Hazy Shade of Winter

The Bangles version of course.

It's been a long winter. I do enjoy the seasons. But really? Haven't we had enough snow now? I am running out of places to put it all. Just as we start seeing bare ground, we get another snow storm. So you get that great frozen crust under fresh snow fall. It certainly makes walking and driving a challenge.
The boys only concern is that they don't want snow days to prolong the school year. I can't blame them. I remember wanting to get out earlier in June. I do recall the Blizzard of '78 wreaking havoc with our school year. We missed a week of school without power. Now we get the same conditions and it is business as usual. How times have changed.

Letter to the President

Coco had a class project to write a letter to the new President of the United States. I think it is a great exercise and love that the school is placing an emphasis on our country's government. I also enjoy a child's innocent perspective on life. I think most adults will get a kick out of this (abbreviate excerpt):
"Dear President Obama,
Congratulations on becoming President........I hope you are as good a President as George Bush.
From - Kyle Chin"

Democrats everywhere are rolling in their graves.

Wouldn't it be nice if it were that simple? Everyone just stops their b*tching and moaning and just wish a new President good luck and do a good job.

Mantown 2009

This weekend is Boys weekend. Demi is off the the Island to her annual weekend with the Real Housewives of Long Island. I know, I know. Where do I begin? I know you just want to shout out @#$%^ (rhymes with "stores"), but they are actually very nice girls. Mostly.... Just me and the boys. And I have a raging head cold. Not a good start. But we had the beach party at the school last night, where the boys got to do the limbo, arts and crafts, dancing, moon bounce, run around with their friends. And I. I got to hang with some of the football moms. The boys both have basketball and Coco has a birthday party. I score bonus points with organizing a carpool and play dates (for the boys, not for me).
I got the boys fired up for NHL All-Star Weekend. They are rooting hard in the Futures Stars games for the Bruins Representative to the Rookie Squad, Blake Wheeler. Editors Note: Here is the first representation for the B's in this blog, and is a positive sign of how well they are doing this year, it is not followed by a curse or outburst of disappointment. Unfortunately, Milan Lucic was not able to play for the Sophomore Squad. I pointed out to the boys the fact that Zdeno Charra took it upon himself to turn his role in the hardest shot competition into a way to fund raise for charity. And how it snowballed from just the entrees in the competition, to their teams, to the NHL and then to the NHL Players Union. So not only an opportunity to get the boys excited about hockey and the Bruins, but a good message as well. The boys went wild when Charra set a record to win the event.
At one point, while the three of us were sprawled out on our new sectional couch, each having plenty of room to sprawl out, stretch, scratch, etc, Caz turns to me and asks, "Hey, at bedtime, can we take Mantown upstairs and have a Mantown sleepover?" I lost it. I am sure it was inspired by all the commercials during the All Star Skills Competition for the new show with the Goose, Tony Siragusa, "Mancaves". Highlight of the weekend.
In order to comply with by full disclosure policy, or fair and balanced, or whatever you would like to call it, I must confess that I was not on my A game all weekend. I could hide behind my head cold but I just need to fess up and say I did not have the energy to be as patient as I needed to be. There was an inordinate amount of yelling on my part and not because I was trying to be heard from one floor away. The boys are of the age where they can be extra helpful when they choose, so maybe I expected more help than I got. Maybe my expectations were out of skew because I expected more help because I was sick. There were a couple of moments that were not my proudest. Not to worry Lefty, I don't think the boys will be in a clock tower over it. Scared Straight or not, they should pull through.

Battle of Evermore

Well, I can certainly report that I was much more vociferous at this past Board meeting than the last one. I think I did my part in getting folks talking about the needing to address certain inequity within the program. The teams with the larger rosters need to figure out how to manage playing time. We can't have another season like we did last year. We already know that we are going to lose quite a few kids to the other programs in town. That shouldn't matter. The reason they are leaving is the issue. I don't claim to know what the correct solution is. But at least I have the Board talking. We talked about JV teams, controlled scrimmages, and capping teams. We do have to figure out. Between 9 adults, I would hope we can do that.

TV Nirvana

24 is back after an extended hiatus. The first 4 hours over 2 consecutive nights got us off to an exciting start. Fastest four hours on TV. 2 LOST premier tonight using the 24 format of no repeats during the season. Does it get any better than this? Almeida looks like he went to the dark side, only to be deep undercover. Chloe is still a pain in the *ss. Jack still doesn't miss a shot. The Island is traveling in time. Jack Sheppard wants to go back to the island. The perfect storm of TV shows. Winter just got brighter.

Movie Review - Bedtime Stories

When Adam Sandler was on SNL, I thought he was a comic genius. I loved his skits: Operaman, The Fresh Peppah Waiter, etc. When he started doing movies, there was a promising start, Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison. But then things like 50 First Dates and 8 Crazy nights came along. Time I will never get back. This performance was in the classic Sandler mode, but with a twist. It was family appropriate. This was a really great family movie. All four of enjoyed it thoroughly. Plenty of laughs, and a good story. Courtney Cox and Keri Russell were funny in this too. I give it 4.5 Chinnies.

The Crud

Well, we made it until the middle of January before our clan came down with the crud. Coco got up in the middle of the night vomiting. He continued every couple of hours until mid-afternoon. Poor kid started getting the dry heaves too. We laid him out by the fire on the couch in the den. I had moved a half of a cord of wood the previous morning. The kids and I had shoveled yesterday and again this morning. My back was tired and finally crapped out. My stomach seemed a bit off and I feared I was catching the crud too. So I laid on the floor with a heating pad by Coco and kept him company. The little champ made the bucket or the toilet every time. He finally perked up about kick-off time of the first game. I think he was thrilled he got to watch back to back games, even if he did fall asleep during half-time of the second game. I know I was happy about watching back to back games. I would say we successfully managed our first bout of the crud.