Travel is good. Nothing a long weekend doing all the fun stuff in Manhattan and Brooklyn to guarantee a little renewal. Getting to see it again was a lot of fun. My daughter and I Jet Blue'ed it into Kennedy on Thursday night and met up with family at Sal's Pizzeria in Brooklyn for a snack.

Friday, I got to renew a long familar acquaintance with the stink that is Canal St & Chinatown. I can only imagine the fumes on a hot day. We meandered up there into SoHo, stopping at all the groovy places along the way (and there were many). Lunch at Two Boots Pizza was pretty awesome and we worked our way uptown. After cruising through midtown, we worked our way into Chelsea for a dinner with my older sister at Chelsea Restaurante. My sister is a minor celeb there as she's lived in the neighborhood for quite awhile and I think is also a pretty big tipper. You eat wonderfully there.

Saturday was more of the same. After being unabashed consumers on Friday, we tempered that a little with a trip to the Natural History Museum. Had to see the whale. The trip up town was marred by the whiniest cab driver I've ever had in NYC. All the street festivals going on had him crying the blues. Despite his pissing and moaning, it was kind of cool to sneak in behind Grand Central on our way uptown. I tried taking pictures of the "Whale" but I don't think they came out okay.

I've gotten kind of blase about celebrity sightings over the years, but my darling daughter was clearly taken sharing a row with Oprah, running into Richard Belzer on 43rd st, and having Teddy Geiger say excuse me to her as he went by at JFK yesterday.

The picture I wish I would have gotten was the gonga line of planes out the window yesterday. The tower had everybody doing a series of u turns to get to the big runway. At one point, you could see a series of 15 planes of all sizes jockeying for space, sort of fun and intimidating to see in the twilight. Guess I'm a dork that way.

A fine time, just what the doctor ordered.............

My remote post, live from not so colonial Williamsburg. I've been playing tour guide/fellow tourist with my eldest daughter in New York, We've been bunking with my younger sister in the Williamsburg Section of Brooklyn. Weather has been rather blech, but that hasn't stopped fortune from smiling in the right way.

My darling child went off to see The Color Purple last night and sat near Oprah, who happened to be there checking on her latest investment. From Canal st to the east and West Village to mid town to the parks (Central and Washington Square), she got a good intro in fun as a carefree Manhattanite.

(e:Hodown) is right on the money about the Mac Store. Full of posers, but I had a good time compiling a mental wish list anyway.

While my child was getting cultured in Time Square, my future brother-in-law and I repaired to a truly unique place in Brooklyn, a joint called Barcade, lots of good local brew and the joint is lined with vdeio games from the 80s. I can still rock Super Mario Bros.

Wee-HooOO!! A breather in the nonsense. By this time tomorrow, I'll be safely in Chelsea watching the talented wait staff pour me too much Pinot Grigio with dinner.

Been too fucking long since my last breather

Seeing White House Press Secretary Tony Snow play the flute may have scarred me more than I know. Jumped the gun on Happy Hump Day wishes as many of the complaint letters at TW have been dumped in my lap. I've responded to this challenge by giving credit away like nickel candy.

Can't seem to shake one respondant. She download ez armor (the TW security package) and I think the download was corrupt. She had my number from one of my stops at other TW offices. She was understandably pissed that the program didn't work. She happened to call during the big foolishness two weeks ago and couldn't get a hold of anybody and was pissed about that. I arranged for a tech to come. He happened to be late and ignorant. Two things that are apparently my fault. Arranged for tech support to call her. She missed the calls as they tried her three times. Apparently that is my fault as well.

All this for a bad download, that needs to be dumped and replaced.

I love my job (heavy sarcasm)

My home base is changing. That would be a wholly unremarkable thing except for the first time in 11 years I won't be based in the city. My whole department is getting bumped all to the offices in West Seneca. I never logged anytime there so that will be different. When I came to this office, I joked that I was trading Shanghai Red's for Chefs. Now, I seem to be trading Chef's for Louie's Texas Red Hots. I'm thinking of taking a journey to see how far it is from the new office to Schwabl's (home of the kick ass Beef on Wick). Same shit, different day, different location.

Off to Manhattan on Thursday to hang with my siblings and to show my lovely eldest daughter NYC. My younger sister was all about the planning of the trip until she announced her wedding. She and her intended are having a thing at some resort outside of Fishkill, NY on Columbus Day. They managed to pick the weekend that West Point, Marist and some other college are all having their homecomings, so finding a place to stay will be interesting and expensive. My mom seems to like the idea of playing travel agent. I'm in the "Okay, I can't afford a vacation now, but it's family so that's what you do." Said younger sister announced that she wanted to have an unconventional ceremony and every step taken is pivoting from right out of Bride magazine. She's 38, but is planning like she is 21. Her day, I guess, but I think the expense involved is one of the reasons my youthfully 70 year old Dad accepted a three week assignment in Philly this month.

I'm a big hockey fan, but part of me wants the Sabres to quit teasing us all and pack it in. It's been a fun ride and seeing the citizens just hi-five one another is nice, but they are in over their heads. Weather wise, and Ottawa being too good wise, it is slowly turning into time to go to a Bisons game, drink a beer or two and people watch, safe in the knowledge that the game is a backdrop for some fun people watching.

Happy Hump Day, ya'all

Because the Versus network is run by Dewey, Cheatum and Howe, I thought for the benefit of tonight's Sabres game I'd offer up the following info. Tonight's Sabres game is on Versus and on Hockey Night in Canada and in HD on a network called MOJO.

Versus shares their HD feed with the party animals at the Golf Channel. If you go to Versus HD expecting to see Hockey, you'll actually be treated to a bunch of guys in Polyester pants -- not unlike clubbing in Lackawanna.

I just thought I'd offer this estrip public service announcement for the common good and in light of the fact that people will be hollering at me tomorrow about "What did you morons do about the HD?" when it wasn't us morons it was the Versus morons.

Non Hockey fans can enjoy the new Grey's Anatomy in its proper HD.

I'm having a hard time letting go of the urge to beat the shit out a music teacher. I'd never thought one would deserve it, but I now know of one who merits such treatment.

My kids school is doing an operetta, school play thingy. There is a district wide organization which helps with arts stuff in the Buffalo schools and they are overseeing this little production. I knew my daughter got involved which was great, but Number One Son tried out. He just turned 9. He and a friend went down to the "auditions." Each was sent to a group of older kids, 11 to 13 years in age. That can be intimidating in and of itself. The advisor who apparently thinks he is at fucking Julliard looked at my son and simply commanded "NEXT", giving him no instruction, no direction, just placed him on the stop. My poor boy got nervous and sort of collapsed into himself and started to cry, given that he was surrounded by no support at all which made that feeling even worse. The older kids mocked that, until my darling daughter appeared and threatened beatings all around. Lovely girl, she is capable of some intense mood swings, but upon hearing of this lioness like response, I immediately upped her allowance.

My son held it together until he got back to class until he got to his teacher and had a good cry. I'm angry because it took a little bit for all of this to get to me, but I also want to slap the shit out of the play director. If the fuckstick doesn't want to help and encourage young kids who have a genuine interest, then what the fuck is he doing working for schools. This jackass set my son and apparently 4 or 5 others kids up to fail simply because he couldn't be bothered to give a shit.

The inherent beauty of all of this is that at a school function from a couple of posts ago this weekend, I was, er, able to voice my displeasure to the school principal who had the miscreant in her office.

I believe I told her something about what kind "of a shell of a man browbeats 8 and 9 year olds for the sake of a school play."

Godfuckingdammit

Well, that was a fun work week. The Big Kahunas decided to institute a entire new billing system first thing last monday. I got to spend last sunday helping prep the damn thing. It is a decent piece of software that will be a great use once everybody gets over the heebie jeebies with it. Trouble is, every department feeds off of it, so one fuckup can reverberate for quite awhile. Then, there was the change of servers for the internet. Sunday was the day to pull the plug on the adelphia server and connect with the Time Warner --- GADS, what a pain in the shorts. The big bosses hit part of the email of adelphia.net account holders without realizing that more than half the folks didn't use that email so they had no idea how stupid we were about to get. Of course, it didn't go smooth. Compounded by the problems with secure sites, that mole hill became in mountain in double time.

Just about everything about it blew. Peeps, if your net connection got fubar'ed last weekend into this week, lemme know. I figured out how to give credit rather quickly (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Wednesday I headed out to one of the call centers to pitch in with some troubleshooting on the billing system. During the lunch break, I broke bread with some of the folks who work me in Buffalo and we told some war stories of what customers were telling us. The center's manager heard one line from the conversation and immediately thought I was slamming her call center and ran to tell the dude I interviewed with for a job late the week before. What the hell?? Not only was that a little junior high for my tastes, but does the allegedly professional women have such an opinion of me that I am stupid enough to insult an operation while I'm in the middle of that operation. The fact that she said nothing to me left a sour taste in my mouth. If the smell of superstition is going to be stinking up the place, I'm wondering if I should really head over to the new spot.

In my current stead, there is a chance my office might be relocating to the confines of West Seneca in just remote enough to make me underwhelmed at the prospect of going. But alas.

Short vacation coming up, taking the eldest to NYC for her birthday in June. In 11 days, we head off for a long weekend of savoring Manhattan. It's been a little over 1 1/2 years since I've last been and can't' wait.

My younger sister is taking my daughter to see the Color Purple while we are there. She announced that she (the sister) is getting married at a place near WestPoint called the Garrison in October. Never did a solid drive like that on my own before, but first time for everything.

And how was your week?

My kids' school did a neat thing to celebrate the springtime weather. Some parents and kids got together and built a maypole, creating a nice day outside as well as a excuse for a picnic in the sunshine.



The peak of the maypole




Great day to savor the spring weather

Yo Time Warner/adelphia.net subscribing peeps,

It's not an outtage. It's the formal untangling of Adelphia and the restitching of Roadrunner. Sit tight, engineering types should be through messing with us soon. Watch the mail, the shift from adelphia.net to roadrunner.com is up for this week too

Back to your regularly scheduled estrip