Earrings, Red Sox, Pockets and more...

By K.J. Cardinal

My apologies for the lack of posts lately. I have been somewhat unmotivated, somewhat incapacitated and somewhat inebriated. A friend of mine, Amy, just started her own blog, and her enthusiasm has lit a fire under my keister to get back on the bloggin' trail.

Anyway, here's a recap to what's been going on.

- Anna got her ears pierced. Being just like my father, I was definitely against the notion of poking a hole in my daughter's ears for cosmetic purposes at such a young age. The way I figure it is if she wants earrings, then when she's old enough to express that, we'd get her earrings. The thought of making a life-altering decision for your child wasn't necessarily something that I wanted to do, but Angie really wanted to pierce her ears, so as you can see with the adorable picture on the right, Angie won out.

Now that her ears are pierced though, I must admit that it's pretty cute. And, I'm surprised that she doesn't pick at them or anything. She's so curious these days that I thought I'd have to worry about her constantly trying to rip them out and then pulling a Houdini act and making them disappear in her mouth, like she does with anything else she can get her hands on.

- What a weekend we had. Saturday started off with the final BU women's lacrosse PackCast of the season (exciting, I know), but the day was highlighted by Angie and I taking Sammy and Matt to the Red Sox-Yankees game, which was their Christmas present. Despite the rain, we had a blast at the game. We hung around for the first hour or so of the rain delay, but when they pulled the tarp off the field and then put it back on, we decided we'd had enough. Plus, it was the eighth inning and all the beer stands were closed, so that also played a role.

After the game, Matt and I went over to the Cask to meet up with Glenn, Cassani, Jamie and the man of the night, Pockets. My buddy Dan (AKA Pockets) was up from New York for the weekend, so we tore it up in the city after the Sox game and then crashed at Jamie's in Medford. It was a blast to say the least. On Sunday morning Pockets came back to my house to hang out with Anna for a little while before going back to NYC. As you can see in the picture at the right, Pockets was a fan of Anna's and she took a liking to him as well. My favorite part of that photo is that Dan is still wearing the wristbands from the night before.

- Sunday started off by picking up the pieces from Saturday night and heading back to Hudson. I was definitely feeling kind of blah and hungover. I planned on planting myself on the couch for the day and watching The Masters. But then around 11 a.m. I got a phone call from Tiff saying that I had a new niece...and this definitely put a lot of pep in my step! Talk about the ultimate cure for a hangover. Anyway, as you read in the post below, Natalie Jane was born on Sunday morning and she's so precious. I can't wait to see her again.

- Monday and Tuesday were supposed to be rather uneventful days, but of course some came up. Last week I took the Mazda to get inspected. The inspection sticker actually expired in November, but since we rarely drive the car we let it go until April before getting an inspection. As expected, the Mazda failed emissions. We were concerned it may cost a lot to get fixed, but were pleasantly surprised that the work only ran us about $400. We got the car back last Friday and drove it throughout the weekend like the mechanic told us to.

On Monday afternoon, Angie was coming home for lunch when she calls to tell me, "the car broke." Well, not exactly, but something definitely went wrong. So, we brought it back to the mechanic for $200 more worth of work and picked the car up yesterday after lunch. Angie then calls me later in the afternoon to tell me that "the car's rattling." So, the car is currently back up at the shop getting fixed. I'm pretty confident that they just have to tighten up some bolts or something on the exhaust and that it won't cost us any more money, but that car has been the bane of my existence lately.

Well, those are the main happenings of the last week or so. I also wrapped up all the graphic design jobs for Vermont, produced two PackCasts and went to a PawSox game with my buddy Mike. So, thanks Amy for getting me back on the blog-wagon. I'll be sure to do a better job over the next couple of weeks...especially next week when we're on vacation at Steele Hill.