An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey . He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult
work, as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a
letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent,
I am feeling pretty sad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year.
I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would
be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.

Love,
Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Papa,
Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried.

Love, Vinnie
At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Papa,
Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.
Love you,

Vinnie

My dad, thoughtful observant dude that he is, recently noted that all it takes to make everyone around you a doctor is for you to come down with something. Opinions and assholes are forever linked in that regard.

I guess it is a sign that I’m getting older that it is taking a bit for an ankle injury(pulled tendons above my achilles) to recover for me. Age and the fact that resting it is a little dull. The needs of my job need me to do some ambling around, making me the Dr. House of marketing. A couple folks see me coming with a “still limping, there” observation. That’s helpful as I wasn’t noticing. Powered my way through our recent benefit which I think would fry the healthy cortex of Schartzeneggarian proportions. You know you’re doddering a bit when both your mom and daughter present you with ankle braces.

It’s funny what can slow you down. My building has a set of stair cases that thankfully after five years, I don’t think much about….till now. You have to be careful when you think about how you plant your foot a bit and that nearly induced, vertigo I guess. I’m part of a great team and one of the kind souls reorganized our group to “get Mike off the stairs.” That made me feel both really great and sort of pitiful.

I’ve never been a jock of any kind to speak of, but take a degree of pride in doing my share, toting my barge, lifting my bale, doing for the team (“TEAM, TEAM”).

I made sure I wasn’t screwing anything else upIt’s going away, but three weeks off from heavy lifting events will help, but the nerves can repair sooner.

I wouldn’t mind.

Lot of milestones lately, and the latest one put me, the lovely mother of my lovely children, and the middle child of that collective in White Plains, New York at Purchase College for orientation. It was our daughter's orientation and first visit to the college of her choice. It was a pretty regular assortment of meetings, sessions, icebreaker type activities. Given it's location, about 30 minutes north of New York City so there were folks from all over.



I was relieved a bit that it looks nothing like U.B. and is a nice sized community for our daughter to start off and gain some confidence being on her own. It's right next to White Plains, but built so it is its own little world as well and I think that is kind of cool. One can ease themselves into things so it's not too much too soon. That didn't stop my amusement at some of the parents whose questions sounded more like they were sending their ten year old off to camp as opposed to their young adult off to school.



If a community can take our too cool teenager and move her from "I can tell already I'm going to hate it here" (when she saw students dancing parking directions for us) to somebody who has a schedule, two job prospects and three prospective roommates, they must be doing something right.

You never know anything for sure, but this feels like a positive start.

This might be one of the cooler work pictures I might ever get to take.

Now how this happened, but the renowned number one son graduated 8th grade this week. In a week of milestones, his older sister graduates high school on Monday, so allow me a rare moment of hey, aren't my kids cool

The stuff you have to do sometimes.

The Xbox died after a lengthy run, and a few repairs, so I've decided to trade in the peripherals and games and go gently into the goodnight for a bit, or at least treat myself to a Wii perhaps.

To do Netflix and download from their library of marked up software, I signed up for a gold membership, which means nothing really, only you can't escape it.

In calling "customer service" despite having all the financial information, the lovely people at Gates World insisted I know the security question for the Xbox Gamertag, not the Charge Card Holder. This might be the dumbest security measure I've heard in the age of paranoia. Fortunately, I picked up the Xbox used from a good soul, ((e:Terry)), and round two wrapped up tonight and they stopped billing me. I think I'll use the savings for HBO or something.

Thanks Terry and watch out on them thar internets, ya'all

Silliness I tell ya.

It is possible to be getting too old for some things. I've been playing kickball leagues behind UB for a couple of weeks, but I think my season is over. Last week after visiting my dad in the hospital (he got out the next day), I ran home, changed, and hauled over to the field to join my team. It had been raining, and I almost thought it would have been cancelled.

Probably shoulda been.

It's the goofball league so nothing gets taken too seriously, but I scrambled, played poorly the first game, dropped a couple of easy catches. But in the second game of the doubleheader, I started to find my game. I made a few plays. I got on base a few times. The team was winning, until.....my fourth trip to the plate.

Connected! Sure fire extra base hit, until.....I planted my left foot to start running and it felt like somebody hit the back of my ankle with a sledge hammer. I collapsed like lawn furniture and I think looked back at one point to see what did hit me.

I'd never felt the muscles in the bottom of my leg tighten so fast before. Everybody must have known because I was surrounded in a heartbeat.

"don't put any weight on it" "quick, get some of the beer and that duct tape" and I was on the bench. It wasn't throbbing or anything, so I didn't think it was the end of the world, but I stayed put till the end of the game. When it finished, I hobbled to my car, thanking god that I had the good sense to have automatic transmission. The more you hobble like that, the farther away the car does seem.

To make sure I didn't screw anything up to bad, I drove over to immediacare. When the rest of your team is headed to Gecko's to drink, it is a lonely drive. I checked into the Hertel Ave facility and got xrayed to see pulled ligaments which are slowly returning to normal.

But, I think my season is done.

As we speak, my dad is at the new Gates Building undergoing an angiogram. Most medical people I know use the word procedure when it comes to stuff like that and I think that is good. Not only do you bill less on procedures than surgeries, the likelihood that they are no big deal is a faster reality too. In all likelihood, he'll probably be home this evening, but anytime you hear anything heart related it does catch your attention a little bit.

I'm not concerned in the grand scheme, as the old man started complaining after his third 15 mile bike ride last week. That's pretty damn good for 75, considering I'm not sure I can do that now.

The siblings are the basket cases. My younger sister had a boyfriend that went through open heart surgery so with her level of calm, it is a good thing she is in Harlem. The old sister is here and looking for stuff to kvetch about, so I might need to run some emergency chloraform downtown to knock her out. The folks are fine, it's the imaginations that run amuck.

There's a work happy hour tonight and the old man said to go....so, I'm going

My eldest daughter is learning to drive. She is doing really well. Like any new driver, she has some things to work on, but is doing pretty good. Watch how folks maneuver around Western New York, I had a bit of an automotive epiphany. And funny enough, it’s not her I’m worried about.

In watching how everybody drives like it is all about them, it makes you wonder. Pity the poor devils trying to parallel park on a busy street, as nobody waits. They pull around the poor guy trying to concentrate on his parallel parking. So you got that to think about while the impatient guy doesn’t seem to give a hoot that he pulling into territory that you know, might have a car coming in the other direction.

I just took my son to the movies over the weekend and we’re coming out and this woman is parking her car very snuggly up to mine, so I basically can’t leave. I, of course, raise an eyebrow. She gets out and says “I didn’t hit your car.” I reply “Well, you didn’t buy it dinner either, could you please back up so we can leave and you can horde both spaces?” She attempts the stink eye but does give me the room to at least leave the parking space without the aid of rubber gloves.

Pulling up Main and Goddell, a Hotel van driver weaves a tapestry of obscenity at me when I chose to stop at the red light. Apparently, I should have gone through to the light and taken my chances with the traffic coming off the 33.

Maybe it’s me.

I was running some saturday morning errands earlier and it did seem like idiosyncreasies amuck on the roads today. Apparently, if you are going to eat at Pano‘s, you have to park in their parking lot and road rage when you try to leave it. It seemed to be a theme. And watching the same scene geting replayed at the Co-op was kind of hilarious.

(Folks, just take a space on the street, it’s the weekend and it would do your fat ass good to walk more than 10 feet to each establishment)

Maybe it’s me.

I took in the Auction benefiting Give for Greatness (the arts group) over on Amherst Street Saturday morning and had to drive around the shapnel of a fairly fresh accident at Delaware and Amherst, and nearly got pegged by somebody making a left, from Amherst, who was so semi-circling it, he was mostly in our lane. About a year ago, coming off Amherst harmlessly on to Delaware, I was ticket fodder. No such look this weekend.

Is the nanosecond saved by making your left turn a semi circle worth it?

Is anybody really that in a hurry?

“Can I drive Dad?”

Yeah, sure, just watch out for everything

I just took my son to the movies and we're coming out and this woman is parking her car very snuggly up to mine, so I basically can't leave. I, of course, raise an eyebrow. She gets out and says "I didn't hit your car." I reply "Well, you didn't buy it dinner either, could you please back up so we can leave and you can horde both space?" She attempts the stink eye but does give me the room to at least leave the parking space without the aid of rubber gloves.

Pulling up Main and Goddell, the Doubletree Hotel van driver weaves a tapestry of obscenity at me when I chose to stop at the red light. Apparently, I should have gone through to the light and taken my chances with the traffic coming off the 33.

Maybe it's me. I was running some saturday morning errands earlier and it did seem like idiosyncreasies amuck on the roads today. Apparently, if you are going to eat at Pano's, you have to park in their parking lot and road rage when you try to leave it. It seemed to be a theme. And watching the same site get replayed at the Co-op was kind of hilarious.

(Folks, just take a space on the street, it's the weekend and it would do your fat ass good to walk more than 10 feet to each establishment)

Maybe it's me.

I took in the Auction benefitting Give for Greatness (the arts group) over on Amherst Street this morning and had to drive around the shapnel of a fairly fresh accident at Delaware and Amherst, and nearly got pegged by somebody making a left, from Amherst, who was so semi-circling it, he was mostly in our lane.

My eldest daughter is learning to drive and doing really well. And funny enough, it's not her I'm worried about.