This morning I had tons of motivation. I got up at 5:10 and went to the cellar to record some guitar parts. Yeah! Get working lard boy!

I did laundry.

Maybe tomorrow.

Motivation appears to be quite the fleeting thing for your humble narrator.

So as I’ve mentioned in previous posts Jen spent much of this past week suffering through a brutal cold. She missed work a couple of times and had to work from home another couple of times. She went to work this morning but is still under the weather a bit. Also over the past few days my step daughter has been dealing with a cold too. Not as severe as her mother’s but still pretty annoying.

This morning, while I was supposed to be rocking along with the rhythm tracks for lame song #1, I started sniffling. Here we are about four hours later and I’m still sniffling.

Uh oh.

I am going to have a positive outlook about this. I have full confidence in my immune system to fight off what ever buggies may be invading my system on a molecular level. Sic ’em white blood cells!

The Bruins won last night. I guess all it took to wake up the offense was having your best forward take a cheap shot from behind that more likely than not ends his season and in the worst case may result in permanent brain damage only to find out that the prick who hit him in the head from behind won’t be suspended by the NHL despite the obvious intent to injure.

Note that the cheap shot, injury, and possible brain damage alone were not enough to spark the Bruins. They lost the game the incident occurred in, and then lost the next game to the 2nd worst team in the NHL. It took the announcement of the non-suspension to wake them up.

I guess we as fans have to take what we can get in a playoff run that will not include Marc Savard. Savard being the player who is lucky to not have been reduced to a drooling vegetable by the drooling vegetable in Pittsburgh. Funny, this all sounds familiar. Didn’t a Pennsylvania player almost destroy Patrice Bergeron’s brain a few seasons ago? Yeah, that happened.

The hit Savard took has been deemed legal by the powers that be, despite the fact that hits thrown with the intent to injure are in fact illegal in the NHL and this particular hit had intent to injure all over it. Maybe the rules are different for players who wear the same jersey Sidney Crosby wears? Could be. Probably not, but it could be.

I have a question. Are the radio rights for the Boston Red Sox back to WEEI full time? I thought that happened last year after a pretty sad attempt at splitting the coverage between WEEI and another station owned by the same company.

If the answer is yes then I will never be apart from a Red Sox OR Bruins OR Patriots game again. Why? Because I have an iPhone.

Over the last 14 months of glorious iPhone ownership I have installed a handful of applications that allow me to listen to streaming audio. Pandora, Daytrotter, Wolfgang’s Concert Vault, Student Radio Network, and NPR News.

And not long ago I added a WEEI app as well.

Now it should be noted that despite having this bevy of listening options, I never really spent much time with them. When I tried using them I would often run into network issues and the streams would either be lost or be choppy and tough to listen to.

Something made me give streaming audio another try yesterday. I drove from Salem, NH to Framingham, MA listening to the random song function on the Daytrotter app and never lost my connection, never experienced any delays, never had any problems at all. On the way back I listened to the Pandora app. Again, smooth sailing with no issues. While driving to get my step son at his after school program I listened to a Who show from 1973 on the Wolfgang’s Concert Vault app. Flawless again.

I have to add at this point that I had completely forgotten I had the WEEI application.

While waiting for the little man to finish his evening activities I browsed the music section of the app store and found the free AOL radio app. I installed it. Checked the local stations for the Boston area and saw 98.5fm. The station that carries Bruins and Patriots games. That’s when I remembered WEEI.

So from now on, when the Bruins are playing and I can’t get to a television or a radio? Pop on the ol’ iPhone. When the Red Sox are on and I can’t get to a television or a radio? Pop on the ol’ iPhone.

It really is the greatest invention in the history of the universe. Screw the wheel, the iPhone takes the prize!

My red haired sister sent me this link from Boston.com this morning.

Cardinal rules – There’s a special something redheads share

You should read it.

There are a couple of things I want to say in response. I don’t really buy the red heads don’t go gray mantra. I look in the mirror and I see plenty of white hairs. I know the day when I am no longer a red head is coming, and it’s probably coming soon. It’s okay though. I see being a red head as a state of mind as well as a physical trait. I will always be a red head, even when my hair stops being red. You’ll just have to check out the sunburns to see proof.

One other statement from the article needs commenting on. “…as the gene for red hair is dispersed through the population, gingers will become less common. But they won’t disappear completely.” I completely disagree with this.

I have had a hunch… a feeling… an intuition… for many years now that as the red hair gene disperses throughout the population it will actually become more common, and eventually… someday… we red heads will actually take over the world. I don’t know whether it will be in a sort of harmonic convergence kinda way, or more like a villain in a James Bond movie taking over the world kinda way, but I do believe that someday… some glorious day… it will happen.

And when that beautiful day comes it will be a capital offense to utter the phrase, “rusty brains.”

Power to the Red Headed People!

I just looked at the date. Is it really March 11th? No-freakin’-way is it really March 11th!

We just finished Christmas and New Years a few days ago, didn’t we? I can’t believe how fast this year is going. I’m dizzy just thinking about it.

March means April and May are nearly upon us. April and May are the anniversary months for Jen and me.

April has our dataversary (anniversary of our first date) and our duplexiversary (anniversary of our moving in together). May has our engagedaversary (anniversary of our engagement) and our actual wedding anniversary (anniversary of our wedding… the first anniversary to be exact).

It’s disturbing how fast the year is moving, but when you look at the celebrations that are right on the horizon it doesn’t seem so bad.

According to news reports this morning actor Corey Haim has died. Another little piece of the 1980’s goes away. I wasn’t a fan. I remember seeing Lucas, but I never saw The Lost Boys. What I was a fan of was the endless joking made at his and his other half Corey Feldman’s expense.

I went to youtube looking for two video clips that I could use to pay tribute to the fallen former teen idol.

One was the Robot Chicken episode with the two Coreys fighting crime… or solving mysteries… or something. I forget. I haven’t seen it in a long time, but I know it was funny. I know it.

I couldn’t find it.

The other video I looked for was a clip from Greg the Bunny. Corey Feldman made an appearance on the FOX show. I don’t think it ever aired, but it’s on the DVD. Feldman tries to pull a prank on his horrible neighbor, Warren, and accidentally kidnaps Greg.

I couldn’t find it.

Here is the dialog as I remember it:
Greg has been sleeping on the front seat of Warren’s car when Corey drove off in it (his intention was to drive it a few blocks down the street and leave it there). Greg wakes up, he and Feldman see each other and start screaming.

There is a little back and forth before getting to the pertinent lines.
Corey Feldman: I thought you were a stuffed animal!
Greg the Bunny: I thought you were in rehab!
Corey Feldman: No, that’s Corey Haim.
Greg the Bunny: What did I say?

Had you seen the clip you would totally have laughed. It is the best Corey/Corey joke ever.

And now the punch line is gone. Corey Haim has gone to the great vampire hunting rehab in the sky. Happy trails 80’s teen idol. Hope things work out better where ever you end up then they did here.

You have to read this story before I can continue. I’ll give you a couple of minutes….

I worked at that Shaws warehouse. For three days back in 1995. During my tenure the warehouse was operated by a third party, not by Shaws itself. Therefore, none of what I say in this reminiscence relates to the current story. Okay?

I think it was ’95. It might have been ’94… but I think it was ’95.

I had a job working for a school called Northeast Broadcasting School. I got the job a few weeks after graduating from their audio recording program. My job was to babysit the recording studios. It was part time, I made very little money, my hours were late at night and all weekend. The huge plus was that I got to use the studios myself when no students were there.

Of course they laid me off.

I ended up getting a job working 2nd shift on weekends at the Shaws warehouse. As I said before, I did not work for Shaws itself and I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the third party company that ran things.

What I do know is that they were pulling out. I was to start on a Friday, and by the end of my shift on Sunday they were going to be gone and Shaws was going to take over.

The place was in chaos. It was insane. There was no supervision, no order, no anything. I had a little training on my first day and then it was off to the mad house. The conditions were awful, every single employee that I met was stretched to the breaking point. People would get pissed off at a manager and break open a box of food and throw it at the walls. One guy actually threw a tantrum and drove a fork lift into a wall. I asked one coworker if anyone had tried to Unionize and was told that the topic came up every once in a while, but with Shaws taking over most of the staff was hopeful that things would quickly change for the better.

At midnight on Monday morning all of the third party staff people left the building and a swarm of Shaws employees from other warehouses thundered in. I think my shift ended at 2:00am and that was it for me. I was done. I spoke to some one in the office on Monday afternoon and said Shaws or no Shaws I was never setting foot in that death trap again.

Now here we are 15 years later and the warehouse employees are on strike. Judging by the Globe article linked above it sure sounds like Shaws is trying to eff them in the eh. A wonderful new contract that includes a reduction in take home pay and a 10% increase in family health care cost. Nice.

I am glad they Unionized. Unions tend to get a bad rap these days and it is definitely deserved. I am generally a pro Union kinda guy, but they can be just as corrupt as anyone else. I worked at UPS for a while and was a member of the Teamsters. There were a few occasions when coworkers had some sort of problem with management and would seek out the Union’s help. It used to bother the management folks, but from what I can see the situations would normally be resolved to everyone’s benefit. Of course I can’t for the life of me remember a specific example, so I might be passing on an affective snow job onto all of my faithful readers. Who knows. Who cares.

All I know is that I’m not shopping at Shaws until the strike is over.

Solidarity.

My beautiful wife is still feeling sick. She’s been fighting a bad cold since Saturday night and is staying out of work for the second day in a row. I very much want her to feel better.

Please continue to send her get well thoughts. She can use them.

**Subject Change**

Apparently today is the day that the weather is officially nice enough for road crews to start deploying onto the side streets in their ceaseless effort to gum up traffic everywhere. I saw four of them this morning. They were all in Concord, MA so maybe it’s just that one town that let the crews off the leash today, but if one town does it you know that more will follow.

**Subject Change**

Three years ago today Boston (both the town and the rock band) lost Brad Delp.

A couple of weeks ago I had iTunes up on my desktop at home. I had walked away from my computer and my step daughter was taking a look at my playlists. The kids take piano lessons and I was being a nerd and playing them some examples of a couple of my favorite keyboard players (Rick Wakeman & Keith Emerson).

When I walked back into the room she had clicked on my Boston playlist and selected “Rock and Roll Band”. Turns out she knew the song from playing Rock Band. I told her that her mother knew the guy singing and she was very impressed. I now have two Brad Delp stories (the other one had to do with him walking into a bar in Billerica in ohhhh 1992 or ’93 or so and having the whole crowd hush with awe as Boston music royalty deemed them worthy of his presence) and this new one is by far the better.

I have purchased four Powerball lottery tickets since the game became available in Massachusetts.

I haven’t won.

In the drawings I’ve played no one has won.

Still, on two of my four tickets I actually got a number. Pretty cool. On a third ticket I actually got two numbers.

I just know there’s a winning ticket with my name on it. It’s just a matter of time!

(Now please go back and read the title of this post… Yup, that’s me.)

My wife is still sick today. She called in sick to work. I want to be able to stay home and take care of her but I can’t… stupid job.

Please send get well wishes to my sweetie.

Thanks

We watched Miracle tonight with the kids (on blu-ray… woah!). I wanted to give them an idea of why I got so excited about the Olympic hockey tournament this year.

The most notable kid comment was, “The movie is called Miracle, so I bet they win.”

Wise beyond their years, eh?