10.1.2004 - 10.31.2004

October 21, 2004:  So I don't take back what I said about the Red Sox curse being a farse, but I will say that they just played some serious baseball!  Congrats to the team, they played hard and deserved to win.  I'm not much of a sports fan but really enjoyed watching this series and hope the next one will be half as great to watch.  Of course as always, the fans burned down half of the city, win or lose they riot.  That is quite possibly the reason I am not a big sports fan, nothing is worth getting that crazy about, especially not a game that started off just being fun for most of us when we were 6 or 7 years old.  Anyway, we'll be watching the game this weekend for sure.  Lisa is getting ready for her trip to Florida and Gregg, Kevin, and I will be doing some riding up north.  We're hoping for good weather, probably cold but hopefully not raining.  The last two times Gregg and I rode it was pouring rain, the mud was fun but when you get home it feels like you just finished taking an 8 hour bath, not half as much fun as it might seem.  Have a great weekend and good luck to the Red Sox!

October 17, 2004:  Not a bad weekend here, pretty mellow.  It was supposed to be cloudy and cold but it ended up being not so bad.  I'm not much of a baseball fan but I tend to watch a few of the playoff games each year.  How about those Red Sox Saturday night, looked more like a football score, 19 to 8 Yankees was it?  Lisa saw some news report that they tore down a house that some old school Yankees player's wife might have lived in back in the day, because its gone they said the curse is over and the Sox will beat the Yankees and make it to the World Series, sounds pretty crazy to me.  Glad to see that worked out as planned!  We went to Worcester to do some errands on Saturday and stuck around the house on Sunday.  I changed a couple of light switches and built a spare tire holder for the 4-wheeler trailer.  I finally got around to making a cover for Isis's new crate too, we had a blanket on it before but it didn't fit all that well and it didn't seem like she was all that comfortable inside it.  I'm not much of a seamstress but it seemed to come out well, as long as you don't look too close at it anyway.  I think she likes it already because just after I finished she was laying inside without having to be told like we do when we leave now.  Well, not much else going on, I'm going to NH for probably our last ride of the year, Gregg and Kevin are actually off that weekend so we're all going to make it this time, should be fun.  Lisa is finishing up her first rotation and getting ready to go to Florida for her second.  She gets back in December and then I leave for training for a week.  Lots of traveling for us in the next month or so.  Lisa and I haven't been apart even close to this long since we have been together, I'm sure going to miss her, Isis will too.  Have a great week and I will try to actually get some pictures this trip.

October 12, 2004:  It was another beautiful fall weekend here in New England, another weekend that would have been perfect for tearing up the trails with the wheeler, but I have been on call to cover for someone taking a vacation so no riding for me.  I did get a bunch of stuff done around the homestead though.  Saturday I went to my brother's place in CT and built a lockable storage room in his basement so when he moves all of his stuff to NYC next month he has a secure place to leave his tools and house type stuff.  While I was doing that he was finishing the drywall in the laundry room upstairs.  He still has a lot of work to do before someone can move into that apartment, I'm sure I will be spending a couple more weekends down there helping him out.  Sunday morning I got the bright idea that I would start removing the wallpaper in the bedroom, the PINK wallpaper, in preparation to paint that room and make it look less like an 11 year old girl's room.  It came off fairly easy, it was my first experience with removing wallpaper but from what I can see this could have been much worse.  It's a pretty large room so it took quite a while but I got it all off and the walls wiped down on Sunday.  I took a break so we could go to Home Depot and pick out some paint, get some new wall plates for the outlets and even one of those large flat light switches too, very exciting.  I had yesterday off so I got up bright and early and started painting, I got it all done and the room back together by about 5pm, just in time to eat dinner and crash on the couch for some TV before bed, that paint roller is killer on the shoulders!  I took some before and after shots so you can feel some of the Pepto-Bismol pink effect, in person was the only way to truly experience it.  We still can't figure out what they were thinking to wallpaper a room this color, it's just plain awful.  The new color is a dark green, in lower light it appears to be grey.  It actually looks pretty good in person and goes very well with the furniture and decorations that we have always had in the bedroom.  I still have some touching up to do around the ceiling but the bulk of it is done and it did come out nice.  One of these days I will get around to putting the section back up with pictures of our entire place, probably in a couple weeks when Lisa is in Florida for her rotations, I'll be plenty bored I'm sure.  Gregg got the parts back for his 4 wheeler that had to be welded after it came apart on our last ride, so we should be on for one last ride in about two weeks, I've been counting the days since our last one.  Our goal is to put on 100 miles in a day, we tried last time but at about 50 miles Gregg's machine quit so the attempt was cut short.  I'll try to actually get some pictures this time, I have been slacking with the digital camera lately, keep forgetting to bring it with us.  Anyway, have a great week and we will talk again soon.

October 6, 2004:  And we're baaaack!  We had a great week!  Dave and Jeanie crashed for a couple nights, we got to catch up and just hang out, almost did a midnight kayaking run on the lake but for some reason it never happened.  I think maybe I'm losing my motivation to do the somewhat careless things I used to do all the time, not sure why though, I'll have to look into that.  It may have something to do with the fact that I turn 30 at the end of the month, man that sounds kind of scary, lets move on.  Tad and Danielle's wedding was awesome, tons of people we haven't seen in forever were there, it was at a beautiful Inn on an old farm in northern MA.  It has gotten us to actually start thinking about where, when, and all the other stuff involved in getting our wedding plans going.  We haven't really made any progress but at least we're starting to think more about it.  With Lisa's school schedule it's going to be tough to schedule something in the next year or so but we'll see.  Other than that it's been a normal week so far.  Lisa is enjoying her first rotation and is up late about every night doing extra work to prepare for the next day.  We have been able to hang out a lot more so that's cool, she's busy but much less than when she was in classes.  Sunday we met Dave and Jeanie at Jamie and Shannon's house in NH.  Yeah, Jamie, my old roommate and his wife.  They have a brand new baby too, well almost, he's 3 1/2 months old now, sorry, 15 weeks, I'm learning the correct terminology now that all of our friends are making babies.  His name is Evan and Jamie already has big plans for his little guy, there is already a dirt bike picked out for him!  Hopefully now that we have been able to meet up we might be able to hang out more often, especially that he's into dirt biking.  We are trying to hook up and do a ride in a few weeks, Kevin and Gregg are already in and hopefully Jamie can join us too.  I'm on call for the next two weeks so I am stuck in the area.  My brother is moving to NYC on a permanent basis now so I'm going to Hartford to help him finish renovating his apartment so his tenants can move in to his and he can rent the other one.  We haven't hung out in a while so it should be fun, and Isis will be able to play with Maddie too.  Well, talk to you all again soon.