Our family has settled in Scituate. We think we’ll be here for a good long while too. With Gabriel on the way, we were looking for houses in the Boston area, and ran into this cute little cottage over Thanksgiving (Abe’s Uncle lives 4 houses down the road). Franny and I drove back the next day to check it out, and we were sold. We pushed the sellers down an additional $85k from their ask, and we had a deal.
We bought the house without a realtor or lawyer – saving $$$ – go us. We can read our own contracts, and who is better aligned with our own interests than, um, us? (If you’re interested, there are great HBS cases on why realtors are completely unaligned with either the seller or buyer’s interests).
We were then the proud owners of a house on a cliff, overlooking the ocean, with a beach at the foot of the cliff for surfing and playing. This was literally the way Franny and I would dream about our perfect house – “wouldn’t it be nice to have a house on a cliff, with surfing waves, by the ocean?”
The house was being sold as a knockdown. We knew better – but it was a scary proposition. The house was built in 1920, fairly solid, but hadn’t been occupied in 8 years, wasn’t completely winterized, and had been destroyed by a bad 1970’s makeover.
Long story short – we are in heaven, we bought at the low point in the market, at a truly hardball price (paid for land only) and then “flipped” our own house with the help of tons of family and friends – thanks everyone! We now live in a beautiful, inspiring, livable, warm Cape Cod summer cottage, we play daily at the beach with our children, and we wake up to sunrises over the Atlantic. Incredible.
My wife and my buddy have been working on Monkey Analytics – a fantastic web startup, which they just launched. Go Team Rocket Monkey! Next step for them is sales and marketing, so I thought I’d share some link love.
It’s so exciting to see this – I remember ~1.5 years ago walking on the beach in Long Island when Franny first had this idea – to bring science / math computation such as Matlab to the cloud / web application space. She built out the concept into a business plan, and then started executing. My good friend James was pretty excited about this too, and had the flexibility (he is a freelancer) to pitch in as well.
Say hello to Gabriel Moyse Murray, our second baby boy! Vital stats: 8lbs 10oz, 22″, born 4/20 at 11:45pm. Franny did this au natural once again, which was impressive (and fast, again – only 10ish minutes of pushing – she was a rockstar!) He is huge like his older brother, but totally unique in his own way.
Gabriel means God is my strength, which plays nicely with Isaiah (God is my helper). We also like the similarity of the short name Gabe with Abe without actually having named a child after ourselves . We liked Gabriel, but didn’t think we’d get to use the name – we were pretty convinced this was a girl. Were we surprised when the new baby had boy doo-dads!
Where do you stand on Ninjas vs. Pirates? Isaiah knows ninjas have the upper hand, and has already started practicing. He was running around outside in his pajamas, picked up a stick, and I snapped these shots with my iPhone. I had to make a comic – he looked like a little ninja master:
Have a look at the standalone shots: these were cut out of the iPhone photos, then passed through a watercolor filter to give them a gravelly dark comic feel.
PS - If you have a better idea for use of these images in a comic let me know – this is a barebones version just to get the idea out.
Isaiah is very proud of having his own laptop. (I picked up an OLPC for him off a fellow Googler who was done playing with it). Tonight he sat in my lap while I helped him open it up. He turned it on, and smiled when it chimed. He then picked it up and walked over to the black rocker, put it down, and sat by himself pinging away on the keyboard.
Photos, photos, photos. Isaiah is loving getting wet in the sprinklers and the pool (as well as the Long Island Sound). As happy parents we take occasional bursts of photos, so enjoy these documenting his laptop and recent sprinkler / pool fun.
Check out this collage of Isaiah. It contains all Isaiah photos we have taken to date (about 1,000). It’s generated using the Shape Collage software I recently stumbled upon. This goes into my suite of cool photo tools (which also includes Rasterbator for hugified posters). Click through to see the full size image (5MB) which is a lot of fun. A detail of the 2nd “a” is shown below.
Have you drawn yourself as a teen? This is an internet meme I couldn’t pass up, though I’m a bit late to the party. (I read about this originally on the Flight Comics blog). I felt I needed to do three versions: the 15-17 year old Abe, the 18 year old Abe, and me today. If you’re honest with yourself, this is actually a lot of fun. Crazy to think how much our world can change. At the core, not much has though; still focused on kindness, honesty, and giving back more than I’ve been given.
One year ago we welcomed Isaiah into the world. Crazy. Francesca and I have been parents for a year. What a wonderful year! Isaiah is walking, climbing, talking (a little), inquisitive, sensitive, overall a joy. Franny and I have grown together as partners, parents, friends. Sometimes stressful, always wonderful.
One year ago we didn’t know when he’d arrive. I remember wanting to know what our child would be like. Whether we were having a boy or girl. Now we know – I couldn’t have imagined it this wonderful. Isaiah is Isaiah, I can’t imagine another child that he would have been. Franny and I are truly rediscovering the world through his eyes.
I’ll leave you with another Isaiah quote – I find it fitting for a first birthday, because Isaiah’s arrival has helped me to slow down in life, to enjoy the here and now and stress less about the future.
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die — Isaiah 22:13
. We liked Gabriel, but didn’t think we’d get to use the name – we were pretty convinced this was a girl. Were we surprised when the new baby had boy doo-dads!
