goals for our teams. This week, we both left our games with injuries. Late in his match, Kyle went down after being kicked in the shin. He blocked a hard shot on goal but got tagged by the shooter’s foot on the follow-through. He wears flimsy, lightweight shin pads, believing he has better touch with them. I may have to enforce his use of a more protective guard in the future.
It’s been a while since we have had a good snake sighting. I am pretty sure this little fellow is harmless but I kept a safe distance just in case. I saw him on the way to Kyle’s soccer game. Three shrieking girls made for a pretty good homing beacon.
There are some days when you are better off simply staying in bed. My left foot is still bruised from last week’s game and despite the discoloration I felt it was not going to affect my play. Ten minutes into the game, I managed to roll my left ankle. I decide to play through the pain but ten minutes later was taken out entirely with an injury to my right knee (on a late tackle which earned the other team a yellow card). Left toes, left ankle, right knee. It is starting to get easier to list the part that aren’t injured. With a little luck and rigorous PT I might be back for next week’s game. More than likely I am going to miss a few while I mend. We lost 3-1 and every goal of the game was scored off a penalty call which should give you some idea of the quality of officiating (or lack thereof).
Kyle and I both had a great time and significantly improved our driving skills. The course is not inexpensive but I can honestly say it was worth every penny and was another shared adventure Kyle and I will look back on with fond memories. For the record, which would otherwise be distorted over time, the father performed all events at full speed and did not take out a single cone all day. The son did a very admirable job for a newly minted driver but racked up a small family of dead cones.
Kyle almost lifts his left rear tire on this manuever. After accelerating to 50mph our instructor hits, at the last possible moment, one of two buttons on a box in his lap which illuminates one of two lights above the dash indicating when we may initiate braking and to which side of the obstacle we must steer. This is about as realistic a collision avoidance scenario as I can imagine and I can tell you that it produces an adrenaline rush similar to a high speed near miss.
After a pit stop at home for lunch, Kyle and I completed his indoctrination into the world of driving by attending a 5 hour skid course. To qualify as an instructor for this program you must be a licensed race car driver. Much of our time was spent in car where we practiced emergency braking, high speed slaloms, and collision avoidance. To give you a sense of the intensity of the driving, tires on the cars are replaced every six days.
Kyle passed his driving test this morning and is now a licensed driver in the state of Massachusetts. This is a bittersweet milestone for his parents. On the one hand we are very proud of him and feel he has learned to be a good driver. On the other, we know this brings him one step closer to leaving the nest and we enjoy having him in our nest.