paul reed

Well, I haven’t been too good at keeping up with my blog. There’s a lot gone on, but I haven’t yet got the discipline to keep things posted. Maybe that’s for the better, since I’m sure much of what I would have posted would be quite boring!

Today I’m off Home. I haven’t been Home (as distinct from home) since May last year when i went to get my Green Card. Since I moved to the US I’ve not had such a long absence; I normally go at least twice a year for one reason or another. I think it started to get to me that I hadn’t been to Blighty in so long. Mum and Dad came over in November, but I haven’t seen Mark, Nicky and Katie since the last trip, and haven’t seen Anna since she was born. In retrospect that’s quite sad. So I’m actully really excited to be spending 6 days (or so) back with the family. As an added bonus, Marcelle is coming over from Ireland, whom I haven’t seen since she shipped out to Dublin for Visa Processing at the hands of the INS. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but it feels like longer. Life will be complete again for a few days!

So, pop-pickers, don’t expect much of an update until I return…

… I hope my presents arrive in one piece.

Hey! If you’re an American Airlines baggage handler and you’re reading this; be careful with the blue bag, it’s precious cargo!

Monday is Patriot’s Day, which is a State holiday in Massachusetts, so it’s a long weekend. The City of Boston uses this opportunity to host the Boston Marathon on that day (so if you’ve ever wondered why the Boston Marathon is on a Monday, rather than the more usual Sunday, now you know!). As a result the place goes a little bit ‘marathon crazy’ for the weekend. There’s a big expo on at the Hynes Convention Center (sic) which is a good source for free PowerBars and the like. Lots of vendors come and sell last years running and fitness gear for knock down prices. It fun but chaotic! Also the streets round Back Bay start to close off as m-day approaches. It’s madness in such a busy city with so many small one way streets, but folks seem to cope.

Today was DIY Saturday for me. The weather is (was this morning) beautiful, so I split my time between sealing the cracks between the floor boards under the kitchen cabinets and treating the roof deck. The kitchen needed doing because unfortunately the 3 guys who live downstairs smoke, so when they have a particularly big night the apartment reeks of stale smoke as if someone had been smoking in here. I don’t want to know what goes on down there — I suspect some serious dodgy tobacco — but I’m blaming my recurring headaches and bad nights sleep on them.

Today is Tax Day. Nothing else to say.

Walked home from the office - it’s a good 45 minutes to an hour traversing the City. You get to see a whole cross section of Boston. Decided not to go swimming: on Thursday night Community Running take up 3/5ths of the pool so it’s normally quite crowded. I’ll plan on going tomorrow before going to the Niketown RC Boston Marathon gathering.

If you want a laugh, visit this site. The FAQ is particularly hilarious. Yet another sign that some people have way too much spare time … I blame the economy.

Given that Halocline get so many hits … ahem … I thought I’d try out a new web stats service. I was using eXTReMe tracking which Alister uses on different.com, but I stumbled across Stats4all which seems a little bit nicer. Or maybe it’s just the same stuff presented differently! You be the judge …

My friend Ed recently got a puppy. Being the self proclaimed new media hack that he is, the puppy has it’s own Internet domain! So, ladies and gentlemen let me introduce … the one … the only … Frisket (I’ve got no clue where the name comes from either … but she’s a cute puppy!).

Well it finally happened: after having spent 6+ years driving in the US I was pulled over yesterday. I’d just been to Belmont Wheelworks to finalise some of the spec’s on my new bike. As I trundled up the road totally out of it I saw a Police car practically in my boot (aka. trunk), lights blaring. So, I diligently pulled over to let him past, only to have him pull over behind me. In a word: bugger!

So it turns out that I was doing 46mph in a 30mph zone, both facts of which I had no idea. I was on auto-pilot driving — the sun was out, not a care in the world. He could have said I was doing 90 and I’d be in no shape to argue. Anyway, he took my driving license and registration and went back into his car for about 10 minutes. I’m convinced they’re just listening to the radio, giving me (the crim) time to stew over my heinous crime. Finally he came back and said he was just going to give me a warning, but that I should be careful. “It’s an easy mistake to make” he said, “with such a wide open road, but it’s a 30mph zone. What if a child ran out or someone stopped suddenly?”. He’s got a valid point, but in any other country a road this wide would be called a motorway or autobahn. Still it was a close one … would have made the bike even more expensive!

It’s tax time of year here in the US. The tax year ends on December 31st, and returns must be submitted by April 15th. Around this time the UK tax year also ends, and those returns have to be in by September. This gives you a couple of months off, before you go round and do it all again. I feel like I’m continually doing taxes for one country or another. Thankfully PricewaterhouseCoopers do all the hard work of preparing my returns, but it’s still a lot of work collecting all the information and chasing up on things. Add to that the fact that I simply must understand every last nuance of the returns, and I’m probably the Customer from Hell for them. Oh well, 4 days and counting …