Author: Andrew Huey

Route 22

I had to drive on Route 22 today, back towards Roselle Park, for the first time in quite a while.  I used to drive on 22 between Somerville and Roselle Park on a fairly regular basis, after I’d moved to Somerville, but my parents hadn’t yet moved to Whiting.  (Looking back at some paperwork, this would have been 1994 – 1997.)  The one thing that stirred the most emotion, unexpectedly, was passing Gertrude Hawk.  I used to stop in there and buy sugar-free chocolates for Mom occasionally.

I was actually taking a trip into Westfield, for my first meeting with the law firm that will be handling Mom’s estate.  We used to go into Westfield occasionally when I was a kid, usually to see a movie.  I passed the Rialto theater, which is amazingly still there.  And I passed by the Town Book Store, which is apparently (and depressingly) the last independent book store in Union County.  Yikes.  (I guess that means that the old Cranford Book Store is gone.)

Lent

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. My mom was always big on not eating meat on Ash Wednesday, and on Fridays during Lent. She didn’t normally call to remind me, but if I was calling down to Whiting for anything, she’d make a point of reminding me, or if it was Friday night, she’d ask if I remembered not to eat meat that day. Mom, I want you to know that I remembered not to eat any meat yesterday. Eggplant for lunch and vegetable pad thai for dinner.

I’ve never been really big on the idea of giving something up for Lent, but I usually at least thought about it. This year, I feel like enough has been taken from me already that I don’t need to feel guilty about not giving anything up for Lent. I remember a homily about Lent one of the priests at our old parish in Roselle Park delivered back when I was kid. He said that maybe we should think about resolving to do something positive during Lent rather than giving something up. I gave a few bucks to the Alzheimer’s Association yesterday and lit a candle for Mom, so that’s a start, right?

St. Patrick’s Day

Somerville St. Patrick’s Day parade names first-ever female grand marshal

I see that the Somerville St Pat’s parade is March 14 this year, the day after my birthday. For a few years, we had a tradition going where Mom and Dad, and maybe a couple of other folks, would come up to Somerville for the parade, and we’d hang out in my apartment, have a few beers, and celebrate my birthday. I remember one year when Pat and Heather came up too, before they were married, I think. That was fun.

Since Mom stopped driving a few years back, we haven’t been doing that. I have some fond memories of St Patrick’s parades in Somerville, though.

Happy Valentine’s Day

I used to send my Mom a card on Valentine’s Day, and sometimes flowers.  I mentioned that to someone a few years ago, and got a strange look.  They thought it was weird to send flowers to your Mom on Valentine’s Day.  I never really saw anything wrong with it.

adsense

Since I was doing a bunch of other stuff on the blog anyway, I decided to go ahead and sign up to put AdSense on my blog.  I don’t expect to make any money off it, but I was curious about it, so I thought I’d give it a try.  There was some weirdness going on at first, but I’ve figured out what was causing it — Adblock Plus.  Duh.  The AdSense page at Google is pretty much nonfunctional if you’ve got ABP installed and enabled in Firefox.  And, of course, it blocks the ads that are being put on my page, so  I can’t see them.  Oops.  I disabled it, and now I can access the AdSense site, and I can see the little ads Google is putting on my page.  By default, the ads were appearing at the top of the page, above the blog posts, so that was kind of ugly.  I moved the code to the bottom of the page, so the ads will appear down there now.

Fragile Things, again

I posted a couple of days ago that Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things had just been released as a $7.99 mass market paperback, but still cost $9.59 for the Kindle.  I just looked again, and now it’s $7.99 for the Kindle, so I guess somebody (or some automated process) does keep an eye on these things and adjust Kindle prices downward when a cheaper hard-copy version of a book is released.
Oh, and I just noticed that Interworld is only $3.99 for the Kindle.  I already have the hardcover on that one, but if you like Gaiman and haven’t read it, it’s a good book.  (Not great, but fun, and a quick read.)