Weekend in Review

It started out as a pain in the ass, but the weekend turned out to be pretty good.

I posted an entry on Friday discussing my broken rim issue. I slid on the ice into a curb with my driver’s side front tire taking all of the impact. The result was the rim actually broke. I’ve never seen that one before, but there it was looking up at me… a broken rim.

I decided to swap the tire for my spare. All I had was a donut… a very experienced donut at that. I waited for the garage to empty out a bit and then went out and changed my tire. Always good for a laugh; a fat man on his knees changing a tire. The donut looked seriously wimpy when I took the car off the jack, but it still seemed like a better idea than leaving on the broken rim.

My drive home was about 27 miles of pothole filled nightmare. It’s funny how when you’re really focused on the condition of the pavement you can often tell exactly where the town lines are. Framingham wasn’t too bad. Wayland was pretty good. Lincoln was terrible. Concord was a little better. Bedford was almost as bad as Lincoln. Billerica was all right (at least on the few roads I took… generally Billerica’s roads are a disaster), and Tewksbury was good in places and horrid in others.

Somehow though, I managed to get my car home on the donut. After consulting a few friends who are more automotively inclined than I, I decided to bring the car into the shop to make sure the rim was the only thing damaged. Unfortunately the shop was closed for the weekend, which means we took Jens’ car everywhere.

I would like to take a moment to pay homage to the donut that got me home. This was the second time in the last few months that I’ve had to put this wonderful donut onto my car. The first time was after blowing a tire on the way to Jen’s. The donut drove me safely from Salem, NH to Tewksbury, MA via route 93. A job well done. The second time it took me back roads from Framingham, MA to Tewksbury. Another job well done. I think I am going to have this donut bronzed and have it entered into the Spare Tire Hall of Fame. If no such place exists I will create it. Nothing is too good for my wonderful spare tire. Thank you donut… thank you.

Thank you my donut

For being so kind to me

Saturday was a kind of screwy day. We took the kids to their piano lesson at 10:00 and hung out there for the full hour. Afterwards we drove back to my house. The plan was for me to take care of a little Internet business and then we’d go to Quincy to visit The Godfather, who is sadly back in the hospital for a few days.

The Internet business is worthy of note for two reasons. First it’s really cool and lots of New Englanders are going to totally be jealous of me, and second it fucked up most of the rest of the day.

The demand for Boston Red Sox tickets is so ridiculously high that certain games and certain seating sections are sold separately from the rest of the tickets. Specifically, the green monster seats, the right field roof seats, and opening day plus all nine games against the Yankees. The team deals with this insane demand by having an Internet raffle where the prize is a chance to buy tickets. I entered my email address and magically was chosen to have the chance to buy tickets for either opening day or the Yankees games.

I talked it over with Jen and we decided to go for a Yankee game. The restrictions were that I could buy a maximum of four seats to a maximum of one game. I asked her to pick a few games off of the schedule that she’d like me to go for, and from there I picked my target game.

The sale started at noon, so at 11:59.50 I clicked on the link they emailed me and was placed into a virtual waiting room. (do you hate the word “virtual” as much as I do?) The sale was scheduled to end at 5:00. That was perfect as my family was going to have the traditional Steak and Cake night celebrating Jen’s birthday at Polcari’s in Salem at 6:00.

A few words on Steak and Cake. For a while we were celebrating good weather birthdays by having a little BBQ and then doing cake and presents. The term was coined by some one who used to be involved who isn’t anymore, but it stuck. Eventually the BBQ idea was replaced by simply going out to dinner. Cake more or less disappeared from the equation but the name remained.

So there I sit in the virtual waiting room as the minutes tick by. I figured that seeing as there would be a (relatively) small number of people given the opportunity to buy tickets I should be able to get mine within an hour or so.

Wrong

Noon became 1:00, which became 2:00, which began to approach 3:00. Jen and I sat in the living room watching various On Demand programming (some South Park, some Family Guy, and then the special edition of Independence Day… a terrible movie that Jen and I both can’t stop watching. Don’t you want to just punch Jeff Goldblum when you watch that? Don’t you just want to puke when Judd Hirsch says something about catching a cold. It’s horrible… and yet I keep on watching the damn thing. It’s like driving past a car accident on the highway, you just can’t look away.) waiting for me to get my chance to buy some tickets. Around 3:00 the idea of going to Quincy was scrapped. There wasn’t enough time to go South to Quincy, visit for a while, and then get back up North to Salem, NH. Besides, I wanted my damn tickets!

Also around that time they announced that the sale would be extended from 5:00pm to 11:00pm “for our convenience.” I guess Theo Epstien has a different definition of “convenient” than I do.

4:00 came and went, and then 5:00 came and went. At 5:30 I said screw it. I closed the laptop (without exiting the virtual waiting room) and we went to dinner. I had a combo plate of some pasta, an excellent piece of chicken, and some tortured baby cow. It was very good. After the meal was over we drove my folks back to Tewksbury and I checked the laptop. I was out of the virtual waiting room and on a “you can buy tickets now” page. I asked for four tickets to the Sunday July 27^th game against New York and chose “best available” for my price level. It came back with four seats in the center field bleachers and I took them. BAM Sox/Yankees tickets for the summer. Kick ass!

Now the question becomes… who gets the other two tickets? My brother in law offered to name the baby my sister is carrying after me if I gave him one. The baby is due a couple of weeks before the game, and let’s say my sister was miffed. Also, both of the baby’s grandfathers are also named Robert so I would never be sure if Ken actually kept his side of the bargain or if he was really naming the baby after a grandparent or two. That’s still the only offer on the table… so if you want to go and think you can beat that I encourage you to try. Hehe

Sunday was a great day. Harry’s family birthday party. His friend party was February 1st, so this was his second full blown birthday party. Kids are so lucky these days. All I got was one 70’s version of steak and cake! The party was at Mike’s house. That’s the kid’s father, not Mike the bass player from Wisconsin. The grandparents were there along with some friends and an aunt and uncle and a couple of cousins, and the newcomers this year were my sister and her husband and my brother and his wife.

For Christmas, Santa brought Harry a really cool marble run thing. Imagine building your own roller coaster for marbles… that sort of thing (or you could just look at the pictures that I’m sticking onto this post). Ken walked into the room and saw it… and instantly fell in love. I now know what Heaven is for Ken… it’s a huge marble run roller coaster type thing.

There was also a fair amount of drama. First, a car carrying Mike’s sister’s family got stuck on the long, steep, icy driveway. Fortunately they were the last car to arrive and five of us went outside to heroically push the car up the slope. Okay, so heroically is probably overstating it quite a bit. Later as the party was winding down Mike’s sister’s family again had driveway troubles. Earlier in the day the weather basically sucked. Snow, rain, freezing temperatures, and high winds. The wind was kind enough to knock over a tree and dump it across the driveway. Again, the manly parade outside. This time it was Jen’s step-father wielding Mike’s chainsaw like a logger in a Brazilian rain forest. The tree was sawed into pieces and moved out of the way in no time.

The party was a big success over all. Everyone had fun. Bellana and her cousin Hailey were twins for the day, the food was good, the Spongebob cake was excellent, Harry got a lot of cool presents, Bellana was nice enough to play “Happy Birthday” on the piano, and a huge new marble run was built by Mike and Ken with plenty of help from Harry and Shawn and Hailey.

After the party Jen and I went home and flaked for a while before breaking out the Christmas gift the kids got for me… a Hersey’s Kiss fondue pot. We each increased our annual sugar intake by about 10000% within just a few minutes. I particularly liked the chocolate covered pretzels and the chocolate covered cookies. I know you are usually supposed to have some fruit when you fondue it, but we went with junk food. It worked out very well indeed.

Here come the pictures…

This is the 2nd cutest picture ever taken.

This is the cutest picture ever taken

Jen took this picture of my gigantic nose

Say hello to the Birthday Boy.  Harry, age 5.

Jen gives some love to Floyd

Ken finds his purpose in life… the marble run

Dig the testosterone!  Left to right: Ken, Sherman, Mike, Some Fat Guy, John.

Present time!

I think I’m seeing double

Harry was kind enough to let Shawn help.

Harry kept forgetting to read the card first… just like I always did!

Ken starts building

The singing of “Happy Birthday” was accompanied by Bellana on the piano.  Nice job!

Dig the Spongebob cake

Harry was ready for some cake… I was too!

Party goers…

…and more party goers

Mike and Ken, with help from Harry and Hailey, and Shawn start serious work on the marble run.

The work continues

And still continues.  I took a few seconds of video of the finished project in action.  I’ll post that when I get a chance.

This week there are a couple of things planned. The main one being something on Thursday that’s supposed to happen. I can’t quite recall what it is. It’s a day that starts with a V or something. All I know is that it’s the first one for Jen and me and I’m really looking forward to it… even if I can’t quite remember what it is. I’ll let you know how it goes.

That’s all for now.