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Weekend
It was such a busy weekend - and, overall, a good one. On Thursday, as I mentioned at the time, Teri and I picked up new phones - smartphones, the only Android phones AT&T offers. They're Motorola Backflips. We're still trying to decide if we like them.
They require a data plan, which will cost more. But we finally moved the phones into my name, which will give us a 19% discount. It won't erase the increase, but it will substantially reduce it. I just wish we'd made the switch eight years ago. We'd have saved thousands!
On Saturday we went back to the phone store in Warwick; I needed to let them copy my employee ID, so we'd get the discount. After that, we stopped at Trader Joe's. We're kind of pleased to have found it; it's only a twenty to twenty-five minute drive away, and the next closest one we knew about was at least an hour away. Sebastian posed with a large stuffed ape.
We bought some neat stuff, went home, and then headed out to - wait, let me explain.
I recently instituted a one-man revolution against TV in our house. One night I channel-locked every kid's station. Sebastian has been watching 30-45 hours of TV a week despite my constant complaints, and his school performance has been suffering - badly. So now it's no more than one hour on weekdays, and two hours or one full movie on weekend days.
To fill up the time that was previously occupied by TV, I'm reading to Sebastian more. We're going to go out more, to playgrounds and such. And I'm determined to make the most of our weekends, particularly in nice weather, by getting the whole family out of the house and on the road. When I was young my parents took us to all sorts of fun and interesting places. I'm going to provide the same experiences for Sebastian, if I can.
So I suggested that we finally go to the dinosaur place in CT that Sebastian has been asking to see for four or five years now. By the time we were done at Trader Joe's, it was too late to do it that day. So instead Sebastian suggested that we go to a place called United Skates of America, a skating, rock-climbing, and laser-tag place in Rumford, RI. He'd been begging to go there, too.
On the way Teri noticed Slater Memorial Park, which she'd been interested in for some time; she hadn't known where it was. But we continued onward to United Skates.
The rock climbing didn't go very well. Sebastian doesn't have much upper body strength; I'm not sure why. I had a LOT of upper body strength when I was his age. But he just couldn't get higher than five feet off the ground. I'm going to talk to his pediatrician about that.
After that it was either skating, laser tag, or give up. We all knew that skating would kill us - none of us has a great sense of balance - so we tried laser tag. It was weird. For one thing, the other five people in the group were all kids under the age of ten. It felt weird sitting with them in the hot, steamy "ready room". I glumly anticipated being killed over and over by nimble little murderers.
I'd forgotten that although I've gotten much fatter and a bit clumsier as I've gotten older, I've also gotten a lot smarter. I slaughtered those kids! Even though several of them cheated and came around the central barrier to our side of the range, I was able to occupy strategic areas and blow them away. I had 20 kills, which placed me comfortably in the #1 ranking.
On the way home, I suggested we stop at Slater Memorial Park. We did, and Sebastian had some fun at the large playground there:
We were pretty hungry once he'd finished playing; it was late in the day. So we grabbed some food at the one restaurant in the park. The experience inspired me to add a listing for the restaurant on Yelp, so I could write a review:
After that, we headed home. Sebastian stayed up late; we'd finished reading The Black Cauldron that evening, and continued on immediately with The Castle of Llyr. It's possible that that series is too exciting for him; he stayed up past ten o'clock listening to me read it, and I finally had to close the book and resort to singing lullabies. Even so, it took fifteen minutes of singing instead of the usual five to get him to fall asleep.
Sunday I surprised Teri by suggesting we go to the dinosaur place (which is, in fact, called The Dinosaur Place at Nature's Art). I'd feared that it would be a three-hour drive, but it actually took almost exactly one hour; less time than it takes us to drive to Boston!
It's late, and I'm tired. Here are a couple of photos.
We walked around the pond before the volcano erupted; the weather was perfect, and it was a nice long walk. The eruption was good enough for Sebastian (I'll admit I wasn't terribly impressed). After that he spent some time in a maze there, and then played in the playground. I got pretty annoyed when Teri drove to Longhorn's for dinner on the way home; she always likes to stick to the same chain restaurants, which makes no sense to me. Why travel to eat the same old stuff? But we agreed while eating that we would start trying new places when we were on the road.
We ate, got home, I read to Sebastian and again had to resort to singing, and after he fell asleep I started writing this. And now I'm going to bed!
But I will say this: I want to DO things on the weekends. Have some fun. Get out of the same old rut. And this weekend felt like a really good start.
They require a data plan, which will cost more. But we finally moved the phones into my name, which will give us a 19% discount. It won't erase the increase, but it will substantially reduce it. I just wish we'd made the switch eight years ago. We'd have saved thousands!
On Saturday we went back to the phone store in Warwick; I needed to let them copy my employee ID, so we'd get the discount. After that, we stopped at Trader Joe's. We're kind of pleased to have found it; it's only a twenty to twenty-five minute drive away, and the next closest one we knew about was at least an hour away. Sebastian posed with a large stuffed ape.
We bought some neat stuff, went home, and then headed out to - wait, let me explain.
I recently instituted a one-man revolution against TV in our house. One night I channel-locked every kid's station. Sebastian has been watching 30-45 hours of TV a week despite my constant complaints, and his school performance has been suffering - badly. So now it's no more than one hour on weekdays, and two hours or one full movie on weekend days.
To fill up the time that was previously occupied by TV, I'm reading to Sebastian more. We're going to go out more, to playgrounds and such. And I'm determined to make the most of our weekends, particularly in nice weather, by getting the whole family out of the house and on the road. When I was young my parents took us to all sorts of fun and interesting places. I'm going to provide the same experiences for Sebastian, if I can.
So I suggested that we finally go to the dinosaur place in CT that Sebastian has been asking to see for four or five years now. By the time we were done at Trader Joe's, it was too late to do it that day. So instead Sebastian suggested that we go to a place called United Skates of America, a skating, rock-climbing, and laser-tag place in Rumford, RI. He'd been begging to go there, too.
On the way Teri noticed Slater Memorial Park, which she'd been interested in for some time; she hadn't known where it was. But we continued onward to United Skates.
The rock climbing didn't go very well. Sebastian doesn't have much upper body strength; I'm not sure why. I had a LOT of upper body strength when I was his age. But he just couldn't get higher than five feet off the ground. I'm going to talk to his pediatrician about that.
After that it was either skating, laser tag, or give up. We all knew that skating would kill us - none of us has a great sense of balance - so we tried laser tag. It was weird. For one thing, the other five people in the group were all kids under the age of ten. It felt weird sitting with them in the hot, steamy "ready room". I glumly anticipated being killed over and over by nimble little murderers.
I'd forgotten that although I've gotten much fatter and a bit clumsier as I've gotten older, I've also gotten a lot smarter. I slaughtered those kids! Even though several of them cheated and came around the central barrier to our side of the range, I was able to occupy strategic areas and blow them away. I had 20 kills, which placed me comfortably in the #1 ranking.
On the way home, I suggested we stop at Slater Memorial Park. We did, and Sebastian had some fun at the large playground there:
We were pretty hungry once he'd finished playing; it was late in the day. So we grabbed some food at the one restaurant in the park. The experience inspired me to add a listing for the restaurant on Yelp, so I could write a review:
Len's Hot Dog Haven II
9 Slater Park Ave.
Slater Memorial Park
Pawtucket, RI 02861
2 out of 5 stars
If you want to eat at Slater Memorial Park, it's either Len's, the next-door ice cream place, or bring your own food and have a picnic (which you can; there are picnic tables).
The food wasn't bad, although the frozen lemonade was small, an odd shade of yellow, and tasted pretty artificial. I was a bit surprised by the service. We'd ordered two large fries, but only received one. I went back and look at our order slip, which had been impaled on a spike, Sure enough, two large fries were listed.
So I went over to the girl who'd taken my order, and told her as nicely as I could about the mistake. She immediately insisted that I'd only ordered ONE large fry. "No," I said, still smiling and trying to be nice, "I just took a look at the order slip, and it said two."
She walked over to look at it, and I went with her. "Look, it's a large LEMONADE, sweetie!" she said, pointing to the entry for a large frozen lemonade (which had really been surprisingly small). "No," I answered, bending the corner of the slip that was covering part of mine, "right here, a second large fry - see?"
She said she'd get it. I waited about five minutes. She handed it to me, and I thanked her. She then walked out of the door, almost pushed me aside, and walked away.
The fries weren't that good, by the way - they seemed a little underdone. Not very crisp. The hot dog was okay, and the corn dog a little better than average. But again, not the best service.
After that, we headed home. Sebastian stayed up late; we'd finished reading The Black Cauldron that evening, and continued on immediately with The Castle of Llyr. It's possible that that series is too exciting for him; he stayed up past ten o'clock listening to me read it, and I finally had to close the book and resort to singing lullabies. Even so, it took fifteen minutes of singing instead of the usual five to get him to fall asleep.
Sunday I surprised Teri by suggesting we go to the dinosaur place (which is, in fact, called The Dinosaur Place at Nature's Art). I'd feared that it would be a three-hour drive, but it actually took almost exactly one hour; less time than it takes us to drive to Boston!
It's late, and I'm tired. Here are a couple of photos.
We walked around the pond before the volcano erupted; the weather was perfect, and it was a nice long walk. The eruption was good enough for Sebastian (I'll admit I wasn't terribly impressed). After that he spent some time in a maze there, and then played in the playground. I got pretty annoyed when Teri drove to Longhorn's for dinner on the way home; she always likes to stick to the same chain restaurants, which makes no sense to me. Why travel to eat the same old stuff? But we agreed while eating that we would start trying new places when we were on the road.
We ate, got home, I read to Sebastian and again had to resort to singing, and after he fell asleep I started writing this. And now I'm going to bed!
But I will say this: I want to DO things on the weekends. Have some fun. Get out of the same old rut. And this weekend felt like a really good start.