We had our last evening out for the next month or so. We went to dinner at an Italian place in Watertown called Porcinis. Good place - I definitley recommend it if you're looking for some good Italian food and you've had enough of the chains.

R.'s surgery is just a couple of days away and I'm getting pretty nervous. I'm not nervous about anything in particular, really. I think it's just general "Dad" nerves. Everyone seems to be a bit out of sorts as this gets closer. I think I'll feel better when this is over and she's home. The four weeks she has to stay off her feet will be tough, but I'm hoping we'll be able to keep her busy and the time will go fairly quickly.

Well, after what seemed like way too much work on the parts of me, A., and The Hey, I have my Red Sox tickets lined up for the 2005 season.

I managed to get 5 games (two of which were purchased by The Hey). I got in on the Red Sox Nation random drawing pre-sale yesterday and got tickets to see the Twins in July. I'm taking the kids to this one - it'll be R.'s first Red Sox game, so she's pretty excited. I'm also seeing the Braves in May, the Reds in June, the Rangers in August and the Angels in September. A pretty good selection of teams - all except the Reds were pennant contenders or playoff teams last year, and the Reds have a few players (like Junior and Sean Casey) worth watching. The games are also nicely spread out - I've got one game every month except for April.

The only other games I might get are Opening Day or Monster Seats if one of us should be lucky enough to get selected in the random drawing. I'll also see a game at Safeco Field in Seattle when we go out there for vacation, and I might try to get down to Citizens Bank Park in Philly sometime this season. Add that to a few Pawsox games and a bunch of games in Worcester, and it'll be a good, baseball filled summer.

Only about 3 weeks until pitchers and catchers report!

Anyone else sick of shoveling snow yet? I know I am.

We got another 6 inches of snow on top of the two feet we got Saturday-Sunday. I'm running out of places to put the stuff. It'd be nice if we got a few warm days, but the next couple are going to be bitterly cold, then we might see it get above freezing early next week.

Doug Mientkiewicz rejoined Pedro Martinez with the Mets today, as the Sox traded him for a minor league prospect. My preference would have been to keep Mientkiewicz over Millar. I love his glove and though he's not as good a hitter overall as Millar, he's a bit more consistent when he plays regularly. Millar will go hot and cold, and he adds nothing on defense when he's not hitting well. Millar's more fun to have around though, and is certainly a clubhouse leader.

Some nice minor league baseball related news today. Worcester is getting a team! They'll be playing at Holy Cross' baseball stadium, after they've done some upgrades and added a couple of thousand seats.

Ironically, the franchise the Worcester ownership group is getting is the franchise in the CanAm League that would have become the Pittsfield Owls. If the powers-that-be in Pittsfield weren't so short sighted and selfish, that town would be gearing up for Opening Day in May instead of Worcester.

I know that sounds like a bit of sour grapes (probably because it is), but I'm really thrilled that we'll have a team so close to home. Holy Cross is only about 1/2 hour from here, so it'll give us the opportunity to go to a bunch of games this summer. The ownership group is made up of baseball fans (all Sox season ticket holders) who are local businessmen. I sent an email of congratulations to the email address on the Web site, and I got a nice note back from Alan Stone, the president and CEO of the team.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the Pats take on the Eagles in the Super Bowl, but I never liked the two week break between the conference championships and the big game. It just seems too long, and the media just exhausts themselves trying to find a new angle. If the Pats play the Eagles the same way they did against the Colts and the Steelers, we'll be having our 4th parade in the past three years in a couple of weeks.

Well, we got about 2 feet of snow from what is being dubbed the Blizzard of '05. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon shoveling out the driveway. I can really feel it in my shoulders and legs. The only good news was that it was light, fluffy snow so it was pretty easy to move around.

My other big accomplishment for the weekend was hooking up a wireless network in my house. I used Apple's Airport network cards in both the iBook and the eMac, and bought an Airport Express base station. So now I can have wireless high speed Internet access through both computers, I can print wirelessly, share files and do some other cool stuff. For example, I can play iTunes songs that are on the eMac through the iBook.

The reason for hooking up a wireless network was so that R. could get on the Web easily after her surgery. She likes to play on some of the kids sites - Nick Jr., Playhouse Disney and such, so this will give her something else to do while she's laid up.

Pats game is started. They're up 3-0 about half way through the 1st quarter. The Eagles already beat the Falcons, so whoever wins this game will face Philadelphia in Jacksonville for the Super Bowl. Pats just made a nice stop on 4th and 1, then Brady threw a 60 yard touchdown to Dieon Branch. 10-0 Pats.

Oil Can Boyd announced that he was going to try out for the Brockton Rox next season. I'm really looking forward to seeing the Can pitch. I used to love seeing him pitch for the Sox, and he was such a character. You were always wondering what he would do next.

Well, the Roger Clemens thing got resolved pretty quickly. The Astros ponied up for an $18 million one year contract.

It's all about ego. Roger wanted to be the highest paid pitcher ever before he retired. He beat Pedro's record, and now he's happy.

We're in the middle of a blizzard. We're expecting about 18 inches or so of snow. I can hardly wait to start shoveling it tomorrow morning.

The Rocket does it again.

Not on the field this time, but he did set a record. Roger and the Houston Astros submitted their arbitration bids yesterday. The Astros put in $13.5 million. Roger wants $22 million!

Now, Roger's a great pitcher. You could make a decent case that he's the best pitcher ever. He won the Cy Young Award last year, won 18 games and brought the Astros to within one win of the World Series. He made about $7 million, and the Astros were offering to double that.

As great as Roger is I can't see him getting that kind of money. Roger had a great year, but Randy Johnson had an even better one, statistically, playing for a lousy team. Randy's only getting $16 million from the Empire and he'll be the highest paid pitcher in baseball next season. I just can't see an arbitrator saying that Roger is worth nearly 40% more than the Big Unit.

Maybe Roger has just decided that he doesn't really want to play anymore, but if they pay him $22 million he'll play. Maybe if the Astros can't come to an agreement with him and he doesn't win the arbitration hearing, he'll stay home. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Wow, is it cold out. We’re having our first seriously cold snap of the winter here in the Boston area. The temperature when I left my house this morning couldn’t have been much above 15 degrees. It made that five minute walk from the parking garage to the train station seem a heck of a lot longer.

I’ve been reading Faithful, the diary of the 2004 season by Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King. I’m only about a third of the way through it, but I’m finding it to be a bit of an odd book. O’Nan and King are obviously not sports writers. They bring a fans sensibility to the book which can make it quite charming in places. I guess my problem with the book is that it doesn’t seem much different than if I had decided to keep a really detailed blog of the 2004 season. They make daily entries, talk about that day’s game, where the Sox are in the standings and comment on things that are going on with the team. They also mix in some personal anecdotes. That’s pretty much what I do here, although I don’t swear nearly as much as King does.

The book is certainly worth reading, if for no other reason that it provides a good, day by day account of the 2004 season from a fans perspective. I guess that with the name “Stephen King” on the cover my expectations for the book were a bit too high. King definitely seems more at home writing about possessed cars and killer dogs than the Red Sox and the Yankees. So, I recommend the book for Red Sox fans, but don’t expect one of the all-time great baseball books.

I took the kids to see Fat Albert yesterday. It was cute and made me chuckle in a few places. J. seemed pretty into the movie, since he wasn’t jumping off his chair every five minutes like he sometimes does. R., on the other hand, started asking, “Is it over yet?” after the first 45 minutes. This coincided with the time we ran out of Junior Mints, so I don’t think there was much coincidence there. I wouldn’t go rushing out to see it again, but it was OK for the kids. I did appreciate that Bill Cosby put a kids movie out that stayed away from toilet humor and bad language. There just aren’t that many of those out there these days, even in movies that are aimed at kids.

Of course, I felt a few more gray hairs develop when J. asked me, “Was Fat Albert a real cartoon?”

I did, unfortunately, end up working this weekend for about five hours on both Saturday and Monday. I was so far behind with my work I really needed the quiet time to get caught up, and I made a good dent in things over the weekend. I figure that five hours on a weekend day is worth at least eight weekday hours, since I don’t have any meetings, the phone isn’t ringing off the hook and no one is wandering into my office to talk about anything.

I’m hoping to, at worst, only work one more Saturday this winter. We have a project due next Monday and I may have to go in next weekend to put the finishing touches on it. I’m hoping I can get it done during the week, but I’ll have to see how things go.

In a couple of weeks, R. goes in for surgery on her foot. Without getting into too many medical details, we’re having it done to fix some issues she was born with. We have been doing Botox injections for the past couple of years, but the orthopedists say there’s not much more we can do in that direction.

R. is going to have to stay overnight in the hospital, and then will be in a cast and can’t put any weight on her foot for six weeks. It’ll be really difficult for her to have to sit around so long. We’re hoping to get her back to school (in a wheelchair) ASAP, but we’re expecting she won’t really be able to go full time until after the February school vacation. It’s going to be tough on all of us, but I’m sure we’ll get through it.

Needless to say, I’m getting more nervous and stressed about this the closer we get to the date. I don’t like the thought of my little girl going under the knife. My only consolation is that we have one of the best pediatric orthopedists in the world doing the surgery. One of the great things about living in Boston is the access to high quality medical care. That said, I’d trade places with her in a heartbeat if I could.

J. is also being impacted by all of this, unfortunately. A. had to cut back some of his activities for this winter, since it’s going to be tough to get around with R. in a wheelchair. He’ll still go to school, of course, but all his weekday after school stuff is being put on hold, and I’ll be bringing him to Tae Kwan Do on Saturdays. To make it up to him a bit, I’m taking him to Florida for a few days during the February vacation. We’re making it a cheap trip. We’ll stay with my parents and use one of their cars. I’ll take J. to Disney for a couple of days, and I still have enough leftover days on my park hopper tickets to cover the time we’ll be down there. We’ll spend some time with my family and have some good father-son time. We’ll be flying down on Song Airlines, the first time I’ve flown out of Logan instead of Green in a long time, so we’ll see how that goes.

Of course, R. will be hopping mad when she finds this out. We’ll be presenting this to her as a “first graders” trip, and that I’ll take her to Florida for a similar trip next year. And, of course, I’ll have to bring her back a nice present.

What an astounding win for the Patriots yesterday. They just shut down the vaunted Colts offense and have turned Gillette Stadium into Peyton Manning's own personal purgatory. Manning is now 0-6 in Foxboro.

Many pundits (including 9 out of 10 analysts on ESPN) picked the Colts to win. They were coming off a dominating win against Denver and no one thought the depleted Patriots secondary (missing Ty Law and Tyrone Poole) could stop Manning and his receivers. Well, they managed a grand total of three points and the Pats made them pay for every yard.

It's really amazing. The Patriots have gone from years ago being the laughing stocks of the NFL to one of the dominant teams. No one even gets excited when the team makes the playoffs any more. And now the Pats are only two more wins away from becoming a bona fide dynasty. The game next weekend in Pittsburgh is the real test, since I think the Patriots can handle whoever comes out of the NFC.

Go Pats!!!!

Welcome to tonight's edition of Stupid Driving Tricks

I worked late tonight and took a late train home. Just outside my station, the conductor announced that we would be held there for a few minutes because there was a car on the tracks. I figured a car had stalled on the tracks at the next crossing, but that it would be removed and we be moving in a few minutes. After about ten minutes we did start heading for the station, but the conductor advised everyone to look out the left window to see the car that had held us up.

It turns out that this woman had somehow driven a good 150 feet down the track from the crossing and managed to get the tire of her car stuck between two tracks. I have no explanation for how or why someone would do this, unless they were drunk. There are fences on both sides of the track, so she couldn't have just veered off the road. She's damn lucky she wasn't killed. I can't wait to see if there's something about this in the local paper tomorrow.

On another topic, Apple came out with a couple of intriguing new products yesterday, aimed squarely at the low end of the market (not a typical Apple target). The one that got most of the media play is the iPod Shuffle. It's a tiny, flash based music player, about the size of a pack of gum. You load songs from iTunes and it plays them at random. There's no display to tell you what song is playing, and it has only some fairly basic controls.

I like the concept behind this. I, like most iPod users, usually play my iPod in "shuffle" mode, which picks songs at random from your library. This is kind of like carrying your own radio station around, since you don't know what's coming up next. Of course, you know you'll like all the songs, since it's all your music, right? Occassionally I'll want to listen to a specific song or album, but I probably shuffle songs 90% of the time.

It'll be really interesting to see if people go for this, or if people really want more control over their music. The success of the iPod mini proved that some people are willing to sacrifice capacity for size. We'll see if that holds true with the Shuffle. The price point is certainly right, at $99 for a 512MB iPod and $149 for 1GB.

I also thought the new Mac mini looks pretty cool. It's a $500 Mac that measures about the size of two paperback books. It's the cheapest Mac Apple's ever sold, but it comes without a keyboard, mouse or monitor. Once you add all that stuff, you're up to at least $650, which is still $150 cheaper than the low end eMac. I could easily see getting these for the kids eventually.

I'm hoping the Apple Store will have them both in stock this weekend. I have to stop by there to get an Airport base station - I'm planning to set up a wireless network in the house. More on that later.

OK, does anyone else think that Omar Minaya has gone a little nuts now that he has a few dollars to spend? After all, he spent the last few years as the general manager of the Little Sisters of the Poor (AKA the Montreal Expos). Now he's spent over $170 million of the New York Mets money the last few weeks, first signing up Pedro Martinez for $53 million, and now handing Carlos Beltran $119 million.

Not that this is a bad signing. If you're going to pay anyone $119 million, Beltran is probably the guy. He's a five tool player who had a great post season for the Astros (anyone else remember that catch he made against the Cardinals in the NLCS?) It's really a shame the Astros couldn't sign him up. According to ESPN, the main sticking point with the Astros was the lack of a full no-trade clause. ESPN also said that the Yankees never made an offer, which is interesting. Apparently even the Empire wasn't up to spending Beltran's price tag, especially when you add in the luxury tax on top of it.

Can the Mets finally end the Braves run of consecutive division titles? I guess we'll see.

Lovely weather we're having here today. we had what they call a "wintery mix". That basically means that you get a bit of snow, a bit of rain and a bit of freezing rain that adds up to a major mess. I had to go into work today since we're in the middle of our year end close. The ride in was dry, but the ride home was interesting, to say the least. The Mass Pike was covered with slush and there were several accidents. I even saw a white minivan up ahead pull a 180 right on the highway. There's nothing more unnerving than suddenly seeing headlights facing you on your side of the road. Fortunately, the driver was OK and escaped with nothing more than a broken taillight. He even sped past me once he had recovered from the spin! Gee, do you think that driving too fast for the conditions might have had something to do with his problems in the first place?

I've rarely seen a bigger mountain made out of a molehill than the current controversey over the World Series ending ball. In case you haven't heard about this, Doug Mientkiewicz kept the ball thrown to him by Keith Foulke for the final out of the World Series. He had it authenticated by MLB right after the game, gave it to his wife to stick in her purse, then put it in his safe deposit box. The Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessey revealed this fact in his column yesterday, along with the fact that Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino would like the ball back to display somewhere. Much sports radio generated controversey ensued.

My take? Baseball players have been bringing home souvenirs from games practically since the first diamond was laid down. No one ever says anything when a player keeps a ball or bat with which he hit a significant home run or pitched a no-hitter. What Mientkiewicz did appears to be in keeping with long standing baseball tradition. Even an MLB spokesman said the ball belonged to Doug, according to Shaughnessey's article.

In any event, Mientkiewicz said that he'd be happy to loan to ball out to display it to fans, as long as it was acknowledged that the ball belonged to him. So what's the problem?

Florida trip report, continued

Monday afternoon

After lunch we headed over to Celebration to visit the former CFO of the company I work for, who had retired a couple of months earlier. Celebration, in case you’ve never heard of it, is a town developed by Disney, situated on part of the 50,000 acres Walt bought up to build Disney World on.

The town itself is modeled to replicate the look and feel of old time, small town America, and it succeeds admirably. The houses are close together and situated on relatively small lots. The downtown area has a variety of shops, a movie theater and a post office, all in interesting architectural designs. Unlike many of the other Florida developments I’ve seen, the houses don’t all look the same.

The house we visited was really beautiful. It was great to see my former boss and his wife. They look like they’re really enjoying retirement. Hopefully, I’ll be in the same position in about 20 years.

After leaving Celebration, we headed back to Mom & Dad’s to relax for a bit and get ready for our annual Chef Mickey’s visit. This has become a family tradition; it’s the 5th year the entire family has gone. This year was the first in the last three we managed to have the entire family there for the picture they take before the meal. Two years ago, my brother got stuck in traffic, so his family showed up late. Last year my niece was sick, so she and my sister-in-law didn’t make it. After the picture, we were seated and were immediately inundated with a series of Disney characters. This year’s lineup included Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Chip & Dale and my personal favorite, Donald Duck. We got lots of great pictures and the kids had some really fun interaction with the characters. J. and my nephew had a big high fiving session with Dale, and R. had some nice moments with Minnie. I told the kids that if they talk to the characters that they’ll react and it really seemed to work. The food was good for a buffet, but it’s really the family event that we all go for. Hopefully we can continue to tradition for a few more years, at least until the kids start getting too old for character dinners. Then we’ll have to find a new place to eat, I guess.

After Chef Mickey’s, we headed home and got to bed because we had another busy day coming up.

Tuesday

We got up early again and headed for Sea World, our one theme park experience for the trip. We had been there a couple of years earlier and the kids wanted to go there rather than any of the Disney parks. R. seemed particularly fixated on seeing Shamu again, so we made seeing his show a priority.

We got there around 9:30 and parked the car, rented a stroller and headed over to the dolphin show, which was really entertaining. It even included a great twist at the end, which caught us all completely off guard. Then we went to see Shamu. It’s incredible seeing these huge animals perform and watching the trainers interact with them. After the two shows we went to get lunch. This was the one place Sea World improved greatly from our last visit. Last time it took forever to get lunch and the food was mediocre at best. It seemed like there were more choices this time and the food was significantly better, even if it was still overpriced. The kids meals even included a plastic Shamu lunchbox, which they were very happy with.

After lunch we checked out a couple more exhibits, but at this point the park was becoming really crowded (the next day’s paper mentioned that they were close to closing the place to additional guests). We saw the penguins, which were pretty cool, fed the dolphins and petted some stingrays. At this point, the kids were getting pretty exhausted, so we started to make our way to the exit.

We had promised them a couple of souvenirs, and both the kids bought these Sea World trainer action figures. R., unfortunately, later experienced some buyers regret and decided that what she really wanted was a stuffed Shamu. Being big pushovers, we gave in and bought her one at the Sea World store at the airport on the way home.

All in all, Sea World was a lot of fun. The place is more show oriented instead of rides, so you don’t have to wait in a lot of lines. I prefer the Disney parks for the most part, but I don’t mind visiting Sea World every few years.

We went home, relaxed for a bit and then left the kids with my folks for our one “grown-up” night out on this trip. A. and I had made a priority seating for Jiko, an African restaurant at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. We had never been there before, but all the reviews I had read on the Internet were outstanding. So we left the kids in their grandparent’s hands and drove back to Disney.

We hadn’t been to the AK Lodge before, but I was looking forward to seeing it. I wasn’t disappointed. You walk into the lobby and it looks like a gigantic African lodge (or at least a Disney Imagineer’s version of one). Based on the lobby and surrounding areas, it’s my second favorite Disney resort for theming, after the Wilderness Lodge.

We had a bit of time to kill before dinner, so we wandered around a bit. The lobby has some great African artifacts displayed, so we inspected those. I wanted to get a look at the pool, so we walked over there, then wandered around the gift shop for a bit. It was still about 25 minutes before our priority seating, but we decided to check in anyways and see if we could get seated a little early. We were given a beeper and decided to go check out the nearby bar. We ordered drinks, and I tried an African beer (from South Africa - unfortunately I don’t remember the name of this one). It was a nice, crisp lager and I drank it down while A. sipped on a drink. Soon enough, our beeper went off and we made went back to Jiko to get seated.

We were taken to our table by the host, an exceedingly polite young African gentleman and sat down. The decor was beautiful - very tastefully put together. There was also a decided lack of the screaming kids you sometimes encounter at Disney restaurants. There were some children dining in the restaurant, but they were all very well behaved. The screaming kids all appeared to have been relegated to Boma, the buffet restaurant in the AK Lodge.

We decided to try one of the appetizers that they offered when our server, Michael, came over. Michael asked us if we had dined at Jiko before and we said no. He offered to describe some items on the menu for us and did a very nice job of laying things out. He suggested that we could get a combination plate of four of the appetizers, so we took him up on that, along with ordering a couple more drinks. I tried a Moroccan beer this time, which was actually brewed in Casablanca. Here’s looking at you, kid.

We ordered dinner when Michael came back with the drinks. I ordered beef ribs with an African sauce of some kind. A. ordered monkfish, which Michael had mentioned was one of their specialties. A few minutes later the appetizers arrived, and we were glad we had ordered the combo plate, since they were all excellent (BTW, if you ever eat there the combo plate isn’t on the menu, so you may have to ask for it if your waiter doesn’t mention it). Dinner arrived a bit later and it was wonderful. The beef ribs were tender, with the meat practically falling off the bone, and the sauce was terrific. It was a real change from the BBQ sauce that usually adorns my ribs. A. reported that the monkfish was excellent as well.

We were tempted by deserts, but too full, so we paid up and left. I can’t recommend Jiko enough. It was one of the best meals we’ve ever had at Disney and a very fine restaurant by any measure.

After dinner we went over to Downtown Disney. We wandered around a bit, but didn’t buy much. We were also getting tired from the long day, so we headed back to the house.

Wednesday

We had hoped to get moving fairly early on Wednesday, but that didn’t seem to be happening. The kids had been promised that we would return to Disney to ride the monorail, one of their favorite activities. We decided that we would grab some lunch while we were there. We arrived at the Contemporary, claimed we were having lunch there, and made our way to the monorail. We hopped on, got off at the TTC and switched over to the Epcot monorail. The kids love riding it, and I find it to be very relaxing. We rode to Epcot and back, switched back to the resort monorail and headed back to Contemporary.

By this time we were all ready for lunch. We decided to eat at the cafeteria style restaurant in the resort. It wasn’t bad - the food was reasonably edible and not too unreasonably priced. After lunch we headed up to my brother’s house.

We had a big family gathering planned for the day. Not only would we all be together, but my cousin and his family, along with my aunt and uncle would be there. That would make 16 of us, which my father and uncle both said was the largest gathering of people with our last name in at least 50 years.

We hung around the house for a while as the kids played, then the men and the kids headed outside to play a little whiffle ball in the back yard. My brother has a pool in his yard, so we had an unusual ground rule - anything that landed in the pool was a home run.

The rest of the gang showed up after we had been playing for a bit, so we kept playing outside until it was time to go to dinner. We went to a nearby Italian chain restaurant, which served meals family style. We ordered some drinks and food and the air was filled with all of our chatter. The six kids had a great time together and got along really well.

After a group picture we all went our separate ways. It was a nice way to end the vacation with everyone together.

Thursday

Thursday, unfortunately, meant going home. I had really enjoyed the trip and wasn’t looking forward to returning to the snow and the dozens of emails that had no doubt piled up at work. We said goodbye to Mom and Dad and headed for the airport. Everything went smoothly, we landed on time, picked up our luggage and car and headed home. Soon enough, I found myself in boots and a winter coat, shoveling the snow that had accumulated while we were away. The memories of our trip kept me warm though (or maybe it was just the shoveling...)

A quick aside here from my Florida trip report, but I thought this was kind of interesting.

A columnist for the Metrowest Daily News , Julia Spitz, wrote in a recent column that she was quitting smoking after puffing a pack a day for 35 years. She said about the cost, “Let’s not do the math. I just can’t face those numbers. We’ll say I’ve wasted thousands of dollars in the past 35 years and leave it at that, OK?”

Well, that kind of a challenge couldn’t be left alone by my CPA brain. So I fired up Excel and figured out how much she had spent on cigarettes over the past 35 years, using the figures quoted in her article.

Over the past 35 years, Ms. Spitz has spent nearly $23,000 to destroy her lungs. If she had taken that money and invested it at 8%, she’d have almost $65,000 today.

That’s probably the biggest reason I never tried smoking when I was a kid. It wasn’t as much the health issues as it was the fact that there were lots of other things I’d rather spend my money on.

So, today’s lesson kids is don’t smoke. You’ll be richer for it in more ways than one.