Today was Daddy Day and with Megan out of town for the weekend at an AMC (her job) event, I wanted to do something unique and fun with Caleb. A few days ago I started tossing around ideas and settled on taking him to a farm to go apple picking and check out the equipment and whatever else we could find.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned as we woke up to a fairly even downpour. Picking apples in the rain, I guessed, would not be nearly as much fun as in the sunshine. For better or worse, however, Caleb and I decided to go through with it anyway. What’s a little rain and wet clothes — certainly not enough to stop us from having a good time?

I didn’t take very many pictures (juggling a camera, bag of apples, three year old, and an umbrella is not as easy as it looks), but those that I did take are below.

Just starting out. This is just after we crossed the bridge from Boston to Charlestown.

Heading out of Boston on Hwy. 1

Still on Hwy. 1. Still raining.

Still raining, but now the road is beautiful. We are very close to the farm now.

Boots! Our bag of apples is almost full!

Heading home over the Tobin. Still raining, but we have a bag full of awesome apples to eat!

Our neighborhood is great. Every day there is something unique happening.

On Friday we were treated to a very special road construction exercise. It seems that a rectangle of street outside our building was ready to be ripped up (by a massive, massive machine) and then replaced moments later with fresh asphalt. We can’t figure out exactly why the road needed to be torn up, but at least the timing coincided with the start of Caleb’s afternoon nap…

Click on the photo to see the noise up close and personal.

I am sure I come across as many things through this blog but a computer geek and an economics/finance junkie are probably not at the top of the list. Well… I stumbled across an incredibly creative website this afternoon while reading one of my favorite economics blogs. (Click on the image to the right to see the various images I created.)

The site, Wordle, creates an image based on a block of text you provide. The resulting image can be manipulated some with rough controls that allow you to alter the color palette, general arrangement of the words, as well as the typeface used. The text you submit is parsed using a number of criteria and then individual words are pulled out and arranged according to some logical order, and given weight based on frequency of use.

In looking at the images I created (see them all by clicking on the above image), I clearly have a recurring emphasis. Caleb’s name is consistently prominent as are a few select other words. Rather than blather on about what I see in each image, take a look for yourself.

Yesterday was one of the more physically intensive Daddy Days we have had for some time. When asked, Caleb said that we should go to Central Square. Not content with our normal route of a walk to Park Street to catch the Red Line over the river, I decided that we would take the Green Line to BU and walk to Central Square instead. The weather was perfect and I figured it would be a good way to see a part of Boston neither of us had explored much before (Cambridgeport). Click on the photo to the right to see all of the images from our adventure!

The weather was indeed beautiful — sunny and not too hot — and perfect for a long afternoon walk outside. The walking portion of the trip, essentially BU to the North End, via Central Square and the Mass Ave bridge on the way back (instead of the more direct Longfellow Bridge) was just under 6 miles long. Roughly 5 of those miles Caleb trudged from the comfort of my arms or shoulders. (What’s a stroller?)

We learned a few things along the way, namely that Boston is beautiful in the summer, and the park along the Charles River (adjacent to Storrow Drive) is simply made for running/ strolling/ taking everything in.

Megan took some great photographs of Caleb and his friends the other day. They were hanging out in the playground next to our apartment enjoying the fantastic weather. Caleb did a few tricks on his skateboard for the camera and is really getting a hang of his balance. It helps when there is nice cushy rubber for him to fall on (the green/ gray/ black ground cover in the photos). Click on the image to the right to see all of the photos!

I was writing an email this morning and Caleb came over to me to announce that he made a “nest.” I assumed that he was talking about a drawing — he had been drawing skateboards for a bit — and got up to go and check out his artwork. Boy was I wrong. He made his nest out of a pack of Happy Birthday candles. (Caleb, your imagination and creativity amaze me!)

Here’s a closeup of the nest he made.

And now a photo of Caleb proudly sitting next to his creation! He added two birds to the nest before I took the shot (the two rectangles).

Yay! Another Daddy Day post! (I think I am almost caught up now.) The photos to the right (click on the image to see them all) are from the end of May. Caleb took a late and rather long afternoon nap, so we ended up heading out on our Friday adventure pretty near to the end of the day (we left the North End around 4pm I think).

In talking through our options with Caleb, he picked Harvard Square as our destination. We made a pit stop at Megan’s office, which is on the way to the Park Street Red Line station, because I forgot to ask Caleb to use the restroom before we left our house. A short ride across the river and we romped around Harvard Square for a bit, taking in some dinner, and checking out Eastern Mountain Sports for skateboards (they had none).

On our way back, we decided to take the scenic route along the waterfront and took our time moseying home.

Boy am I glad we left yesterday evening instead of trying to stick it out last night. It is sunny and beautiful in Boston (and our tent is finally dry — it’s been hanging in the shower since last night) but not so much in Bear Brook State Park. Here’s the hour-by-hour weather forecast:

Caleb and I decided to come back a day early from our camping drip due to the somewhat “wet” weather. It started raining during the middle of our first night, and kept up for pretty much all of the next day (yesterday). We checked in at the office yesterday morning to inquire about the weather and were told that the sky would clear up just after noon. Noon came and went, and we decided around 4pm that we had enough of the weather. We still had a great time and made the clip below early yesterday morning (around 6am) when Caleb finally woke up:

Truthfully, it was a pretty difficult camping trip, at least from my perspective. Camping is somewhat laborious anyway, but add into the mix a two or three year old boy, a huge dog, some rain, and endless mosquitoes, and I would think even the most seasoned camper (which I am not) would get a bit dissuaded.

Caleb seemed to have a fantastic time, especially on our first day (setting the tent up and hanging out before bed). The mosquitoes clearly bothered him but doses of bug spray at least helped keep them at bay. The rain was another story — Caleb very much wanted to go hiking on our second day (as did I), but every time we ventured out, it invariably started raining too hard to continue (sans good rain gear including waterproof hiking shoes).

Nadine had a really hard time though I think she really enjoyed hanging out in the tent with us. I had put flea/tick/etc. junk (Frontline) in her fur the day before our trip (which always tweaks her system a bit) but still ended up having to put bug spray on her to keep the mosquitoes off. I doused her collar and then put it back on her but then I found a bunch latching on to her stomach and the bridge of her nose (poor girl!). She also seemed to think that we were moving and more or less refused to eat (even carrots, one of her favorite treats). I kept finding her “burying” her food bowl (a stress-induced hoarding/rationing behavior — she would nuzzle her bowl with her nose into a corner of the tent as if to cover it with dirt) and she continued to refuse food until we returned to Boston last night.

Trips to the bathroom were also a bit of a challenge. I opted to bring Nadine as leaving her in the tent — to potentially tear it to shreds trying to chase a passing deer — was likely a poor option, and didn’t want to expose the car to more mosquitoes than necessary (three to four managed to always enter no matter how briefly the door was open). So the three of us piled into a stall (which was thankfully one of the cleanest bathrooms I have ever seen at a campground) and made do (umm… no pun, however slight, intended…).

For fun, which we managed to create/find/sustain despite the above, we hiked (per our several, though abbreviated and wet attempts), made fires (the second one was freakishly extinguished by the rain just 5 minutes later), skateboarded (well, Caleb did “tricks” while I watched), explored a bit, read stories in the tent, visited nearby Concord (about 30 minutes away — our morning adventure while waiting for the sky to clear up), and took a detour into the nearby Camping Museum (which was awesome!).

All in all, Caleb and I are ready to take another trip (Nadine not so much). The next time, we’ll hopefully have better weather, and will perhaps choose a climate not so mosquito friendly…

Megan just hopped into a cab headed for the airport (she’s off to Michigan for a several day business trip), Nadine has been walked, and Caleb has been fed breakfast. What’s the next logical activity at 6:30 in the morning on a work day? Going to the Science Museum, of course. Caleb announced that he wanted to go there with me, and that we will be bringing his “moving skateboard” as well.

I must admit, the work/Science Museum conundrum certainly seems to lean toward the latter in terms of appeal…