5/31/07

Dear Blog,

Well, this past weekend was Memorial Day Weekend, which meant an extra day off of work, and that everyone and their brother was headed down to the Cape for fun in the sun.

And it was sunny. It's been beautiful, in fact, for quite a while up here. A few times the temperature has creeped into the low 90s, but for the most part the weather has been most pleasant day in and day out. In fact, the forecast calls for temperatures in the 70s for most of the rest of the week. This is the weather we've been waiting all throughout that awful winter for.

Anyway, most of the Fadden tree was around for the weekend. My folks' place had the cookout on Saturday, with all of the Memorial Day weekend cookout staples - hamburgers, hot dogs, cole slaw, baked beans, potato salad, grilled chicken, and, of course, lots of booze. On Sunday we went to Aunt Martha's house in Falmouth, which is undergoing some renovations, but is almost done. Then Monday passed by relatively uneventfully.

On Tuesday night, before I went to work, Kait's friend Kelly called us and asked us if we wanted to go to trivia night at a pub right by our apartment. We had been going to the Ground Round in Chelmsford on Thursdays for trivia night, and we had heard about this other one, but we hadn't been yet. We tried to get ahold of Geoff, but couldn't. It turned out that he was already on his way, with his brother and no fewer than 6 other friends, but we didn't find this out until we were well into the contest. Much to our delight, we ended up winning the game on the last two questions - we were tied with Geoff's team going into the final round - and with it we took home a $50 gift certificate to the pub, not to be used on Tuesdays. So, we returned there for dinner last night (we all have arrangements for tonight and tomorrow night). It was standard pub fare, but you have to like eating almost for free, right? Tonight, trivia night is at the Ground Round, where Kait, Geoff, Mark, and I won last week. That means that my sister and I are currently one-half of the defending champion teams at the trivia nights of both establishments.

Tomorrow night, Kait's best friend Megan is flying in from Maryland with her husband. They'll be spending the night here and then driving down to the Cape, but as I'll be at work when they arrive and probably won't be back from breakfast until after they leave for the Cape, I won't see them until Saturday evening, when I get down there. It'll be good to see them - they are two of the most pleasant people I know.

Ok, sports tomorrow, I hope. Till then...

5/24/07

Dear Blog,

I finally got the last of the Spinners tickets yesterday. And no sooner did that happen than I began to start looking around at the other New England minor league teams. There are seven of them, in all: the Spinners (Red Sox A), the New Britain (CT) Rock Cats (Twins AA), the Connecticut Defenders (Giants AA), the Pawtucket (RI) Red Sox (AAA), the Portland (ME) Sea Dogs (Red Sox AA), the New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Blue Jays AA), and the Vermont Lake Monsters (Nationals A). I've come up with a nifty little plan to see all of them this summer, but I need to get my ducks in a row in a hurry with regards to the Sea Dogs and PawSox, because their tickets go pretty quickly. The first part of my plan calls for trip on the weekend of June 9th to see the two Connecticut teams, staying overnight Saturday at my cousin Kerry's apartment. The plan has hit a bit of a snag because Kerry, I found out last night, was planning on being here that weekend - at the very least she will be coming up for a baby shower Friday evening and then has plans to see a friend Saturday. But she seemed receptive to the idea, and said she'll see if she couldn't get back to Connecticut Saturday night. We'll see how everything works out.

I went to one of my sister's team's lacrosse games yesterday afternoon, and sort of worked as a consultant on the sideline. I've never played lacrosse, of course, but as I've spent virtually the entirety of my youth watching sports I've developed a decent sports IQ, as it were, and I can see things that maybe aren't obvious to everyone. The most obvious thing that I saw yesterday was that neither the varsity nor the JV was doing a very good job communicating, specifically when they got open. Varsity lost 10-5, or something like that, but Kait's JV team was able to tie 6-6. They almost won, in fact; the other team scored with 12 seconds left to tie the score. Hopefully they carry enough of the frustration over to their last two games to put them over the top in at least one of them.

Work has been interesting, to say the least, this week. Monday was a long night, capped off by an extra fifteen minutes at the end taping up a bunch of packages that had worked their way over to PD-5. Tuesday, on the other hand, was a breeze. Last night was somewhere in between. Our full-time supervisor seems to be trying to set some sort of record for how many people he can make genuinely mad at him at one time, and he's doing a damn good job of it. Honestly, when he's telling me something I don't particularly want to hear, I just sort of nod him off and send him on his way, but a lot of people take what he says very seriously and get upset at it.

Last night, for instance, apparently he told Fred that he was going to start writing up and firing people for being late. Now, Fred, whose performance at his job I have gushed about here on multiple occasions, comes in late quite a bit, because it's not always easy for a guy working another job and who also has a family to get to his 11:00 overnight on time every night. That said, he is still much more productive during the time he is here than pretty much anyone who arrives on time and works the whole shift. So, what the sup told him was a threat, but it was an obviously empty threat - there is no way he is going to fire his best worker, as well as one of the most popular guys in the whole hub. But he told him that anyway, to see if he could squeeze out some extra minutes out of the guy. It's the sort of thing that, if I were Fred, I would have responded to with an "ok, I'll do my best to get here on time", and then continued to do exactly what I was doing. Is the sup an asshole for making empty threats at his best worker? Absolutely. Is getting upset or arguing with him going to make him change? No - all it's going to do is add unnecessary stress into your life, which of course will shorten it, and probably lead to Alzheimer's or something. Just smile, nod, ignore. That's my philosophy. And I get very upset about quite a few things.

Weekend plans: mom and dad are still in town, so Kait and I will be headed down to the Cape for Memorial Day weekend. I imagine a lot of other folks will be down there, as well, so it should be a seriously good time. Kait has another lacrosse game this afternoon, and I may make my way over there after I've had lunch and a shower.

Ok, that's enough for now. Sports tomorrow. Till then...

5/17/07

Dear Blog,

I was pretty exhausted when I got in from work this morning, which is why I've got this entry up so late today.

We've been extremely busy at the hub these last few weeks - ever since the beginning of May, really. This week, my supervisor, John, has been training in the unload. The rumor going around is that he will finally be moved to the section of the unload that feeds our aisle, the supervisor there will go to the sort aisle next to ours, and the supervisor there will shift to our aisle. I was hoping our supervisor and the unload supervisor would just switch places, because that sup - Anthony - knows how we do things and how well it works. Derek - the sup we're rumored to be getting - runs, as do all of the sort sups except John, an open aisle, which means that all of the bars are open and the packages flow down the aisle, as opposed to a closed aisle, which we run, where everyone is responsible for their own unloader or unloaders. That paragraph probably doesn't mean much to anyone who doesn't work the sort at UPS, but that is what's primarily on my mind now and this is, after all, my blog. Besides, for all I know no one is reading this, anyway.

My parents are up at the Cape for a few weeks. We'll be going to visit them again this weekend. Hopefully the weather cooperates (the weather web site isn't coming up right now on my browser for whatever reason, which is irksome).

It was rainy yesterday in Lowell and pretty chilly today when I went for my walk. Lowell has a Class A Red Sox affiliate called the Spinners, whose season starts next month. I've been ordering tickets every week for the last few weeks - I'm going to order tickets to the last two games tomorrow. For anyone reading this in Maryland, the Spinners play in the same league as the Aberdeen Ironbirds. Anyway, when I ordered the first set of tickets, I googled the Park to see where, exactly, it was. It turns out that the Park is about a mile from the apartment, a straight shot down French Street/Father Morisette Blvd. I walked it to see how long it would take me, and it struck me that it would probably be good excersize for me to walk that everyday, weather permitting, so that's what I've been doing.

Tonight is trivia night at the Ground Round. Every week I've been meeting a couple of my cousins there for drinks and the weekly team trivia competition. It's a great deal of fun and a brilliant way for a sub-par restaurant, to be quite honest, to get business. First prize is a $25 gift certificate to the restaurant - not much when you divide it amongst 6 (or more) people, but we're playing to win the game, not the prizes. So far, I've been there three times, and we've finished 3rd twice and 2nd once.

It's also going to be California night at the hub, which means another long one. Hey, more money in my check. Sports tomorrow. Till then...

5/14/07

Dear Blog,

Well, it was quite a weekend, to be sure.

Friday night Dave flew in to Boston for an overnight stay. The Orioles were also in town this weekend so we decided to take in a game if we could. I had asked my cousins how to go about getting tickets and they said that the best way was to look on Craigslist on the day of the game. The problem was, the day of the game, Dave told me that a friend of his, a girl named Caitlin who had gone to UMBC, was now living in Boston and she was going to come, too. This knocked Craigslist out of the picture, as no one sells tickets in grous of three. So we went to the Park without tickets, planning to buy them there, I thought from a scalper.

Instead, we went right up to the ticket window - there was no line, and, much to my amazement, they had some tickets that I guess they reserve for game day walk-up sales. They didn't have three together, but they did have 2 together and another in the same section, an offer we pretty much had to jump on at that point. I took the lone ticket.

Karma paid off, big time. It turned out that the lone ticket was in row 1 of the grandstand section, which is right behind the infield box seats. So, essentially, I was sitting in a box seat for quite a bit less money (although the tickets were still pricey by OPACY standards - $45 each).

The game was great. It was an absolutey beautiful night, game time temperature was probably about 75 and it dropped to maybe 70 by game's end. The Orioles took a 2-0 lead in the first, the Red Sox tied it in the 2nd, then the O's scored 3 in the fifth to make it 5-2. The Red Sox scored once in the 7th, the O's got it back in the 8th, and then held on for a 6-3 win. The game was marked by a lot of clutch pitching with the bases loaded by the Oriole pitchers and quite a few defensive gems, with Markakis and Mora having banner nights at the plate.

On Saturday, the folks came up for Kait's lacrosse game. I was asked to be the timekeeper, as apparently they didn't have a clock. Also, the officials never showed, so a girl from the varsity team had to ref the game. Kait's team lost by a count of something like 11-6, but everyone looked like they had fun. For a bunch of girls who had never played before this season, the team doesn't look too bad. Hopefully, they'll keep their learning curve sharp.

Then we had dinner and went down to the Cape, where I promptly fell asleep, which isn't something I normally do at 9:00 at night. The whole family went to Mother's Day brunch at the Sea Crest hotel (a VERY upscale place in Falmouth). By whole family, I mean Kait, mom, dad, myself, aunt Martha, uncle George, aunt Carol, uncle Brian, my cousins Greg, Geoff, Kerry, Mark, and Eric, Eric's wife Adrianna, their son Andres, Geoff's girlfriend Sue, my step-cousin Steve, and his daughter Sophie. Good time had by all.

Well, that's pretty much my weekend. Sports tomorrow - I still owe you grades for the '03 NFL Draft, don't think I've forgotten.

Till then...

5/10/07

Dear Blog,

I went down to Maryland this past weekend, and had myself a ball. On Saturday night, Tristan, Corey, and I went down to Fell's Point and hit up all the usual suspects. We started out at Max's on Broadway, stopped by the Admiral's Cup, and headed over to Gemini; then we went to a place that I had never been but Tristan and I think Corey had been - I don't recall the name of it but it was an island themed bar that was a couple floors up and looked out over the street - very enjoyable. Finally, we spent a few minutes over at the Green Turtle before we cashed in and took off for back home.

Sunday I did a lot of yard work for the folks, who are having no luck at all getting the Pasadena house off their hands. They are talking with a new relator who is telling them to knock about $90,000 of their asking price. To me, this is just absurd - I understand that the market is shit, but this house should be going for 750 easy. Instead it looks like they won't be able to fetch more than 600 for it. Anyway, Sunday night I went over to Wise's place and played poker with him, Corey, and Dave's friend Andrew. I got down $10 quick, but rallied to finish up 8. Corey left at about 10:45 or so, but I stuck around and shot the shit with Dave and Andrew till about 1:15.

I saw Dave and Andrew again on Monday, as we all went to the Oriole game that afternoon. Dave knows an usher who works behind home plate, so we were able to sit in some amazing seats - about 10 rows back, behind the screen on the first base side. The game was good until the 7th inning, when the Indians blew it open and tacked on more runs in the 8th and 9th to make it a full-fledged blow-out. But that doesn't mean we didn't have a good time.

Monday evening I flew back to Mass, and that night it was back to the grindstone.

We've been getting quite a bit of volume these last couple weeks, and tonight it was just plain hot in the hub. I know the temperature isn't going to get any better, but I hope they bring on some more help to deal with all of these boxes.

Tuesday, my cousin Mark, my sister, and I went to see Spiderman 3. If you're fortunate enough to have not seen it yet, don't. It's a real POS. I haven't been this dissapointed with a movie since The Phantom Menace. You know you're in trouble with a comic book movie sequel when the creators decide that instead of having one really good bad guy - like Willem Dafoe in the original or Alfred Molina in the second - they'll sub in 2 or 3 mediocre ones. They may have been right in assuming that the kid who plays Harry wouldn't be able to carry the torch passed on to him by Dafoe and Molina by himself, but adding Thomas Hayden Church and Topher Grace - two ex-sitcom actors - was not the solution to that problem. If that were the only problem, it would have been a shame, but that was far from the case. All of Peter Parker's personal problems are rehashed from the previous two movies, as if no character development occured in them at all. Apart from that (and maybe more than a little bit because of it) Parker and Mary Jane are, well, annoying. Honestly, I didn't care what happened to their relationship, because by about the 1/3 mark in the film, I didn't like either of them anymore. The comic relief scenes go on for too long, the dramatic scenes go on for too long, and despite the film's 2:20 girth, the bad guys are chronically underdeveloped, which is a sin because the development of the villians was part of what made the first two Spiderman movies so great. Do yourself a big favor and skip this one. Whatever ending for the series you come up with in your head has to be better than what the film provides. One star.