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Starry Night

Last night we went to the Starry Night Cafe in Ferrisburg, VT for dinner. Generally speaking, there isn't much outside of Burlington besides farms and cows but there are plenty of little out of the way places to visit, shop and eat. This is definitely one of them.

We started out (optimistically) eating our appetizers outside next to the pond which was fantastic. I had the soft shell crab (special) and Tara had some Asparagus and Cheddar soup, both of which were delicious. The service was very slow but that was actually ok in this pleasant setting as it gave us time to savor the environment.

By the time dinner was ready the mosquito's had gotten bad enough that we were forced to move inside. The interior of the restaurant is a few, small, quirky rooms that clearly was originally a house and is decorated with local artwork by a textile artist. I had the NY Strip Steak (ok) and Tara had the Risotto (she said it was great).

All in all this was a fun night out, and a nice new place to eat.

You call this a blog?

One of the things I get to do in my new job (along with driving back and forth to Boston three times this week - 1,500 miles!) is to run and post to a blog related to e-Commerce for my organization. I am in the begining stages of setting this up, and customizing the site.

Unfortunately, the tool that they are using is Sharepoint 2003 which doesn't actually offer any real blogging tools. So far we have tried to use:

• Discussion Threads: Won't remain expanded and are plain ugly
  
• Content Box: doesn't archive, bump extended text to another page and is all manual
  
• Announcements: This is the best option yet, but still not quite there. This does allow me to tag the entry with a date and time, sort them with newest first and also add HTML and images into the fields.

Apparently SharePoint 2007 is on it's way out in October and will have more of the tools we are looking for, including a blogging module.

Lame Joke

...as said by a parent this week at Trevor's baseball award ceremony

"If you have a nut allergy are you allowed to play in the Peanut League?"

I can't hear you.

A sound that only kids can hear?

Yeah, right.

Next you'll tell me that there are friends that only kids can see.

I'm aware this is silly, but...

Yes, I'm aware that I've just posted one of those corny countdown scripts. But I am really excited about vacation this year. Dave and I had never taken any serious time off for the first seven years of our marriage. Timing, finances and job responsibilities made it impossible for us to leave town for more than a couple of days at a time. Last year, we took the plunge and spent a week at Disney World... and it was an amazing experience.

Now I've said before, we're not "Disney people" (you know what I mean), and I thought the vacation would be mostly goofy (pun intended). What I wasn't prepared for was the complete immersion into the Disney universe which makes everything stop being silly and start being breathtaking. They call employees cast members because Disney is a 24/7 show. The illusion is practically seamless, and if you take the time to notice, every detail has been thoughtfully planned.

Last year, our favorites were the character breakfast at the Crystal Palace (who knew that super-cool Trevor would be hugging Winnie the Pooh and asking Tigger for an autograph?) and being in an abandoned Magic Kingdom at 2:00a.m. riding Big Thunder mountain over and over...

This year, I've booked a few more character breakfasts (I'm looking forward to the Supercalifragilistic Breakfast with Mary Poppins and Alice in Wonderland), Trevor's going on a kids-only pirate treasure cruise, and we hope to have lunch with a Disney Imagineer one afternoon (No kidding! You get a long lunch and conversation with one of the people who helped create some part of WDW!).

I won't be going on Mission:Space again, lest my brain liquify. And we weren't too thrilled about Thanksgiving dinner at O'hana, so we're trying a different venue for turkey day... but it all looks great and I'm definitely going to be ready for some time off by November (hence the corny countdown). We're going to Disney World!