I’m home

was released form the hospital about a half hour ago. Just enough time to let everyone know I’m all right and to still make tipoff of tonight’s ESPN ACC/Big Ten Challenge match. It’s being broadcast by ESPNU and I will be in my regular seat 5 rows behind the visitors bench – I’m on the aisle on your right.

To Pod or Not to Pod… that is the question.

Are IPods really the way to go? I was in Best Buy last weekend looking for a set of replacement headphones for Brandon’s IPod Shuffle. The only ones (that were Apple certified and that matched the original ones) were sold with a useless remote control and were priced at $45. I was highly annoyed that I couldn’t find the replacement headphones sold by themselves. It was at this moment when I realized that I had become a victim of marketing. It never even occured to me that there may be other options out there for MP3 players. So, I began to look around. I noticed several on the market and all at significantly lower prices than IPod. So what’s so special about these fruity little devices anyway? Why should I give them my money?

Why No PSU Update?


What’s up? What is Larry doing? Everybody is wondering…. “Where’s Larry?”

Yes, only one thing could explain this dereliction of duty. Larry’s in the hospital.

His initial diagnosis is pancreatitis caused by gallstones.

He went in Saturday afternoon, hopes to be out Tuesday.

Right now it seems that he may have surgery to remove the stones sometime in the next couple weeks. First they have to get the inflammation and/or infection reduced.

Don’t feel too bad. Larry always has a way to make the best of any situation. He tells me the hospital is staffed with babes.

UPDATE 11/29/05

Just got a text message from Larry. His gallbladder was removed today and he expects to be home tomorrow.

Thanksgiving NY Style



Santa always finishes the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade!

After the parade we left the building we were in (Ed Sullivan Theatre, aka Letterman Show) to head to our cars. We had a group photo taken by a passerby. Wanted a second but couldn’t get the kids’ attention as they were fascinated by the street-sweepers.

We were accompanied by an old friend and co-worker of Lis’, Doug Reuter, his wife, Susan and 2 kids. His first was born 3 mos before Charlotte. His 2nd the same day as Lex. We’ve known Doug for more than 20 yrs.

We went to the Upper West Side and Nancy’s apartment (Nana to the kids.) A little play in the local park playground and dinner.

All in all a fine day.

Birthdays

At the beginning of the month Ronnie made a comment on his birthday posting that he couldn’t remember the year of everyone’s birth. I think that’s a great challenge to post on our blog (we need to start getting some family history here). I’ll give it a shot (correct me if I’m wrong). I then challenge everyone to post their immediate family’s birth dates. Here goes:

Dad (Edwin) – 01/01/21, deceased 01/24/86
Mom (Eileen) – 12/16/24, deceased 12/09/84
Larry – 03/02/45
Marilyn – 02/23/49
Steve – 05/16/51
Kenny – 07/17/54
Gary – 10/04/57
Ronnie – 10/28/58

For history, we should add Susan: 12/24/45 (deceased shortly after birth). Am I correct? OK, let’s get our families on here! Then we can start going backwards and getting other relatives!

Family Dream

I had one of my family dreams last night. I was “home” (not sure if home was Philly or Chicago) and Mom, Steve, Ken and I were in the dream. Steve and I were current but Ken was still in college. Steve was just leaving to go to work when Mom said “you never know how things are going to turn out, that one, meaning Steve, has got his life in order, while this one, looking at Ken, is on track to be a kitchen bum.”

That caused me to lecture her on how everyone was not cut out to go to college to be an engineer. I somehow had gotten a look at Ken’s class schedule where “cash register management” had stood out and then added “if I had it to do all over again, I would major in hotel and restaurant management” (there’s some truth to that). Mom then made some sarcastic remark about being able to pay the bills on the 1st of the month.

I then turned to Ken and said “I gather you’ve changed your major to restaurant management”. Ken answered yes and then asked me “what clothes did you where to work when you graduated?” He then laughed at me when I said “three piece suits”. I then went on to explain that “everyone wore suits back then”.

Dream ended about then.

SC in SC

Santa Crawl in State College, that is…

The “A-Z Bar Tour” that I founded in Philadelphia in 1981 grew to be a huge success and I’m trying to recreate that experience here with a variation called the Santa Crawl. As you might imagine, a Santa Crawl is simply a bar tour where everyone dresses in Santa costumes. It isn’t something I invented, but I am trying to bring the experience to State College (Santa crawling is a worldwide phenomena with one of the biggest actually happening in New York).

We kicked off our version of the Santa Crawl here in State College last year. Here’s my favorite photo from the event which is also hanging prominently in Hooters.

Check this out for more photos from last year.

When someone asks why we do this, I simply give an answer from this list (responses substantially borrowed from the Baltimore Santa Crawl.

  • meet people
  • meet women
  • confuse the crap outta kids
  • get hugs from the girls from Hooters
  • fill everyone you meet with joy
  • become instant celebrities and rock stars
  • get an invite to the Hooters Xmas party (the last few photos taken last year were from there)

This year’s event will take place on Saturday, Dec 10th and we expect to at least triple the size of last year’s group. It’s a pretty safe bet that I’ll be posting photos on the 11th. The wonderful thing about digital cameras is that you can’t open them up and expose all your film to the light and thus ruin all your photos (know what I mean Gary 🙂 ) so I’m sure to have some pictures no matter how hard we party that night.