"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.