This is a picture I took of me and the (at that time future) Mrs just after we got engaged. I like this one a lot.

I used it today as a guinea pig to test the new Flickr tagging function. It’s pretty much exactly the same as Facebook’s except it has a little more control over privacy.

Click on the image to go to the actual Flickr page then hover the mouse over the image and you will be able to see which one of those people is Rob and which is Jen.

Nothing. Nada. I can’t think of anything to add to this one sided conversation today.

Jen is still sick. It looks like it’s a bad cold but she’s going to the doctor today. It sucks that she started a new job on Monday and had to call in sick on Wednesday. Poor sweetie, I hope she feels better as today rolls on.

The Bruins won. They get to try to win consecutive games for the first time tonight. Unfortunately they have to do it against Philadelphia. Speaking of Philadelphia, the Phillies made my NLCS prediction come out wrong. They have a chance to repeat as World Series Champions. The Yankees and Angels play game five tonight so at some point late this evening the Yankees should prove my ALCS prediction correct. Freakin’ Yankees.

What exactly does one do with a free day mid-week in South Bend, Indiana? My Internet researching has yet to come up with anything. So far it comes down to site seeing on the Notre Dame campus or staying in the hotel. I hope our hotel has a pool. I hope it has a hot tub. Give me a book, my glasses, a towel to wipe the fog off my glasses, and a hot tub and I could sure spend a full business day.

The books on tape during the work day commute experiment continues. I’m nearing the end of Dark Tower Book #4. Cuthburt just sucker punched Roland and Roland apologized. He is a Gunslinger after all. During all of my readings through these books in the past I have always pronounced that name as Cuh-th-bert. The guy reading the book on tape pronounces it Queue-th-bert. I find that disconcerting somehow.

The Smallville viewing also continues. We’re into season two now. We just met a freak-of-the-week who can literally be in two places at once. He was finishing four years of high school in two years. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

I’ll see if I can find some videos to post here to entertain you all, but for now I am done.

Go Bruins
Go Angels
Go Jenny

Did you see that post yesterday (all four of you) where I was all giddy because somebody actually beat the Yankees in a playoff game? Well the Yankees got back at my optimism and beat the holy hell out of the Angels last night, 10-1. That’s TEN to ONE kids. The Yankees are now one game away from a trip to the World Series. I HATE THE YANKEES!

How do the sports gods top that? Well Marc Savard, the #1 center and top scorer for my Boston Bruins broke his fracking foot! He’s out for 4-6 weeks.

Last year the Bruins finished the regular season in 1st place in the East. Their top line was Savard, Milan Lucic, and Phil Kessel. All three of those guys are on injured reserve now. Savard for his foot, Lucic for a broken finger, and Kessel recovering from off-season surgery. Of course Kessel is finishing his recovery in Toronto as he was traded to the desolate wasteland that is hockey’s largest market.

Still, the whole top line is gone! The Bruins did make a deal to bring in Daniel Paille from the Buffalo Sabres for a couple of draft picks, but that is hardly enough to save us from six weeks of destruction. (It could be worse, we could be Maple Leaf fans, or Islander fans. I keep telling myself that.)

My fear that the Boston Bruins were going to start looking like the Providence Bruins is becoming more and more true with each passing second.

I am holding my breath that Patrice Bergeron, Marco Sturm, and Mr Paille can click into a strong offensive line and carry the Bruins through the dark times… but Paille doesn’t seem to be that good and Bergeron, while still a hell of a player, doesn’t seem to be quite the offensive threat he was prior to his near death by Flyer two seasons ago.

The Yankees are rolling…
The Bruins are looking like a M*A*S*H unit.

Oh Hawkeye and Trapper John, can’t you save us?

It’s been a long time since I was a boy scout and had to live by the “do a good deed daily” spiel, but today I jumped back on the bandwagon a little bit.

I was at a gas station in Methuen filling up the blue bomber’s tank when I noticed something placed on top of the pump. It was a wallet.

A lesser man, who lacks the boy scout ethic, might have shouted something like, “Woohoo!” and started digging into it. I, however, let it sit where it was until I finished my business. I figured the owner would come back for it and I would give him time to find it on his own. When I finished and no one had come to claim it I took it off the top of the pump and brought it into the station. I then gave it to the clerk at the register and said where I found it and bought myself a soda. A small reward for my good turn, maybe… or maybe I was just sleepy and needed some carbonated caffeine.

My wife (who is home sick today, the poor sweetie) reminded me of a situation where she left her wallet at a gas station just before we were to fly out to Wisconsin to visit Mike and his family. A kind stranger whose name was almost the same as that of the guy who wrote The Shining (it was different, but similar) found it and returned it to her. The Mrs suggested that possibly my heroic action this morning was a way to refill the karmic gas tank after burning off some of our karmic credit in that prior instance. Note how I mixed my metaphor there. My high school English teachers would be proud as a bear shitting in the woods. (see, I did it again only this time I did it ironically!)

So there is the great story of my good deed for today. There too is my lame attempt at making something silly and simple sound grand and heroic (I’ve used that word twice, get it?) Were I to add a tag to this particular update I would use a word like, “overblown”. Or perhaps, “retarded”.

I hope the guy finds his wallet and I hope that all of his things are still in it.

Last night was a quiet stay-at-home-doing-laundry-while-watching-Smallville kinda night. We saw the world premiers of heat vision and red kryptonite.

It’s funny, all of my Superman knowledge comes from the Christopher Reeve movies. Suddenly I have this urge to learn everything about the entire Superman mythology… the entire official back story as it were. I don’t know if that’s possible.

According to wikipedia there are actually multiple official story lines. When the comic writers wanted to do something new they invented a new line based on the ol’ multiple universe gimmick. (see the new Star Trek movie. No I am not complaining, it just tends to confuse things for hyper nerds like me.)

So in one universe, Clark and Lex Luthor are friends as kids. In another, they meet as adults. Get it? That makes Smallville just about as official canon as anything. Works for me.

Hey, did you hear the stunning news? The Yankees lost a playoff game last night! After squeaking out an extra inning win against the Angels in game two, thanks to a poor pitch in the 11th (I think) and an error in the 13th, the Angels had themselves a walk off win in 11 innings yesterday. How about that! The Yankees still lead the series two games to one, and I am still positive they will be winning the pennant, but Let’s Go Angels!

The Phillies spanked the ever loving hell out of the Dodgers in game three and then won a walk off in game four to take a three games to one lead. The Dodgers goose is, shall we say, cooked? I think we shall. In game five all they have to do to stay alive is beat the reigning NLCS and World Series MVP. Nuttin’ special, right?

The Bruins are under .500. I am not panicking yet, but one of their strong points last year was supposed to be depth, and the line up they are expected to dress for tomorrow night’s game bears a strong resemblance to the Providence Bruins. Not panicking… nope… just feeling a little, “uh-oh” that’s all.

Go Angels.
Go Bruins.
Go Superman.

I watched the Patriots game at my sister’s yesterday. The Pats set a team record by scoring 62 points in a 62-0 laugher against Tennessee. Tom Brady set an NFL record by throwing… ummm… I forget… was it five touchdown passes in a quarter, or six in one half, or was it five in one half. Something like that.

At the same time the Bruins were making a couple of roster moves. I didn’t learn about them until this morning. Milan Lucic was placed on the long term injured reserve list. He has to sit out a minimum of 10 games or (or is it and) 24 calendar days.

On top of that, they traded Chuck Kobasew for a 2011 second round pick, an unsigned draftee (who is a freshman at Harvard, I think) and a minor leaguer. I’ve been a fan of Chuck’s since the lock out when he played for the Lowell Lock Monsters and set the franchise record for goals in a season (the same year that future NHL star Eric Staal set the franchise record for points in a season, although Staal’s record didn’t stand for long). He’s been playing like an M.I.A. this season though and if someone had to go to light the spark under the team, he didn’t do much to save himself. He now plays for Minnesota, the poor bastard. I’ll miss him and I wish him the best of luck.

Let’s just hope the ploy works and this trade puts the fear of the hockey gods into the rest of the team and they start playing like they don’t suck. Please?

Now for a recap of the weekend.

Friday evening Jen and I met at my parent’s house and headed South. We drove the entire length of Rhode Island on route 95 all the way into Connecticut. We checked into a hotel in Mystic and pretty much went straight to sleep. We were, in a word, exhausted.

Saturday morning we got up (too late to consider a dip in the pool) and dressed up nicely (Jenny looked fantastic of course) and went-a-gamblin’. The first stop was Foxwoods. We ended up in the new MGM casino. Jen played blackjack while I watched. Occasionally I would sneak off and drop $20 in a slot machine. I never won any of it back. We stayed there for a couple of hours or so, maybe closer to three. When we left we were down $25 (all from my slot machine excursions) and the price of lunch. Not bad.

We then headed to Mohegan Sun, after getting briefly lost. We almost ended up in Westerly, RI which is the home of my former radio show co-host (okay, host. She did almost all of the talking while I pretended to push buttons) DJ Deena. We didn’t try to stop in though, we had gamblin’ on the brain. We turned around and eventually found our destination.

Again, Jen went to play blackjack while I occasionally wandered to a slot machine. I spent about 4 minutes on two excursions and lost $50. That was enough for me. Jen was doing well at the table and when a seat next to her opened up she convinced me to sit down and play.

Yes, I played blackjack, but in all honesty I just sat there and did what Jen told me. Even when I was getting the hang of it I still ran all of my moves past her first. When she first sat at the table she had $100 in chips. When we stopped we had $250. After all was said and done, factoring my slot losses, her Foxwoods results, and breakfast and lunch, we left Connecticut with $172 more than when we arrived. Not bad at all.

On Sunday we woke up early to get some much needed laundry done. Damn the real world’s responsibilities for edging their way into our fun weekend. We also watched a few episodes of Smallville. It is one of Jen’s favorite shows and we have made it the next one on our watch-it-from-start-to-finish list.

For lunch we made an impromptu trip to The Border for lunch and then we headed to my sister’s for the fall-birthdays-steak-and-cake. We split our time between watching the babies and watching the Patriots. We made some plans for Halloween. Jen and I do not have the kids this year so we are going to visit my sister on the 31st and my parents, where both babies will be, on the 30th. I have always loved Halloween, but I think I love it more now that there are kids involved again.

(unrelated side note, the red tail hawk that lives near our building just totally buzzed my window. Very cool)

So that’s it for now. A week and a half to go before we head to Indiana for the first time in my life. Looking forward to it.

Good Day, for now.

Snow… In October… Again.

Sitting at home on the couch watching Smallville DVDs. Thinking about heading out and using some of our $172 blackjack surpluss on lunch with my sweetie before heading to the Fall birthdays steak-and-cake at my big sister’s house.

Another sweet Sunday with my wife.

Perfect.

Happy Alternate Universe Wedding Day to my wife.

I love you Jen.

What is this?

That’s not our house, it must be a hotel room.

Rob is ironing on a Saturday in a hotel room?

Double-you Tea Eff?

They must be off somewhere celebrating what would have been their wedding day.