Well, I’m off to Goldsboro, North Carolina until S…

Well, I’m off to Goldsboro, North Carolina until Sunday, so you won’t be hearing much from ‘ol Jeff for a few days. I’ll be attending the following, though:

Antique Farm Equipment Days, 9AM-5PM , Wayne County Fairgrounds, Adults $2; Children under 12 free, For more information call Jerry McGinnis at 919-735-5503.

Come meet up with me now, y’hear??

Some nights you just ain’t got it. Last night I pl…

Some nights you just ain’t got it. Last night I played hockey and I knew it was going to be a bad night even before I stepped on the ice. Stephanie took my car yesterday and about 5 minutes before I left the house, I realized that my hockey stick was in my car. Not a huge problem, really, I figured. You can always use another stick and they have a pro shop at the rink, so I just bought another one and figured while I was there I might as well get my skates sharpened. More on the stick and the skates later.

Upon returning from the pro shop, I started to put my equipment on and was about halfway through that process and putting on my skates when the lace on my left skate snapped. Back to the pro shop. Buy laces. Back to the locker room.

I stepped onto the ice and I knew right away I was in for it. Quick and easy hockey lesson – there’s people who know how to sharpen skates and there’s people who don’t. I’ll give you a guess as to which version I got. You see, if your skates aren’t sharpened correctly, you can’t turn the way you want, you can’t stop the way you want, you can’t pivot the way you want. It’s kind of like someone giving you a brand new car with a manual transmission and you’ve haven’t driven a stick in 15 years. Awkward.

As if that weren’t enough, about halfway through, some dude comes up to me after a whistle blows and accuses me of maliciously slashing him in the chest and that I had better watch it because “he remembers those things.” Great. Fabulous. First of all, you can probably ask anyone on the ice about the kind of person I am and the way I play – to a man they well tell you that if something like that happened, it was most certainly an accident. Frankly, I don’t even remember getting a stick up on the guy, but if I did it wasn’t intentional and I told him so.

Finally, the stick. The stick is a touchy subject. Sticks are kind of like old pairs of jeans sometimes – once you get used to one, much like skates or girlfriends, it takes a while to get accustomed to another one. Another little ditty – sticks need to be cut to a fairly precise size in order to be suitable for use. It’s based on your height. Since I didn’t have much time, I eyeballed it. Of course, I cut the stick way too small and about 5 passes went right under my stick because I was used to the length of my old one. I know – this is all incredibly fascinating.

That pretty much threw me off the rest of the night. Bad skates, angry at being accused and a short stick translated into a frustrating evening. That’s the way it goes. Get ’em next time.

In other news, I never thought of this, but it sure is a unique way to go out, isn’t it? I wonder if they can pack me into a puck and fire slapshots? Or into a baseball and hit me over the Green Monster?

Speaking of which, I’ll be attending my first Red Sox game of the season tonight and I’ll be sitting (or standing?) in that new area on the roof of right field. Should be cool. Maybe I’ll snap some pics. Finally, word has it that Manny Ramirez, the now affable, happy, goofy slugger for the Red Sox unveiled his new website this morning. I’ve yet to really dig deep, but I will at some point. Manny Ramirez and website – those two words just don’t mix.

Song now playing: Bruce Springsteen – “Darkness on the Edge of Town”

This might be the funniest thing I’ve seen on the …

This might be the funniest thing I’ve seen on the web in years. Nevermind the fact that it’s brought to you by Burger King – just go there. Really. Go there right now. The chicken will do whatever you tell it to do. For example, I told the chicken to do push-ups and to jump on one leg – and it did! Trying to think of something that the chicken might not do, I then typed “eat yourself.” The chicken then beagn to eat his own wing. Unreal. Go there and try some stuff out. Hilarious.

Sadly, Christopher Lloyd does not come with the vehicle. But, oh, the attention you would get.

I attended a somewhat large networking/advertising event in Boston’s Quincy Market last night, one of those deals where everyone wears name tags with their name and company on it. It is the first event of its kind that I have attended, simply because the people who attend these are not really involved in the line of work I perform for my employer. I attended because a few of my co-workers were here from out-of-town and I don’t get to see them that often, so I said “the hell with it” and went. Nothing in particular happened with the exception of a conversation I overheard. I was standing at the bar, literally one foot from these two people who were possibly my age or a couple of years younger. They were just going back and forth for a good 3 minutes on how much they hated the company I work for. I mean, it was malicious. The best part is that their assumptions and claims about the company were completely, utterly untrue. It was like they hadn’t looked at the site since 1999. Whatever. I couldn’t help but laugh at how ignorant the whole thing was and that they actually looked right at me a couple of times during their conversation. All they had to do was look down about 12 inches to see my little name tag. I was kind of hoping they would see, in fact.

It’s not the fact that they were bashing us, hell, everyone’s certainly entitled to their opinion, but I was really biting my tongue because I could have slaughtered them with some of the factual innacuracies they were spitting out. A silly situation at a silly event.

Song now playing: Motley Crue – “Livewire”

I hate it when people lie. When you have to be “pa…

I hate it when people lie. When you have to be “pain-in-the-ass” persistent in order to just get heard. Then you don’t even get taken seriously. Then, when it’s all said and done, you’re lied to. I know I’m being cryptic here and I hope you know who you are and I hope (however unlikely that is) that you’re reading this.

Okay, now that that’s off my chest, some news to share. What this guy doesn’t know is that the coffee was also 42 years old. Heh.

Yep. It’s the same excuse we hear time and time again from the guys – there just ain’t enough chicks around.

The Onion’s take on why more people are buying music online. Good stuff.

Finally, the strange yet fun game of What’s My Name?

Song now playing: Pavement – “Father To A Sister Of A Thought”

Lots of stuff from the weekend: – Hey, remember…

Lots of stuff from the weekend:

– Hey, remember my rant about the worst songs of all-time? Well, it looks like Blender magazine agrees with me on my insistance that Starship’s “We Built This City” is the worst song ever. You go, Blender! The one major problem I have with their list is the inclusion of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound Of Silence” as one of the worst songs. What a mistake that is to include that.

– This morning at exactly 5:28, Stephanie and I were awakened by a parade. No shit. A parade! You see, it’s Patriots Day here in Massachusetts, the anniversary of the start of the Revoloutionary War in Lexington & Concord. You know, “the shot heard ’round the world?” So anyway, 5:28 this morning we hear very loud drums, marching and flutes playing Yankee Doodle. Unreal!

-While it did contain some great moments and overall I found it to be very much worth my time, Lost In Translation, suffered from over-hype. Slow-paced and mealy-mouthed, it probably also ran about 20 minutes too long. But don’t let my bitching prevent you from seeing it – still pretty darn good. Not sure it was worthy of a Best Actor nomination for Bill Murray, either, but I would have loved to see him win it. Anyway, at this time I am far more partial to Sofia Coppola’s other widely distributed work, “The Virgin Suicides.” A much better film.

– Big news over the weekend: I replaced an electrical outlet. Previous to August, the thought of me hunkering down and doing electrical work such as this would make me, uh, poop myself with fear of being killed or at least dreadfully charred by a mindless mistake made with wires. How hard could it be, right? Other than trying to unscrew some screws that must have been in the wall for at least 50 years, it went off without a hitch. When I plugged something into the new outlet to make sure it worked okay, I had visions of a very large explosion as soon as I flicked the switch. Since I am sitting here typing, that did not happen. No explosions, no sparks, no charring – complete success. Oh, suburban bliss.

Song now playing: Air – “Playground Love”