Posted 9:49 PM by RedSox
The Experiment continues…

Well, I feel like a new man today. I went and had the haircut. 11 inches of my hair is sitting on the Entertainment center waiting to be sent to be made into a wig. It is very short. I really like it better this way. I have already caught myself a couple of time thinking I still had the long hair and trying to push it out of the way.

I asked Boogieshoes to take before and after photos with the digital camera. I hope to figure out a way to show them here once I have a few minutes to spare.

I feel really good about myself that I actually made it all the way through. It was definitely for a good cause.

It is nicer now, too because with the shorter hair I can’t see all the gray that I was starting to find more and more of as the weeks went on.

I ended up just going to the local walk-in haircut joint. There is a place in West Haven that will give you a free haircut and send the donation in for you. But I went there a month or so ago and they were really rude when they told me it wasn’t long enough yet. So I decided to just have it cut and send it in myself. Almost a mistake. It’s a good thing Boogieshoes came along. The stylist was going to start cutting without putting it into a ponytail first, which would have been a disaster. After a false start or two she got it right and I am all set. She used the spray bottle to wet the hair before she cut it so I am now just waiting for the ponytail to dry and I’ll send it along.

I didn’t tell anyone at work so it should be interesting to get their reactions. Some of the people I am now working with have never seen me with short hair. Actually very few people have ever seen me with hair this short.

Other than that not much is going on.

Until next time…

Posted 11:09 PM by RedSox
The Experiment continues…

I’m going to bypass the end of our trip. I am not up for boring everyone with details. Having said that, I don’t know what I want to talk about. So I assume this means a stream of consciousness is forthcoming. Lucky, lucky readers.

Where to begin? How about baseball? Well, my beloved Red Sox have nearly successfully tanked another season. Being out of it is merely a formality at this point. An Anaheim win tonight or a Sox loss (they are winning 4-2 in the 8th as I write this) would mercifully end things for this year. What went wrong? Damned if I know. They have two 20 game winners for the first time since like 1949. They have a hitter battling for the batting title (Manny Ramirez); they have a shortstop with almost 120 RBIs. A legit leadoff hitter who stole 31 bases so far this year. They are on a pace for 95 wins. Normally enough for wildcard consideration. Not this year. A disastrous Interleague schedule has put them behind two very good teams in the AL West. So here I am again with the eternal mantra: There is always next year.

Hair. Those of you who know me, know that I have been growing my hair for the last year and two months for Locks of Love. This was something I have been doing in solidarity with a friend who lost a young friend and student to cancer a couple of years ago. Locks of Love is an non-profit organization that takes hair donations and uses them to create wigs for children who loose their hair from disease or chemotherapy. Well, it looks like it is time to harvest. And not a moment too soon. I was never meant to have long hair. I am convinced of that now. I don’t know how people do it. It gets into everything. My mouth when I eat. The shaving cream when I shave. It drives me nuts. I also think it looks lousy. My hair has a mind of its own and I have had the exact same hairstyle since I was in third grade. Even with all this hair, it still insists on parting on the left. I think it looks stupid. I have tried to part it in the middle or anything else. I’d pull it back into a ponytail except for one small problem. I have been cursed with a huge melon on top of body. I can’t get the hair on the front of my head to reach and stay in a ponytail. So I have to pull what I can and then wear a hat with it so I can tuck the rest up under. Geez!

So Locks of Love requires a length of 10 inches from tip to tip. I am fairly certain that I have enough now to have it cut. It will be soon.

So Friday night it looks like we are taking a road trip up to Chynakatt and Blixx country. A band that Boogieshoes and I like very much, The Highland Rovers Band (HRB), is playing up in Worcester at the Irish Times. The HRB are a great group of guys with phenomenal harmonies who are mostly and Irish Band but can also rock the place with popular tunes. Sock Momma - a true Roverette, Boogieshoes, and little old me will be trekking up there to see them. This is their last show before they take a well-deserved time off before coming back on the road before St Patrick’s Day. Boogieshoes and I were introduced to the band shortly after our wedding. Lord Baltimore was already friends with the band and convinced us to go out to see them a bar in our town where they were playing. We were hooked. We go to see them as often as we can. But it is getting tougher for us to see them. They are getting quite a following and can’t play the small bars that they used to anymore. This means that our local Irish Pub doesn’t get shows anymore. So we have to go out about 40 minutes or so to see them these days.

I am really looking forward to going up to Worcester. I can’t wait to see the band. I think that Chynakatt and Blixx said they may come by. I’d love to see them have them hear the band. And we may even get to see the new domicile. My only fears are that it will be really crowded. I’m not real good with huge crowds. I am hoping to get to the bar about 2 hours before the show so we can try to get there before the crush. I hope.

I don’t know. I don’t really have a lot to say these days.

Until next time…

Posted 10:20 PM by RedSox
The Experiment continues…

We got back yesterday from a nice vacation up on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Seven and a half hours driving (with rest stops) through New York, Mass, and CT. Most of it on Route 90, which looks the same from Buffalo, NY to Springfield, MA. We left Wednesday morning at around 10:00 A.M and pulled into the hotel sometime around 5:00 P.M. We didn’t do much the first night. We mostly go acclimated to the surroundings. We walked around a bit and ate supper and later went down to check out the illuminated falls. This was my first exposure to the falls. I had completely missed seeing them coming over the bridge from the US because I was more worried about not crashing into customs. My very first reaction to the falls was “Ok, not bad.” I wasn’t really impressed. I guess I was expecting something a mile high. Still as we walked around and checked it all out and listened to the roar of the water coming over it started to grow on me.

We got back to the room where I discovered a true life’s joy. In-room Jacuzzi. I soaked my tired, road worn, and sick (more about that later) carcass in nice hot water for a solid 30 minutes. Needless to say, I am now hooked. “Someday”, he thinks wistfully.

Thursday we got up and walked from 11:00 in the morning to 7:00 at night. We walked back down to the falls and I got some good pictures. They grew on me even more by now. Sure, they weren’t a mile high but damn they made a lot of noise. And they dominate everything. I realized Thursday morning that you could hear them clearly from the hotel. They were a background track no matter where you went around the tourist district. And seeing the force of the water during the daytime was most impressive. We then strolled around the tourist area. We went into the Hershey’s store, the Hard Rock Café, The Rainforest, and the Guinness museum. Boy was I disappointed to find out it was a museum for World Records and not for the beer. Actually it really did rather suck. It sucked even harder because they have a belt from the world’s fattest man and a platform that you can stand on to have your picture taken inside the belt. What they don’t tell you is they have a little set of LCD lights that tells how much you weigh. Oh, yippee!!! So me being quite the tourist I jump right on up. And the lights light up. I wish the LCD lights on the slot machines that give payout went that high on Friday. We ate dinner at a Steakhouse and went back to the hotel. After all the walking we decided to go next door to TGI Fridays to hang out for Karaoke. .

So we go next door. As we walk inside, I miss an important piece of information that could have changed to whole evening. So we go inside and there is a perky lady running karaoke. Now I have only sung karaoke once. Stone cold sober on the cruise ship during our honeymoon. I was stone cold sober because I was seasick 20 minutes before I sang. The lounge’s Caribbean band singer was talking to us and gave me a seasickness home remedy that worked like a charm. “What you do, mon. Is take a lemon and sprinkle it with salt, mon. Then you take the lemon and suck on it. It will fix you right up, mon.” But I hadn’t had anything to drink. Boogieshoes said I did pretty well. So, fast forward to Thursday night and I’m (say it with me folks) stone cold sober.

I was so sick during this vacation. I had a nasty chest cold. It started Tuesday. Wednesday’s drive up there was pure misery. I started feeling a little better Thursday and even a little better Friday. I am still prone to coughing fits that are really nasty but I am doing better.

I don’t drink when I am sick. So when we got into TGI Friday’s I just ordered Sprite. There weren’t too many people in there and nobody was running up to sing. Since I was in the middle of a chest cold I wasn’t jumping up to sing either. Finally, another customer got up a tried it out. I got up some courage and went on up there, sober. I sang Fire and Rain by James Taylor, which is a song I am confident in. And I think I did really well. Everyone said I did. It felt good. It was fun. I love singing. I just don’t have any confidence in my voice. Sometimes it is really good and sometimes not so good. I think it was really good Thursday night even with the cold. The emcee was also coming off a cold and was really struggling with her voice too. And there wasn’t too many people getting up and singing. Boogieshoes did one. She doesn’t think she was too good but I thought she did fine. To make a long story short I was talked into doing two Elvis songs. I alternated Elvis song with the emcee. She did Hound Dog. I did Don’t Be Cruel. I forget the name of the next one she did. And I did Can’t Help Falling In Love, which was my parent’s SONG. I was struggling more and more with each song and the quality slipped as each on went by. My cold was getting the better of me. I finally did one more (which was one too many as my voice almost completely gave out) just to save the emcee because there still weren’t many takers. Finally, some other people got up there.

It was as we walked out at 1:30 A.M. I noticed the one piece of information that I had missed before. They were pumping the karaoke out onto the street and everyone passing by heard me sing. I was mortified. If I had known that going in I don’t know if I would have done it at all. I suspect I would have but it would have taken me longer to get my courage up.

This post is getting long so I’ll wrap it up for tonight. Not much exciting happened on Friday but I’ll probably touch on that the next time I write.

Until next time…