This Thursday, the large IM group from work will be taking part in our annual outing; for the past few years, that has meant a visit to Waterfront Park for a Trenton Thunder game, and this year will be more of the same. However, in years past our event was held sometime during the summer months, in super hot temperatures on Day Camp Day at the ballpark (although Thursday is “Educational Day” with lesson plans and such – why do we always go with a bunch of grade-schoolers?) The weather forecast for Thursday is sunny and upper 60’s, but it will not be anywhere near “summer” like weather. The nice thing about this year, is the 10:35 AM game time: not only do I not need to head into the office beforehand, I can call it an early day as well.
Category: General Posts (Page 9 of 21)
or George Hendrick… whatever… read the entire game boxscore here
30 years ago tonight, Tommy and I opted to go to the Phillies-Cardinals game, instead of attending that night’s high school Senior Prom. For me, it was my first Phillies game at the Vet since 1974, but it was just the first of many, many games that Tommy and I would attend over the next 15 or so years; his family’s season tickets initially were in row 18 of section 232, but after the strike year of 1981 they moved up 5 rows to row 13, seats 10 and 11.
Those seats were magical, and looking back now it was such a privilege to sit so close to home plate for as many games for such a (relatively) low price as I did. Nowadays, in Citizens Bank Park, those seats would cost upwards of $100 apiece. We sat in those seats through many summer nights while we were in college; we were there in those seats at the snow-delayed Phillies home opener in 1982. Eventually, as we both grew older and Tom got married, I used to buy 10 or so games from his Mom, and used to take my future bride to the games. Our seats were directly under the radio booth, and during the 7th inning stretch we used to exchange waves with the late Richie Ashburn and Harry Kalas. I remember taking my Dad to one particular Saturday afternoon game, and on the way out we ran into Richie as he was leaving the stadium; my Dad, having remembered #1 from his playing days with the Whiz Kids, was duly impressed with his brush with baseball greatness.
Tommy and I sat in those seats for what may have been the last true double-header at the Vet, and witnessed the late Tug McGraw recite Casey at the Bat between games from the mound, and again in those seats on Mike Schmidt night when he retired from baseball. Edith and I sat there through rain delayed nights when we were practically the only fans there, and again on the nights we celebrated Richie’s and Schmidt’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Those seats were truly special, and played a huge part on making me the fan of the game that I am today, which I have passed down to my own son. Will and I have been to only 5 games at the new ballpark, and we’ll be there again on September 3, sitting in section 116, 6 rows behind the Phillies dugout down the first base side. Richie and Harry, and Tug, are now gone, but we continue to cheer for the Phils as we create our own memories.
A good day today. Woke up at 8:00, dragged my feet downstairs into the kitchen to pour myself a cup of freshly brewed coffee (thanks to Edith) and sat on the living room loveseat to absorb the warmth of the morning sun. When the weather gets warm, we like to sit out on the screen porch with our coffee and listen to the world wake up, but it was a little colder than I would have liked this morning.
Another cup of coffee, a little more puttering around in my pajamas, and then a little time trying to re-import the music library from the home server into Edith’s laptop so she can re-sync her iPod. By mid-day, I was out in the yard with the trimmer and lawnmower, with my own iPod playing “Here and There” for a few hours. All in all, the yard looks OK, although the front lawn is god-awful full of weeds and bare spots that need attention. For all of the work on the lawn it felt like a mid-Summer day, although it’s just under two months away until the first day of Summer.
By 5:00 I had cleaned up, took a quick shower, dressed and was back in the back yard tending to the grill with a cold Yuengling in my hand. Dinner, clean up, a little more playing with Edith’s laptop, and eventually by 8:30 Edith was getting Katie ready for bed and Will was reading in his room. It’s now almost 10:00 and I’m a bit tired, waiting for the pain relief from a couple of Advil to kick-in.
So, a few weeks ago (I Hate Coming Up With Post Titles) I mentioned that I received an email from Susan; I replied to her note, and then waited for a reply. Time went by, and I waited some more. Weeks went by, and by March 10 I had started to express my frustration in a blog post which I did not publish. The essence of the post was that although I do not have any expectation that I will ever hear from Susan at any time, I actually thought that this time she would reply to my note, and I just didn’t get it as to why she did not. As it turns out, she did.
I was tooling around with my account on YouTube the other night, when I incidentally clicked on my Inbox link. I was surprised to find a message from LucarioNinja92 titled “friends” which turned out to be a response from Susan to my note. Why she chose to contact me in that way, using her daughter’s YouTube account, I don’t understand, but the message was sent February 27, just 12 days after I had written to her. Anyway, the short of all of this is that we’ve exchanged phone numbers and agreed that we should talk. After over 25 years, this could be a very long conversation…
From the Writer’s Almanac:
Today is Earth Day. And it’s also the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day — held on this day in 1970 and widely considered to the birth of the modern environmental movement.
Earth Day’s founder was a senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson. His goal was to force environmental issues onto the national agenda. Before 1970, stories about the environment were almost never reported. One Earth Day organizer said that back then, “Environment was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news.”
In 1969, an oil pipe ruptured just off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, causing 200,000 gallons of crude oil to burst forth and then slowly leak out and spread over an 800-square-mile slick. It took 11 days to plug the hole. The oil poisoned seals and dolphins, whose corpses washed up onto California beaches, and it killed thousands of seabirds as well. Senator Nelson visited the site of the enormous ecological disaster and was outraged that nobody in Washington seemed to be concerned about the great devastation to the natural environment. And then he realized that many people simply didn’t really know.
So he proposed a national “teach-in,” an event to take place on universities campuses around the nation, one that would educate the public, raise awareness on environmental issues, and make politicians pay attention to these things, so that they would make laws to protect the environment in order to, as he said, “stem the tide of environmental disaster.”
He saw how successful the anti-war protestors were at getting media coverage — and therefore, making politicians take notice — and he decided to base his campaign for environmental awareness on their model. He also hoped to infuse the same student anti-war energy into the environmental cause. He proposed setting aside one day a year as a national day of observance about environmental problems. The New York Times picked up the story in late September 1969, a great boon to the grassroots organizers of the campaign, who had no Internet to spread the word.
At first, Senator Nelson called it National Environment Teach-In Day, but his friend, a New York advertising executive suggested “Earth Day,” especially catchy since it rhymes with “birthday,” and that’s what the press began to call it. Historian Adam Rome has called Earth Day the “most famous unknown event in modern American history.”
About 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. They gathered at assemblies in high school gyms, at university plazas, in suburban city parks. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Gaylord Nelson had graduated from law school, people met up at 4:45 a.m. for an “Earth Service,” where, according to one report, they “greeted the sunrise with a Sanskrit invocation and read together from Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Thoreau, and the Bible.” Girl Scouts distributed pamphlets that Wisconsin grad students had written, which gave household tips for helping to preserve the environment. Tens of thousands met up in Philadelphia’s Fairmont Park — and stayed there for days — and 100,000 streamed into Fifth Avenue in New York City. People celebrated spring weather and gave impassioned political speeches about environmental issues.
Though unstructured and somewhat incohesive, Earth Day was hugely successful. Environmental issues found a prominent place on the political agenda. Earth Day in April 1970 helped lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency by the end of that year (the EPA was created December 2, 1970), as well as to the passage of legislation like the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts.
I was laid up sick at home this past Good Friday evening… Edith and Kate took Will over to his school for a Living Stations event in which Will was participating, and I hung out at home and watched the Godspell DVD I had borrowed from the library.
I had not seen this movie in something like 35 years (I remember watching it in the basement of St. Mike’s church in around 6th or 7th grade) and honestly did not remember much of it at all, except for Prepare the Way of the Lord and Day By Day. I’d always thought the musical and the movie were kind of cheesy, but watching it again I found myself really liking it a lot. Sure, it’s got that certain post-60’s early 70’s Jesus loving feel to it, but many of the performances are strong, and the songs are overall really really good. The backdrop of early 70’s New York City is also fascinating, if not eerie considering the prominence of the World Trade Center buildings in the film. I do have a problem with the ending of the movie (they miss the entire point of Jesus’ death by leaving out the resurrection.)
As luck would have it, the movie was on TCM in the early morning hours of Easter Saturday, so I set the DVR to record it, and I’ve been able to watch it again at least twice since Good Friday. One song in particular, By My Side, I’ve fallen in love with – it has a certain Natalie Merchant or Dar Williams feel to it, and I love the lyric:
Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Can you take me with you?
For my hand is cold
And needs warmth
Where are you going?
Far beyond where the horizon liesWhere the horizon lies
And the land sinks into mellow blueness
Oh please, take me with youLet me skip the road with you
I can dare myself
I can dare myself
I’ll put a pebble in my shoe
And watch me walk (watch me walk)
I can walk
I can walk!I shall call the pebble Dare
I shall call the pebble Dare
We will talk, we will talk together
We will talk
About walking Dare shall be carried
And when we both have had enough
I will take him from my shoe, singing
“Meet your new road!”Then I’ll take your hand
Finally glad
Finally gladThat you are here
By my side (By my side)By my side (by my side)
By my side (by my side)
By my side (by my side)
By my side (by my side)(Matt. 26:14-16)
[spoken]
Then the man they called Judas Iscariot
Went to the chief priests,
and said “What will you give me to betray Him to you?”
They paid him thirty pieces of silver.
And from that moment,
he began to look out for an opportunity
To betray Him.
…but his name is not Reggie Hammond.
This Friday evening will be our first Pack meeting since I became Pack Committee Chairman back in March. We’ve also got a new Cubmaster, so this should be an interesting meeting, since it is our first time running the show. I’m sure we’ll be just fine.
We’re going over camping skills, which might be useful for our upcoming Camporee weekend in mid-May, but it’s kind of tough to get some real camping “activites” for the boys to participate in during a Pack meeting. We’ll see how things go…
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Time for the wearin’ of the green, to adopt an Irish brogue, to dine on some cabbage and boiled potatoes and perhaps a little corned beef, but most of all, to down a pint or two of Guinness.
I must remember to stop on the way home and grab a draught bottle (or six) as I’m running low at home…
It’s snowing. Again. Today. Right now. It has been snowing all day. It will continue to snow all night. Tonight.
I don’t really mind the snow – in fact, I actually do enjoy the snow, when I don’t have to drive in it on roads that have not yet been plowed/salted/sanded/whatevered. I can actually feel all of this snow taunting me, making me yearn for pulling on my boots, stepping into my bindings, and cruising down a nice, wide hard-packed snowy trail.
Sigh… I need to go flip through some old skiing photos…
I’m not sure why, normally I don’t really care much about it one way or the other, but for some reason, this Winter olympics, I am really geared up to see the USA doing so well and bringing home the hardware. I like the Winter Olympics, in general, especially the alpine skiing events, and the men’s and women’s hockey (if the US has a decent team) but I really want our country to collect the most medals this time around.
It almost feels like 1980 all over again. I’m getting kindof goose-bumpy when I think about it… dare I hope for a two gold medals for the USA hockey teams?
Another packed weekend.
Friday night was our Cub Scout Pack meeting, which lasted from around 7:30 PM until clean-up finished around 10:00 PM. Saturday morning, I drove up to Florham Park to complete the required Cub Scout Leader specific training for the Pack Committee Chairman position, from 9:00 AM until Noon. Drove home, cleaned up the house a bit and got ready for the baby-sitter to arrive at 3:45, so that Edith and I could drive over to Summit to catch the 4:49 train into Hoboken for the night…
Last night we celebrated my in-laws 45th wedding anniversary (today) at Leo’s restaurant in Hoboken, along with the majority of Edith’s siblings and their spouses (Michael, Cassy, Guy, Meaghan, Judith, Brian, Andrea, Gus) along with Edith’s grandmother, Uncle Peter and Aunt Lisa. We all took the train in together, which was a fun time, but the evening was still young; we got to Leo’s at a little past 6:00 PM, and had to wait a bit for our table for 15 (they do not take reservations, but assured us we arrived early enough we would be seated) so we hung out at the bar and ran a tab. Now, Leo’s is not a terribly big place, and the bar area is pretty tight, and our party was starting to get a bit, um, relaxed. Let’s just say that I’m sure there were plenty of folks at the bar who were happy to finally see us seated, but once we were seated, we were just hitting our stride. We practically took ownership of the place at that point. Now, we were not particularly obnoxious, but we were certainly loud, and enjoying the evening. I don’t think we’ve ever had the opportunity before to go out together, with all of our kids at home with sitters, and just enjoy each other’s company in such a way. Was there excessive alcohol? You bet. Lots of food? Absolutely. Lots of busting of chops, but no one taking any of it seriously, all in good fun; lots of laughing, yelling, and singing. Lots of picture taking, even a birthday cake to celebrate Judith’s 31st birthday yesterday. A few hours later, our meals were finished, and we were ready to move onto the next stop.
We intended to have some drinks at The Nag’s Head, an Irish bar located downtown, but unfortunately for us we had not yet finished the cigars we had started on the walk over from Leo’s. We decided instead to walk down to the river and grab some drinks at the W, i.e. the Westin Hotel, in their outdoor bar overlooking the New York City skyline. Again, unfortunately for us, there was a line outside waiting to get in, which we did not want to stand on. Fortunately, Trinity was located right across the street, so we finally gathered there. I was able to manage a pint of Guinness, before Edith and I had to take off to catch the 11:08 train back to Summit (the train schedule out of Hoboken is pretty desperate; basically if you miss the 11:08 PM, train, which gets you back to Summit at 12:06 AM after switching trains in Newark, you’ve got to catch the 11:33 PM train, switch trains in Secaucus, and then get back into Summit at 1:28 AM. Miss those trains, and your last hope is the 1:32 AM drunkard train, pulling into Summit at 2:28 AM.) We made the 11:08 train, no problem – but the rest of our party hung out at Trinity to wait and catch a non-existent 12:00 AM train, and arrived in Summit nearly 3 1/2 hours later.
We were a bit tired this morning – managed to miss Mass, but I don’t think we were expecting to make it anyway. Today was a catch-up day, to squeeze into one day whatever normally gets done in two days.
While I’m thinking of it… I did manage to catch the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics this past Friday night, and I thought it was pretty darn good, but aside from the athletes, and Wayne Gretzky and the Olympic torch and all that, there were two pieces of the ceremony that simply blew me away:
- k.d. lang singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. This is an amazingly incredible performance, filled with so much emotion and power, yet such tenderness and sweetness. If you haven’t seen this performance, you need to. The actual video is not available via YouTube (it comes down almost as quickly as someone puts it up) but here’s the audio from the performance:
- Joni Mitchell singing Both Sides Now to a graceful acrobatic flying performance across amazing images of the Canadian prairie
Watch Your Step
Seriously. Why do I need to come up with a stupid title to my posts? I mean, we’re talking about a post that gets saved as an entry in a database table, with its own primary key internally stored, so it can’t be needed, technically. How about defaulting the title to the date and time the post was created? That’s what I used to do back in the old days when I simply wrote my thoughts down in spiral bound notebooks. How about it? I kind of like the idea, and I’ll give it a go with the next post.
Anyway, it was an interesting weekend. Woke up early on Saturday to take Will to his audiologist for a routine hearing check, followed by a stop at the Patriots Path Council Scout shop to pick up belt loops and pins for this Friday’s Pack meeting, then drove by the bank to make a deposit at the ATM, then filled up the Lexus at the gas station, and then home. Hung out at home in the afternoon and evening, watched some of the Winter Olympics. Woke up early again on Sunday to make 9:00 AM Mass at St. Joseph’s before heading over to Newark with Will for the Seton Hall vs. DePaul basketball game at the Prudential Center (SHU won 79-71.) Picked up some Valentine treats for Edith on the way home, had dinner and shared Valentines with the kids, put Kate to bed, and replied to an email that I received on Sunday morning from Susan.
I’m not going to get into the details of her email here, nor my reply, but receiving her email was a bit of a surprise; a welcome surprise, at that. I don’t know, what’s it been, maybe 7 years since I’ve heard from her directly? I’m not sure. She’s got a personal crisis she’s dealing with, and as much as I might think I understand what she’s going through in reality I can’t say that I do. I do hope and pray for things to work out, and who knows, maybe I will hear from her again, soon. In my reply I shared with her my post from back in July (SCP); I mean, what the Hell, might as well put that out there, and maybe, just maybe, Susan will want to break down the walls to open up some dialogue between us, and not keep on hiding behind whatever it is that keeps us from being civil, if not downright friendly, to one another again.
Yesterday was a holiday from work, which was nice. Will had one of his classmates over to play in the afternoon, and they had a fun time together sledding down at the big hill by the elementary school, then playing in the snow in the backyard, playing Boom Blox on the Wii, and finally Lego’s in Will’s bedroom. Will doesn’t really have any friends in our town, and he gets quite bored without anyone local to play with; I feel really bad for him, since this is such the contrast from when I was a kid where you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a kid my age on the street where I grew up. He’s enjoying himself enough in Scouts, though. All in all, he’s a little bit lacking in social development – he’s somewhat reserved, which can be seen as being anti-social, and is very much concerned about embarrassing himself, and with what other kids think of him, to the point where it sometimes prevents him from sometimes doing simple social activities like saying “Hi” to the kids in his class. It’s something we’re keeping an eye on.
Worked from home today – it was snowing this morning, and although not really sticking to the roads I did not want to drive down the back roads to Princeton and Lawrenceville and find they were slippery. It’s funny, I used to drive in the snow all the time when I was in Pennsylvania, it didn’t bother me one bit. I even drove up to University of Connecticut one Valentine’s Day Eve in a snowstorm without blinking an eye (I distinctly remember riding along with the caravan of snowplows on I-84 into Hartford.) Edith and I used to ski all over New England, and drove through our share of heavy snow on the way to Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Nowadays, I simply hate it – can’t stand it, and will avoid driving in it if I can help it. Must have something to do with living the past 19 years in New Jersey and dealing with the dense population of idiots on the roads here. Anyway, I’ll be back in the office again tomorrow. Thank God it is less than two weeks left to February, and then not long until the first day of Spring.
Alleluia.
I took W. to see Avatar 3D on Saturday. I’m not sure that he was too excited about actually seeing the movie (I guess he’s just not that aware of the movie at all, which is kind of a good thing, I guess) but I thought he might enjoy it anyway, so off we went over to Manville for the 12:30 PM showing. It was not bad – the story is OK, but the effect are pretty darn impressive. You can bet it will see a bunch of Oscar nominations this week.
I also updated a bunch of the kids’ book over on LibraryThing the other day – we’re finally near the end of cataloging every book that is worth cataloging. Also, I finally finished book 7 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I had bought books 1 through 4 10 years ago, before W. was born, for my children to one day read. Sure enough, last year W. came across the books on his bookshelf and instantly fell in love with the stories. I bought the books 5 through 7 for him, which he devoured in no time, so I decided to read the books myself. They were sure enough entertaining, but it really wasn’t until the Goblet of Fire that I felt the story become interesting, to the point that I really wanted to know how it was going to end. Some things I figured out (like Severus Snape, for example) but even so, there were enough twisted along the way to make the overall series enjouyable. The problem is: what to read next!
January 24, 1980: Thirty years ago, I copied John Tenniel’s drawing from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and presented it as a gift on the occasion of a certain 18 year-old’s birthday. A long, long time ago…
W. took first place again today, in this year’s Pack 59 Pinewood Derby. Last year, our first year in Scouts, I was astonished that W.’s car had done as well as it did; this year, I was expecting W.’s car would win. He came up with a design many weeks ago, but we did not get around to start cutting out the pinewood block on the jigsaw until last weekend. We worked on it a bit through early in the week with the Dremel tool, and cut away a little more with the jigsaw, until we had what we thought was a pretty aerodynamic design, with optimal center of mass ahead of the rear axle. W. selected Midnight Blue paint, and I helped with adding tungsten weights (special order from WinDerby.com – highly recommended) and spraying up my clear glaze. We even painted the wheel hubs, for a truly custom finish.
Next is the District PWD on March 13th – I’m not sure how we’ll do, with a much bigger field from all of the Packs in the District, but we’ll see how it goes. Win or lose, it should be a fun time.
You must be logged in to post a comment.