Category: Family

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Family Vacation

Really love the new Camera

d5500For the Guadeloupe trip, I bought a new Nikon D5500 camera.  Our old camera was a Nikon Coolpix 5400 that was 12 years old, 5mb pixel camera.  The D5500 is a 24mb pixel with two lenses.  The primary lens is a 18-55mm Nikkor DX.  The zoom lens is a 55-300mm Nikkor DX.  This is a big upgrade from the old coolpix, which served us well.

The new camera has a built-in wifi feature that allows a smartphone to connect to it.  From the smart phone you can view the images on the camera and you can trigger the shutter.  Remotely triggering the shutter is great for taking long exposure photos.

I took this picture of the moon from our balcony on Sunday night.  Using the 18-55mm lens set to a focal length of 24mm.  The aperture was set to f/3.5, the shutter speed was set to 2 seconds and the ISO was set to 1600.  I used a tripod and the remote trigger from my smartphone.

 

I took a similar picture on Friday night without the moon. I used the 18-55mm lens set to 24mm.  The aperature was set to f/3.5, shutter speed was 5 seconds and the ISO set to 400.  I also used a Cokin 8 point star filter to add the starburst effect.

 

 

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Family Vacation

St Anne and St Francois

On Sunday we toured the towns of St Anne and St Francois.  The towns are about 20km apart and both are on the ocean.  We also drove out to the tip of Grand Terre island, Pointe des Chateaux.

St Anne is a small but up beat town.  The main street has plenty of shoppes and street vendors.  There are plenty of places to eat.  The food is a combination of traditional french cuisine and creole.

 

Streets of St Anne:

St Francois is a sleepy town with minimal shopping. The food in St Francois is outstanding.  The center of St Francois is the harbor.

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Family Vacation

Ask for the check???

Our first night we went out for dinner.  Cathy and I do not speak French.  However MJ is able to hold a brief conversation and Jill knows a few words.  Never realized how bad the language gap would be.  I figured they would speak some English.  Nope.  Notta.

We ate at a restaurant, Kamate, just outside the resort.  Dinner was excellent.

After dinner Cathy and Jill went back up to the room while MJ and I finished our drinks.

I asked MJ to get the check.  He spoke to the waitress asking for the check.   The waitress looked at him weird and asked him his age.  He told her that he was 19, but he was asking for me because I didn’t speak French.

The bartender walks over to the table about 5 minutes later.  He hands me a double shot glass.  I look at MJ and asked him what did he request.  He says he asked for the check.  “Obviously not” was my response.

At first the smell reminded me of a single malted scotch.  I’m thinking this could cost me anywhere from $8 to $30 depending on the scotch he ordered.  As I tasted the drink, it was very smooth.  I started to get worried that this could be a after dinner cognac and it could be more than the $30.

I drank 1/2 of the drink.  MJ finished the remaining 1/2.  Yes, the drinking age is 18 in Guadeloupe, so MJ could legally drink.

After we finished are surprise drink, I walked up to the bar to speak to the bartender who could speak some english.  As I paid the bill, I found out that the shot MJ ordered was a $6 Jack Daniels.  Whew.

We are still not 100% sure how the waitress thought we wanted a shot of Jack Daniels instead of the check, but the next day we did make sure to find out the correct way to request the bill.

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Family Vacation

We’ve Arrived at Guadeloupe!

gpcaribWe arrived in Guadeloupe on Saturday, July 4th. Guadeloupe is a chain of Caribbean Islands in the lower Antilles, part of the West French Indies.  It is actually on the South American continent.  The kids can boast they’ve been on 4 out of the 7 continents.

There are two main islands and 4 smaller islands making up Guadeloupe.  The two main island are Grand Terre and Basse Terre.  The 2 main islands are connected via bridge.

We flew out of Philadelphia and had a transfer in Miami.  The flights were very smooth and on time.  We landed in Point-A-Pitre about 20 minutes earlier than expected.  The first thing we noticed is the immigration and customs procedures are very European.  The islands are very French and the euro is the currency.  I told Cathy this is not a vacation, its going to be an adventure!

Our resort is in the town of St. Francois on the island of Grand Terre.  It is about a 45min drive from the airport.  The second thing we noticed is the 2 main islands are much larger than we originally thought.  Its a solid 2 hour drive just to cross from one end of Grand Terre to the other side of Basse Terre.

We rented a car for the week, which always adds  adventure.  It s a small Chevy Captiva with a manual 6-speed transmission.

 

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Family

Jill has Started Mowing the Lawn

Yesterday I taught Jill how to use the ride on mower.  After an hour going over the mower and teaching her to operate it on the driveway, I turned her loose on the grass.

 

 

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Family

River Lady Cruise

After Jill’s 8th grade graduation, we took a dinner cruise on the River Lady paddle wheel out of Toms River, NJ.

The scenery was fantastic.  Got some nice pictures of the setting sun out on the water.  Nice to sit back relax and spend time with everyone.

 

The one piece of excitement was s sever thunderstorm which came through area.  The captain pulled the paddle wheel over to a dock and tied up to ride out the storm.  The thunderstorm passed in about 30mins.  In that time the wind and waves were really kicking up.

Photos of the River Lady

 

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Family Technology

Lost and Found My Phone

Samsung S4

Last night I discovered my phone was missing.  I knew I had it on the bus coming home.  In the house I realized it was not in the holster.  After searching the car I figured it was somewhere on the bus.

Cathy called the bus line to find out the bus was heading back to NYC for another run.  We thought that if I was lucky I might get the phone back in a couple for days.

I use Sprint’s family locator app to track the where abouts of MJ and Jill.  Actually I track their phones and because they would never separate from the phones, I can reliable find them.  The family locator app sends periodic messages to all the phones that I have tracking turned on, so Cathy and the kids all know that I can track them.

After getting off the phone with the bus line, Cathy turned to me and asked if I could track the phone with that software.  I had MJ install the family locator software on his phone and configure it to track mine.  We then spent the next 2 hours watching my phone travel up the turnpike, into the Port authority bus terminal and back down the turnpike.  We quickly called the bus line to find out the route the bus was taking and the stops.  Turned out the last stop was in our home town, Lincroft.

As we watched the bus travel, MJ and I drove over to the bus stop.  We had to wait only 5 minutes for the bus to arrive.  The bus line sent a text to the driver that someone lost their phone on the bus.  As I approached the bus, he was fully aware of  why I was there.  The phone was resting nicely between the wall of the bus and the seat.

The only downside was that before we started tracking the phone, I had started to look at the new Samsung S5.  Guess now I’ll have to wait a year before I upgrade to that phone.

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Family

Jill’s Bedroom

We recently repainted Jill’s bedroom.  What made this interesting is we used magnetic paint on some of the walls.

magnetic_paintAfter reading reviews I decided to put 4 coats of the magnetic paint on the walls to ensure magnets would stick to the walls.  All the write-ups indicated the more coats of paint, the better magnets would stick to the wall.  People who used only 1 or 2 coats were not happy with the results.  Those who used 4 to 5 coats all said the results were satisfactory.

We then covered over the magnetic paint with the top coat color.

The overall effect is pretty cool.  Ordinary kitchen magnets stick with enough force to hold a couple of sheets of paper.

 

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Family

Nice Work if you can get it

Cathy and I tend to celebrate the day we met more than our actual anniversary.  So this past weekend we went into the city to catch a Broadway play and a nice dinner.

We went to see the musical “Nice Work if you can get it” with niceworkifyoucangetitMatthew Broderick.  Unfortunately the understudy was performing in place of him.  Still, the play was excellent.  The two thugs were hilarious.  A couple of the songs, such as “Blah, blah, blah” were just out right funny.  Blythe Donner also had a small part towards the end.  I was disappointed in her performance.  Her part was very small and didn’t add to the story.  It felt like her part was an add-on to help ticket sales.  Setting her character aside, this musical was very enjoyable and worth seeing.

For diner we went to “The View” restaurant on top of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.  The meal was nice, the view was very good.  Having diner alone with my wife, with out interruption from the kids was priceless.

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Family

22 Years Ago today…

Beware the Ides of March.

22 years ago today on March 15th 1991,  I met my future wife.  We met in an Irish pub next to McFadden’s on 42nd street and Second Ave in New York City.

That night I was out with Bill Beck, Paul Beck and John Whalen.  St Patrick’s day was occurring over the weekend, so all the Irish pubs were celebrating with the after-work crowd that Friday evening.

The place was jammed pack.  Somehow we managed to get a table.  The four of us were planning a trip to South Padre Island, TX.  We were using whatever excuse we could find to drink.  Around 10pm Paul had to excuse himself for the men’s room.  I know it was around 10pm because we found out just a short while later that the kitchen had closed.  But I’ll get to that part of the story in a second…

If you haven’t been to a pack pub in NYC, let me tell you, there is no extra space that is not either occupied by a table or filled with people standing.

As Paul tried to get out of his seat, he had to squeeze between me and the table behind me.  With the tight space and just a wee bit to much to drink, he ended up falling backwards over top the table behind me.  Just picture a 6′ 230lb guy with his arms flailing, landing flat out on his back on top of all the food.  Yes, there was a mess.  Yes, we had a HUGE scene with everyone watching.  Yes, he had to scrap food off his back.

The table was occupied by two very pretty women.

In typical fashion, Paul jumped up, and added drama to the whole event.  He bellowed for the waitress over to help cleanup the mess.  He demanded that he pay bill for all the food and drinks.  He demanded that all the food be replaced and new drinks be given.  That’s when we found out the kitchen had just closed for the night.  So he had to settle for paying their bill and picking up their drinks.

After the drama settled down and everything was cleaned up, Paul finished his initial task and made it to the men’s room.  Upon returning, instead of taking his original seat at the table with us, he choose instead to sit with the two women.  Yes, in those days we had no shame.

After a few minutes, I realized that one guy was sitting with two women.  So I picked up my chair and rotated it 180 degrees to sit with them.

As Paul was actively engaged talking to one of the women, Cathy, I began talking to the other, Barbara.  Hey that’s what a good wingman does!

After a few more drinks Paul pulls out a pack of cigarettes. Simultaneously Barbara exclaims “Oh can I have one” and Cathy exclaims “ew, you smoke!”.  Paul and I look at each other shrug our shoulders.  He hands a cigarette to Barbara and starts talking to her.  I start talking to Cathy.  I repeat, in those days we had no shame.

I don’t remember all the details of the night, things started to get fuzzy when we headed up to another party on the upper east side.  A friend of Bill’s had just moved into a penthouse apartment and was throwing a moving in party.  All I remember of the friend was everyone called him “Jake the Snake”.  All he had time to move in was a Foosball table, a couple of kegs and a stereo.

I do remember Cathy and Barbara calling car service sometime before the sun rose to take them home.  I don’t remember how I made it back to Hoboken.  I do remember the hangover on Saturday.

On Sunday we were recapping the events of Friday night over at Bill’s apartment.  Both Bill and Paul were encouraging me to call Cathy for a follow up date.  I honestly couldn’t remember what she looked like.  “Was she cute?” I asked Paul.  “Of course she was cute!” was his reply.  Of course what else would he have said?  So we devised this plan for me to call her and ask her out for a lunch date.  This way if she wasn’t cute, it would only cost me lunch and 30 minutes of time.  When Cathy showed up at the restaurant, it all clicked.

So when you out tonight celebrating the coming St Patrick’s day, just remember the Ides of March is upon us….

 

 

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