Rhode Island Does Exist

So my brother once said that he thought Rhode Island doesn't really exist. Think about it. It's tiny, can easily slip through the cracks, and you've never met someone from Rhode Island have you? Well, I verified this month that it does actually exist. I went to a training course there in Middletown. I was there with four of my coworkers and it was a nice week. It turns out that the city right next door, Newport, is quite the tourist area. It has a few streets right near the beach with lots of shops and restaurants. We also went and took a tour of the 96 room mansion built by one of the Vanderbilts right on the ocean, it's called The Breakers. Let me tell you, it was awesome. At one point we walked out onto this huge veranda that overlooked a large lawn with the sea just beyond it. It felt like it was straight out of a movie. Awesome place, gotta love the Gilded Age. It only took two years to build, but they had enormous amounts of people helping. Some rooms were built in paris, taken apart, and reassembled here. It required 40 servants to keep the house in operation. Oh, and this was just their summer cottage, they only stayed there two months out of the year.

When we left I began talking with the worker at the gift store (only way out, of course). We were mentioning how great it would be to have lived there. But I said that I would rather live in my house now with air conditioning than that house then. She said that's true but it was probably a lot better back then because of "global warming and everthing." I was tempted to say, "Right, I'm sure that 1 degree has made all the difference," but I didn't.

When I got home Elizabeth had the beginning of a cold. It turned out to last about a week and a half. Of course Alicia got it, after staying up with Elizabeth almost all night a few weeks ago. Then I got it. It's just barely starting to go away for me. But now Alicia got pink-eye. The good news is that it appears to be the bacterial kind since we used some of Elizabeth's old pink-eye medicine on it and Alicia is doing much better. (Please don't turn us in to the FDA, I promise I'll do it again...was I supposed to say never do it again?).

The cold put a dent in my training for the bike tour this summer. I'm getting excited about that and enjoying cycling more and more. The only problem is that it's an expensive sport. But that's okay, I've got must of the essentials. I've been riding home from work a few days a week, when I've been healthy. That'll be pretty much impossible when we move to our new building, due to the traffic.

Speaking of which, I had a nice holiday this week. Near our company's current location, there is some construction work going on. This Thursday someone decided to use a back-hoe to cut up concrete encased power wires. That gave us the afternoon off.

Alicia has been busy as usual. Her garden is doing well, despite the fact that it's incredibly hot and humid out here and my lawn is becoming diseased and dying (no joke!). She has tomatos, carrots, strawberrys, basil, and some other vegetables that I don't care for too much. Hopefully we'll get some fruit out of it this year.

Alicia also went to cub camp a couple of days this week. The kids did boating, swimming, archery (take cover!), shirt painting and other stuff. Alicia went boating with them and helped them with some other activities. She had fun being a little kid again (still?).

Speaking of little kids, Alicia is starting to show. The baby has also started to do some kicking and pushing. It's pretty cool when that happens, reminds you that there's really a person down there. (<sarcasm>Sorry, pro-choice people might be offended by that, there's a fetus there, not a person until it's born</sarcasm>).

Elizabeth is being a cutie, as always. She's become our resident artist (see above picture). I'm saving this wall because it will be worth millions someday. Whenever she hears music now she likes to spin around and around and make herself dizzy. It's very silly. She also likes to copy whatever daddy is doing. Yesterday I was working on Alicia's bike, fixing the brakes. Well, Elizabeth just had to grab the tool I was using and try to work on the same part I was working on. Whenever daddy waters the lawn by hand she also comes and grabs the hose and holds it like she's watering. It's so cute.

Well, we're off to Hawaii this week! So it might be another few weeks before there's an update. But we'll keep all of our intent readers posted :-).