Today was quite a shift from a normal teacher day. The family piled into the Tucson at 6:30 and headed down to Augusta. Jen and the boys spent the day shopping while I attended the Maine Education Conference at the Augusta Civic Center. The focus of the conference is technology in the classroom, which of course is right up my alley. I sat in on talks from people from Google and Apple, as well as speakers from other Maine schools. All in all, a very enjoyable day.
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I had a very hard time picking a present for Jen’s birthday this year. I didn’t want to buy another “thing” just to have something to give her, so I started thinking about an experience we could share instead. One of the favorite memories I have from childhood was the train ride that I took in Conway, NH. I found out the Scenic Railway does a gourmet lunch trip in a classic dining car, which seemed like a great way to spend a few hours in a Sunday. We saw more of the backsides of houses and trees than I thought we would, but lunch was delicious and we were treated to some great views of the Saco River. For Jen’s birthday, I decided to extend our 1 day shopping trip to CBD a day and stay over in North Conway, NH. We looked at a bunch of places online and settled on the 1785 Inn. The room was “nice”, if not a little quirky. The deadbolt on the door didn’t work, the shower trickled us clean, and the wifi I was certain was mentioned in the information I read was conspicuously absent. we were the only people staying In the inn that night, so we had a nice quiet stay and a good night’s sleep. The breakfast was probably the highlight of the stay. We ate pancakes and bacon in front of a huge picture window overlooking the Green Mountains. We ate light and headed out to window shop before getting on the train. My father-in-law Bob is an avid fisherman. We go fishing a couple times a year with the boys, usually up on Brann’s Mills Pond. Last night we changed it up a little and went striper fishing with our neighbor Paul on the Penobscot. Lincoln stayed home for this trip, as being out on a boat in the dark wouldn’t have gone well. We had a great time, with one small glitch – no one caught anything! Paul’s fish finder was showing fish all through the river, but most were pretty deep and nothing large appeared to be feeding on the top. According to a friend of Paul’s that is a marine biologist, stripers aren’t as likely to some upriver with all the fresh water coming into the river from the rain we’ve been getting. Caleb got to drive the boat, which made his evening. We pulled the boat out of the water at about 11 pm after about 5 hours on the water and went for a milkshake at McDonald’s.
 The trip gave me a chance to play with my GPS. Here's the track of our trip down the river. Jen and I decided we’d get rid of our DirecTV when we could get broadband internet. Now that we have DSL, we’ve pulled the plug on the satellite and decided to try some online services of movies and TV shows. We signed up for Netflix a few weeks ago to try out their viewing of movies over the Internet, as well as renting DVDs through the mail. We pretty quickly realized that we should have dumped satellite a lot sooner. Jen has found a ton of older television shows that she’s wanted to get and watch again, and we’ve pretty much caught up on the movies we’d wanted to see that were released in the last three years. The online content is icing on the cake. We’ve had minor quality glitches with online viewing, but nothing that would prevent us from using it. With all the rain we’ve been getting the last few weeks, it’s been great to have the distraction of a new movie arriving in the mail every day.  Hey Honey! Look! Another red envelope of viewing goodness! |
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