2010: Year in Review

It’s been another great year at the Garritys. Tom is a junior in high school and Peter is in 8th grade, his final year of middle school. Peter has really shot up this year and has just about caught up with Tom (if not passed him), and is closing in on Mike very quickly.

In February we went down to Florida to visit Mike’s parents. By the time I got around to booking the flights there were no good deals to be had. I ended up booking a flight with a connection through Milwaukee. Everyone thought we were crazy – Milwaukee in February – we were sure to get snowed in. In the end that was the weekend Atlanta and DC were had that giant snowstorm and were closed for days. We waltzed through Milwaukee with no problems and no delays – who would have guessed. The funny weather did mean it was cold in Florida, but we still had a lot of fun. Particularly spectacular were the pair of nesting Bald Eagles over in Punta Gorda, I wonder if we’ll see them again next year.

It was a great summer weather-wise – it seemed to be nice every single weekend. So we were able to fit in a lot of different activities. Over the July 4th weekend we managed to go canoeing on the Sudbury River in Concord. We reached the North Bridge just as some re-enactors were there to celebrate the 4th. Later in July we went up to Mt. Washington for the annual MathWorks family outing. For once the top of Mt Washington was clear on the Sunday so we took advantage and rode the cog railway to the top. We also did a few day hikes to get ready for Yosemite.

We finally made it to Yosemite, a National Park we’d been looking forward to visiting for years. We did some spectacular hikes in Yosemite including the peak of Cloud’s Rest. At least some of us made it to the peak. There was a narrow spot just before the summit with 1000 foot drops on either side and my fear of heights kept me from making it across. We had wonderful weather the whole week, and took lots and LOTS of pictures. We also had booked a dinner at the Awahnee Hotel months in advance, and it didn’t disappoint.

After Yosemite we spent a week in San Francisco. We stayed in Sunset (on the beach) and got around on the Muni. As a result we ended up seeing a very different side of San Francisco from our earlier trips in addition to some of our old favorites. We did manage to get down to the Monterey Aquarium, which we missed last time. And we saw Abe Mammen, an old friend of Mike’s from the Stellar days. One of the highlights of the SF trip was a visit to the Exploratorium.

This was a particularly good year for me as the basketball fan in the family. The Celtics went to the finals, and I had managed to get tickets to all of the playoff games not just my half season. During the Finals (vs LA Lakers) we met some friends from the Media Lab before the game for dinner. Unfortunately Amon is a very big Lakers Fan, so I made sure to be decked out with plenty of Celtics gear. The Celtics won the game that night, but the Lakers took the series for the championship. It was a really good run for the Celtics – who had been written off by most of the media – and I’m hoping for another good run this year.

On mother’s day weekend we went up to Vermont for Mike’s Aunt Evie’s funeral. At the funeral we saw most of Mike’s father’s side of the family and lots of old friends from Starr Farm. On mother’s day we went out with Mike’s Grandmother on his mother’s side along with Mom and Dad, and Mike’s Aunt Mary. So Tom and Peter had three generations of ‘mother’ there at brunch for Mother’s Day. In the fall I went to France to see my Dad. I’d never been to the south of France before and it was a great time. On the way back I stopped to see friends in England as my flight was through London.

This year was the 25th anniversary of the Media Lab. We also moved into a new building at the beginning of the year. To celebrate these big events the Media Lab threw a huge party for Alumni, Sponsors, current students and staff. It was a great time and we saw many people from the past and present of the Lab. We also went to the 20th reunion party for Stellar, the company that Mike worked for in the 80’s. It was a big turn out for a pretty small company. One person came all the way from Japan. It was lot of fun to hang out with some great people we hadn’t seen in years.

This spring we all had our DNA analyzed. We learned lots of interesting things about our ancestory.I’m continuing to run the Scratch club at the middle school. Over the summer, Peter learned to weld and program the XBox, while Tom was working as a lifeguard at the local swimming pool. Those are some of the highlights, there are lots of other things to read about in our blog.

Tom’s News

Let’s see. . . I don’t remember the beginning of the year at all, except that the band I was in split up, so I will just skip to the middle. (I do that a lot. It’s really a bad habit.) Maybe I should write down everything important halfway through the year. That would probably work well. Anyway, on to the intended subject matter. Wow, that took a really long time to get to. I need to get better at this. So during the summer I lifeguarded at the neighborhood pool. Wow google docs’ dictionary doesn’t like “lifeguarded” or “doesn’t”. I made plenty of money. Not astounding amounts, but almost enough for my purposes, and really a lot when you consider the fact that my job was really just sitting there staring at people all day. Boring but really easy. The rest of the summer was not really doing much. I will explain what has happened with the money I made later.

That was really all that was interesting or important during the summer that was specific to me. (we went to california, but I’m sure that that will be discussed elsewhere in painfully over analyzed detail) (as in more than a few sentences) The start of the school year saw me in a new band, and feeling pretty good. Then my history teacher told us during the SECOND BLOCK OF THE YEAR that we were having a quiz on the summer reading the next day. I was still pretty much asleep, so I didn’t realize that until I was at home. The rest of the year has been in a similar vein; too much homework at the worst possible times. (it manages to be at all of the worst possible times by there being too much of it all of the time) I really hate homework.

Now to discuss what happened to the money I made over the summer, then get horribly off topic. That wasn’t an edit, I just know myself enough to predict getting off topic. See I’m doing it right now! I was right. Wow, I’m amazing. Anyway, I spent my money on components for a computer recently, and then I put them all together to make the computer that I am currently typing this on. I am sure that we’ll put a link in there somewhere, so just go through and click on every word in the paragraph. (post a comment if you actually do) (I will be much amused) It is really fast, and lots of fun, but I am pretty much broke, so my monitor is an old one we had sitting in the attic, and I am saving my money to buy a nicer one right after Christmas and probably end up pretty much broke again. But I will have a really great computer, so it will all be okay. That computer has since been put in my room, and I am currently sitting at my messy (but not as messy as it was) desk. I have discovered one really fun game: League of Legends, usually abbreviated to LoL. It is online, massively multiplayer, unbelievably fun, and entirely free to play. You can unlock any feature in the game if you play enough, but if you pay, you can get some of them much easier. My friends all play it, and it is really great. (try it, the name earlier is probably a link. I haven’t inserted it yet, but I probably will) (or you could try clicking on every word in the paragraph again)

That is really all that is important enough for me to have remembered it right now, so anything else must be relatively unimportant. (Or maybe not. It’s just how I am)

Peter’s News

Instructions to understanding what I did this year.

1. Play Minecraft for 5 hours straight for at least a week every day.

You are done.

Actually here is my real paragraph. So what I did before I found Minecraft (which I will explain later) is learn to weld, bought an Xbox and went crazy over the new Halo game. The first big thing this year was my Xbox I bought it about a month or 2 after the beginning of the year I had a lot of fun with that. The other thing that relates to my Xbox is the new Halo game which I was completely obsessed with for a while (a while being up until I found Minecraft). The obsession started in May when the beta came out. After the beta ended I was just counting the days until the game came out. When it came out I had one of my friends over to play with me it was a whole lot better than the old one. Also over the summer I learned to weld at Minuteman high school. After that we got a welder and messed around a bit with that.

Now on to my second paragraph(yay half way done) this paragraph will be all about one thing Minecraft. Minecraft is an online game my Dad found and showed to me one day I was sittting in the computer room looking at my email and such when I notice my Dad beside me messing around in a 3D blocky world I started watching him and then asked him what the url was for the game. The game is the classic mode at http://minecraft.net after a while playing I looked at what the full version was like on youtube. The things that I saw in the videos intrigued me this was almost better then Halo already. Then I decided to buy the game I started playing and I couldn’t get off. Now I have a relatively private Minecraft server (I say relatively because random people who we call “hobos” appear on the server we found a very nice person like this who helped us a lot) which me and my friends use. Minecraft has taken over my life I play almost every day and I’m no where near tired of it.