2010 Rose Family Events Archives...
      For current events, go to the Rose family website page.

01/01/10: Happy New Year!
I had some vacation days to use up by the end of the year, so I've just been relaxing all week. Of course I had to stay up New Year's Eve and watch Dick Clark drop the ball in Times Square. No party or anything; just a quiet night watching movies until around 11:00pm when I switched over to the network channels.

New Year's Day I fixed a pot of coffee, watched the first half hour of the Citius Parade, did some programming and reading and then about an hour of the Rose Parade. I came back into the living room about 4:00pm and turned on the pre Rose Bowl stuff to let the game run while I fixed my New Year's Day dinner of The Great Hip Replacement Ordeal Three Bean Chili Wonder. Tradition rules, Football three times a year: New Years, Super Bowl, and Thanksgiving. That's it.

After dinner I watched a couple of movies. First, was the great Crimson Tide. But to lighten things up for the New Year, did All About Steve from my NetFlix queue. It was about as stupid as I had been told it would be, but it was light and an easy end to the day.

01/02/10: Movie Road Trip: Sherlock Holmes
There was a huge snow storm that began overnight and lasted all day long. But that didn't dissuade six of us from braving the elements and meeting up at TGI Friday's in Newington for dinner. We were so busy chatting it up at the restaurant, that no one even cracked their backgammon board open! That's a first! After dinner, we all headed over to meet another couple of friends at the theater to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie, which was really pretty good. The drive home was brutal; I passed two, three car pile-ups on the way. Just nice and slow does it.

Sunday I rolled out of bed really late and just eased into the day slowly. I spent the day programming until about 5:30pm when Marissa came by to visit. We chatted until about 7:00, I finished up my work, and went in to watch M. Night Shyamalan's Lady In The Water. What a wonderfully different movie. I'm not a big M. Night fan, but this was so well done, though you do need to let go of any sense of reality that you may have. Heck, it's a bedtime story he made up for his kids. But what a marvelous story! Of course I had to stay up past midnight and watch all of the special features as well; very interesting.

01/06/10: The Great Hip Replacement Ordeal
Since there's not much else I'm going to be able to do for the next month or so, I might as well bore you with The Great Hip Replacement Ordeal. The long and short of which is that I had my hip replaced Wednesday January 6th at the Portsmouth Regional Hospital by Dr. Thomas King.

It was a little tougher of an operation than had been expected, and so my recovery was slower than I might have liked. I just had to bear down, do the exercises the physical therapists gave me through the pain, and build up my strength.

Not to infer lack of communication or anything from the doctors, but if you are going to have your hip replaced, or really any major surgery, you should talk with someone who has had it done on them to get the full picture of what the doctor and physical therapist are trying to convey to you.

It's not a really painful process, but it certainly is not painless, and it would be really helpful for your recovery to hear how it's going to go from someone who's laid on the table.

In particular, you can not possibly conceive of the total exhaustion you will experience as your body recovers from a surgery. You have no - as in NO - idea how debilitating an event like a surgery can create for you. I was in pretty good shape when I went into my surgery and figured I'd be back at work in a couple maybe three weeks tops. Sure.... I was out 8 weeks and still was easily run to the ground if I pushed too hard. 8 weeks....

03/03/10: Back To Work "...and Beyond!" (- Buzz Lightyear)
The short week I worked was so that I'd have this weekend to recover if I feel into the dirt from exhaustion. Wednesday and Thursday were pretty tough, but by Friday I was doing much better. So starting to get my body regulated pretty good, I guess. I had a chiropractor's appointment in North Hampton after work Friday, so after that I went over to Helen's in Rye. She had Chinese food delivered and we watched the 1980 George C. Scott movie The Changling.

Though Friday night was a late one, I was up feeling pretty good by 9:00am Saturday morning. Marissa stopped by early afternoon and we had a lovely long chat. Then Saturday evening, Helen came over to learn backgammon so she'd be ready for next week's party. She brought some Amstel with her, and I had pizza delivered. That's a whole food group in itself. Or, that's what I've been told....

Sunday I just took it real easy as I knew the following full week at work would be really challenging. And it was with two out patient physical therapy sessions followed by another chiropractor vist that Friday. After that, I just went home, watched a movie and went to bed!

03/13/10: The Great 2010 St Patricks Day Quadruple Event Backgammon Tournament And No Snow Stir Fry!
The Great 2010 St Patricks Day Quadruple Event Backgammon Tournament And No Snow Stir Fry was my first party since my surgery where I've cooked. I was a little concerned about standing on my feet for that long a period, but other than a little soreness, I was fine.

I did a sherry, tamari, and cumin marinated pork stir fry with boc choi, marjoram seasoned bella mushrooms stir fried with scallions, and sweet red pepper.

To top it all off, I threw some mung beans in and then spread boc choi leaves over the top to steam.

Party went great, with lots of backgammon among the 8 of us. The vote for the movie of the night was U.S. Marshals with Tommy Lee Jones.

03/19/10: Friday Night Out to Play Our Town
After my chiropractor's appointment in North Hampton after work, I picked Helen up in Rye, NH and we did a quick dinner at Abercrombie & Finch. Then we were off to Portsmouth to the Seacoast Repertory Theater to see the play Our Town. I don't think I've missed but maybe two presentations in six years of Our Town in the surrounding area. Seacoast Rep did an excellent job.

03/20/10: Saturday - First Day of Spring!
Wow! Tough to believe that it's the first of spring now after the horrendous weather that we've had recently. But, here it is, regardless. I was pretty done in by the two physical therapy sessions and chiropractor this week so just slept in until about 10:00am. Got up and just had a slow, casual day, accomplishing little of significance.

03/21/10: Peter's Sunday Dinner Party For One
Well, because of the start of Spring and all, I was really cranked to cook up a storm today. Early on, I got a lot of programming done on my project so was in a marvelous mood to go shopping around 4:00pm.

It always takes longer than projected to do this stuff, and this week was complicated by the pleasant visit of my friends Nora and Sue who stopped by and helped me kill off the nice bottle of Spanish Rioja before I had a chance to over due it by drinking it all in a zeal by myself whilest cooking away and listening to my new CD of Beethoven's Andante favori in F major, played - er, rather that would be 'looped' - too many times and at a volume probably not conducive to building good neighbor relations.

I had tumbled onto an interesting recipe in Food and Wine magazine earlier in the week that I had decided on right then would be an excellent challenge for me. It was a spicy Thai recipe that I could not, of course, leave alone. And well that I didn't as it would not have been as good. Or so I think, anyway.

I marinated thin strips of sirloin in a sherry and herb mix while I cut up the vegetables and got the rice cooking - a great resulting Basmati in a broth of cumin, coriander, paprika, marjoram, and who knows what all else. After getting a good base of garlic and fresh ginger root going in the wok, I stir fried onion rings and sweet red pepper. Then I dumped in the sirloin with a can of peas and let that cook for just a minute or so before stirring in the rice. Then there was some sauce to pour in, and then the finale was to throw in almost a whole head of kale and let that steam together. Out standing!

03/23/10: My FAPIIS Work Project Finds Recognition
Several months prior to my surgery I was assigned by NSLC to design and build The Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System, or FAPIIS application. At the time I had no idea how much visibility this project had.

The project was rolled out to government and contractor participants this past Sunday, and today the business analyst that directed me through the project, Steve Eisenbrey, brought me a print out from the online site Government Executive that had a comprehensive article about the project. I told a friend of mine that I was going to frame that article and use it to impress the neighbor's dog. And if the link ever gets whacked, here's a copy.

But I'm really proud that it came out as well as it did and that it will be used extensively. They are already talking about some major enhancement work, and I hope I'm selected to continue on with it as it was a really interesting and challenging project.

03/23/10: After Effects of Physical Therapy
Though I'm feeling pretty good right now, I think I'll be going on an 'Advil drip' here pretty soon. This afternoon's PT session was exhausting, and the deep tissue massage really did me in, I think. But each day a little better. As the Silva Method teaches, "Each and every day, in each and every way, I get better, better, and better."

03/26/10: Dinner and Play Glengary Glen Ross
Back with Helen to Abercrombie & Finch for a quick dinner after a chiropractor's appointment, and then off to Portsmouth to the Player's Ring production of the play Glengary Glen Ross. This was my first time to the Player's Ring and it was really a neat experience; truly a wonderful small community theater experience.

03/27/10: Movie Night At The Garrison: The Shining
I had sent a note out inviting my friends over for a Movie Night At The Garrison: The Shining. This was the first of three classic suspense thrillers that I'll host over the next couple of months.

I guess everyone wanted to get together, play some backgammon, chow down on pizza, and see this great movie because there were 8 of us. So, it sort of morphed into a somewhat major event.

03/28/10: Peter's Sunday Dinner Party For One
Well, I was so excited about preparing tonight's Peter's Sunday Dinner Party For One that I could barely stand it. As soon as I blew back in the door from shopping, I popped a bottle of Berringer Chardonnay and got down to chopping vegetables and other stuff, which there was a slew of: sweet potatoes, ginger root, garlic, jalapeno and harbanaro peppers, scallions, sweet red pepper, and kale.

I had seen this recipe in this month's Food & Wine (along with last week's dish) for Grilled Pork Tenderloins with Vegetable Curry. It also called for some stuff I either didn't have and couldn't find at the store (like Thai red curry paste; I made a concoction of my own and it was marvelous, though don't know if it was Thai or Indian or just me. But it was exceptional!), or stuff I didn't want to use (sour cream; I substituted a nice flavored yogurt instead). As a result, by the time I was on my second glass of wine, the recipe was just a suggestion and I was having a ball.

I started out with the vegetable chopping with a selection of Bach's keyboard partita's, but as the actual cooking started, I moved aggressively into t.A.T.u's 2002 CD 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane. And during dinner itself, Evanescence's 2003 Fallen. I finished off the eveing with the movie of the night, Love Happens. Why not....

04/03/10: Easter Weekend and Movie Road Trip: Clash of The Titans
Easter weekend started out smooth. I had a chiropractor's appointment in North Hampton after work Friday. Between my two physical therapy sessions this week and now this appointment, I can really feel my body changing. I still get tired easily, but the muscles in my leg and out of alignment hips and spine that I have been struggling with seem to be holding their positions longer after the adjustments. This makes my exercise and stretching work less painful and I feel more productive. I've got a long way to go, but I felt really good after the chiropractor visit.

I met a friend for dinner and went a little overboard by having a gooey desert; something I never do. But I was egged on with a "...what are you going to have?" So, once I got it into my head that it was desert time, there was no stopping things. Yeah, I paid for that one by tossing around trying to get to sleep for a couple hours Friday night.

But I pulled myself out of bed at 8:30 Saturday morning, brewed up a pot of coffee and got right to working on the section of code that I had left off with the weekend before. What a bear! I messed with that for hours last weekend and now found myself several hours later this Saturday morning with absolutely no solution. Samesame error, bat ju-ju and no Scotty to beam me up....

Reaching my limit of patience, I did what I always do when stuck on a code issue: I got up and took a walk. I went out to get the mail and found the weather to be really Spring like! It was much warmer outside than it was in the condo. Amazing. Great stuff! And when I went back to my code, I immediately saw the solution. In three minutes, I was onto the next issue. And the next thing I knew, it was 5:30pm and time to head out the door to meet Rick and Brian for dinner at T.G.I. Fridays in Newington.

I was the first there followed about two minutes later by Brian, and then in another five minutes, Rick showed up. I hadn't played Rick in Backgammon in a couple of weeks when he had kicked my ass 6 points a loser, so I think I was overcome with zeal to get him because I threw the cube at him way too soon. I also foolishly felt I was on a roll from Thursday night's set with Brian where I swooped him off the board all 3 games for a 6 point hit. So, I figured I could do the same against Rick and got carried off the field, getting stung for 2 points. That was the first and only game we played because dinner came 4 moves into the second game, and we just folded the board up.

Oh, and the movie? Awful. I should have had a third beer, and even then, I'm not sure it would have helped. For the wasted price of that movie ticket I could have had a couple more beers and lost more backgammon. And that would have been more enjoyable than that movie. Oh, it had some good special effects and there were some good action sequences. But despite the good actors, the dialog and direction were horrible and forced. I had opted not to go to the 3-D version because I had heard that they had shot the movie in regular 2D and then fooled with it after the fact by digitally pulling the foreground stuff forward to simulate 3-D. And I can't imagine not feeling woozy if I would have seen it in what I understand is a real 'in your face' 3-D as the camera was all over the place. No thanks.

Sunday morning, I was up at 9:00am and on the board throwing code and sipping my coffee. Marissa stopped by to see me late morning on her way to Gary's house and then on to her grandparent's house in York, ME. I had to get shopping early as the store closed at 3:00pm. After putting the stuff away, I finished up with the current programming issue I was dealing with so that I wouldn't have to pick up in the dark on it next weekend. I didn't make as much progress overall that I had hoped to, but at this stage of the complexity of the project even a little progress goes a long way to the overall solution.

Peter's Easter Sunday Dinner Party For One was the required Easter ham which I poured a nice sherry and herb marinate over. I baked a small acorn squash and had cumin, garlic, and seeet onion sauted peas as my second side. The wine of the night was a Australian Yellow Tail Chardonnay that had called out to me in the store as I had pranced by. It was fine, though the party lasted longer than usual and I probably (as in probably did) drank too much of that wine for my own good. Well, look: I had to also fix a scallion and garlic Alfredo sauce to go with another series of dinner meals that I was preparing to put down into stock. That sauce would be used with a ham and noodle casserole I plan on making sometime. But the whole thing took me two and a half hours to prepare and my hip and leg were really sore. But after dinner I pressed on for another hour of general stove and kitchen clean up. And then: collapsed on the sofa for some mindless movie....

04/08/10: 3 Month Post-Op Surgery Review
I had my 3 month post-surgery exam today, and I finally remembered to ask what my new hip was made of, and I've got titanium in my leg! The surgeon says I'm doing really good considering the severity of the operation overall. I asked him on a scale of 1 to 10 - with 10 being the most severe - how he would rate mine. He looked over at me and just replied, "You're an Eight." Welllllll, alright-NOW! If I'm gonna go through something like that, it might as well be of epic proportion! Go big or go home! I went B-I-G!

04/10/10: The Great 2010 Post April Fools Backgammon Tournament And Thai Turmeric Surprise
I thought it only fitting to host The Great 2010 Post April Fools Backgammon Tournament And Thai Turmeric Surprise particularly in light of the fact that the weather has really been fooling around with us, going from nice to... well, not so nice.

Though there were only 5 of us, the others had a grand time playing backgammon and trash talking while I cooked up a marvelous tumeric (and other spiced) baked cauliflower dinner that I served over a bed of cumin and basil basmati rice.

We finished off the night with the great cake that the Nancarrow's brought with them and the movie of the night: the original Cape Fear. This was the second in our planned series of classic thrillers, and it was terrific.

04/17/10: Rainy Weekend With A Dash of Final Snow
Friday afternoon after getting home from work, I was heading out to get the mail and the rain that had been falling for a couple of days turned into just the slightest of sleet and then just a pinch of snow.

My disciple Rick Downs came over Saturday night for some backgammon, spaghetti, and the silly movie Ninja Assassins and mentioned that he heard that Dixville Notch, way up in the Northern mountains of New Hampshire, got 9 inches of snow, and that even North Conway got around 4 inches.

Geeze, it's getting a little late in the season to be snowing around here. After all, the 15th was the start of boating season! Despite the start of the season, I haven't seen any boats out in the moorages yet anyway. But then the weather overall has been really fierce for weeks now.

Sunday, Colin (above picture) swung by around noon to pick me up so I could take him out for lunch. He wanted to do a lunch so that Marissa and Gary could join us, so chose BG's Boathouse on the Sagamore Creek in Portsmouth.

The last time I was here was when the kids brought me here for lunch last Father's Day. It's a great spot right on the river, but not too busy today, probably because of the chill in the air.

Though overcast, it was a beautiful view out of the restaurant's windows overlooking the river. We opted to eat inside rather than out on the deck, even though the plastic sides were down. A few people braved it out there, though. It would have been okay, but it was pretty cozy inside looking out. We had a great time together; so good that we can all have fun and be relaxed and enjoy events like this.

After Colin dropped me off back home, I put together my shopping list for this week and tonight's dinner. I'm going to fix up quite a bit tonight as I ate everything I had in stock last week. The fridge is barren! Have to fix that!

As I am helping my friend Sue put together some sort of web site for her art work, we chatted about that as I fixed dinner for us. Now, Sue, all you have to do is keep on task and finish what you need to do so I can finish what I told you that I would do. Okay? Whew!

And speaking of dinner, because it was chilly out I decided to fix oven baked paprika chicken thighs in a white wine, onion, garlic, olive oil, Yukon gold potatoes, kale, and sweet peas extravaganza. I also fixed cumin, paprika, and tarragon steamed Brussels sprouts. Marvelous....

04/24/10: Thai Dinner Out and Movie Night At The Garrison: Psycho
Busy week at work so I just collapsed and decompressed Friday night (23rd). For dinner, I had one of last Sunday's meals for dinner. But the height of the night was the second in the Matrix trilogy. I did the first one about a month ago (for about the 15th time) and will get to the third one in the next couple of months. Once every couple years I have to run the whole series.

Up early Saturday morning, and hip and leg feeling pretty good, though lower back was stiff all day. Worked on my programming project and had a major break-through in the theoretical aspects of the foreign currency pricing analysis that I am doing. Very interesting, particularly as some of the results I am seeing programmatically bear up under propositions I determined almost 30 years ago when I started doing this kind of research.

I had to break away from that and meet some of my friends at Thai Cuisine in downtown Dover for dinner. And, of course, we stuffed ourselves, as in s-t-u-f-f-e-d, ourselves and even split a Thai desert between the 4 of us. Huge - and I mean big - plates of food. This is the fourth time, I think, I've had Thai and I actually prefer Indian. I'm not sure I really like all of the more fruity flavors of Thai food, and we had three distinct and very ethnic Thai dishes to sample from as well as the desert. Hey, the Thai beer was really good, though.

After dinner, we beat it back to my condo and met up with another three friends that showed up to watch the next in our series of classic thrillers: Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Man, did I forget what a great movie that is; even today. But now, there are requests for 4 more classic thrillers so the madness will continue through the summer, I suspect. The Nancarrows again contributed a marvelous lemon and blueberry cake. Despite being stuffed, we made a pretty good dent in that, for sure.

04/25/10: Another Great Peter's Sunday Dinner Party For One
Up again early Sunday morning and back still pretty stiff. Got the coffee going and back on the boards throwing code like a crazy person until I couldn't take it anymore. Knocked that off about 4:30pm and went food shopping.

Tonight for Peter's Sunday Dinner Party For One I fixed a marvelous pork chops in a thyme and rosemary vegetable mix in a sauce of grilled onion, carrot and crushed tomatoes and basil. I started out the food prep listening to a CD one of my students, Brian Serven, brought over the other night for me to check out: Yann Tiersen's piano soundtrack to the movie Good Bye, Lenin!. As I emailed him: "Very nice. Somewhat similar in feel to Philip Glass, though where Glass is very haunting, this is a little more lyrical, though I'm not sure I care for some of the mix of voice and some of the variance in the overall feeling of the CD. Whereas I could listen to just about all of Glass's works, I'm not sure I would with this."

From there, I went on to the unbelievable Struggle from the Subway to the Charts by Nuttin But Stringz. Wow! is all I can say about that. Looking forward to doing that one again, for sure! Then, 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane by t.A.T.u. as I stirred the sauce and sipped a wonderful Lindeman's Bin 65 Chardonnay, having, "More fun than humans ought to have." as my 35 year disciple and friend David Landers says. Yeah, baby!.

Took it a little slower with dinner and listened to Bach: The 6 French Suites with Glenn Gould. And then the movie of the night was the 1954 classic Executive Suite with William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck. Nice....

04/30/10: Day Off!
Took the day off! Yup. I had my new tv scheduled for delivery in the morning, and then my former disciple Master Bruce Vinciguerra said he could come by late morning or early afternoon to do the set up. So, I just decided to take the day off from work and relax. Well, I began my next major rewrite of my Forex programming project now that most of the analysis algorithms are functioning as advertised.

The story behind the new tv is that my current 46" LCD tv screen displayed vertical lines several weeks ago, just as it did a year ago and had to be replaced. Well, seems Mitsubishi has had particular problems with the manufacturer of this model's panels that they extended their warranty, which I fell into. Rather than replace the panel a second time, they told me they would give me a new tv. So I asked them, how much to upgrade from a 46" to a 52". So, for $400: sold!

The delivery came about 9:00am and Bruce was here with one of his brothers around noon. It didn't take them long to do the basic setup. Bruce was going to come back later that evening to finish all of the fine tuning, so then I was left here with that tv calling out to me, "Peter.... Peter.... Come watch me...." It was all I could do to resist. But I had so much work to do, I just plowed into the programming until I couldn't stand it anymore.

I went in and slipped the Blu-ray of Crimson Tide into my PS3 and tried to figure out some of the setup functions. I'm an engineer and I just got so frustrated trying to figure out what to do that I threw instruction booklet down. These things are written by engineers, who are the worst people to have write an instruction book. It is just awful; like trying to teach someone English by handing them a dictionary. Great, just great...

Finally, Bruce and his wife Dawn showed up to save me. After Bruce worked through all of the fine tuning settings, we all went out to Cartellis Bar and Grill here in Dover for a marvelous dinner. It has been literally years since we have all gotten together. It was nice to revist an old friendship over great wine, dinner, and atmosphere.

05/01/10: Breaking In The New TV
It was all I could do to stay out of the living room to fiddle with the new tv. But I held out working on some programming until my disciple Rick Downs came over for some spaghetti and backgammon. Then the movie of the night was Tony Jaa in Ong-Bak 2: The Beginning, a totally useless martial arts movie that was just outstanding on a 52" LCD flat screen! I got my new tv fix totally satisfied!

Up around 9:00am Sunday, got the coffee brewing, and settled into some programming. Headed off to the store for food shopping around 3:00pm as wanted to get an early dinner this time so I could have a relaxing evening later with another movie, which turned out to be Night At The Musuem.

I had found an Indian recipe for Spiced Tofu, Cauliflower, and Spinach, but I don't see any use for tofu and I wasn't feeling it for spinach. So, I got some nice lean pork and red leaf lettuce instead. I figured this was going to be a fairly quick fix, but I got behind sipping the wine, chopping stuff up, and doing all this prep work. It was fun, but a little more drawn out than I had planned. Great recipe with garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, turmeric, and scallions. I also fixed some rosemary steamed snow peas, but I'm not convinced that rosemary alone (and in that concentration) came out as good as I had hoped. Buyer beware....