Easy To Slip

It's so easy to slip
It's so easy to fall
And let your memory drift
And do nothin' at all
All the love that you missed
All the people that you can't recall
Do they really exist at all

- Lowell George


It's early on Boxing Day...trying to sort out everything that has been going on during the past week. As I mentioned yesterday, my mom fell at work last week and fractured her left wrist and right arm. She's in a rehab facility that just opened up....told it's beautiful, but there's only five patients in there so far. She's facing six weeks of physical rehab, then will probably miss more time on disability. Spoke to her very briefly yesterday - my brother had her cellphone as she can't hold anything, and started crying while we talked. Broke my heart - it's difficult to be hospitalized during the holidays. We'll be down over the weekend to visit her.

The family is scrambling to make sure my dad is taken care of - at this stage of his Alzheimer's, he can't be left alone. So my sisters, brother, nieces and nephews take turns staying with him. I took him back home last Saturday after visiting my mom and stayed with him for awhile. It was getting late in the day, and he usually gets more disoriented in the late afternoon/early evening (believe this phenomenon is called "sundowning")...he started asking me where I lived and where I was born. I didn't know how I'd react when he didn't recognize/remember me, but I knew the day would come, so I just reminded him I was his son. He's coping so far, but I know he misses my mom terribly.

Christmas was pretty low-key. We had dinner Monday night and exchanged gifts afterwards. G. got Guitar Hero 3 and was rocking that Monday night and yesterday. We hit 7:30 Mass yesterday and went to Sake on Rte. 1 for a traditional Japanese dinner. :-)

Also got called at 10:30pm Christmas Eve on a mail relay server that was non-responsive. I wound up driving up to the datacenter and getting it back online - it's OT and makes up for the time I missed for the half-day I took on Christmas Eve.

Need to finish up some shopping and get ready for the trip to see my family this weekend...then things will settle down.

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas. I hope Santa brought you everything on your list.

Please take a second to keep my parents in your prayers/positive thoughts/good mojo. My mom fell at work last Tuesday and fractured her left wrist and right elbow. She's in a rehabilitation facility and can't use her arms due to swelling and soft casts being on them. My dad is trying to deal with the fact that she'll be away for six weeks while she heals up.

Thanks and God's blessings on us all.

A quiet but productive weekend

Get most of my daughter's Christmas shopping done? Check.

Install some needed weatherstripping on the drafty backdoor to the house? Check.

Cook a very tasty red beans and rice dinner for the family today? Check.

Get sufficient rest to get over this cold I've had for a week? Check.

Find time to hit the holiday wine tasting at Ourglass with L, and have some Layer Cake Shiraz last night? Check.


It's all good. :-)

Running Hot And Cold

Another week, another cold. Don't know if I just ran myself down, or caught something on the flight back, but it's here and I feel tired and congested. Been taking Zicam this go-round - seems to be working OK.

My Jacksonville trip was a blast. Went down last Friday morning with 2 of the guys I tailgate with. We stayed just outside of the airport - headed into downtown JAX in the late afternoon and hit a reception for the BC booster club. I met a lot of other friends there and caught up with a bunch of people. We headed over to The Landing a few hours later - it's an outdoor tourist trap on the St. John's River, lots of bars and restaurants. Had an overpriced steak for dinner and hung out in the courtyard with the other fans, listening to cover bands and knocking back some adult beverages. By the time we left, there were probably a couple thousand people there having fun.

Saturday morning we did the one-stop shopping deal at the local mall...hit the Walmart/Always supermarket for provisions, and the guys went to the liquor store next door for some Jim Beam. Got down to the stadium lot around 10:30 and settled in with a couple dozen BC fans to tailgate. One friend's brother (who is now a local) gave directions to a coworker to get him to our lot, then figured out they knew one another from schooldays.

The game was a grinder...left too many points on the field in the first half and got shut down in the second. The funny part was my friend getting put on national TV after the deciding INT return...his cellphone started ringing off the hook with calls and text messages that he was a celebrity. I told him he was now the poster boy for BC fan depression.

Did some more tailgating after the game, then it was back to the hotel, where we finished up in the lounge. Flew back Sunday. It was a great time.

Happy Thanksgiving

Having a cup of coffee, getting ready to load the car and head out to visit my brother-in-law. Back on Friday and then the last BC home game of the year. Booked my trip to Jacksonville next weekend for the ACC championship game, which should be fun.

Safe travels to all who are on the road and in the air today.

Birthdays

L. and I took a friend to All Seasons Table for a birthday dinner this past Saturday night. He liked the restaurant as much as we do - and it's quickly becoming one of my favorites. We had sushi as appetizer, and I had some crispy duck in a Thai sauce. Fried green tea ice cream for dessert. Happy to see the restaurant full at 7pm, with folks waiting on tables. Then home to watch a disheartening BC loss.

Did a lot of errands over the weekend, as well getting to the gym both days. Taking tonight off, so it's been 5 out of 7 days. It's a good start, and I'm hoping to keep to a similar schedule this week. Brought in my winter clothes and put the summer ones out in the garage...with temperatures in the high 20s the past few days, it's about time.

As for the other birthday, our oldest cat turned 17 over the weekend. Bebop's been part of our family since we bought our house - we have a picture of him smelling G when we brought her home from the hospital. He's slowed up considerably and has some trouble seeing - right now he's curled up next to me on the couch as I type this.

Shhhh.....batteries recharging

It's a quiet Friday night...no plans at all. The only definite item on the agenda is taking a friend out to dinner for his birthday tomorrow night; other than that, there's things to do like bring in the winter clothes/take out the summer clothes, housework, etc. That's all on my time and pace, which I'm thankful for. And with that, I bid you good night.

Super Special Overnight Posting!

I'm sitting on my couch, half-asleep, waiting on a DBA in Dallas to finish a backup and upgrade Oracle software. I went to bed around 9:30 and slept fitfully until 1:30. If I can get back to bed by 4, I'll be shocked. Looks like a long day ahead of me. Ah, the exciting life of the IT professional - and yes, I am getting overtime.

Been trying to get back on my exercise routine. Between football games and a cold, I'd been out of the gym for a week and a half. My gut has expanded accordingly, so it's time to get serious. I made it to the gym last night and tonight, but I already know I'm going to be too zonked to do much of anything Thursday.

Saturday night was a doozy. Got up to my usual parking place at BC around 5pm, and wound up sitting in the car for 2 hrs with The Captain and Count Macula, drinking beer and talking. The weather was horrendous...cold with wind-driven rain. By 7pm, we headed up to campus to meet up with our usual tailgate crew, who ran late. The funny part was meeting an FSU fan who was a good friend of my cousin down in NJ back in the day. Wound up getting stuck with 8 ounces of Bushmill, which I had to down just before gametime.

The weather actually improved during the game itself...the rain let up by halftime and the wind died down by game's end. Not a happy ending for the good guys, unfortunately. I wound up getting home by 1:30am and was appropriately useless on Sunday.

Winter is starting to rear its head - getting the winter clothes out and putting the summer clothes away is at the top of my to-do list this weekend. I already scheduled some maintenance for the snowblower with the local hardware store. It's about 37 degrees in the backyard as i type this, and I'm warm, albeit tired.

Shelter From The Storm

Just starting to see some rain from the remnants of Hurricane Noel. I have a decision to make in a few hours as to my pregame activities before FSU-BC. There's no question of staying home, but I need to decide when and where to meet up with people. The latest forecast is for heavy rain and wind in the hours just before kickoff.

Just getting over a cold, and I'll most likely get drenched even if rain gear, but hey. I'm a fan and this is what I do.

Run Your Body Down

Today is my nineteenth wedding anniversary. All credit should go to L, who puts up with my nonsense. I'm no one's idea of a day in the park to live with, but she manages. :-)

After running myself down all of last week, I hit the jackpot and caught a head cold. I've been working the Coldeez and feel a bit better, but I also know I'm pretty much down for the week. I need to point to Saturday, as my brother's driving up for the FSU-BC game. So, it will finally be early nights and taking it easy...like I should've done last week.

The Jersey trips usually take something out of me...the drive, meeting up with friends. Unfortunately, I had a very late night on Wednesday doing some maintenance, then the BC-VT game Thursday, then out to the local for a while on Friday. By Saturday, I was dragging, but I had promised my friend I'd go see him and the team he's coaching, so that turned into a long day between the game and heading out afterwards. I woke up feeling horrible Sunday, and here I am now. You'd think I would've learned by now.

I'll have to do some housecleaning to be ready by Saturday, but that will have to wait another day or so. All I'm thinking about now is the Nyquil I'll be taking in an hour.

A long few days

Back home from New Jersey, updating the blog and watching the Indians-Red Sox game 7. It's been a lot of driving and late nights, going back to Thursday. And on to the recap...

Went to the Experience Hendrix show at Hampton Beach Thursday night. I enjoyed it a lot - got to see some of my favorites, like Buddy Guy and Robert Randolph, as well as some players I've grown to appreciate, like Doyle Bramhall, who did a wonderful cover of Angel. Mick Taylor played an extended version of Catfish Blues, which didn't do a lot for me. I've never been a big Kenny Wayne Shepherd fan, but thought his songs were good, especially the Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) finale with Randolph. A friend stuck around after the show and talked to Bramhall and Billy Cox and said both were extremely courteous to the fans. I split as I had to be up by 5:45 Friday and had to drive an hour home through thick fog. All in all, a good time.

I dragged through work Friday on four and a half hours sleep. I left from Maynard @ 4:15pm and wound up needing five hours to get to Jersey. Drove through rain better much the length of Connecticut and hit some traffic at the beginning on 495, and at the CT-NY line. I was pretty much exhausted by the time I got to the hotel - checked in and got settled, then headed over to my sister's place to work on her PC. I finished pretty quickly and was back at the hotel by 11.

Spent Saturday with my parents - my dad's Alzheimer's is progressing. He was pretty quiet for most of the day, and I noticed he frequently zoned out on our conversations. He really doesn't initiate conversations very much anymore, although he does well when I or other people talk to him. His short-term memory is pretty much shot. It's sad to see. My mom is holding up OK, but it must be a nightmare to see someone you've been married for 50 plus years disintegrating.

Went out to a Portuguese restaurant in Lyndhurst called Tero's Saturday night with a friend. Dinner was delicious - had clams in a garlic broth for an appetizer and a huge paella as the entree. Highly recommended. I didn't want to bring the leftovers back in the car, so I stopped up where my brother was bartending and gave them to him. Hung out and watched the Sox and some college football. By the time I got back to the hotel and ready for bed, it was 1:30.

Drtove home today after stopping by and seeing my folks...much easier drive and got home in about 4 hours. Listened to the Giants win their fifth in a row on the drive. I'm cooked now though...early nights this week!

The Torture Never Stops

Football season has been wearing me out, but I'm not really complaining. BC is now 7-0 and rolling along to a showdown next Thursday night with Virginia Tech. Watched the Notre Dame game between a benefit at Avenue C and the Ale House. Then off to Burlington to meet up with a friend and watch the Sox. Needless to say, it was a long day, but a lot of fun.

It doesn't get any easier though - going to Hampton Beach Thursday night to see the "Experience Hendrix" show. Some of my favorite guitarists are on the bill (Buddy Guy, Robert Randolph, Robby Krieger, Doyle Bramhall) playing with Billy Cox (Band of Gypsies bassist) and Mitch Mitchell (JHE drummer). Looking forward to it...meeting up with some friends there. Then on Friday it's down to NJ for a family visit. I want to spend some time with my dad before the holidays start up.

The way things are going, I might have a quiet weekend in December. Maybe. :-)

Flatfoot

Managed to get to the doctor this week to have my ankle looked at. He thinks it's a strained tendon, which will take a while to heal. While he's looking at me, he says, "You've got flat feet! Get some arch supports!" Now I've either made it through 50 years without knowing that fact, or I have fallen arches. So out I go to CVS and now I'm adjusting to having the supports in my shoes. I also bought an ankle support for when I work out. Aging is fun, huh?

Been to the gym three out of the last 5 days, so I'm making progress. I've lost a couple of pounds, so I'm getting there. Busy day tomorrow...going to a benefit in the mid-afternoon, then over to my local to watch the BC-ND game.

Catch up

Been way too long to update this blog. So, here's what's happening....

Have to call the doctor tomorrow. My right ankle has been swelling on me, mostly after standing too long or exercising. I felt something pop in it when I was playing volleyball at a company outing during the summer - it hasn't been an issue until two or three weeks ago. I haven't been good with my gym attendance, so it might be inactivity has weakened the muscle support around the ankle. Could be a lingering injury or the onset of arthritis....but I won't know until I get it looked at. I did buy a ankle support wrap after going to the gym this afternoon, so I'll use that until I get in.

Speaking of the gym, today was my first day back in two weeks. My weight is back up near 230 and my gut has returned. I had a cold that settled in my sinuses two weeks ago, and last week was a blur between work, attending the Dylan/Costello show and going to the BC game. The funny thing is that up until recently, I would've beaten myself over this, but nowadays I realize it and just set about to correct it. Maybe it's the onset of wisdom. :-)

Anyway, I know I need to get back on the stick and get into the gym 5 days a week. That and cut out the sweets, etc. I'll set a target weight/waist size and that usually gets me started.

The BC season has been an extremely pleasant surprise...they figured to be good, but undefeated and ranked #4 in the nation is heady stuff. I attended my 6th game in a row this past Saturday (5 home and Atlanta) and I'm more than happy to have a week off and watch the Notre Dame game on TV. I was actually thinking of driving down to NJ this weekend to see my family, but decided a weekend at home was needed. I'll probably head down the weekend of the 20th.

L and I went to see Bob Dylan (and his band) and Elvis Costello (solo) at the DCU Center in Worcester last Tuesday night. Met up with some friends and had dinner/drinks, then headed in to catch Elvis into his second song. I've been an Elvis fan for decades, and I loved the solo format. He played 45 minutes and mixed in the hits with some unreleased songs. Hope he comes back next year with his full band.

Dylan's voice is shot, even by his standards. The rumor is that he has carpal tunnel syndrome, which limits him to guitar on his first 3 songs, before switching over to keyboards for the rest of the evening. He has a great band though and I thought it was a good show. Glad I finally got a chance to see him.

Took G out on the road for the first time two weeks ago, on an early Saturday morning. She did well - was understandably nervous when she started, but settled down and even got out on two of the main drags here.

Work has been slow...I'm growing more and more doubtful of there being a fulltime job for me once the work is transitioned to a data center out of the state. However, I am working and should be secure at least through the end of the year, if not a bit into the new year. It's been a full year since I was let go from my last job - can't say I miss it.

Oh Atlanta

Spent the past weekend down in Atlanta...the centerpiece of the trip was the BC-Georgia Tech game, won by the Eagles 24-10. Had a great time and got to see some college friends for the first time in years.

Started Friday morning with L driving me out to Logan for a 12:25 flight. Met up with the Captain and Count Macula and settled in for a $9 bloody at Game On. A beer and it was time to board, suitably relaxed. First time I'd flown in 3 years, and all went well. We were held up approximately 15 minutes due to some weather in Atlanta. A safe landing and we were off to get the rental.

From the time we got off the plane to leaving the terminal, it started to rain. Hard. By the time we got to the rental lot, it was pouring. We discovered we had been given an SUV...which I had never driven before. We got out on Rte. 85 north, and the wipers couldn't keep up with the rain. Cars had their four ways flashing while driving 15 mph. Great fun! I thought I was being crowded by cars on either side, until I realized the SUV was big enough to fill the lane.

We stayed at the Wingate Inn in Buckhead, and I recommend this hotel highly. Good value, clean rooms, great staff. They steered us around and gave us a good recommendation on barbecue for the tailgate. We checked in, got squared away and repaired to the bar for a few beers.

Drove out later to visit my friend Scott and his family...he was kind enough to grill us steak, fry us some okra and make us feel at home. Drove back later in the evening and met Count Macula at the ESPN Sports Zone to catch the end of the Yanks-Sox game. Met a couple of BC fans down for the game there, then headed over to Fado's to close the evening out. When we were down in Buckhead in 1998, it was hopping. They've had a lot of trouble there since, and the area's being converted to a Rodeo Drive shopping area.

Woke up a bit fuzzy-headed Saturday morning...after a few coffees and Advils, I stood ready to face the day. Wound up driving the Captain down Peachtree St to the GT campus in the late morning. Tech fans were already out tailgating at 11:30 - a good 8+ hours before gametime. Stopped and checked out The Varsity - The Captain has horrified by the greasy food on display, and we both took a pasadena on eating there. Bought a Tech shirt for G and headed back. I met a former colleague from my old job, who had moved to the area with her husband a year ago. We had lunch across the street at Tin Lizzy's cantina, and we had some excellent tacos. Spent some time talking with Michele about work and life - she's a great gal.

After lunch, I walked back to the hotel and my friend Steve and his S.O. Lynn had just arrive. hadn't seen him since my last visit in 98. They checked in and started in on the Michelob Ultras in their cooler. Not my first choice, but better than no beer at all. Scott and his family arrived a bit later, and we had our traveling party.

I had borrowed a cooler from Scott the night before, and had already bought some beer and ice during the day. The Captain and I finished buying provisions and got some barbecue at a place I can't remember the name of. We gathered up everyone and made the trip to the campus just after 5. I knew where the pay lots were - what I didn't realize was that one of them was directly across the street from The Cheetah, Atlanta's premier gentlemen's club. In the interest of full disclosure, two members of the traveling party made their way over for a visit (no names please, and rest assured your humble blogger wasn't one of them). Everyone enjoyed the 3 Bs (beer, Bushmill's and barbecue) and we were fed and lubricated for gametime.

The walk over to the stadium was an experience. We went down frat row and saw more drunk students than you could shake a roofie at. The Tech fans were a gracious sort for the most part, with the exception of the drunk kids throwing bottles on the field during the game. We got to our seats in the BC section and rooted the Eagles on to victory. Saw a few people I know from the home games, along with the CFO from where I currently work.

The game ran long and we didn't get back to the hotel until nearly 1am. Tried to get a last beer at Tin Lizzy's, but it was packed full of kids and we called it a night. The next morning we all met up for breakfast, said our goodbyes and we were on our way to the airport for a noon flight home. Got in early and after dropping the Captain off in North Station, got home by 4pm.

Plenty of fun, shared with good company. And we won.

Full Circle

Spent part of the weekend teaching G how to drive...we were in the parking lot of the hospital where she was born, although it's been turned a medical office complex. Hard to believe 16 years passed so quickly. G passed the permit test last Thursday, and she's been out with both L and myself. Once she gets a bit more comfortable, we'll transition to the streets, most likely on a quiet Sunday morning. G also starts sophomore year in HS tomorrow, so it's back to the old commute.

Had a busy weekend...G's nose was out of joint when I didn't take her to the Spirit game two weeks ago, so I took her last Friday night and we were rewarded with a 3-2 win. Saturday was the BC home opener, so I met up with Capt. Lou and some other friends and enjoyed a great tailgate and an Eagles win. Sunday we all went out for a housewarming cookout at our friends Dave and Mary. And on Monday I rested. :-)

G and I hit the WWE show last Monday. She loved it, I thought it dragged a bit. This was all before the suspensions hit, so we pretty much saw the full roster in action.

Another home game this weekend, and then it's the Atlanta trip.

Monday Night Raw

Heading into Boston in about an hour with G - we're going to the WWE show at the Garden. G is bouncing off the walls as I type, as she's about to see her hero, John Cena, in person. It should be fun.

Spent last Friday at the North Shore Spirit game in Lynn with a couple of friends from the Noise Board. Sat behind home plate, drank a few beers, watched the game and talked about music. The home team even had a chance to tie the game in the bottom of the ninth, but the runner was thrown out at home (rather easily). Went into Chinatown yesterday for a dim sum run at Emperor's Garden and some bubble tea in Harvard Square.

Hard to believe the football season starts this week. Will have to fight the students moving into their apartments to get to the BC game on Saturday.

"If I knew I was going to live this long, I would've taken better care of myself"

Just a quick note - successfully made it through G's sweet 16 party and my own 50th birthday. Both events went well, and I promise to follow up with more information. Right now I'm dead tired from going to the gym and working to get the weight I've put on since vacation back off to stay.

I count my blessings and am thankful I'm here, relatively healthy and surrounded by family and friends. And that's what it's all about in the end, innit?

Sheiky Baby!

After getting back from NH on Saturday, I took G over to Somerville to the MWF show. The main attraction was The Iron Sheik, who was surprisingly low-key. No ranting and raving - he sat behind a table and signed autographs and posed for pictures. In the photo above, the guy on the left called a friend on his cellphone, then handed it over to Sheiky, who was nice enough to chat for a minute. now, I do have to say the Sheik was a bit glassy-eyed, but I didn't bring a breathalyzer along, so I'm left to my suspicions.

The show itself wasn't bad - they imported talent like Road Dogg and Alex Shelley from TNA, and Joey Mercury, who was recently released by the WWE. The usual local performers were there, like Slyck Wagner brown and Rick Fuller, along with Diehard Eddie Edwards, whom I had never seen before and came away impressed by. G liked Nocturne, and happily razzed him as "Emo Boy". It ran long though, didn't get out of there until 11:25. The crowd was down to under 100 by the end.

G had never been up close for matches ( we sat in the third row), and she was pretty impressed by the bumps the guys took. All told, a fun evening.

Vacation 2007

Back home after spending the week in the North Conway NH area. We rented a condo in Glen, just up the road from Storyland. I'll post some pictures later on. We had a blast...did some canoeing on the Saco River, rode the alpine slide at Attitash, dipped our toes in the falls at Diana's Baths. Ate a lot and relaxed. The weather was fine until the end of the week, when it turned hot and humid. It's good to be back home though, just relaxing on the couch and watching the Yanks on the tube. Back to the salt mines tomorrow.

Errata

I misidentified the young man who played with Buddy Guy Friday night - his name is actually Quinn Sullivan, and here's a video of him playing with Guy earlier this year in New Bedford. It runs over 9 minutes, but well worth checking out:

Too Much Fun

Busy weekend - went up to Lowell Friday night to see Buddy Guy at Boarding House Park. My friend had never seen him, so I bought tickets last week and off we went. Left @ 4:45pm figuring we'd be fighting traffic on Rte. 93, but it never materialized, so we were parked next to the venue by 5:20. We had an hour to kill, so we wound up in a place called the Blue Shamrock, which was a tad sketchy, but had Guinness on tap and therefore was acceptable. Got back to the venue @ 6:30 and it was already full up due to general admission seating. So we perched on the concrete wall at the back of the park and watched the show from there.

Buddy can be hit or miss, but he was on Friday night. Did a great version of Otis Redding's "Dreams To Remember". He did all the schtick too...plucking notes with a drumstick, playing with just his fretting hand, playing with his teeth. He's something to watch at age 72. At the end of the show, he brought out an 8 year old guitarist named Quinn Sullivan who was amazing for his age. He showed no signs of nervousness and traded licks with the master. I'll have to post some video of him when I get a chance. A fun night all around.

Saturday night I went over to the Abbey Lounge with my friend George - saw the Mess Me Ups, the Lyres and the Classic Ruins. Great bill - all 3 bands were good. George and I were talking about how we saw the singer for the Lyres (Jeff "Monoman" Conolly) at The Rat with DMZ over 30 years ago. Tempus has fugited, but his band still rocks. Stopped off in Malden on the way home and saw Bootleg Willy for an hour.

This week will see me getting my unmotivated self back to the gym...I strained my back last weekend, and I haven't worked out since then. I'm feeling better, and I want to get a week's worth of exercise in before heading out for vacation.

Speaking of vacation, it's almost upon me. Looking forward to it greatly...have my books picked out and will spend the time doing things with the family and just relaxing and reading. I've made up my packing list and will spend next Saturday doing laundry and packing up. We've made our list to things to do (horseback riding, Alpine slide at Attitash, perhaps some canoeing/rafting on the Saco River) and places to eat, so I guess we're as ready as we'll be.

Sorting things out, part 2

Will wonders ever cease? I'm actually fulfilling my promise!

I guess this is as good a time as any to write about the Benoit family murder/suicide. People who know me in the real world will tell you that I've been a wrasslin' fan for over 30 years. I saw my first live show at Madison Square Garden in 1975 (George "The Animal" Steele v. Bruno Sammartino main event) and my most recent house show was a few months ago at the Lowell Auditorium. Truth be told, I had started losing interest a couple of years ago, until last summer. We were on vacation in NH, and G decided she wanted to watch some of the Raw show one night. And got hooked. Big time. So she had a million questions about the matches, the personalities and the business, so I started watching the shows again.

Two weeks ago I was home, while G and L were down on the Cape for a dance competition. G called and wanted to know if I had heard any news about Chris Benoit. I checked online and saw the awful news about his being found dead with his wife and son. I wish I could say differently, but I had read he had missed a PPV the night before, and I thought "murder-suicide". And unfortunately, I was right. G has tried to come to terms with why someone who was described as a good husband and father could commit such a horrible crime. I wish I had a simple answer - other than the fact we can work and travel with people and never realize the darkness that exists within them.

My own feeling is that this tragedy is just the latest example that the wrestling industry is built on human wreckage, and it's getting harder for me to reconcile the "turn your brain off" entertainment value with the addictions and physical destruction that follows in its wake. When ECW was breaking over a decade ago, I'd watch Mick Foley and KNOW that he was suffering a physical toll during his matches. Ten years later and Foley talks about forgetting the route home from the airport, along with a multitude of physical problems.

It gets harder and harder to reconcile.

Sorting things out, part 1

Almost a month since my last post - for shame. There's a lot to catch up on, so I'll split this into early morning and evening segments.

Still hard at work in Maynard - hard to believe it's 8 months now. Been busy with projects and getting ready for more server migrations to the Dallas operations center. Had a fairly easy commute last week with so many people being out for holiday week, but I'm guessing the grind starts again this morning.

One of the company executives held an outing a few weeks ago at his home out in Acton. I had a good time - lots of food, brought a bottle of Riesling. All was well until the volleyball game started mid-afternoon - I was asked to play and proceeded to run myself into the ground. The main problem is that I refuse to acknowledge my age, so I was hurling myself into the sand trying to dig out balls, and generally putting my body to much more stress than I could handle. I got home that night and I felt like I had been hit all over my body with a wiffleball bat. I actually needed 6 Advils to get through the next day and a half. I told Lofty Mario about my athletic efforts and he told me, "Dude, we're getting too old for that."

Looking forward to vacation in three weeks. Heading up to the Mount Washington Valley with the family - we rent a condo for the week, which brings pool privileges there. It's great to wake up, look out the living room windows and see the Presidentials in the distance. We'll be celebrating G's sixteenth birthday while there, and she'll be applying for her driver's permit the following Monday.

One main drawback to the volleyball fiasco was getting out of the gym routine. At one point, I had gone 5 days in 3 weeks, which doesn't get the job done. I got back the last 3 days, so I'm hoping I'm back on schedule.

That's all for now...more later, I promise.

A good night to play catch-up

I'm sitting on the couch, zonked, watching the Mets-Yanks on the dish. Just to clarify, I'm zonked as in tired...got called the past two nights in a row by work. Was up from 11-a Wednesday night and 11-2 last night, so I'm running on 9 hours sleep the last 2 nights. I do get OT, so I can't complain too much. We're in the process of rolling out a production application in Dallas, so there are some growing pains involved. I got home @ 6pm and immediately took a nap for over an hour.

Finally got tracked down by Sirius radio - when I bought my car nearly 3 years ago, it came with a one year demo for satellite radio. Well, on May 31st the demo finally ran out. I play it a lot - G listens to Hits One when she's in the car, and I switch between Howard, the rock stations and some classical. So I bought a subscription, and all's well with the commute again.

Speaking of which, G is done with school for the year, so I'm leaving earlier, and the drive has been a bit shorter. My mood is a bit better, but I still want to evaluate my options as far as employment goes. My fellow contractor and I were told this week that we're extended through the end of the year, which would put me there for over a year.

Not much planned for the weekend...L and G are taking me to Sake on Rte.1 on Sunday for Father's Day. One of my favorites - they do a great job with sushi, as well as tempura dishes. Have some yardwork to do, as well as washing the car. Updating the resume should be on the list as well.

Recital

G. had her dance recital yesterday - couldn't be prouder of her. She did a great job...she has the ability to make her dancing look effortless, although you know she's working as hard as she can. Two performances, each with 9 dances, including the opener, the finale and a solo. I made the afternoon performance and the second half of the evening show, as I had to come home and take care of the pets in the late afternoon. L. stayed and rooted her on through both shows. Poor G slept until 12:15 today, as expected. She has finals this week, then starts summer vacation on Thursday.

Pretty quiet day today - mowed the lawn and did some cleaning up around the house. Hard to believe the final episode of The Sopranos is less than 4 hours away. It's been my favorite show for years now, and I didn't even start watching until the second season. I grew up in northern Jersey, and it's always fun to watch and see if I can figure out where scenes have been filmed. A few years ago, we were driving to the cemetery in North Arlington for a funeral and went past Pizza Land (as immortalized in the show opening credits). My friend shook his head and called me a tourist when I pointed it out. :-)

Things are going well at work, but the commute has been horrible the past couple of weeks. I'm at the point where I'm updating my resume and thinking of exploring my options. I like th jib and the people I work with, but spending an hour and a half to two hours in the car every morning is zero fun. Things will change up a bit by the end of the week as I won't have to drop G off at school, so I'm hoping getting an earlier jump will help.

There are other things to blog about, but enough for now.

Happy Birthday Dad

My father turned 80 today - the two milestones I know he wanted to reach were this birthday and his 50th wedding anniversary. He has them both now and I couldn't be happier for him.

Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer's two years ago this summer. It's easy to let the disease and its effects define him now, but on his birthday I'd rather rewind my memories of him. I have so much to thank him for - the ability to face life with a sense of humor, an appreciation of family, his unwavering support in my education and career and a love for sports and music. We all go through phases in our relationships with parents, and our appreciation for their role deepens considerably upon become a parent. There were many complaints and things I harbored against him as a child and teenager - as I matured, I got to see him as a person with the credits and debits we all own. On balance, he was on the plus side of the ledger.

Dad has six children - two are gone and I know he carries that grief with him to this day. He's proud of his 7 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren. He loves his wife of 52 years dearly. He has his good days and bad days, and the good ones still carry the majority.

I called him this morning to wish him a happy birthday. He gave me the Mickey Mantle line - "if I knew I was going to live this long, I would've taken better care of myself." We both laughed - and Dad, you took great care of me, and I'll always be grateful.

Yankee Clipper

Got back from NJ yesterday afternoon. G and I had a good trip - left Melrose @ 9:30am Friday and had an uneventful trip down, at least until we hit the Major Deegan @ 12:30. The weekend exodus had started, and it took about an hour to get from the Bronx city limits to the bridge. We got to our hotel @ 2...rinsed off, changed and headed over to visit my folks. Stopped at The Mana on Tonnelle Avenue for murderburgers and fries. Headed down to Hoboken to catch the Yankee Clipper ferry to the game. I took some photos, so here goes:

Manhattan skyline as seen from the Hoboken ferry terminal

G on the Yankee Clipper

Dad and daughter on the ferry

We met up with my college friend Dave and his GF Jill at the stadium...we originally sat down near the LF foul pole, but eventually moved over with them about 3B. Horrible game (and weekend) for the Yanks...they lost 10-6 and we trudged back to the Harlem River for the ride back to NJ. I would definitely recommend the ferry trip - got there a half-hour before the game and enjoyed the sightseeing up and back.

Spent Saturday doing the flea market in the Giants Stadium parking lot, and getting in some pool time at the hotel. G went to a birthday party with a family friend that night and I met some college friends at the XR Bar in Soho. Had dimsum with some friends Sunday and drove back in the afternoon.

Off we go

Heading out for NJ in about an hour and a half. Doesn't look like my laptop has a slot for the digital camera's memory card, so any photos might have to wait until my return. I will take a few pictures with my cameraphone just for safekeeping.

It looks like a great weekend - hot and sunny. Went out and bought my sister a new PC and spent the past 2 nights getting it set up. It has Vista loaded on it, so I had to ramp up on that OS...didn't see any bugs, but it's hard to reconfigure.

Anyway, I'll try to get something up tomorrow morning. Have a safe trip if you're on the road this weekend.

Running on empty

I've been dieting for about three weeks now - I find I do a lot better when I have a specific goal and date in mind. This time, I've been trying to get back to a 38 waist by the time I go down to Jersey this weekend. And the results have been good - I'm down to 38-1/8 this morning, been hitting the gym regularly and staying away from the candy/junk food.

The problem is I've pretty much run myself down doing this. I hit the gym yesterday and came out famished. My name for it is "the hungry horrors" - I got home and had some peanut butter on a toasted English muffin and a yogurt (which not-so-coincidentally has been my dinner the past few weeks), which held me until L. made some shepherd's pie from dinner. Today I've been hungry AND wiped-out, so I know I'm running on fumes right now.

Luckily, the trip is Friday, but I need to find some healthy snacks to get me through the next few days.

Birthday wishes

My good friend Arlyn is celebrating her birthday today. A gentleman doesn't mention a lady's age, but we will share this particular number for the next three months. Enjoy the day and know that your friendship with myself and my family is cherished.

Lazy Sunday

I figured I'd knock something out here before hunkering down to watch the Sopranos. It's been a rainy weekend...the sun finally came out here about 4pm. Outdoor work was out of the question, so i spent a portion of today trying to resurrect the PC I gave to my sister. No luck though...and rather than spend any more $$$ on it, I'll probably buy a new one for her and her kids. Nice guy that I am. :-)

I also headed up to Ourglass Wine for a tasting yesterday afternoon - it was nowhere near as crowded as the last one. Plenty of distributors though...bought two Argentine wines, a tempranillo and a bonarda/malbec blend. Ourglass is my favorite wine shop right now...Rte.1 north in Saugus, next to Jimmy's Steak House. I recommend it highly.

Spent Wednesday in a comedy of errors...was invited to the Tigers/Sox game by an old friend. I left that morning wearing a thin short-sleeved golf shirt and a rain jacket with no lining. Unfortunately, the thunderstorm that came through around 3pm was immediately followed by a cold front that dropped the temperatures about 20 degrees. I wound up buying a zip-up cotton hoodie to keep me warm in the bleachers; however, Mother Nature had other plans. Spent $25 to park my car at Landmark Center, had dinner at El Pelon (El Guapo burrito - excellent choice) and walked over to the Baseball Tavern to await my friend. By the time I bought my first beer, I saw that the game had been postponed. Long story short, wound up at the Pour House on Boylston St. and had a couple of beers.

Getting ready this week for the trip to NJ with G. We're going to the Angels-Yankees game Friday night, and I'm meeting up with some folks from Emerson College days Saturday night. Looking forward to it, particularly the ferry ride up to Yankee Stadium. Hope to have a lot of photos from the weekend.

Flying blind

I'm sitting here in the datacenter work area, without my glasses. Two weeks ago I accidentally stepped on them - I finally got them repaired (basically had a screw put in), but the frame is still somewhat bent. I tried to apply a bit of pressure to straighten them out, which wound up popping the screw out again. Now I have to swing by the optometrist and see if I can get them fixed, or spring for a new frame.

Sigh.

Anyway, still tired from the weekend. Will finish up the workday from home.

Spring has sprung

Tired and sitting on the couch with my laptop, waiting for The Sopranos to start in a half-hour. Was out Friday and Saturday nights, which doesn't help matters. Anyway, ran the mower for the first time this spring...the weather was finally rebounded from the cold we had the past couple of months.

Spent yesterday at Suffolk Downs - went out to bet a few races and get my Derby action in. What a nightmare: big crowd, not enough tellers and long lines everywhere. Twice I got caught in lines where tellers were arguing with bettors over tickets they'd punched. I literally had to walk away from the second line, as I couldn't take Dumb and Dumber trying to sort bets out. A big part of the problem is the presence of the once-a-year visitors whose knowledge of calling out bets is equivalent to my knowledge of quantum physics. And to cap it all off, I didn't cash a single bet; in fact, one of the horses I touted in the Derby finished dead last.

Keeping busy with work - starting to integrate more into the group in Dallas. I'm finding projects to keep myself busy while waiting to transition our servers to Dallas.

I'm beat - more to follow, soon.

iPod/reading update

In case you're wondering what's been added to the iPod recently:


Back To Black - Amy Winehouse (highly recommended)

Yours Truly Angry Mob - Kaiser Chiefs

Neon Bible - Arcade Fire

Introducing - Joss Stone

Swinging the Blues Dancing The Ska - Jools Holland and His Rhythm & Blues Orchestra

Dylanesque - Bryan Ferry

The Little Willies (also highly recommended)

LCD Soundsystem

We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank - Modest Mouse


And I'm finally ripping some of my CD collection to mp3s.


As for my literary pursuits, here's what I'm reading now:

Starsky And Hutch

A long overdue post.

Got a great laugh Friday night - was waiting for Bootleg Willy to show, so we could toast his liberation from a hated job. I was talking with one of the regulars there - she asked me where Willy was, and I told her about his new job, and how I had met him at work about 10 years ago. She proceeds to tell me that she had originally thought Willy and I were cops.

A little later I tell this to the bartender, who says, "She isn't the only one. I've had two or three other people ask me the same thing."

:-)

I sent this story to my friend Arlyn, who tagged us with "Starsky And Hutch". Brilliant!

It's been an eventful few weeks since I last posted. We added a second consultant at work, and he's done a good job so far. I'm trying to get him up to speed on the basics there - eventually, the plan is for him to handle the OS side of things, while I transition to application support. It's comforting to know I have backup there now - I can take days off/vacation now.

Wound up dropping nearly $800 on car repairs a few weeks ago. The Cruiser had a stuck brake caliper, so it had to be replaced. Also got the windshield fluid nozzles replaced (they had cracked) and the AC recharged. Of course, we haven't had any warm weather to test the AC with.

Looks like some bad weather on the way here north of Boston. It's drizzling here now, and we're expecting 2-4" of rain this afternoon/tonight. I'd like to make a run into Cambridge to stock up at Trader Joe's. but we'll see.

Dance It Away

Time to catch up, being the unmotivated blogger I am.

First, my dad had some minor surgery Monday - clearing out a blockage in an artery. He'd been complaining about numbness and tingling in his arm, and an MRI finally turned up the culprit. He's home and resting.

G missed a week of school with a bad cold. She recovered in time to perform in a dance competition on Sunday. She and her team received "high silver honors" for their three routines, and so qualify for the nationals at Cape Cod during the summer.

Had big fun at the SlipKid/Jawn P show last Friday night. Met up with my friend Charlemagne from the Noise Board at the local, and got to Avenue C during the Jawn P set. I got to see Shawn do some rapping, then he vacated the stage to let some special guests up. Thought Jawn did a good job; unfortunately, the crowd was more interested in seeing Gary Cherone and his band.

SlipKid put on a great show - best of the three I've seen. They did a greatest hits set, then tackled the concert version of Tommy for the second. Charlemagne was very impressed, as was I. My highlight came during the end of Tommy, when they were doing the "listening to you..." finale. The sound system cut out, so the crowd continued singing with Cherone's encouragement. Just a lot of fun.

Anyway, back to the real world. Trying to get ready at work to bring in a second consultant and we're gradually shifting our email and file systems to Dallas.

Working From Home

Poor G has been laid low with a bad cold....in fact, L. took her to the doctor yesterday as she was displaying some symptoms of mono. Anyway, I'm parking on the couch, a conference call on the speakerphone and blogging. God bless America!

Been spending a lot of time at the datacenter this week...one of the blades has some bad memory and crashed twice. I'll have to go back there tomorrow and swap out the bad DIMMs with some new ones.

Looking forward to tomorrow night...going down to Avenue C in Malden to see my buddy Shawn perform with Jawn P, then stick around for Slip Kid, Gary Cherone's Who tribute band. Slip Kid is doing a "special performance of Tommy", so that should be interesting.

Haven't played any Strat this week....will probably resume over the weekend.

New iPod/1964 strat replay update

Forgot to mention that I broke down and replaced my misplaced iPod nano with a 30GB video iPod. I wound up with digital overspill when trying to load my current iTunes library on it, so i did some judicious pruning and I'm all set for now. I'll have to start setting up some playlists, as it took me forever to scroll through the damned thing while trying to load Quadrophenia during my workout Saturday. :-)

I'm just about at the end of July with my 1964 AL replay on strat-o-matic. The Yanks went through a 7 game losing streak, though they've turned it around a bit lately. They're 6 games behind the Chisox, who are on a 104 wins pace right now.

Failures, Fishtails and Fisticuffs

An alliterative description of my weekend.

I was hoping for a quiet Friday at work to ease into St. Patrick's weekend; alas, the silence was shattered by a 4:15am phone call from work. "The network is down!" I wind up at the datacenter at 6am with a jumbo coffee and 2 muffins. Not to go all IT geek on everyone, but our hosting company pushed out some network patches that our router didn't appreciate, so it went out on strike. I conference with their network team, reboot the router, we're back in business. "Oh boy," I think, "I'll work until 2:30 and call it a day." Uh uh...turns out our network time server was also corrupted and pushed out an October 1994 date to all of our production servers. Long story short, I didn't get out until 5:45 pm...sustained only by coffee, Diet Coke and those muffins.

I should mention here that we had a snowstorm Friday. By the time I got on Rte. 93 to head home, the road was in poor shape. As I headed past Commerce Way, I started skidding to the right. Now, I know you're supposed to steer in the direction of the skid but applying that knowledge in the midst of sliding off the interstate isn't easy. So I whip the steering wheel to the left....straighten....then start whipping to the left twice as fast. I wound up doing a 180, facing backwards. Thank God there wasn't much traffic - no one was within a half-mile of me. I got myself turned around and got home without further mishap.

Finally fired up the snowblower the first time this season Friday night. Spent an hour digging out the homestead and helping out two neighbors. The next morning the kids next door came by @ 8:30 and asked if I wanted the sidewalk shovelled.

"How much?"

"I don't know."

"What kind of businessman are you?"

Turned out I paid them $20 and they did the cut and the driveway to boot. Good job shoveeling and negotiating. :-)

Took L. down to Mexico Lindo for dinner and margaritas Saturday night. had the grilled red snapper which was very good. caught the end of the Georgetown-BC game, then headed down to the local @ 10pm. Bootleg Willy swung by and we had a good time hanging and talking. At closing time, we walked around the corner to have one more at another establishment. Another young crowd, no problems...we're getting ready to go and on the way out we stop to talk to another regular. "Boy, it's been a quiet St. Patrick's Day!"

About a minute later, it started.

Someone brushes by me, then I see 2 knuckleheads wrestling toward the door. They go spilling onto the floor, knocking over a floor lamp in the process. The doorman and owner separate them.

Another minute passes, and two more knuckleheads get into it. Again, they get separated.

Now it's time for the main event. Another knucklehead throws a punch...at a woman. He gets thrown to the ground and is surrounded by 6 or 7 guys, all throwing punches at him. The knucklehead's friends come in to get him off the ground, and it's on. 15-20 guys fighting, 3 or 4 women squared off, people on the periphery throwing cups of beer at the combatants. It was the biggest fight I've seen in years. I finally just shook my head and moved back to the bar, mostly to avoid getting knocked over or hit by a stray punch. By the time we finally left, Willy counted 6 police cruisers on the street in front of the bar.

AI's barroom equation: alcohol + testosterone + youth = strife.

On Sunday I rested.

Brackets

Just finished filling out my brackets for a money pool, and one for fun on the ESPN site. Taking a break from my Strat replay after the Yanks dropped 2 games to the A's....hitting has gone south, with the Mick is something like a 2 for 30 slump. So I'm watching the end of the Twins-Yankees game and relaxing.

Not much more to add, so I bid you good night.

Strat update delayed/some good news

Sorry for the delay...having some problems trying to get the reports formatted correctly. I'll work on it tomorrow night when I'm a little more lively.

One thing I forgot to pass on from last week...I've been told by my manager to consider my contract "indefinite", rather than expiring after six months. Plus, there's a possibility I could be brought on fulltime later in the year. I do like where I'm working right now...management has been reasonable and my co-workers are nice folks. The commute is horrible, but that's a trade-off I can live with. I'm lucky with how this has worked out so far.

Some Strat replay reflections

I'm playing the Yankees day-to-day in the 1964 season...using the "as played" option, so I use the lineup players and starting pitchers from each day. One thing I've done is rearrange the batting order...when Kubek was healthy (which isn't all-that-frequent as his neck/back problems were starting to become serious), he was the leadoff batter....with an OBP of .275. Usually, Bobby Richardson would follow in the 2 hole, with his .294 OBP.

Ugh.

What I normally do is bat Tom Tresh leadoff with his .342 OBP, and bat Phil Linz second against lefties and Richardson against righties. if a Hector Lopez or Pedro Gonzalez is in the lineup, I'll move them to second. Usually I'll bat Maris/Mantle/Howard/Pepitone 3 through 6, then put Boyer and Kubek 7th and 8th. Hard to believe, the Yanks won 99 games getting subpar offense from three-fourths of their infield...they could field though.

The starting pitching has been fine with Whitey Ford and Jim Bouton...Al Downing only has 2 wins thus far, and I'm at the point in the season where Rollie Sheldon has replaced Ralph Terry as the fourth starter (even though Terry is actually pitching well in the replay). The bullpen has been solid with Steve Hamilton as a swing man, and Hal Reniff and Pete Mikkelsen closing. Mel Stottlemyre is still about 6 weeks away and Pedro Ramos doesn't join the team until September.

I'll try to get some stats up tonight.

Springing Ahead

Day two of the daylight savings time. I'm walking around like a zombie, as I haven't adjusted yet...I slept horribly and was up between midnight and 2am. Thankfully, looks like my patching to the various company servers paid off, as I haven't heard of any issues so far.

Had a pretty uneventful weekend. I did maintenance last Wednesday night and was up until 2:30am. I took it easy Thursday, then went out with lofty Mario and later met up with Bootleg Willy, so I had my usual late Friday night. I was tired the rest of the weekend, and didn't get half of what I wanted done accomplished. When will I learn? :-)

Saturday night I took G. to her first wrestling show up in Lowell. As predicted, she loved it and had a blast. It was your average WWE house show...lots of families there. The wrestling itself wasn't that great, but the kids love to see their heroes and villains in person. Got back home and crashed for the night. Spent yesterday trying to catch up on the errands I missed on Saturday.

I'm at the end of June in my Strat replay of the 1964 AL season. The Yanks are currently a couple of games out of first place, mostly due to their abysmal record against the first place White Sox (I think they're 2-8 so far).

Looks like a busy week here at work...interviewed a former co-worker to fill a contractor position wlast Friday. I hope things work out for him.

RIP, Brad Delp and Ernie "The Big Cat" Ladd.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Apologies for not posting...as expected, I got caught up in my Strat-o-matic replay once I got it loaded on my PC. I'm about 40+ games into the 1964 season, skippering the Yankees. We currently lead the White Sox by 3 games, after winning the first game of a doubleheader against the Chisox, 1-0 in 13 innings. Joe Pepitone hit a walk-off homer to get a win for Pete Mikklesen.
I'll upload some files later this evening.

Been extremely cold here the past 2 days...steady windchill at -10. The furnace is on its last legs, and isn't handling the cold at all...keeps needing a manual restart every couple of hours. Looks like that will be our major purchase this year.

More to come.

Doings large and small

It's been quite the week for yours truly. My apologies for not posting earlier, but I've either been in no mood to do so, or busy doing other things and haven't had the chance. So this will be a long entry....you're forewarned!

I've been dealing with some issues a family member in Jersey is coming through. It has my entire family in turmoil, and the resulting stress really had me down most of the week. I was at the point where I'd have a headache every morning by the time I got to work. Been spending a lot of time on the phone talking with different family members, and it looks as if the situation is partially squared away for now.

I was running out of my blood pressure meds and needed to go to the doctor's office last Saturday morning to get checked before the prescriptions were renewed. My BP was running high...around 145/90...when I should be at 120/80. I've had a med substituted for another and been advised that I should get a home monitor and check my BP regularly. Between the stress and the BP, I knew I had to make some changes, so I'm going to try to stick to a low-sodium diet, and cut out the alcohol for the time being. Add to that being more stringent about my gym attendance and looking to reduce/avoid those things that add to my stress level.

Going on the wagon isn't much of a big deal...I rarely drink at home and usually limit myself to hitting the local once a week. When I do go out though, I can feel the rise in my BP the next day, so I'll take a break and try to get it within an acceptable range again.

Other than the health update, it was a quiet week at work. I'm trying to help set up a VPN tunnel between my contractor and their parent company's network, which is pretty entertaining as I have little experience with firewalls. My networking expertise is limited to servers and how they interact with gateways and firewalls, so it's a learning experience. I'm also busy getting our servers patched for the Daylight Savings Time switch in a few weeks.

The weekend was fun...took my wife (henceforth known as L.) to the Exchange Street Bistro in Malden Saturday night. I liked it, she thought it a bit pretentious (we got there to find it was half-full...the young lady at the front desk asked if we had reservations, then advised we might have a wait. The wait turned out to be 3 minutes). The food was good (had a 20 ounce pork chop which was delicious), the service excellent. Split a bottle of cabernet and enjoyed dessert (mixed berries over a shortcake biscuit for L, chocolate mousse for me). We definitely want to try it for brunch someday.

My strat-o-matic order showed up Friday...loaded on my PC and spent a good chunk of the weekend replaying the 1964 season. Right now, the Yankees are 7-4..have a doubleheader to play against the Senators when I get home tonight. The blogging and web authoring pieces of the program weren't working...I'll get something up soon.

I tried to replace the fan in my neighbor's museum piece PC yesterday...amazingly, I got the power supply open and removed the old fan, and put the replacement in, even though it had a three prong adapter and the supply only had 2. Plugged it in and the fan didn't work - like a knucklehead I tried to unplug the fan and got shocked for my stupidity. I have to go back to CompUSA tomorrow and see if they have a compatible fan...if not, it's either order a replacement somewhere or put it back the way it was and return to my neighbor. I've already told him the PC is 10 years old and should be replaced.

That's it for a snowy Monday morning...I'll try to get some more posted later.

Bubble Tea Time

G. and I found a new favorite...Boston Tea Stop on JFK St. in Harvard Square. We bought a bubble tea/smoothie combo (green tea for me, strawberry for her) - it was great. Much better than the place we usually go after dimsum at Emperor's Garden.

We walked around for a bit - amazing to me how much it's changed over the years. Made a run to Micro Center, then Trader Joe's, where my bill came to $77.77.

I know I should've played the lottery last night.

Rough sledding

My daughter (henceforth known as G.) came home from a walk yesterday to tell us that someone had been taken out of the local golf course/sledding spot by medivac. Turns out a mother of 3 was tubing, lost control and fell into a marsh. After the snow/freezing rain storm on Wednesday, we went into the deep freeze, so the snow is now iced over and has the consistency of cement. Anyway, it was closed down today, turning away young thrill-seekers looking to crack their heads open...

(WBZ) MELROSE The ice is raising serious concerns about the safety of sledding.

Police in Melrose are preventing sledders from using a popular hill at the Mount Hood Golf course after a woman who was sledding with her three children suffered serious head injuries in a fall.

"We had a near fatal accident due to the icy conditions," said Chief John O'Brien of the Melrose Fire Dept. "It's like cement right now and if you get any type of air, you're landing on cement.

The 39-year-old woman was injured Sunday when she went airborne and landed in a frozen marsh. She suffered head trauma, back injuries, a leg injury and was suffering from hypothermia.

The sledding hill is very steep and fast. When you add the ice, the hill turns dangerous.

"This is the worst I've ever seen," said Henry Hooten, a Melrose resident who has lived on the edge of the course for 40 years.

Chief O'Brien said the area will remain closed indefinitely.

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Wounded Knee

I almost forgot to post this...this is the aftermath of Lofty Mario's knee replacement, taken about 2 weeks after the fact.

The Year Of The Pig

It's Chinese New Year, so we'll be skipping our dimsum excursion today...it will be a madhouse down in Chinatown. Maybe next Sunday..it's been about 6 weeks since we've been down to Emperor's Garden - usually it's my daughter, one her friends and Bootleg Willy. My wife made the trek once about a year ago and hasn't wanted to return since.

Have a long list of to-dos today...set up the TV so my daughter so hook up her video game system...hit the gym...drive her to Harvard Sq so she can do some shopping at Urban Outfitters...and make a side trip to Trader Joe's. I might've done some of these yesterday, but staying out until 5:30am put the kibosh on that. :-) I blame Bootleg Willy for leading me astray.

Strat-isfaction

I took the plunge today and bought the latest version of the Strat-O-Matic baseball simulation. I still the first board game I bought back in 1977 out in the garage, which I imagine would be worth something if I ever decided to sell. I had bought the computer version faithfully for years, then got away from it a few years ago. I also bought the 1964 season disk, which features two of the closest pennant races in a single year, as well as the end of the Yankee dynasty. Should be a lot of fun - the latest versions of the game have an HTML generator, so I'll probably put my replays up on my Google homepage.

Got my new laptop from work this afternoon...Toshiba with a 1.8GHz cpu and 2 GB of memory. Pretty sweet.

Shoveling slush and other sources of happiness

I'm sitting on the couch with my eyes lightly irritated by the fumes of the Icy Hot recently rubbed on my lower back. I shoveled thrice - the last time removing standing slush on the sidewalk and the cut into my driveway. It's getting cold tonight after today's goulash of frozen moisture, and the slush would've hardened to the consistency of concrete. So I'm waiting on the 2 Advils to kick in, typing this entry and waiting for the Duke-BC game to start.

The weekend was a bit hectic....wound up flying solo to the local on Friday night. They're slowly building up the clientèle the previous owner alienated and there hasn't been any nonsense going around as far as fights go. The new owner has some ideas for specialty nights during the week, while keeping the weekends for dance music. I did get a good one off at his expense Sunday night...I stopped in for a quick pint and they had the VH1 Classic Surreal Life games show on. They were featuring The Hedgehog, Ron Jeremy, and Nick says, "I'm pissed...people always say I look like him." My reply: "Nah, he's much better looking."

I had some hardware maintenance scheduled overnight Saturday at the datacenter...my daughter was over at a friend's for a sleepover, so my wife and I went out to dinner at La Vita Mia's in Saugus before I headed in. It's one of my favorite restaurants...good food and huge portions. Had the chicken saltimbucco over sage risotto and there was enough leftover for dinner Monday night.

The maintenance was more of the runaround from the vendor, whom I won't mention but they rhyme with Hell, which is what dealing with them is like. Five and a half hours and the issue still isn't solved.

Attended the Jon-Erik benefit at The Abbey Sunday afternoon. I caught The Classic Ruins, The Alrighters and The Steamy Bohemians...enjoyed all three greatly. Got to hang out with Carl from The Ruins for a bit, which is always a pleasure. He was kind enough to give me a Ruins shirt for my daughter, who wore it to dance class the following night. Neither one of us had ever seen The Alrighters...hard-to-describe band with a sax/stand-up bass/drums/vocalist setup, playing rootsy type music. They were a lot of fun and definitely worth catching again. The Bohemians did a wonderful set of Kossoy Sisters songs - their finale, the standard "I'll Fly Away", had a good portion of the audience wiping their eyes. Bravo ladies.

I never had the chance to meet Jon-Erik in person, but always found him to be gentlemanly in his role as a moderator on The Noise Board. He had his opinions and argued them intelligently and with humor. His voice will be missed there. Rest easy.

The Good Soldier

It's an extremely messy weather day here in the Boston area...woke up this morning at 5:45 to snow/freezing rain. Since then, it's gone from snow to rain and back again. Schools cancelled and my wife and I decided to work from home.

About 10am I get an email from a developer saying one of the QA servers is running slow, it's been up for almost a year and maybe it could benefit from a reboot. I send out the proper heads-up and reboot the sucker.

It doesn't come back up.

OK...it's QA...I can head to the datacenter (which is a 20-25 minute drive in good weather) tomorrow morning and deal with it. I talk to the QA manager - who informs me they REALLY need the server as they want to roll it out over the weekend.

Dang.

So, I jump in the car and DO THE RIGHT THING. Other than a near spin-out exiting Rte. 93 it was a relatively safe ride, albeit slow. I get to the DC, power-cycle the server (which hung up on its way down) and declare victory. Then it's another slow ride home and finishing up the workday. I've already shoveled the sidewalk twice, and the rain has turned the driveway snow into glop that can't be picked up by the snowblower.

More on the past weekend in another post.

Making plans

Made it to the gym again tonight...that's 6 of the last 9 days. And I've been rewarded with a loss of about 3-8" around my waist. My weight is about the same, maybe down a pound. My routine is cardio every visit, and not doing Nautilus on back-to-back visits.

Got some maintenance scheduled for this Saturday night which is really putting a hitch in my giddy-up for the weekend. I'm planning on attending the Jon-Erik benefit show at the Abbey this Sunday evening, and with my daughter doing a sleepover Saturday, I'm thinking of dinner with the wife that night. Perhaps Magnolia's in Inman Square, which I've wanted to get back to since the summer.

Work has been getting busy, just with getting everything ready for Saturday night. We're replacing some hardware and patching software to get ready for the daylight savings time change, which is early this year (March 11th as a matter of fact).

Not too much else to add right now, I'm tired, but it's a "good tired".

Take care.

Bring on the baseball season

Bearnie Williams and I are waiting patiently for the pitchers and catchers to report next week.

You can't tell from this photo, but I picked up my new glasses this afternoon. They're taking some adjusting to, as the prescription is stronger and the frames themselves are smaller. When I left the optometrist, I was extremely disoriented - I had to remove the glasses as I was walking on some ice and didn't feel particularly sure-footed. It had been about four years since my last exam - I do see a noticeable difference in reading print.

Watched some of the Super Bowl over at Willy's. Not a particularly memorable game...truth be told, the Colts should've blown the Bears out. I thought the Colts OL deserved the MVP award as a group...they were the most dominant unit on the field.

Young fashioned ways

Let it be known that six months shy of my 50th birthday, I was carded while entering my local. Of course, the doorman is young enough to be my son. One of the former doormen was sitting at the bar and sadly shook his head at the spectacle.

Busy day upcoming...heading out to the gym, then laundry and some housework. I'm thinking of heading over to Bootleg Willy's for the Super Bowl.

Benefit for Jon-Erik

Just Another Night

It started with Bootleg Willy picking me up and heading up toward Danvers. We were heading up to Tequila's on Rte. 1 to watch the Prides Of Malden: Preacher Jack and the Cherone Bros. Who tribute band, SlipKid.

Between the onset of sleet/snow, needing to stop at an ATM for a cash infusion and looking for parking, we got in late and only caught the last 2 songs by the Preacher. He was playing solo on an electric keyboard - and he was favoring us with a medley of Christmas carols, which seemed a bit odd given it was Feb. 2nd (but as my wife told me today, it was Candlemas). After a short rap thanking the crowd for its time, he switched over from synth to piano and played his finale.

Have mercy.

Preacher Jack pounded out the boogie-woogie good and hard and dirty. Willy and I looked at one another and started laughing...he was great. During intermission, Jack walked by and we said hello and complimented him on the set. He's a very nice guy and told us he'd been playing since he was 12, which gives him 53 years experience. He's definitely worth catching and I'm definitely checking him out again soon.

SlipKid played two good sets, marred by a horrendous sound mix. At times, the drums were the most defined instrumentation coming out of the speakers. It's a shame because the band does a good job with the songs and Gary Cherone sings the hell out of them. We caught the two sets and headed out just before the encore.

We headed back to Malden and hit the locals and finally called it a night around 2. I got home and logged in to check my email before turning in. That's when my cellphone buzzed....I checked the number, didn't recognize it and answered.

It was work.

Sod me.

Turns out there was a problem monitoring some of our application nodes, so the data center called out. I wound up on a conference call, desperately hoping I didn't sound as drunk as I felt. This went on for a couple of hours, until we concluded it was most likely a monitoring issue, not the app, and to work on it Monday. Finally got to bed after 4am.

Fun, fun, fun...another example of the glamorous life of a sysadmin.

Totally wired

Spent most of last Saturday retrieving Lofty Mario from the hospital. Somehow the walker he used to leave the building wound up in his home, but I'm sure that was an honest mistake.

After that good deed, I went home and spent the afternoon cleaning up my audio/video mess. I must've come up with a dozen cables that weren't in use anymore. In addition, I finally retired my turntable and cassette deck, neither of which I've used in probably a decade. My daughter is hoping to get the turntable, as she has fantasies on scratching and popping on it. My wife claimed the cassette deck, as she some tapes she wasn't to dub off to her PC. I did get the S-Video cables hooked up to the new SAT receiver, so the video is much clearer. The only downside I spent so much time crouching/contorting myself in a narow space that my back and legs were killing me the next day.

I still need to unwire/straighten out/rewire the current configuration, but that's another afternoon project for another day.

The Shape I'm In

I managed to get back to the gym last night...a half-hour of cardio and the steamroom helped alleviate the depression I had.

I've been pretty lax in my attendance since before Thanksgiving - between the holiday obligations and adjusting to the new job schedule, I haven't been very diligent in working out four days a week the way I used to. This is probably a good time to fix a goal and work toward it...as of today, I weigh 221 lbs and have a 38-3/8 waist. I'll sit down and figure out a target weight/waist size and start trying to achieve it.

Two and a half years ago, I weighed about 240 lbs and was wearing size 42 jeans. I'm probably one of the few people stupid enough to start a workout/diet regime just before the holidays. Luckily, I had a HS reunion coming up in April 2005, which gave me the motivation to try to lose 30 lbs. And I did...I got down to 210 and a waist size just around 38". Since then, I started doing some Nautilus and bulked up, and I put on 10 lbs. Now I've decided to cut back on the weights and go for more reps with a smaller weight, to try to tone rather than get bigger. We'll see.

Loss

I was planning on posting last night - that is, until I called my friend Patrick down in Jersey. He told me a mutual friend lost his 22 year old son over the weekend. No idea what happened, except there was no mention of foul play.

Few things depress me as much as seeing a young life ended. Watching my father deal with Alzheimer's is difficult, but I understand that it goes with the territory of reaching old age. As a parent, the idea of losing a child horrifies me.

I wish there was something wise I could say, but all I can do is hold them in my thoughts and prayers. I hope you'll do so too.

Less Than Zero

Coldest day in two years - awakened this morning to see a reading of -1 in the backyard. Add a stiff wind, and it was frigid.

So, of course, just before leaving the house, I hear my daughter ask, "Why do I need gloves?" Oy vey. It turns out she lost/misplaced hers - I was sorely tempted to teach her a life lesson and send her off without them, but the fear of frostbite setting in persuaded me. So she gets my gloves.

Do I even need to add that she didn't bring a hat either?

So, she has my hat and gloves, while I have a headband and a pair of gloves I had to buy on my way in. Lest I forget, she is a honor student at her high school.

Speaking of succumbing to my good nature, I ran into Boston after work to visit my friend Lofty Mario, who is recuperating from knee replacement surgery in MGH. I had to bring his cellphone recharger in, so he can keep in contact with his female friends he meets on the various Internet dating sites...and a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, a little cream, no sugar. I wound up braving the cold for five blocks up Cambridge Street...next time, I buy it close to home and he can have one of the nurses nuke it in the microwave.

Oh Headless Chicken

Well, I think I finally convinced my co-workers I can be as much a spaceshot as anyone else. made the drive into Maynard this morning, get to my desk at 8:45. By 10:15, one of our servers is acting up and non-responsive, meaning I have to trek up to Billerica to fix it. Needless to say, I was not happy, particularly since I have no documentation on the apps on it, etc. So I shutdown my laptop, gather everything up, make the 40 minute drive up, wait 15 minutes to get some lunch to take into the facility. I sign in, go to set up, and I forgot my power cord.

Sod me.

I have about 90 minutes of battery time...takes about an hour to get the issue resolved. I stopped at CompUSA to check a replacement, but didn't want to spend the $90 on the adapter. So, i'm home, where my loving wife has a spare power supply that I can use here.

70 miles driving today...sigh.

The Week That Was

I had hoped to post last week, but never got around to it. Just never got back into a cycle after the Jersey trip, then had to work late Wednesday night (as in driving to the DC at 10pm and not getting to bed until 1:30) and going out for some bevvies on Friday night. So I've been out of sync for a bit - this week should be a lot quieter.

Spent a good chunk of the weekend installing the Slingbox we purchased for Christmas. I ran down to Circuit City and bought the Slinglink router package...the good news is that you plug one end into the router and the other into the Slingbox and the signal gets carried through the house wiring. The bad news is you have to plug it directly into an outlet, and not a power strip, and with outlets at a premium, it makes for some creative electrical work. Anyway, I got it up and running and was watching it on a my PC Saturday night.

Sunday is when the fun began...the DirecTv receiver's hard drive was starting to make grinfding noises, and it finally gave up the ghost. So it was back to the store to buy a replacement receiver. Spent a good half-hour waiting on the phone for DirecTv's customer service, but I got it up and running yesterday afternoon. My task for next weekend is to unplug my audio/video equipment, clear out everything that isn't being used and streamlining the wiring. That will take up an afternoon. I have a turntable and cassette deck that I'll probably set aside somewhere...haven't used them in years.

Watched the Pats game over at my friend Willy's house....his Pats fan friends were suitably downcast at the end. The ice cream sandwiches I brought over weren't enough to cheer them up.

Why should you want to take my bad trip?

Indeed.

Back home after a long weekend. Crappy weather, saw another bad accident on the Merritt Parkway south on the way home this afternoon (2 SUVs mangled one another and wound up blocking the 2 lanes - add the police and rescue trucks in the median and shoulder, and no one was going anywhere).

Stopped by my folks before leaving - my dad (who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's since July 2005) had called to make sure we were going to come by. When I drove up the street past the house, he was looking for us through the storm door. And that ain't my dad. As the disease progresses, he grows more worried and nervous about things. He goes through phases where he doesn't recognize my mom as his wife, which understandably upsets her. It's a long, hard row to hoe, and all I can do is try to make things easier for them. Today broke my heart though.

We did go to Steve's in Carlstadt last night and had a good dinner. Awful service - the waitress had us on her "pay no mind" list and we had to keep asking for a utensil setup for our daughter, a drink order, etc.

It's good to be home...I'm beat.

Stuck inside Secaucus with the Massachusetts blues again

Posting from my hotel room. An overcast day down here....will be taking my nieces to the swimming pool here in a while, then going out to dinner with my parents later. Saw a few months' worth of accidents yesterday, including a car into the median and down a bank on Rte. 91 in CT.

Watched the Eagles-Saints game up at the bar where my brother works...in a bowling alley. My wife knows we only go to the highest class places. :-)

Quiet before things move to fast-forward

Have about an hour to go here at work. Just wrapping up for the week...then the fun begins. I'm finishing up my holiday season with a visit to my family in NJ. So tonight will be laundry, packing, getting the car gassed up, then a visit to the local, which coincidentally is having its grand reopening. This promises to be a circus, but unfortunately I have to cut the night short and get some sleep. Driving 225 miles hungover is no longer an acceptable option.

The weekend will be a blur of family visits, brunches and dinners. It's a good trip as my daughter gets to spend some time with her cousins and have an overnight with them, and my wife and I get out and act like adults for an evening. Then it's back on Monday to face the arrival of real winter weather.

Hope to get some photos up this weekend.

First post

I want my will and capability to meet inside the region
Where this gravity don't mean a thing
It's where the angels break through . . .
It's where they bring it to you
It's where silence, silence can teach me to sing

I want a world without gravity
It could be just what I need
I'd watch the stars move close
I'd watch the earth recede

"Wicked Gravity" - Jim Carroll