09-20-2014, 05:21 PM
Stop putting the land mines in front of you.
I’m ten minutes into my morning walk, when I realize I should have worn a sweater. Change a couple time zones, fly further north and all of a sudden the temperature shifts from mid-80’s to high-40’s. Ooppsy. My fingers were only a little numb when I returned from Lake Quannapowwit. To the city of Wakefield, I would just like to point out that just because throw a bunch of letters and vowels together, it doesn’t really make it a name.
Another thing that’s twisting my brain, which doesn’t take much, is that the Wadzinski’s live in Reading on Wakefield st. The town next to Reading is Wakefield. It makes it tricky when I’m trying to remember whether they live in Reading or Wakefield?
Part of the fun of getting to Lake Quannapowwit is crossing the massive rotary during rush hour traffic. Cars whipping by. No stop signs or crossing lights. No crosswalks. It is all about finding the gap in the flow. You only have to run through traffic four times to get to the lake and another four times on the way back. Granted it is not crossing the street in Zheng Zhou fun, but it is still plenty entertaining.
Living in drought country, the sound of toilet running should make you crazy. Hence my agitated state upon hearing the toilet constantly running in Helen’s bathroom. I actually the toilet was running in the same fashion when I was here two years ago.
I opened the top of the tank and saw water streaming constantly out of the broken float. Shoot, I can change a float. I just did the same thing for the same problem at my sister Stephanie’s house when we visited back in June. I travel. I fix plumbing.
I resolved to do something about it. I didn’t want to embarrass my hosts, so I figured I would just do it while they were at work. There was even a Home Despot nearby to buy the parts. I slipped out before everyone arose and got the parts.
The first snare in the road was the lack of the twist off connector from the water outlet to the toilet. Instead there was a nice brass nut, with a thousand years of crust on it. I was definitely going to need a wrench. No good deed goes unpunished.
Natalie was working from home so I asked her if she had a crescent wrench. “What’s a crescent wrench?” She wouldn’t let me down the stairs to to the basement to hunt through Steve’s tools, so we played is this the right wrench from the stairs.
Eventually, I found a suitable wrench and snuck back upstairs to the bathroom. I put the wrench on the bolt and turned. Rather than actually loosening bolt, the whole assembly turned in the tank. I couldn’t find a way to lock in the float to allow me to loosen the bolt. I even tried jamming a knife into the bottom. No Bueno.
At this point I noticed water was spewing out of the valve. All my twisting of the nut had loosened the nut on the valve. A large puddle was now forming under the toilet. Time to retreat and come up with a new plan to change the float, maybe even going further into the hole by buying another wrench.
Plans are very fluid. Stay on your toes. We were to drop my mother off at the Chateau for her lunch with Mrs. Dorothy Smith, an old friend from our Burlington days at 1pm. That plan has shifted to Friendly’s Ice Cream parlor at 12pm.
I do this crazy thing where I look up the address for the restaurant before we head out. I note it’s location and figure out a route to get there. I acquire this information on the off chance I need to find the restaurant.
As we head out, I tell my father I know how to get to this restaurant but how would he like to get there? Well, he has a way. And let’s just say it wasn’t the quickest way. We hit a lot of the same territory as our trip to find pants yesterday.
But it was scenic. We cruised by the minuteman statue in Lexington. Saw my mother’s old High School, again. Lots of little roads with lots of traffic. But as my father kept pointing out, the Friendly’s was just up the road.
For those of you not familiar with the Northeast institution that is Friendly’s think of them as a Foster Freeze with more indoor seating. Dorothy Smith always goes there for lunch for a grilled cheese sandwich followed by a sundae.
Miracle of miracles, we were on the right road and found the designated target. Dorothy’s daughter, Karen also joined them so I go to see her too. For much of my childhood in Burlington, the Smith girls and the Lynch girls used me as their living dress up doll. I didn’t have any bad flash backs about seeing her at all.
On the way back, I used the directions I had looked up to get us back to the 95 Freeway in about a minute.
When I was finding out where my mother was having lunch, I should have probably spent a minute to find where my father and I were having lunch. Cindi and I visited here many years ago and we found this restaurant in Burlington called Lester’s that I really liked. Good BBQ with really great side dishes. And I was sure I knew where it was.
I’m sure my father was laughing on the inside when I kept driving up and down the street looking for Lester’s. I knew exactly where it is, I think. At this time, my phone decided not to have Cel reception so I couldn’t look it up on Google. Time was also running out since my father made the dreadful statement “I’m going to need a bathroom soon”
I punted. We opted to go to a pizza place my father wanted to go near the town center. But we stopped for a second so he could try his phone. It kind of worked but no one at Lester’s would pick up the phone.
So, we are heading back passed the spot where we had made the original left turn in search of Lester’s. It was an interesting spot since that was where the first McDonald’s had been built in Burlington and was now some other restaurant.
Turns out that other restaurant was Lester’s. Sigh. We pulled in.
My father had been poorly all morning. He started the day atop the toilet and was still recovering. So, the idea of a bunch of slow roasted meat probably wasn’t the best thing for him. I offered to go somewhere else, but he was going to soldier on.
He soldiered on by having a brownie and an ice cream bar for lunch. I don’t think I would have ever gotten away with have a brownie and ice cream for my lunch as a kid.
Afterwards, we stopped at Ray’s Barber which my father had always frequented. I was sent in to ask about Ray and was informed Ray passed away in the 1990’s. The challenge is to find someone that my father knew who is still alive.
We headed to the Oak Grove cemetery in Malden to visit my Grandparent’s graves. I also got to see the statue of Winged Victory in the cemetery that a friend of my father’s had made. He remembers going by the artist’s studio and seeing plenty of nude models. I might have to go back and get more information on that story.
We picked up my mom and headed back to Reading. I had nice little spat with my mother. There wasn’t a lot of rancor in it since my tongue is firmly clenched in my teeth. But she asked me what I thought about Zachary’s drinking. I told her I don’t talk to her about other members of the family. It was like throwing the mine in front of me.
She didn’t like that and wanted more from me. I told her I had said all I was going to say on the situation. If I had said more, it would only have gotten uglier.
I dumped them at the Wadzinski’s and headed off to Lynn Wood reservation for an afternoon hike. The reserve was quite pleasant, surrounded on three sides by water that you could only catch in glimpses. Lots of school running teams using the trails. A couple of hikers smoked as they climbed which I thought defeated the purpose.
One of the highlights of the Reservation was the Dungeon rock where pirates had supposedly buried gold back in the 1700’s. The small steel door under the granite boulder was locked by the time I got there.
I was only attacked by one pit bull on the way out. It wasn’t much of an attack. The dog grew confused when I tried to pet him and scampered away as his owner called him to heel from far off down the trail.
For dinner, we went to the Wadzinski’s favorite restaurant, Hayes Bickfords. I guess it’s an east coast chain. It’s main attraction for my cousins is that it serves breakfast all day long. Natalie is a bit of a finicky eater and French Toast is in that small group of things she will eat. So, if you want to take them out, you better go somewhere that serves French Toast.
Hayes Bickfords isn’t that good. It seems kind of grimy and the wait staff was really slow. It didn’t help that I was crammed into a booth with barely any room to flail my elbows around.
My cousin, David McKenna, was also there. He is in charge of taking care of my Grandfather McKenna’s old house in Cambridge. I’m not all that impressed from what little I heard about the job he is doing.
For instance, the latest tenants have a dog. He didn’t run this by parents to get their permission or even get more money on the safety deposit. His feeling was as long as the rents paid, I’m sure a dog will be fine.
Um, no? We will be heading to the Cambridge house tomorrow to scare the tenants.
Back to the house to lock myself in poor Helen’s bedroom.
I’m ten minutes into my morning walk, when I realize I should have worn a sweater. Change a couple time zones, fly further north and all of a sudden the temperature shifts from mid-80’s to high-40’s. Ooppsy. My fingers were only a little numb when I returned from Lake Quannapowwit. To the city of Wakefield, I would just like to point out that just because throw a bunch of letters and vowels together, it doesn’t really make it a name.
Another thing that’s twisting my brain, which doesn’t take much, is that the Wadzinski’s live in Reading on Wakefield st. The town next to Reading is Wakefield. It makes it tricky when I’m trying to remember whether they live in Reading or Wakefield?
Part of the fun of getting to Lake Quannapowwit is crossing the massive rotary during rush hour traffic. Cars whipping by. No stop signs or crossing lights. No crosswalks. It is all about finding the gap in the flow. You only have to run through traffic four times to get to the lake and another four times on the way back. Granted it is not crossing the street in Zheng Zhou fun, but it is still plenty entertaining.
Living in drought country, the sound of toilet running should make you crazy. Hence my agitated state upon hearing the toilet constantly running in Helen’s bathroom. I actually the toilet was running in the same fashion when I was here two years ago.
I opened the top of the tank and saw water streaming constantly out of the broken float. Shoot, I can change a float. I just did the same thing for the same problem at my sister Stephanie’s house when we visited back in June. I travel. I fix plumbing.
I resolved to do something about it. I didn’t want to embarrass my hosts, so I figured I would just do it while they were at work. There was even a Home Despot nearby to buy the parts. I slipped out before everyone arose and got the parts.
The first snare in the road was the lack of the twist off connector from the water outlet to the toilet. Instead there was a nice brass nut, with a thousand years of crust on it. I was definitely going to need a wrench. No good deed goes unpunished.
Natalie was working from home so I asked her if she had a crescent wrench. “What’s a crescent wrench?” She wouldn’t let me down the stairs to to the basement to hunt through Steve’s tools, so we played is this the right wrench from the stairs.
Eventually, I found a suitable wrench and snuck back upstairs to the bathroom. I put the wrench on the bolt and turned. Rather than actually loosening bolt, the whole assembly turned in the tank. I couldn’t find a way to lock in the float to allow me to loosen the bolt. I even tried jamming a knife into the bottom. No Bueno.
At this point I noticed water was spewing out of the valve. All my twisting of the nut had loosened the nut on the valve. A large puddle was now forming under the toilet. Time to retreat and come up with a new plan to change the float, maybe even going further into the hole by buying another wrench.
Plans are very fluid. Stay on your toes. We were to drop my mother off at the Chateau for her lunch with Mrs. Dorothy Smith, an old friend from our Burlington days at 1pm. That plan has shifted to Friendly’s Ice Cream parlor at 12pm.
I do this crazy thing where I look up the address for the restaurant before we head out. I note it’s location and figure out a route to get there. I acquire this information on the off chance I need to find the restaurant.
As we head out, I tell my father I know how to get to this restaurant but how would he like to get there? Well, he has a way. And let’s just say it wasn’t the quickest way. We hit a lot of the same territory as our trip to find pants yesterday.
But it was scenic. We cruised by the minuteman statue in Lexington. Saw my mother’s old High School, again. Lots of little roads with lots of traffic. But as my father kept pointing out, the Friendly’s was just up the road.
For those of you not familiar with the Northeast institution that is Friendly’s think of them as a Foster Freeze with more indoor seating. Dorothy Smith always goes there for lunch for a grilled cheese sandwich followed by a sundae.
Miracle of miracles, we were on the right road and found the designated target. Dorothy’s daughter, Karen also joined them so I go to see her too. For much of my childhood in Burlington, the Smith girls and the Lynch girls used me as their living dress up doll. I didn’t have any bad flash backs about seeing her at all.
On the way back, I used the directions I had looked up to get us back to the 95 Freeway in about a minute.
When I was finding out where my mother was having lunch, I should have probably spent a minute to find where my father and I were having lunch. Cindi and I visited here many years ago and we found this restaurant in Burlington called Lester’s that I really liked. Good BBQ with really great side dishes. And I was sure I knew where it was.
I’m sure my father was laughing on the inside when I kept driving up and down the street looking for Lester’s. I knew exactly where it is, I think. At this time, my phone decided not to have Cel reception so I couldn’t look it up on Google. Time was also running out since my father made the dreadful statement “I’m going to need a bathroom soon”
I punted. We opted to go to a pizza place my father wanted to go near the town center. But we stopped for a second so he could try his phone. It kind of worked but no one at Lester’s would pick up the phone.
So, we are heading back passed the spot where we had made the original left turn in search of Lester’s. It was an interesting spot since that was where the first McDonald’s had been built in Burlington and was now some other restaurant.
Turns out that other restaurant was Lester’s. Sigh. We pulled in.
My father had been poorly all morning. He started the day atop the toilet and was still recovering. So, the idea of a bunch of slow roasted meat probably wasn’t the best thing for him. I offered to go somewhere else, but he was going to soldier on.
He soldiered on by having a brownie and an ice cream bar for lunch. I don’t think I would have ever gotten away with have a brownie and ice cream for my lunch as a kid.
Afterwards, we stopped at Ray’s Barber which my father had always frequented. I was sent in to ask about Ray and was informed Ray passed away in the 1990’s. The challenge is to find someone that my father knew who is still alive.
We headed to the Oak Grove cemetery in Malden to visit my Grandparent’s graves. I also got to see the statue of Winged Victory in the cemetery that a friend of my father’s had made. He remembers going by the artist’s studio and seeing plenty of nude models. I might have to go back and get more information on that story.
We picked up my mom and headed back to Reading. I had nice little spat with my mother. There wasn’t a lot of rancor in it since my tongue is firmly clenched in my teeth. But she asked me what I thought about Zachary’s drinking. I told her I don’t talk to her about other members of the family. It was like throwing the mine in front of me.
She didn’t like that and wanted more from me. I told her I had said all I was going to say on the situation. If I had said more, it would only have gotten uglier.
I dumped them at the Wadzinski’s and headed off to Lynn Wood reservation for an afternoon hike. The reserve was quite pleasant, surrounded on three sides by water that you could only catch in glimpses. Lots of school running teams using the trails. A couple of hikers smoked as they climbed which I thought defeated the purpose.
One of the highlights of the Reservation was the Dungeon rock where pirates had supposedly buried gold back in the 1700’s. The small steel door under the granite boulder was locked by the time I got there.
I was only attacked by one pit bull on the way out. It wasn’t much of an attack. The dog grew confused when I tried to pet him and scampered away as his owner called him to heel from far off down the trail.
For dinner, we went to the Wadzinski’s favorite restaurant, Hayes Bickfords. I guess it’s an east coast chain. It’s main attraction for my cousins is that it serves breakfast all day long. Natalie is a bit of a finicky eater and French Toast is in that small group of things she will eat. So, if you want to take them out, you better go somewhere that serves French Toast.
Hayes Bickfords isn’t that good. It seems kind of grimy and the wait staff was really slow. It didn’t help that I was crammed into a booth with barely any room to flail my elbows around.
My cousin, David McKenna, was also there. He is in charge of taking care of my Grandfather McKenna’s old house in Cambridge. I’m not all that impressed from what little I heard about the job he is doing.
For instance, the latest tenants have a dog. He didn’t run this by parents to get their permission or even get more money on the safety deposit. His feeling was as long as the rents paid, I’m sure a dog will be fine.
Um, no? We will be heading to the Cambridge house tomorrow to scare the tenants.
Back to the house to lock myself in poor Helen’s bedroom.
So much for the flickr badge idea. Dammit