Fighting a Cold -- 01/02/00
That scratchy throat that bothered me the past two mornings seems to be trying to turn itself into a full fledged cold. Popping a bunch of extra vitamin C (and an extra zinc as well) and trying to take it easy to avoid getting sicker. Right now just a sore throat and a slightly stuffy head. I had a rotten head cold the week after Thanksgiving and I would just as soon not have another. People worry about catching a computer virus over the Internet, but imagine if rhino viruses could also spread on the web... I mean it seems to me as if many of the online journal writers I read have a fairly high frequency of colds and flu. It seems as if some have health complaints about every third week. Be sure to wash your hands after downloading that file. Don't execute that applet; you don't know where it has been.
As a consequence of feeling a bit under the weather, I opted not to go for a run today, despite the ridiculously mild temperature. It was easily in the upper 40's; I'm sure that it would have been well up in the 50's if we had only had some sunshine, but it's been cloudy and foggy all day. If it had been sunny (or at least not so foggy) I would have been tempted to go to the shore and take some pictures. I suppose that might have been an interesting challenge, to take pictures that showed the fog without being just gloomy and muddy looking, but I was feeling too tired to attempt anything challenging.
Anyway, in lieu of a run, I went for a long walk with Nancy. We covered a fair bit of territory, perhaps three miles or so. I've described this area as being suburban although it is a suburb of a small village. Rhode Island, like most of New England, is composed of a series of towns, which are the key local government units outside of cities. The township we live in has about 25,000 people and covers something like 80 or so square miles (these are off-the-top-of-my-head figures, I've not looked them up). There are four villages large enought to notice, the three largest of which sort of blend into each other. We live outside of those three villages, a semi-rural semi-suburban resididential area.
My neighborhood is former long-abandoned farmland which had reverted to woods, but which has been developed in recent years. You could discern three separate neighborhoods here. (I won't bother to mention prices as they are so much a reflection of location; what would have bought a mansion in upstate New York would buy a very nice home here and perhaps barely an average home in Silicon Valley.) One neighborhood was developed ten to fifteen years ago where a typical house would be a Cape Cod or a contemporary design with a one car garage on a quarter acre lot. The neighborhood where we live was started a bit over ten years ago and then development stopped for a while (probably due to the Rhode Island banking crisis in the early 90's which effectively killed the real estate market for a number of years -- but that's a whole 'nother story) and then resumed about five years ago. We bought our house four years ago (closed the sale and moved in early in February of '96) and the number of houses in this neighborhood has almost doubled in the past four or five years. There are perhaps half a dozen new homes currently under construction and perhaps four or five possible lots remaining to be sold. [When we moved in, the pavement on our street stopped just a couple hundred yards further along, where it turned into a rough dirt road through a wooded area. My youngest was ten and a half at the time, just the right age to have fun exploring the woods, climbing hills and dirt piles. That's almost all gone now, but he has outgrown that stuff and now lives to play with various electronic gadgets -- computers, video games, audio components, etc. Perfect timing.] A typical house in our neighborhood is a modern Victorian style house with a two car garage on a half acre lot. Our walk today took us over to the third neighborhood, one that has been built since we moved here. Houses there are much larger ("executive homes") with three car garages on three-quarter to full acre lots.
At various times we have taken the opportunity to explore houses under construction, but not today, just weren't any at the right stage (safe to enter but not so complete that they are locked). On our way back to our house we realized that the name of one of the newest streets (actually just a three house cul-de-sace) in our neighborhood was "Lupine Court" -- which we felt was only appropriate since so many wild rabbits have been losing their habitat to all of this construction.
I did manage to crawl out of bed around quarter past seven, got coffee going, read the Sunday paper, etc. I went to the supermarket and got grocery shopping out of the way in the morning. Made tuna salad and cole slaw (my favorite way, using red cabbage with slivered Granny Smith apple and a little bit of carrot) for lunch. This was before our walk. After the walk I made lunches for tomorrow, cleaned the kitchen, etc.... yeah, all this guy stuff... One of these days I'm going to have to learn how to spend Sundays watching football and drinking beer. I'm typing this on my laptop again because Nancy has the main computer. I've got to wrap this up now, however, beause it is about 5:30 and I've got to return those movies we watched New Years Eve (due by 6pm today).
My goodness, what an exciting life! Yawn ZZZZZZZZZZZ
ouch! In the process of posting today's entry I accidently trashed yesterday, but fortunately was able to rebuild it.

**Fighting a Cold** -- *01/02/00*
That scratchy throat that bothered me the past two mornings seems to be trying to turn itself into a full fledged cold. Popping a bunch of extra vitamin C (and an extra zinc as well) and trying to take it easy to avoid getting sicker. Right now just a sore throat and a slightly stuffy head. I had a rotten head cold the week after Thanksgiving and I would just as soon not have another. People worry about catching a computer virus over the Internet, but imagine if rhino viruses could also spread on the web... I mean it seems to me as if many of the online journal writers I read have a fairly high frequency of colds and flu. It seems as if some have health complaints about every third week. Be sure to wash your hands after downloading that file. Don't execute that applet; you don't know where it has been. As a consequence of feeling a bit under the weather, I opted not to go for a run today, despite the ridiculously mild temperature. It was easily in the upper 40's; I'm sure that it would have been well up in the 50's if we had only had some sunshine, but it's been cloudy and foggy all day. If it had been sunny (or at least not so foggy) I would have been tempted to go to the shore and take some pictures. I suppose that might have been an interesting challenge, to take pictures that showed the fog without being just gloomy and muddy looking, but I was feeling too tired to attempt anything challenging. Anyway, in lieu of a run, I went for a long walk with Nancy. We covered a fair bit of territory, perhaps three miles or so. I've described this area as being suburban although it is a suburb of a small village. Rhode Island, like most of New England, is composed of a series of towns, which are the key local government units outside of cities. The township we live in has about 25,000 people and covers something like 80 or so square miles (these are off-the-top-of-my-head figures, I've not looked them up). There are four villages large enought to notice, the three largest of which sort of blend into each other. We live outside of those three villages, a semi-rural semi-suburban resididential area. My neighborhood is former long-abandoned farmland which had reverted to woods, but which has been developed in recent years. You could discern three separate neighborhoods here. (I won't bother to mention prices as they are so much a reflection of location; what would have bought a mansion in upstate New York would buy a very nice home here and perhaps barely an average home in Silicon Valley.) One neighborhood was developed ten to fifteen years ago where a typical house would be a Cape Cod or a contemporary design with a one car garage on a quarter acre lot. The neighborhood where we live was started a bit over ten years ago and then development stopped for a while (probably due to the Rhode Island banking crisis in the early 90's which effectively killed the real estate market for a number of years -- but that's a whole 'nother story) and then resumed about five years ago. We bought our house four years ago (closed the sale and moved in early in February of '96) and the number of houses in this neighborhood has almost doubled in the past four or five years. There are perhaps half a dozen new homes currently under construction and perhaps four or five possible lots remaining to be sold. [When we moved in, the pavement on our street stopped just a couple hundred yards further along, where it turned into a rough dirt road through a wooded area. My youngest was ten and a half at the time, just the right age to have fun exploring the woods, climbing hills and dirt piles. That's almost all gone now, but he has outgrown that stuff and now lives to play with various electronic gadgets -- computers, video games, audio components, etc. Perfect timing.] A typical house in our neighborhood is a modern Victorian style house with a two car garage on a half acre lot. Our walk today took us over to the third neighborhood, one that has been built since we moved here. Houses there are much larger ("executive homes") with three car garages on three-quarter to full acre lots. At various times we have taken the opportunity to explore houses under construction, but not today, just weren't any at the right stage (safe to enter but not so complete that they are locked). On our way back to our house we realized that the name of one of the newest streets (actually just a three house cul-de-sace) in our neighborhood was "Lupine Court" -- which we felt was only appropriate since so many wild rabbits have been losing their habitat to all of this construction. I did manage to crawl out of bed around quarter past seven, got coffee going, read the Sunday paper, etc. I went to the supermarket and got grocery shopping out of the way in the morning. Made tuna salad and cole slaw (my favorite way, using red cabbage with slivered Granny Smith apple and a little bit of carrot) for lunch. This was before our walk. After the walk I made lunches for tomorrow, cleaned the kitchen, etc.... yeah, all this guy stuff... One of these days I'm going to have to learn how to spend Sundays watching football and drinking beer. I'm typing this on my laptop again because Nancy has the main computer. I've got to wrap this up now, however, beause it is about 5:30 and I've got to return those movies we watched New Years Eve (due by 6pm today). My goodness, what an exciting life! Yawn ZZZZZZZZZZZ ouch! In the process of posting today's entry I accidently trashed yesterday, but fortunately was able to rebuild it.

Welcome to the Future -- 01/01/00 (yesterday's entry)

Back to Jim's home page