has now gotten official recognition at the Santarchy!(Santacon) website. We are in the Santacon archives section.
This is not my beautiful wife….
No, it’s my beautiful house under construction, circa 1908.
The woman we bought it from sent us this and a few others.
The second photo here is from 1912. Notice the little sapling tied to the stake in the front yard? It’s now the 60 foot pecan tree that shades us from the afternoon sun.
Smashmouth ain’t nothin
This is in response to Gary’s Smashmouth posting. I couldn’t post a picture as a comment so I had to start a new entry.
I’ve posted a picture here of our friend Mel’s snowblower. Many of you know Mel. He owns his own auto repair shop and I get out there every once in a while because I help him with his computers. I was actually just there this morning and had his partner send me this picture of the snowblower Mel created. It’s got a V8 engine and dual exhaust stacks. He said he managed to clear his entire lot of 6 inches of snow in about 15 minutes after last week’s storm.
As Mel said, Gary, “Don’t try to compete with professionals.”
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.
Smashmouth Redux
I know some of you have seen this picture before, but I wanted to get it on here for posterity. We had our first substantial snowstorm overnight, and Smashmouth and I were out at 6am clearing the driveway and sidewalks.
Speaking of posterity, I’m archiving the blog on a regular basis and will occasionally distribute CDs to family members. So, if you want some mundane event or milestone or whatever recorded, put it up here. Our great-grandkids will be able to check it out someday.
Remember, “We are the mundane!”
Thanksgiving NY Style
Santa always finishes the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade!
After the parade we left the building we were in (Ed Sullivan Theatre, aka Letterman Show) to head to our cars. We had a group photo taken by a passerby. Wanted a second but couldn’t get the kids’ attention as they were fascinated by the street-sweepers.
We were accompanied by an old friend and co-worker of Lis’, Doug Reuter, his wife, Susan and 2 kids. His first was born 3 mos before Charlotte. His 2nd the same day as Lex. We’ve known Doug for more than 20 yrs.
We went to the Upper West Side and Nancy’s apartment (Nana to the kids.) A little play in the local park playground and dinner.
All in all a fine day.
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”.
Do you dream?
I woke up this morning after one of my typical nights of dreaming. The “star” of this dream was Gary. He had just gotten a review at work and wasn’t too happy about it. So he came to the family for advice. We were living in Chalfont. Mommy, Kenny and Ronnie were in the dream. Mommy and I intervened…kind of like attending a “parent-teacher” conference with Gary’s boss. Kenny & Ronnie were “background” constants; Kenny complaining that he was having similar problems at work and Ronnie just standing there laughing (we were all current age except Ronnie who was a teenager)!
Weird. Do any of you dream? Steve says he doesn’t, or at least never remembers them. I dream nightly. Maybe it’s just a female thing??????
Changed the Footer
Decided it was time this handsome devil joined the rest of the family.
