We went out biking again today. I've gone pretty much every day since I got my new bike, and most day's both Sabrina and I have gone for at least a little while. We went out to a reservoir today in West Hartford that has a 3 mile paved bike path around the water, which is very nice. It's very scenic, and wasn't really too crowded. There were a fair number of people, but spread out over the whole thing it isn't too bad.
We filmed a wedding for one of Sabrina's mother's friend's the other night. There was an official photographer as well, but she wanted a video of it too. It went fairly well. We got to the church about half an hour before the ceremony started to figure out where we should stand and where things were. They had a bagpiper out front when the bride arrived in the limo, and we filmed all that, and the bride walking down the isle, the ceremony, the recessional, etc. Then we went on to the reception, which was at A Villa Louisa in Bolton, CT. It was a nice enough place, specializing in receptions and catering. It had a fountain in the front entry way, and also a nice view. We got video of all the necessary stuff, like the wedidng party coming in, the toasts, cutting the cake, throwing the bouquet, etc.
The video came out better than I thought it would. I was worried there wouldn't be enough light for the camera. It's a digital video camera and they aren't really very good in low light. It was fairly good anyway, and it got better sound than I expected. I don't know if we'll try to edit the video at all or not. We didn't have to, but it's somewhat fun to do anyway, so we might try to put something together. It's pretty time consuming though, and will use up a ton of disk space on the computer, so we'll see.
My class at Strayer University starts tomorrow. It's on Access databases, so it shouldn't be too hard. I have read through the first part of the text book already and it isn't too difficult. I already know quite a bit about it, so I don't expect much trouble. I'm mostly doing it just to see if I like the school and the class format before comitting to getting a BS degree there. We'll see how it goes.
Well I bought a new bike today. It's a Trek 7500. I had originally been looking at the Trek 7200, then decided I'd really like the 7500fx, which is a fitness model. I am planning to ride mostly for exercise, instead of doing my jogging, so I thought that would be good. I read a lot of really good reviews for it too, so it seemed good. But it was much more expensive and I didn't know about paying so much for a bike. But Sabrina and I decided that for something that is going to last quite a while, it was worth spending the extra money for something that was really good, rather than just ok. So I had looked yesterday to see which was more like I wanted, and whether it seemed worth the extra money for a 7500fx, and decided it probably was. The components are quite a bit better, and its a more streamlined bike. I also like having the thumb-shifts much better than the grip-shifts, which narrowed it down to the 7500 and the 7500fx. We went back today to make a final decision and I rode both of them around the parking lot a few minutes, and liked the 7500 much better than the fx version. In theory the FX is better for exercise, but it depends on you riding on smooth roads. The 7500 is a little more all-terrain, and has wider tires for a better grip. It can be a little more work to push it around, but not so much that it is an issue. The other big feature of the 7500 is that it has a suspension fork, and suspension seat-post, which makes for a very smooth ride on less-smooth roads. Since I've spent 28 years looking at potholes in New England, that was a big selling point. It was a really big difference in the parking lot, and I could tell it would be nicer in the long-run to have the suspension.
The people at the store are really nice, the owner was there today and is who we were talking to. He obviously really likes the bikes and knows what he is talking about. He was pretty salesman-ish, but clearly enthusiastic, which is really nice. The place has been around for quite a while. They also stand behind Trek bikes for quality. They will give 10 years of service if anything goes wrong with it, except things like flat tires. Anything else they'll replace if it wears out or breaks. You don't even have to bring it back to them if you aren't around, if you have to get it fixed somewhere else you can just send them the receipt and they'll give you back the money you paid.
So of course it was raining once I got it and I haven't been able to really ride around yet, but I'll try it out tomorrow. I had to get my helmet out of storage too. I had gotten a new one a few years ago and never even took it out of the box. Sabrina brought her bike to get a tune-up and will get it back on wednesday, so we can both go riding together, which will be fun.
Not much new here. I picked more radishes from the garden, Sabrina's father has been eating the greens. Some of the radishes have been nice, and others are really scrawny. I'll be surprised if they get any better after this, they've been in there for quite a while, and I doubt they'll grow much more even now that it has thinned out some.
Monday Sabrina and I had a picnic up the street at a little semi-park where there is a historical marker. There are a couple benches and a picnic table looking over a big field. It was a nice enough spot. I found it while I was out jogging one day. Sabrina made lunch and brought it up when I finished my run. She made sandwiches and macaroni salad, and we also had some cherry's for dessert. She used some of the lettuce from my garden in the sandwich too, so that was nice. It's the first bit of it that we've tried. We saw a deer out in the middle of the field a bit before we left. It was too far away to see well, but it was there. I saw one yesterday when I was out jogging too, it crossed the street a ways ahead of me. And we saw one on the way back from dinner tonight at the side of the road. It's been a big week for wildlife I guess.
Only a couple weeks left until I start my glass at Strayer. Hopefully it'll go ok. I've read the first 3 or 4 sections of the text book, and it seems ok. It's a little bit basic, but it has good enough examples and does things in an ok order for learning. It's pretty much all a giant case-study, which is pretty much the only usefull way to learn a database. It just seems corny when you are reading it.
Well, we've been back a few days now, I just haven't taken the time to write an update. The trip to St Paul went pretty smoothly, except for when we actually got there and the directions I had for the hotel were wrong. I hadn't noticed that they went just to the street, rather than the hotel itself, and the street was too long to figure out which way to go. We managed to find it anyway, after driving around and following the directions that we had to the place that the graduation was, so it wasn't too big a deal.
St Paul is pretty nice. Where we were was very clean and well kept. Apparently in the last couple years they have done major work to redo downtown and just finished so we were seeing it very freshly done. It's a little weird because there are Peanut's characters all over the place as statues in front of buildings and in parks. Charles Shultz was born in St Paul, and the Mall of America has Camp Snoopy in it, which is a little amusement park type place. We didn't have time to go to any of the local attractions because we were only there for 2 nights and the one day we were there was taken up with the graduation. That's ok though, except for the mall there isn't much to do. Where we were downtown has pretty much nothing in it except business stuff. We couldn't find anywhere at all to eat, except in the hotel restaraunt. There was also a cafeteria style place down the street that had italian food and a couple other things, but nothing that interested us at all. The place in the hotel was nice though. The food was good, and the price was ok. It's an irish pub called The Liffey. I got a sandwhich both times we ate there, and it came with a ton of big french fries, so that was good. We also got dessert both nights, which was also good.
The trip there and back was uneventful. We stayed at two different Days Inns, which were both right off the highway and easy to find. We got Domino's Pizza both nights we stayed in Syracuse, NY, and when we were in Elkhart, IN, we went to a Chinese buffet that was right next to the hotel on the way there, and went to an all-night restaurant on the way back. It was the only thing open by the time we got there. It was really good though, we both got burgers and it came with soup to start with, which was good, and a big bowl of crackers to go with it. We got mozzarella sticks for an appatizer because we were really hungry by then, but then could only eat half the burger. The burgers also came with giant potato wedges with bacon and cheese on them. The chinese buffet was pretty standard, but was good, and inexpensive. The most surprising thing was that they had serve yourself pork tenderloin, and whole turkey, and roast, and ham.
In othe rnews, Sabrina picked some of my radishes for me, and they seem to be doing ok. Some of them were scrawny, but others grew really well. There are alot of big leaves on the mesclin mix too, but not really anything to harvest yet. The cucumbers may or may not be doing ok, the plant is going, but not very much. I'm not holding my breath for it.