So where was I...

... oh yeah Arlene's daughters went to visit their father in Palmyra Penn. It was not an uneventful trip. I haven't flown since 2006 and I had a stop somewhere in Texas. The flight back to Boston was similar one stop at a place more or less on the way. Who remembers? Pennsylvania is not all that far from Massachusetts but they did not have a direct flight. They went to Detroit first then to Pennsylvania. The weather was not the best, particularly on the return trip. It was the same scenario, Pennsylvania to Detroit, then Boston. Well the weather was sketchy in Detroit. There was the possibility that they may have to stay in Detroit for a time, possibly until the next morning. They became frantic.
"Are we going to have to sleep in the airport?!"
"Are there hotels in the airport?!".

Now I should point out Arlene's daughter are twins and they are in their mid thirties. Long story short, they waited a bit and made it home safely.

Sometimes I am unaware of what goes on around me. Last Sunday night Arlene and I were watching 60 Minutes. The were doing a piece on Michael Bloomberg the former mayor of New York City, who by the way is worth 47 billion dollars, (Yikes!) when Arlene informs me that he grew up around here in our very hometown. I was unaware of that. Then she tells me that his mother still lived here until she passed in 2012 at 102. Below is an article from the New York Times. You don't have to read it but is what I found on Google.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/nyregion/charlotte-r-bloomberg-mayors-mother-dies-at-102.html

Couple that with finding out Fannie Farmer lived at the end of my street sometimes I wonder how these things got by me. 

Here's a picture of the house that Emilia Earhart lived in with her sister. She went to the same high school that I did.

Then a couple of days ago the Mayor of Salem Massachusetts snapped this picture of a streetlamp with this ghostly image.

And to finish up this disjointed mess I am happy to announce that Arlene and I will be heading back to Martha's Vineyard in June. We can't wait but of course we'll have to. So to finish up it's time to get off the couch and do some laundry and food shopping. The servants are never around when you need them and when is Donald Duck going to put some pants on?
I'm outta here.

Tasty ham, beautiful weather, laughs, the marathon...

As I begin this blog it's 2:15 Monday afternoon. It's called Patriots Day around here marking the first battles of the revolution at Lexington and Concord. I probably won't finish this at this sitting but I guess that really doesn't matter. At this point there are still runners crossing the finish line of the 121st running of the Boston Marathon. I remember in the 70's and 80's I worked at a store my former company has at the Prudential Center in Boston. Below is a picture of the rather bland Prudential building. On the ground floors were many retail stores.

 

 

Below is a picture of the exterior of the store on the right, behind the duckboat.





Anyway the reason I bring this up is at that time the finish line of the marathon was not too far up Boylston Street, very near the store front. It has since been moved about a half a mile up the street, No matter what your scheduled was you weren't going home for quite a while unless you traveled with public transportation. Still it was pretty neat to watch thousands of runners go by. This year there were over 30,000 runners. A bunch of us would go out to eat and have a few drinks. I know at times I have complained about what a pain it can be dealing with downtown Boston on any day. Still on days like today I have to say how proud I am to live here and how wonderful the City of Boston is. On top of the marathon, on the third Monday in April another tradition is an 11A.M. Red Sox game. The city was really humming today.
 
I was at my sisters on Easter Sunday. It was a lot of fun. The wine was flowing and all were cracking wise. The weather was very warm, 86 degrees. We all made fun of the way we talk around here. Not so much the Boston accent but the way we can contract a short sentence or phrase into one or two words.  Did you eat? can become, Jeet? 
Do you want to go down ... becomes Juwanna guhdown... You're supposed to... becomes yaspozetah. What are you doing... Whatcha doin?

My middle sister and I both read comic books at some point in our lives. There's a cliché  sound effect that is has been used in comic books for years. It could have been used in Archie or Spider-man. Most of the time it was used when someone was falling off a building, into a volcano, out of a plane without a parachute...

Ok you get the idea. So we're sitting on the back porch. There's an ant on the railing and my brother in law reaches out to flick it off. As the ant goes sailing off the railing I say, "Aieeeeee!"  My sister caught it and started laughing. I joined her in laughter. My other sister and brother in law looked at us like we had missed our medication. 

 

That's all I got for now.

I'm outta here.  

That was the week that was.

Right off the bat I want to get this out of the way. Several days ago my friend Dave and I went to see the construction site of the new casino they're building only about four or five miles from where I live. It is quite close to the rotary of death that I mentioned last blog though it is easier to use since it is the first exit off the rotary and it is much easier to get in position to take it. Well guess what? It's a construction site with trucks and cranes. It's not particularly exciting so there's just a picture. By the way this is supposed to be done in about a year. They are building a casino and a hotel.

The airport is not all that far away from here. About 5 to 7 miles east of here, so it is not unusual to have planes flying over. I was on the couch watching television or perhaps the television was watching me, when I was startled away by the roar of low flying jets. It was scary. You don't know what to think. It was two distinct planes low and loud. Were we under attack? It turns out it was opening day at Fenway Park and the Red Sox commissioned a fly over by the Blue Angels but it scared the hell out of  me.

The marathon is next week and they have established a Krystle Campbell Scholarship Fund with a team of runners called Team Krystle who will be running and raising money for the scholarship. They ran through the neighborhood the other day but I had no idea who they were until Arlene gave me the lowdown.

Sunday was a beautiful day so Arlene and I went out for a bite to eat. Having a hotel built in town has brought four very nice restaurants to town. We've been to Salvatore's before and I have also mentioned before that the restaurants location used to be a bank. The Depositors Trust, the site of an infamous robbery that took place as the Memorial Day parade went by. The robbers, which included 3 cops, broke in the store next door and entered the bank through the ceiling. They left the hole in the ceiling in the restaurant. The take was 1.5 million in cash and an estimated 15-25 million in gold and jewelry. Anyway as you walk out the back of the restaurant to the parking lot you see one of the oldest brick houses in the country, the Jonathan Wade house built in 1683. I had my camera with me.

 

However there is one older brick house in the city, possibly the oldest brick house in the country. This city was settled the same year that Boston was, 1630. The Peter Tufts House which is almost around the corner from my house. It dates to 1677. This is not my picture. I got it from Google.

 

 So we took a right out the parking lot up Governors Ave and Arlene said let's take a ride. So off we went to the nicest part of the city to the next town over and circled back into our hometown. Here's the video. With all our chit chat we sound like we're on the zoning board.  


  
So that's it for this edition,
I'm outta here.