has now gotten official recognition at the Santarchy!(Santacon) website. We are in the Santacon archives section.
Resuming Normal Activities
Following my doctor’s advice to resume normal activities, I went forward with the 2nd Annual State College Santa Crawl on Saturday night. In the initial event last December we had five participants, this year we tripled that number. I do believe that the event now has enough inertia that it will probably double in size next year. That should allow it to take on a life of its own similar to the way the A-Z bar tour that I created in Philadelphia went on for at over 10 years after I left town (for all I know the A-Z tour is still going on).
For more photos of our event, click here.
Eat, Drink, and be Merry
Just got back from my checkup following surgery. The doctor has given me a clean bill of health and says I can resume normal activities with no restrictions. My stomach still looks like I’ve been in a knife fight but other than that I’m fine. I even dropped about 10 lbs (206 on the bathroom scale this AM) and I’m going to try to keep it off.
I’m home
was released form the hospital about a half hour ago. Just enough time to let everyone know I’m all right and to still make tipoff of tonight’s ESPN ACC/Big Ten Challenge match. It’s being broadcast by ESPNU and I will be in my regular seat 5 rows behind the visitors bench – I’m on the aisle on your right.
Larry Update Below!!
Why No PSU Update?
What’s up? What is Larry doing? Everybody is wondering…. “Where’s Larry?”
Yes, only one thing could explain this dereliction of duty. Larry’s in the hospital.
His initial diagnosis is pancreatitis caused by gallstones.
He went in Saturday afternoon, hopes to be out Tuesday.
Right now it seems that he may have surgery to remove the stones sometime in the next couple weeks. First they have to get the inflammation and/or infection reduced.
Don’t feel too bad. Larry always has a way to make the best of any situation. He tells me the hospital is staffed with babes.
Just got a text message from Larry. His gallbladder was removed today and he expects to be home tomorrow.
Birthdays
At the beginning of the month Ronnie made a comment on his birthday posting that he couldn’t remember the year of everyone’s birth. I think that’s a great challenge to post on our blog (we need to start getting some family history here). I’ll give it a shot (correct me if I’m wrong). I then challenge everyone to post their immediate family’s birth dates. Here goes:
Dad (Edwin) – 01/01/21, deceased 01/24/86
Mom (Eileen) – 12/16/24, deceased 12/09/84
Larry – 03/02/45
Marilyn – 02/23/49
Steve – 05/16/51
Kenny – 07/17/54
Gary – 10/04/57
Ronnie – 10/28/58
For history, we should add Susan: 12/24/45 (deceased shortly after birth). Am I correct? OK, let’s get our families on here! Then we can start going backwards and getting other relatives!
Family Dream
I had one of my family dreams last night. I was “home” (not sure if home was Philly or Chicago) and Mom, Steve, Ken and I were in the dream. Steve and I were current but Ken was still in college. Steve was just leaving to go to work when Mom said “you never know how things are going to turn out, that one, meaning Steve, has got his life in order, while this one, looking at Ken, is on track to be a kitchen bum.”
That caused me to lecture her on how everyone was not cut out to go to college to be an engineer. I somehow had gotten a look at Ken’s class schedule where “cash register management” had stood out and then added “if I had it to do all over again, I would major in hotel and restaurant management” (there’s some truth to that). Mom then made some sarcastic remark about being able to pay the bills on the 1st of the month.
I then turned to Ken and said “I gather you’ve changed your major to restaurant management”. Ken answered yes and then asked me “what clothes did you where to work when you graduated?” He then laughed at me when I said “three piece suits”. I then went on to explain that “everyone wore suits back then”.
Dream ended about then.
SC in SC
Santa Crawl in State College, that is…
The “A-Z Bar Tour” that I founded in Philadelphia in 1981 grew to be a huge success and I’m trying to recreate that experience here with a variation called the Santa Crawl. As you might imagine, a Santa Crawl is simply a bar tour where everyone dresses in Santa costumes. It isn’t something I invented, but I am trying to bring the experience to State College (Santa crawling is a worldwide phenomena with one of the biggest actually happening in New York).
We kicked off our version of the Santa Crawl here in State College last year. Here’s my favorite photo from the event which is also hanging prominently in Hooters.
Check this out for more photos from last year.
When someone asks why we do this, I simply give an answer from this list (responses substantially borrowed from the Baltimore Santa Crawl.
- meet people
- meet women
- confuse the crap outta kids
- get hugs from the girls from Hooters
- fill everyone you meet with joy
- become instant celebrities and rock stars
- get an invite to the Hooters Xmas party (the last few photos taken last year were from there)
This year’s event will take place on Saturday, Dec 10th and we expect to at least triple the size of last year’s group. It’s a pretty safe bet that I’ll be posting photos on the 11th. The wonderful thing about digital cameras is that you can’t open them up and expose all your film to the light and thus ruin all your photos (know what I mean Gary 🙂 ) so I’m sure to have some pictures no matter how hard we party that night.
Boo!! Hiss!! Boring!!
Some of you may remember my campaign last spring to name the new State College minor league baseball team the Sliders. My nominee had been one of seven (the others were Black Bears, Copperheads, Miners, Mountain Bats, Ridge Riders, and Stags) selected to be semifinalists. I put some serious effort into promoting my choice (I even handed out business cards promoting the name)
Let’s just say that my suggestion didn’t meet with universal acclaim (Click here to read a local writer’s opinion),
Evidently, team managemant felt the same as the above writer because they wound up throwing out all seven of the semifinalists and starting over with a new list of finalist. They were Anglers, Coalys, Furnace, Haymakers, and Spikes.
The grand announcement of the winner was today. And the winner is, drumroll please:
All I can say is “boring”.