We drove past our old house in Roslindale, which made Maddie (now 7) nostalgic, but which Max (4) doesn’t really remember. We also drove past Fallon Field playground, where we spent many an hour, and the arboretum, in which we would have taken a walk had the weather been kinder.

We took the kids’winter coats to Boston, and the weather justified our decision. Then we got back to the DC area, and were soon digging out their summer sandals. We also had to get out the allergy medication: Max started sneezing while we were still on the plan descending toward BWI airport.

This is a great part of the world, especially if you can stand the pollen, the heat to come, the traffic, and a few other things. I still miss Boston, though.

Many years ago, I joined DEC in the UK, the land of my birth, as an instructor teaching software, mainly database software. Staying with the firm and with database, I moved to France and then to New England. After a few years, I felt that it was time for a change – from the industry, but not from New England.

DEC was acquired by Compaq, which was later acquired by HP. Most of DEC, that is. The database part was acquired by Oracle.

Years after that, I was on Newbury Street in Boston, and came across this sign. It had obviously been buried under another sign, which was in turn making way for yet another sign, at the same building. It was a rather sad relic of the firm.

That sad stuff said, I’m glad that I was part of DEC, and that it was part of my life. All the best to Ken Olsen’s family, and to everyone else who ever referred to him as “Uncle Ken.”

My thoughts are with my Boston buddies. I hope no third aquapocalypse awaits.

Meanwhile, here in DC, it’s hot, and I’m not sure how to coax the mighty-looking air conditioner into life…

But sports loyalties are stubborn things, so it’s the Pats I’m rooting for. And after 20+ years in the USA, I’m still not sure that football isn’t played with a sphere.

I wrote the above while waiting for Chinese food about an hour before kickoff. I don’t believe there’s anything in there that might have jinxed the Patriots…

Saturday’s storm broke all records for a December snowfall and buried the Washington area, forcing authorities to suspend public transportation, declare a state of emergency and plead with residents to stay home…

The storm began in the Gulf of Mexico and continued northeast along a track meteorologists call an “I-95 special,” growing most intense over the Washington area. New York and Boston also had heavy snowfall, but by the time the storm reached that area, its heart was over the ocean so those cities received less snow…

Some areas, particularly in Southern Maryland, experienced wind gusts up to 40 mph. The total measured snowfall at Reagan Airport at 8:58 p.m. was 16.3 inches, but it was as high as 23 inches elsewhere in the region. That would be more snow in a 24-hour period than the region typically gets in an entire winter.

Meanwhile Boston braces for a great white wave, and Universal Adam features the Snowmageddon tweets.

I took the photo yesterday morning, less than halfway through the storm. It’s part of the rather good Flickr group Sprung from Silver Spring.

I’ll follow links to Globe content from various places, notably Largehearted Boy and Universal Hub. LHB, a music and lit blog, is based in the deep south (of the USA), but frequently links to Globe content. A recent link goes to an article on collecting music in the age of downloading.

UH is very much a Boston blog, curated by Adam, a former near-neighbor who I never had the pleasure of meeting in real life (although we were in the same room at least once). The most recent post at the time of this writing proclaims today Malls Suck Day at the Globe, on the basis that there are three articles comparing malls to downtowns, with the comparisons being in favor of downtowns. It’s good to see that the Globe isn’t pandering to its mall-based advertisers.

And one thing, I let float away. We had a helium balloon bearing the slogan Good Luck left over from a weekend potluck. I took it out onto the deck, and let it float away. It too was tired, so it didn’t spring straight up into the air. Rather, it floated across Walworth Street, rising enough to clear wires and rooftops.

May the balloon of good luck float toward you, good people of Boston.

Universal Adam pointed to a “missing Boston” post from Alex Howard, who made a similar move earlier this year. I’m already with with Alex on several of the items on his list, such as Jamaica Pond and the Arnold Arboretum.

I’ve been disappointed with the response on Craigslist. Items such as air conditioners, humidifiers, didn’t get any responses. We managed to sell a bookshelf (several people responded, we sold it to the person who could come and collect it) and a small couch (we delivered).

Still, that’s probably what would have happened had we used classified ads, back in the day.

It was a lovely sunny October day, we bumped into some friends, we bought some art… The print of dinos reading is by Eric Sturtevant: our home life sometimes resembles the picture.

The two smaller prints are by Chen Reichart, whose blog and Etsy store are called botodesigns. The autumnal print seems to illustrate that we should become a two-Android family soon. Chen and her partner were kind enough to compliment me on the tshirt I was wearing, and to ask where I got it (Threadless, Star Men in Moon’s Milk).

Indeed, the SoWa market is like Threadless, Etsy, and similar web sites come to life, in ways that demonstrate advantages of real life over the web. The market has a good selection of tshirts, crafts, etc. It also has an antique market next door, in a rather wonderful old trolley barn.

The market also provides the chance to meet the artists: that’s face-to-face, the ultimate social medium. On Sunday it had sunshine, halloween candy and other seasonal flavorings. Now, time to post this, and get ready for halloween itself.