Month: May 2006 (Page 1 of 2)

Sunday with Mackenzie was a good day. After some dinner at Nana’s and shooting a few hoops with her “Cinderella” ball, it was off to the ice cream place. She worked her kiddie cone chocolate chip cookie dough like a squirrel enjoying their first acorn of the season. She carefully prevented any drippage as she systematically chipped away at the sugar cone with her little teeth. Not “baby teeth,” mind you, she’s a “big girl.” She and Auntie Megan engaged in some girl talk as they devoured their screams on the sun drenched picnic table. Meanwhile, Kyle sat silently attempting to extract all ice cream from his cone with his tongue. I think there may have been a Gene Simmons comment, but he ignored it and dutifully kept at his task.

Earlier at dinner, there was a brief exchange between Kenzie and her Uncle Kyle. I mentioned something about Jessica playing softball when she was young. Even though her mom’s not around, Mackenzie still likes to hear about her. Kyle is pretty upset with his sister and said, “I can’t stand Jessica.” Now if Jessica were to have walked in the house at that moment, Kyle would have been quickly loving her, but as it is, he struggles with his emotions on the whole thing. I said something like “you don’t mean that… that’s your sister.” He responded with a “not anymore!” Everyone was quiet for a few seconds, but then carried on with passing food and pouring drinks. Well, all except the little one. She looked up at her uncle with her big brown eyes and said softly and very matter of factly, “She didn’t do anything to you.” No one heard it but me and Kyle didn’t react. With all she’s been through, this child of four is still fighting for her mom. I’m going to send this little story to my daughter Jessica. Maybe it will help her to fight on for just a minute or an hour or a day so that Mackenzie’s efforts will not be in vain.

I am looking forward. A few years back I was browsing an art book when I turned the page to this image.

I liked it and noted the caption identified its home as the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting is Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte.

Next week, on Friday, June 9, after customer presentations in Milwaukee and Chicago, I’ll take a vacation day to see this expression of imagination and many others including:

René Magritte – Time Transfixed
Georges Seurat – A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
Édouard Manet – The Races at Longchamp
Edward Hopper – Nighthawks
Salvador Dal? – Inventions of the Monsters
Lyonel Feininger – Village Street
Marc Chagall – America Windows

ABC’s Brent Musburger made some idiotic comments today before the Indy 500. He said we shouldn’t forget we’re at war so that we can all enjoy events like the Indianapolis 500… Yeah Brent, we’re in Iraq so they can fuel the damn cars…

While most Americans celebrate the holiday by going to parades, holding cookouts and drinking excessively in the late spring heat, some poor FBI agents are digging for Jimmy Hoffa at a farm in Michigan. I hope someone brings them dogs and beers…

I miss the NBA and NHL playoffs. I know they’re ongoing, but without the C’s and the B’s in them, it’s just not the same. I long for those Memorial Day weekend triple headers of C’s, B’s and Sox playing on the same day. I wonder when that will happen again. Oh, and Dwyane Wade is the real deal.

We’re almost 1/3 through the marathon that is the Major League Baseball season and I don’t know what we’ve got with the Red Sox. The pitching has been solid as expected, and the defense better, but the lineup does struggle on occasion to score runs. So far, the biggest surprise has been Mike Lowell (.326, 22 doubles and 29 rbi) and the biggest disappointment Jason Varitek (.232 and only 3 more homers than Josh Beckett). I love his game, but .232 is lame.

It’s sad because of the guys immense talent, but because Barry Bonds is perceived as he is, all his accomplishments in baseball will be shadowed by an asterisk. Today Mr. Bonds passed George Herman Ruth with number 715*, but he’ll never, ever, be looked upon with the reverence of the Babe.

Kyle has had a tough “coming of age” long weekend. First, and it was a first for him, a waitress spilled 15 of my 16oz beer on him during dinner. Right in his lap. Based on the look on his face, it wasn’t “the pause that refreshes.” Second, yesterday he tripped on a pair of shoes (not mentioning any names…) left in the living room, and fell against an end table resulting in his first fat lip. It was pretty traumatic for him and even more so for me. He’s fine and I’m recovering.

I kinda like HR chicks. Well, the ones that get it. The ones you can actually joke around with and not end up in, uhhh, HR. Anyway, one I know has kind of a problem with passing out company golf shirts because it’s very “old boys network” behavior. I thought of her when I read about another cool HR chick today.

Finally, why do middle age relationships or anything remotely resembling a relationship have to be so complicated? Could it be:

– the ex?
– the kids?
– the mother?
– the other ex?
– the work thing?
– the one that got away?
– the drinking problem?
– the kids kids?
– the backhair?
– the cellulite?
– the cats?
– the dog?
– me?

Really, I’m just wondering.

Last night I met about a dozen work folks for dinner in Boston’s North End. It was a fun night, but once dinner was over I’d really had my fill of fun. We had a couple drinks before and then wine with dinner, so a few people were getting real happy and beginning to lose inhibitions. As we were walking back toward Quincy Market, the group turned left. They were going to stop and drink. I kept going straight…to walk and think.

It was a beautiful night.

First I received an eMail, then a voicemail, then old-fashioned junk mail and finally another eMail. It was unbelievable. My phone company, Vonage, didn’t want me, a loyal customer, to miss out on their great IPO!!! For those of you not hip to the lingo of us movers and shakers on Wall Street, an “IPO” is an initial public offering of stock. That’s when big shots like me get to get into stock on the ground floor and ride it to riches! Yep, this was another opportunity just like that time I was invited to participate in the IPO of MP3.com. Yeah, back then of course, I was a big shot record executive and… well, that’s another story for another time…

As any investor should, I conducted a little “due diligence” on this “too good to be true” offer and quickly surmised it was going to be just that. The financial fundamentals just weren’t there and competition in their VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) market is heating up. Some observers suggested that Vonage was actually having difficulty attracting institutional investors and that the seemingly customer-friendly IPO offer was actually a desperate cash grab from its own customers.

I didn’t invest.

The stock opened Wednesday and the IPO price loyal Vonage customers had to pay was $17/share. It quickly fell and as of yesterday, it sat at $13… I love the service and pay a flat $27.78 a month, but I’m sure glad I didn’t buy their stock. Let’s say I purchased 500 shares. As of this morning I’d be down $2000, or about six years worth of Vonage bills… All because my phone company spammed me into a bad deal.

Yes, I am toast. An overdone piece dipped into hot tea with milk when it just turns to mush before disintegrating to the bottom of the cup. Anyway, toast can’t write so I give you Dave. Um, well, Dave’s hair. It seems, according to Dave, that he’s got some fabulous “do” according to all the groupies on his myspace site. Now don’t get me wrong, Dave’s pomp is legendary. It’s freakin awesome! Here are some comments left from his fans:

“best hair since ’68 era Elvis! keep rockin cat!” “Keep growing those cool lambchops!”

Another dude from a British band wrote ol’ Hut234 to say he thought he had the best hair in the UK until he saw Dave’s picture he said “you win!” Dave got a big kick out of that…

Dave is proud of his hair and I think he spends quite some time whipping it up into that pompador. I tried to touch it once, but Dave went all diva on me…

Visit Dave at www.myspace.com/raveondave

I’ve been very busy lately working on um, work, so I don’t have much time to wax poetic. Hey, at least I haven’t missed any beautiful weather. It has been raining so much the last time the Red Sox had a homestand they played a total of six innings. Anyway, it does give me the opportunity to re-use this graphic from May of last year…

It’s funny, while most people are quite tired of the beverage falling from the sky, my boy Kyle loves it. I recently told him about when I was in college in Tucson, it was just one after another of hot, dry, cloudless days. I’d wish for just one day of weather like this. Enjoy it. Soon enough you’ll be hearing “how ’bout this heat?”

Last night I watched the last episode of “Love Monkey.” Several times during the show, I felt myself beaming with delight. Yeah, there’s the music, the great scenes of NYC and its clubs, but I really think the appeal for me is the bonds of friendship the characters had and their personal integrity. I have friends like that I don’t see nearly enough of. In the final scene, all the friends come together for the birth of a baby. As each friend arrives at the hospital to wait and worry, a song silences dialogue. It spoke to me about “the journey.”

There’s been quite a bit of buzz surrounding whether the box-office take of “The Da Vinci Code” will be follically challenged when it opens this Friday. There are also Catholic groups, including “Opus Dei” asking for a film disclaimer. Opus Dei doesn’t want to be portrayed as secretive monk-freaks… Um, whatever. As for the Catholic bureaucracy, Josh Grossberg wrote in E!-Online, “In a Good Friday sermon at St. Peter’s Basilica, Father Ramiero Cantalamessa, speaking before Pope Benedict XVI, attacked the book and the upcoming film as “pseudo-historic” works aimed at undermining the Church’s authority.” The church’s authority? Is that the same authority some of their priests used to rape little boys? Just wondering.

As for how the movie will do, just do the math. “Da Vinci” sold over 40 million copies of the book. Multiply that times people lending their copy to others, library borrowing, illegal Internet distribution of the text and audio version and that 40 million is probably 400 million. Those that haven’t read the book have certainly heard about it, so I expect the opening weekend to be huge. After that it will be all about word of mouth advertising. With Ron Howard directing, I expect movie-goer opinions to be stellar. I dare say that if “Da Vinci” had a love story and a sinking luxury-liner, it might end up the highest grossing film in history.

“Happy Mother’s Day” I said with a smile as she walked out the door. Dressed in black, the mother of our children floated away, back out into the rain of a bittersweet day. Standing at my feet was our four year old grand-daughter, Mackenzie. I was told she burst into tears at church on this day. To “Kenzie,” Mother’s Day is a painful reminder of her mother, who took herself out of the game over two years ago. Her return is uncertain. “She wanted to see her Auntie Megan,” I was told. Kenzie made herself comfortable on the couch with her Uncle Kyle, so there was no need for Megan to get up just yet. Entering Megan’s room to let her know, I was horrified to see a tornado had touched down and violently swirled the contents of her room into a splintered, random mess. I climbed over the wreckage and dug through debris until I finally found her. She was sleeping soundly, unfazed by the destruction left in the wake of a wicked whirlpool of wind. Relieved my Megan survived the devastation; I kissed her cheek and told her of our visitor. She sprang up like a rookie being asked to pinch hit in a big game… a really big game. Based on Ms. Daley’s past performance in these pressure situations, I have no doubt she’ll hit a homer.