Ed’s corner of the web

Caution!  Spoilers ahead!

Last weekend marked the debut of the seventh Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  We were too tired after having dinner with friends (hi Kim and Patrick!) on Friday night, so we didn’t pick up the book that night.  Instead, we got up in the morning on Saturday and picked up two books at around 9:30 am.  What followed over the next two days was a veritable orgy of reading.  Honestly, I had forgotten how good it felt to just sit down with a good book and just read, read, read. I think I read about 7 hours on Saturday and another 5 hours on Sunday until I finished.  Carisa reads about 25% faster than I do, so it took her significantly less time.

Bottom line?  Very good book.  Not great, perhaps, but still very good and very enjoyable.  I wasn’t a big fan of the epilogue - too short, too few details, too nice and clean.  I wasn’t very keen on the large sections of the book spent hiding in a tent, either.  But that didn’t stop me from feeling very happy and satisfied at the end.  I could go on and on about how I liked this thing and didn’t like that other thing, but I’ll save the in-depth analysis for another time.  Just one thing, though: I held out hope for Snape to come through, and boy did he ever!  I feel so much pity for the guy, but he was without a doubt the most hard-core, steadfast wizard ever to pass through the halls of Hogwarts.  I doff my wizarding hat to you, Severus Snape.

Backblogging! I’m sorry, I know it’s a bad habit to fall into, but please allow me this indulgence. I’ve been running around like a madman for the last few weeks, so the blog has been given short shrift. I promise it won’t happen again. Well, not really, but I do feel bad about it.

Carisa and I went canoeing on the Concord River a couple weekends back. We’ve tried to do it at least once a summer with relatively good success. We enjoy the river a lot. The scenery is nice, the current isn’t too fast, and navigation is easy.

Carisa modeling our lovely orange lifevests

Me in front of the Minuteman statue. I tried to button my hat like his.

Carisa at river’s edge.

Flowers in a nearby field

We had packed some sandwiches from the Main Street Market in Concord and had a nice little picnic at the Minuteman Park. It’s nice being able to canoe right into a park, pull your boat ashore, and enjoy lunch. Highly recommended.

Had the opportunity to go out to the Esplanade and watch the fireworks on the 4th.  Fabulous show.  They seem to outdo themselves every year.  I admittedly wasn’t very psyched to go out in the wind and rain, but the show was totally worth it.   The smiley faces, cubes, and hearts that graced years past were there, as well as a couple new features, my favorite of which were the yellow-white “squids” that slowly rose up from the barge.  I remember being an adolescent and wanting badly to be a pyrotechnical engineer.  Each 4th brings a bit of that back.

I’m writing from the hospital in the little break I have after my last admission and before I have to go catch a baby.  It’s been an unusually busy day.

I learned this morning about the North Pacific Gyre, a swirling confluence of ocean currents in the Pacific which, at its center, has entrained a Texas-sized floating field of bits of plastic trash.  The thought is both staggering and disgusting.  It definitely increases one’s desire to recycle.  One hopes that the combination of moving towards more environmentally-friendly packaging, developing better photodegradable plastics, and encouraging recycling will help to curtail this trend of plastic-overridden environments.  I salute San Francisco for taking a small step by banning bottled water purchased by city departments.

More detailed link on plastic in the ocean here.