Monthly Archives: March 2006

For the Irish in Everyone

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Well, a belated Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all. Boston or Chicago, it’s a holiday of particular note, most notable in both locales for fantastic parades and cavalcades of drunken louts. Here in the Hub our soon to be Cardinal granted a special dispensation to the flock with regard to eating meat on Friday. Thus, everyone was forgiven for knocking down some corned beef. I heard a priest on the news say he thinks it would relieve the need for so many confessions, to which I thought do you honestly think this reduce the sins associated with the holiday. “Bless me Father for I have sinned, in a word Guinness.” Be that as it may I hoisted a couple of drinks myself and look forward to a few more today as the Terwedow clan convenes for their annual celebration, complete with the corned beef, cabbage, and Ali’s scrumptious soda bread. So enjoy the weekend and heed the words of my favorite cantankerous Irish character, from the film Hard Day’s Night. In one of the all time best lines in the movie, the Samuel Beckett looking little man, in firm reprimand, cracked, “You should be out paradin’ instead of sittin’ here and reading your stupid book!” Doesn’t everyone love a parade?

In other news, here’s best wished to my mother’s speedy recovery. Get well soon. Ali has finally finished all her licensing responsibilities for her programs, with great fanfare. Now she will celebrate with a much deserved vacation to decompress and make headway on the wedding plans. Finally, in response to a request about more information on Keri’s new gig, she is switching to a different law firm, one that is smaller and willing to pay her a whole lot more dough. So, she’ll basically be doing the same kind of work, only with a smaller firm and a different legal specialty. Hopefully, it will be a fantastic fit.

Unintended Birthday Consequences

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I should have known that getting Ali an iPod Nano would complicate our relationship. Now that she has been turned onto the mp3 craze, I can hardly put my fingers to the keyboard of my computer. She is a quick study to be sure and she has taken to using iTunes without a hitch, importing CDs, downloading, you name it. More than that, I showed her a couple of other means for downloading music that have all but created a monster. First it was the digital camera (Has anyone ever seen collection of photo CDs? See the photograph below.) and now the Nano, combine these with my upgrade to DSL and a ultra slick scanner, her rapidly evolving digital lifestyle is soon to eclipse my own. In short over the last year and a half, I have created a monster, a lovable one, but a monster nonetheless. Look at her take that duck apart below, at a tender age no less.

Photo: Ali Tearing into a Chocolate Duck

Since all my music is “crap,” she has become ever more oppressive since learning how to create customized playlists, wherein she tortures me with increasingly cheesey songs. Think of such super hits as “To Be With You” – Mr. Big; “The Power of Love” – Huey Lewis; “Going Back to Cali” – LL Cool J; “Black Velvet” – Alanah Myles; I mean the list goes on and gets uglier. There are some good ones to be sure, but it could easily be understood as an adolescent 80s nightmare. In fact, she thinks that would be a good playlist name!

Photo: Ali's CD Photo Album

Of course there are perks. For one, with her immediate submersion into the realm of digital music, she now wants to go a buy a pair of Bose mulitmedia desktop speakers. Even more stunning, she even found a way to get them for free! In some ways she continues to surprise me. What wouldn’t be a surprise, however, is if in another six months or so we are the most wirelessly integrated one-bedroom apartment in the greater Boston area, just so I can have my own computer again.

So as the wedding plans continue, you all can be sure that you will experience some of the 80s musical nightmare. Better still, for all you Illinois people, Ali is delighted to report that she has reserved the deluxe port-a-potties, with hand washing stations as a bonus. Just hearing that news, I am sure none of you can wait for the middle of July get a whiff of that!

Finally, congratulation are in order for Ali’s older sister. Our little Keriann got a new job! That’s right, she is leaving the desk at the law firm that was her longest running gig to date and moving on to greener pastures, literally and figuratively. So way to go Keri and good luck!