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.