Saturday, July 26, 2008

Blog Vacation 2

This was the accomodation 'provided' for our VT stay:


Here's pretty much all I saw on the road - CORN ! !


. . . which is preferable to seeing one of THESE, especially at 2 a.m.:



Mrs. L suns herself on a rock:


. . . while Master L perfects his 'river-crossing' technique:


This was especially ironic:

Especially after playing a gig at a nudist camp the night before!

Master L notes that the blueberries are not all ripe just yet:

The cat takes a celebratory nap upon our return:


Maybe I need to take better vacation photos . . .

Some Stuff from Blog Vacation 1

Here's some stuff that went on while I was off recovering
from sports-related betrayal . . .

One day, while hiking in the woods, Master L noticed
this, stuffed inside a hollow tree and sort-of covered
with brush:

This thing looks like some kind of lost military something
or other, doesn't it? It has latitude and longitude
markings and "Official Geocache" written on it.
Having had no idea what the hell 'geocache' was, I pulled the
the thing out of the tree with a long tree branch, and opened it
with the same. I don't know what I was thinking - if
this had been an explosive device, I doubt the length of
the branch would have saved me!

Anyway, it contained a logbook and a bunch of little toys.
Odd. But it had a web site written on it, too. So, not
knowing 'how the game is played', we took it home to
check out the site. That's when we discovered that there
are legions of people hunting down these 'geocaches'
using their GPS systems. Ah, technology - is there
anything it can't do?

Having looked at the web site, we now knew that
we weren't supposed to pull the box from its location
(oops), but instead, take an item from it and leave
something else. My son took a little toy 'Magic 8 ball'
that was in there and we put in a Matchbox car and
small bottle of hand sanitizer. Then we brought it
back out to the woods and put it back in the tree.
We had stumbled into the world of geocaching and
located one of their boxes without any technology
at all . . . just a good pair of young eyes. Hmmm . . .

On a different day, we went to a Red Sox game.

This was the best deal in the park for food.

And the 'food' had that heady mix of heat,
grease and cheese that makes any meal a
success! :)




My camera was not cooperating on this day . . . and I must have had

too much caffeine to hold it still (though I *thought* I consumed

enough grease to counteract that!).

What's with the double-spacing??? Stupid interface. But

now you can try to 'read between the lines' for some

actual interesting content!!!


Thursday, July 24, 2008

Been Away

I've been away. And on top of that, I had actually deleted
a couple of my last posts in disgust, making the lapse
seem longer.

You see, my life-long love affair with the Boston Celtics
has come to an end. It was a painful breakup and I
needed time to regroup.

"But Mr. L, they WON. Why would you desert them
NOW?"

Thanks for asking. For the last 20 years or so, I've
dutifully bought tickets as part of a group. We were
there the year the team won only 15 games - sitting
ALONE in the top of the building. And I mean ALONE.
There was our group, and the rest of the seats were
empty. For years, our group had about 30 people
who came to all the crappy games when the
Celtics were just awful.

Forward to this year. The team went out and bought
what they needed to win (see "Florida Marlins Win
World Series"). As the year progressed, the
building filled up. People were coming back because,
hey, the team wins now!

Then the unthinkable happened: when the Finals arrived,
the Celtics office decided to 'reserve' 1400 seats for
"VIPs and celebrities". Needless to say, these had to
be seats right down in front because celebrities have
severe myopia, as evidenced by their views on
the world....

So, those 1400 seats had to come from somewhere.
You can see this one coming, right?? Our group
ticket allotment was reduced from 30 per game
to FOUR for Game Two ONLY. And - they weren't
even our normal seats. . . they were high in the balcony,
in an endzone, and $100 per ticket more expensive!
[From the time the building opened, our seats were
actually HIGHER than the balcony, but you'd have
to see them to know why they were 'better']

This is how the Celtics show "appreciation" for all the
years we supported them. But hey, Ellen Pompeo
wanted tickets . . . gotta make room! She plays a
doctor on TV!

I wrote a letter to the office asking for an explanation.
No response.

The ultimate insult was an interview in the Boston
press with the Celtics' guy in charge of doling out
the "VIP" tickets. When asked if the "VIPs"
have to pay for the seats, he responded:
"That's at the discretion of management."

In other words, "No - we get the prestige of
showing them on national television in our
building, we're aren't going to charge THEM
anything."

So. After supporting the team since childhood,
I can no longer do so in good conscience. The
organization is just a bunch of greedy bastards.

Are you listening, Kevin Garnett? The player
who said he wanted to "win it in front of [our]
fans" . . . who is so disconnected from the
business that he doesn't know that real fans
were ousted for come-lately 'VIPs' . . .

Not that he'd care, he probably scored 30 of
those tickets for his friends!

But I'm not bitter. They ARE saving me a lot
of money next season. I won't go!

So to recap: Celtics' ownership = BAD.
Or did I not mention that?