Weekend Delights -- 02/27/00
This has been a fairly quiet weekend at home -- uh, quiet in the sense of no world-shaking paradigm-shifting extraordinary events, it was frequently not quiet in the sense of sound volume. But, there's nothing surprising about sound level when the house fills with teenagers.

Friday night was very different from a typical Friday night in one area: I came home to a dinner prepared by my wife. This might not seem unusual to most people, but if you've been reading my babbling here for a while you may be aware that Nancy does not cook. That is, I do more than 99 point something percent of the family food preparation around here. (I had to qualify that by restricting it to family meals because the kids certainly feed themselves and their friends the various odd-hour feedings required by teenage clocks.) And, as a result, I do all of the grocery shopping as well. This week the local schools have been closed for mid-winter break (or whatever they call it) and so Nancy and the kids have been off all week (that's why we took that trip to Boston on Wednesday). So Friday afternoon Nancy went to a fish market and bought some fish and made dinner (batter-dipped oven baked flounder, rice pilaf, peas, salad) as a special surprise for me.

Jennifer is into video (as well as computers). She has taken a videography course in high school and had her stuff on the local cable access channel and she has also done some freelance work. She and her friends have been making a movie during this February school break, a project they describe as being sort of a horror murder mystery kind of thing, more like Scream than Blair Witch. They even have scripts printed up, but I get the impression that they have revised their storyline multiple times during the course of the week. Friday night a clump of them were parked in the living room, screening some of the week's efforts. Nancy and I had retreated to our bedroom (along with a bottle of white zinfandel and some amorous intent) and were entertained by the sounds of hysterical rolling-on-the-floor teenage laughter arising from the first floor. (Earlier in the evening Jennifer had been working on an English report due when they return from break... a topic about which I may have something to say in future entry.)

Saturday they were back. Our driveway and the street in front of our house filled with cars -- high school seniors all tend to have access to vehicles on Saturdays, even if they don't have a personal car. Sean was asleep on the couch in the living room and I suggested jokingly that he was the body of one of the victims. He was soon awakened and made a member of the cast... and later in the day he wandered into the kitchen with his t-shirt covered with whatever they were using for cinematic blood.

Saturday night Nancy and I went over to her mother's for dinner (along with her sister and her family who live on the same street plus a visiting sister from New York and her family)... meanwhile, Jennifer was working on her English paper with some other friends and Sean had gone to Providence roller-blading with friends.

So this morning I boot up the PC and check email and then check various counters and statistics and get to wondering why I have visitors who hit my index page and then seem to disappear without actually loading any entry or visiting any place in my site. Duh! That's when I checked my HTML again and discovered that on my index page I had a bad link to my most recent entry -- had the file name as 02400 instead of 022400 -- Ouch! -- It was okay in that little February calendar, clicking on the 24 in the calendar would have taken them to the entry for that date, but clicking on the text listing the date and title for that entry would bring them to a geocities screen saying that was a bad address. So apparently several people came to my index page and said gee, let's check out his latest entry but got the error message and went away... *sigh* That's the third or fourth time this year that I've had bad URLs listed because of a typing error that I didn't catch. That's certainly no way to build a readership; if the content doesn't drive them away, the bad links will.

Misty, foggy Sunday morning, very mild, probably upper 40's, supposed to get into the 50's inland, might even do that here. Nancy and I worked out together yesterday using our favorite workout video from The Firm. [Note: I tried to find a URL for them but a quick check via Google only found a law office -- our video is too old to have a URL listed on it -- but their workout videos are listed at amazon.com, etc.] Today I plan on going out for a run later on. First I have to post this to my site. Then finish reading the Sunday paper. Make a shopping list. Go grocery shopping (also need to hit Agway and get more rabbit food). Put away groceries, clean the refrigerator (or perhaps reverse that order)... and the freezer needs to be defrosted. (I kept telling myself to do it while the weather was below freezing but never seemed to be able to find the time to get around to it.) Go for a run. Straighten the mess on the desk in the den. (Got to get to the taxes soon.) Help Jennifer organize her thoughts and her research for her paper (for which her airhead teacher has not given any specific guidelines at all... what a jerk!) and force Sean to get to work on his paper on Edward I (also due upon return from vacation) for which he claims to have completed all research and has a rough sketch written.

Tonight's a Sopranos night. Need to try to get to bed soon after that because I'm going to have a full day ahead of me -- teaching an advanced level class Monday thru Wednesday.


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