songbird's crazy world

mapquest and your GPS are only as good as the information they're programmed with. Becca is taking the SAT tomorrow. by the time she enrolled for the test, she was closed out of the test center in or school district. the closest test center that still had seats available was in Lake Ronkonkoma, which is about a 25 minute drive from here. Neither of us had ever been to Lake Ronkonkoma, and we had no idea where the school was. so, at the suggestion of her SAT tutor, Becca and I decided to do a practice drive to the test site tonight. I am sooooo glad we did. seems there's a difference between "Lake Ronkonkoma" and "Ronkonkoma", the school says it's in Lake Ronkonkoma, but it's acctually in Ronkonkoma, and the directions we got from Google Maps were just plain wrong. And my GPS was no help either. we rode around Ronkonkoma/Lake Ronkonkoma for about 45 minutes (with memories of looking for our hotel in Boston coming back to us) when we quite accidentally...

I have just returned from Boston -- again. This time I was in town on business. Flew out of Newark yesterday morning (yes, I know, Islip and JFK and Laguardia are all much closer to my house, but the fare out of Newark was unbelievably cheap -- so cheap that the relatively large fare for car service was justified.) I left my house at 4 for a 6:30 flight. What I like about flying out of Newark -- we flew right over Manhattan, at an altitude where I could see all the landmarks. It took all of 45 minutes to fly over the route that took hours and hours to drive last week. My meeting was in the financial district, a very lovely part of town. I got there incredibly early, and wound up kiling time in the local Au Bon Pain. There's something comforting about the familiarity of your favorite chain of coffee shops. My company reserved a room for me at the Omni Parker House , a hotel rich in history . So it was only logical that my colleagues and I have lunch there. I had a lobster roll -- an...

though one doesn't "really count." Becca is a junior. she's done well on the PSAT exam, she's currently preparing for the SAT and the ACT exams, and every day she receives dozens of notices from colleges all over the country asking her to apply. So this week, midwinter recess here in the northeast, my baby and I began to explore the possibilities. Monday. we packed the car and prepared for the long drive from Long Island, NY to Boston, MA. I chose to drive up on 95. It would have been shorter to take a route through Hartford to the Mass Pike, but I have become comfortable with 95, it's the route I take when I drive Jen to University of Rhode Island. to be honest, I'm not used to long drives by myself, I usually have someone else to share the driving, and New York to Boston was a bit daunting. It wasn't a bad drive. we left the house around 2:20 PM, left our town by 3 (Had to run a few errands before we got onto the highway) and were on our way. I put B...

I will post the whole story tomorrow...but it was a great trip.

today I will be driving from Long Island to Boston. Becca and I are booked into a hotel in downtown boston for the next 3 nights. Tomorow we being the college tour process, visitng campuses and talking with students and getting a better idea of where my baby may want to apply. It's exciting and terrifying aall at once.

and not just some random, small, controllable zit. no, I was cursed with the mother of all zits...a huge red blob right in the middle of my chin. at least it's not on my nose...or Icould be mistaken for Rudolph. it's a huge zit, an ugly zit, even a slight bit painful. I'm going to be 49 years old on Wednesday AND I'M STILL GETTING ZITS! in a way I should be grateful that my skin still thinks I'm youthful enough to get zits. I'll go celebrate that youthful glow after Mr. Zit vacates the premises. zits have to be male...only a man can vex a woman as much as this zit is vexing me. and did I get any sympathy from my darling 16 year old? of course not. all she said was "I hope you're planning to take care of that thing before we go to Boston tomorrow."

so, you haven't heard much from me lately. I am posting this from my phone. and I have to be very careful, because if Ipress the CLR button too hard my whole post will vanish into the stratosphere. so excuse the typos. my laptop seems to have bitten the dust. it's been running slow, it overheats, it tells me my hard drive is nearly full amd that I am low on memory. I've had it for 4 years, and I understand laptops have a limited usseful life. I wanted to get it into the Geek Squad months ago. but for reasons I won't get into now, until the fios guy showed up yesterday mine was the only 'puter in the house with an internet connection...and kidlet needed access to turnitin.com. I don't know if my laptop is salvageable now. I have a killer cold. been sick since wednesday. of course I am sick, I am going to Boston on Monday. and my colds tend to morph into ear infections and bronchitis. one time Ieven had pneumonia. and ever notice that the week before v...

Monday February 16th is Presidents' Day -- a 3-day weekend for URI students, and the beginning of midwinter recess at our high school. Just before Jen went back to school last month, she and Becca made plans. Becca is going to visit Jen on 2/12 - that's this coming Thursday. I want Becca to see the URI campus from the perspective of a student (she saw the campus on move-in day, but that's different.) I don't think URI is on Becca's list, but seeing the school will give her a frame of reference when she visits other colleges. and the fact that there's a Jason Mraz concert at URI thursday night...has nothing to do with the timing of the visit. ;-) so the plan was for both girls to come home to Long Island on the 13th. then Becca and I were planning to drive Jen back to school Monday night, because on Tuesday we are headed to Boston to check out several schools. so two days ago I made the hotel reservations...one night in Rhode Island, two in Boston. Jen came ...