Magazine Gremlin Strikes Again

It happened again, and as you can imagine, the second time is even more unsettling than the first.

I'm talking about my mystery magazines. A few months ago, I wrote about receiving Outside magazine in the mail without warning, and no one came forward to take credit for a gift subscription or an accidental subscription or a fit of drunkeness or loss of sanity (other than my own).

And I swear, I didn't subscribe to it myself, though I've been enjoying reading the magazine, nonetheless.

Well, I come home from work yesterday, and Liz informs me that I've received the latest issue of Men's Health.

Say what?

And again, I don't recall ever even considering subscribing to Men's Health — not because I'm already healthy (far from it), but because I'm a geek, and geeks read the New Yorker and the Atlantic and maybe Outside (for the fantasy life), but not so much Men's Health.

That said, the latest issue has a nice cover article on Barack Obama. And it's billed on the cover as the "Special Wealth & Power Issue." I could get into that.

Hey, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I'll read the dang magazine. But it's time I got to the bottom of this crazy mystery.

Who is the magazine gremlin?!? Show yourself!!!

Our Pumpkin

From Our Pumpkin

New Haven Fall Foliage

After a rainy, windy Saturday, temperatures reached 60 degrees and the sun dominated the sky Sunday, allowing us to take a beautiful hike at West Rock Ridge State Park.

It's hard to tell whether we've reached peak color. The sky was hazy and some of the color was muted.

Foliage is definately now past peak in Hartford. Driving north five days a week has allowed me to take full view of the changing leaves.

The views from West Rock of New Haven and Long Island sound are just spectacular. Check out more photos of our hiking trip.

From New Haven Fall Foliage

Community Service

About a month or so ago, I started volunteering at the Connecticut Food Bank once a week for two or three hours. The organization is essentially a go-between for area food pantries and food donors. Most of the food comes from grocery stores. The food is either near expiration or the packaging is damaged. On a daily basis, volunteers help sort the food, preparing it for the pantries and soup kitchens.

The majority of the volunteers are retirees or groups from various corporations who come in as part of some company give-back-to-the-community program.

The other folks who help out are there to do community service because they, in some way, broke the law. Most of them are 20-somethings.

For the past two weeks, I've been mistaken for someone who is there to 'serve time.' They usually ask me how many hours I have to put in or just ask straight out why I have to do community service.

I guess I see why people would think that....I'm on the young side. I'm there during normal workday hours, and I'm there by myself, not part of a group. Obviously, I'm not a young professional because I should be at work at 10 a.m.

I think it's funny.

1st Wedding Anniversary

It's really hard to believe that a year has gone by since our wedding, but here it is, a year later. We celebrated by traveling down to New York City with our bikes to ride through Central Park and the Hudson River greenway.

We ate our leftover wedding cake and celebrated with champagne shortly after midnight Monday. In the evening, we went to a fancy restaurant down the street and stuffed ourselves with really good French food.

We looked through our albums, remarking on how good looking our wedding party was (and still is!) and how the whole wedding weekend was everything we could have ever wanted.

Here is a link to some photos from our anniversary weekend and video from our NYC trip is below. (I'm practicing video editing with iMovies -- I'm better with Adobe Premiere. I haven't figured out yet how to set a summary image. That's why it looks all black. The video is on the grainy side, too.)

30

Happy 30th birthday Sarah Casey!

Odds & Ends

The Hartford Courant launched its new redesigned, reconfigured newspaper Sunday, causing me a late night at work Saturday. Courant.com was tweak slightly, and there were a few techinical glitches getting the print edition's content onto the web.

On top of that, Paul Newman died, with news breaking Saturday. Newman lived in Connecticut, so we really pulled out all the stops in terms of coverage both in print and online.

Our weekend was one of doing errands and trying to relax. Dave and I registered to vote Monday after getting the oil changed in my car.

Dave also planned to give my car a tune up, but his toolbox, which he left unattended outside for about 10 minutes, was stolen! He's had that toolbox since his days of repairing, tinkering and fixing up his old Triumph TR6, a British sports car from the early 1970s that he eventually sold when we were living in Wausau.

I'm starting to prepare a syllabus for the class I'm teaching next year on online journalism. Dave continues to train hard for his first marathon on Nov. 2 in NYC.

Dave and I both can't wait until the election season is over!