Don't Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow--
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than,
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor's cup,
And he learned too late when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out--
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far,
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

- Author unknown

Tuna Lips said...

Life is queer? Speak fer yerself, there, Liberace.

Tuna Lips, Out!

Gathering Momentum

It's supposed to rain on Sunday, but I have to get moving on the garage projects. Will's Toy Chest, the Herreshoff Tender Re-fit and the Marblehead Gunning Dory aren't getting done by themselves, and I can't wait for the weather to be perfect.
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Tomorrow morning, I'll glue up a panel for the Chest, epoxy the middle frames to the Dory bottom, and drill holes in the keel brass for the Tender - all before noon. That should establish some momentum.

Derby Winner

So Big Brown won the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs
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We'll never hear the end of this from "you know who".

Antidote

The perfect antidote to having to watch the Lifetime Channel is a kettle of macaroni and cheese. I've decided that life is worth living again after only my first plateful.

Kill Me Now Please

It's another cold and rainy Saturday.
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That means that Joanne has fired up a heaping serving of the "Lifetime Channel".... you know, television for women.
~
Gag me with a freaking spoon.
~
I won't make it to 3:00 PM. This is my last day on Earth.

POTW Week 18

Here are the POTW selections this week... late as usual.
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I'm feeling kind of bad for my cat Roenick. It really seems like he is mourning the loss of his domineering sister Isabelle. He just mopes around the house and issues these depressing moans from time to time.
~
I miss Izzy too, but you don't see me in a deep funk. Snap out of it Roenick!

ANNOUNCING....
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 18th week of 2008.

• Andrew Peabody
• Barry Lutchen
• Nick Herz
• the entire Customer Care Department of Nordic Track
• Manny Ramirez
• Jill Phillips

I wonder if Roenick is just now realizing that Izzy passed? He never seemed to be overly intelligent.

Loathsome and Demonic

How's this for trash talk from my loathsome, demonic, archrival Joe Collins?

Collins Said....

Good news... While the rest of us are running the Marine Corp Marathon, maybe you can run the Marine 10K that day ! A little concerned about the litany of ... "may achin knee, my broken treadmill, customer support, my weight, my moods" Am I running with Lutch?!!?

Workouts since last report:

4/14 14.2 bike

4/15 4 mile walk Dallas

4/16 12 miles bike Dallas

4/17 12.3 bike Dallas

4/19 3.4 treadmill run

4/21 2 miles (outdoors)

4/22 2 mi

4/24-27 4 rounds golf

4/29 11.3 bike

4/30 2 mile run Weight down to 205... building strenghth, character and determination ! !

Registration is now open:

.

http://www.marinemarathon.com/page11.aspx

I will beat him, irregardless of the sacrifice and pain that it takes.

Treadmill Stop and Go.

Like I suspected, Nordic Track was way off base. They were telling me to buy a new microcontroller and control console that would have set me back over $600 bucks.

When the Tech came over to the house and checked the treadmill, the only thing wrong was a loose connection to the motor. Glad I didn't follow the expert customer care offered by Nordic Track.
~
The treadmill works like new, but my knee sure as hell doesn't. It's giving me a ton of pain.... the kind that would incapacitate a lesser man.
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It's back to the Cybex bike for a week or so until the knee kicks into gear.

Tuna Lips said...

One can get to figgerin' that from the neglectin' you have done to this here blogosphere, sumfin' ain't sittin' well with you, Sure Shot. Irregarding the dark passages your thinkin is a wanderin', like the tunnel to pappy's hooch still near the landfill in Peppermill Hollow, knows you wills come out to a land of milk and humpin', of birds and bees and cigarette trees, where the whiskey dunt run dry. And this self-carved d-bag who calls hisself Pisc, or Piscabo, or some other name depending on the day, he can find another split personality in some neighboring blogpsphere, irritatin boil on my arse. Get offa my cloud you surly cur.

Love that Dirty Water

Mike comes back home from Washington DC on Wed. It's hard to believe that he's been gone for over a year, but he will be working in the Boston market and will be around Marblehead again.
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My extreme bias is that Boston is the best place in the universe to live.
~
I was so fortunate during my ten years at General Dynamics to travel throughout the United States. California was great.... SF, LA and San Diego had great assets. I also loved Seattle with it's seacoast and mountains intertwined. Spent a lot of time in Dallas, Denver, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Washington, Nashville, Chicago, and New York.
~
Been to Spokane, Portland (Ore. and Maine), Montreal, Honolulu, Toronto, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Vancouver, and San Juan. New Orleans, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Memphis, Lake Tahoe, Reno, Las Vegas, and Kansas City were also stops. Roanoke, San Antonio, Ft. Lauderdale, Charlotte, Sacramento, Orlando and Boca Raton made the list.
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I almost forgot Colorado Springs and Little Rock (where they really hate the Clinton's).
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My least favorite place was probably Buffalo. But the customer there was one of my best and really loved the area. Can't forget Albany and Syracuse.
~
So I really feel like I've seen a lot of the United States.
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But wherever I went, I was always glad to get back to Boston. It has my kind of trees, my kind of dirt, the Ocean, the White Mountains, the Cape, and the people talk like me. People aren't phoney or nicey-nice in Boston, but they are not rude like in New York. There is a feeling of "what you see is what you get." It has a genuineness in the change of seasons, and a sense of tradition and history in it's cities and towns. Plus, there is the Red Sox and the Patriots.
~
I'm glad that Mike is coming home to Boston.
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And, BTW, I don't care if I ever set foot in an airplane ever again.

Taste of Summer

It's still only April. But because we had a run of 70 degree days this week, you really want it to be summer. Today the weather is overcast, glum and in the forties.
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Yesterday, I took advantage of the warm temps by getting into the garage and building a case to house the components of our TV downstairs. It's all done except for the back panel and the sanding, and was a good tune up for some of the techniques that I'll use on Grandson Will's Toy Chest.
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Tommy McMahon and Reaf dropped by with a piece of pier foam that I recommended that he buy to fulfill his dream of making a floating Beirut game table. We cut it to size on the band saw and pieced together a 30" by 60" panel to serve as flotation. It should provide many hours of inebriated pleasure for Tom and his friends this summer.
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I felt so good that I decided to get two miles in on the track before dinner. Unfortunately, there is no denying that the pain in my left knee is the real deal and can't be ignored. I'm going to try to run through it today and continue to hope for the best.
~
The evening was capped by dinner with the O'Shea's at the Peabody's where Jim grilled a turkey breast on his charcoal cooker. I think that we were pretending that it was a summer night, and we tried to hang out on his deck and watch the Sox, but it cooled down quickly.

POTW - Week 17

Now it's coming out that a bunch of the Red Sox have been afflicted by the flu. I'm not sure that I have recovered from this insidious strain. I haven't felt right for over a week and a half. Not that I'm complaining. That would be downright un-Nanepashemet of me.

Announcing...
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 17th week of 2008

• Paul Giamatti
• Eric Johnson
• Meaghan Bruett
• Bob Towne
• David Letterman
• Linda O'Shea

I hope that my poor training is indicative of this persistent virus and nothing more.

Final Episode of John Adams

Wojcik was right again. The final Adams episode was a decided tearjerker.
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The loss of his daughter and wife was tough to take, but the ascent of his son, John Quincy, to the Presidency and his extended correspondence with Jefferson culminating in their mutual deaths on the 50th anniversary of their signing of the Declaration of Independence, is the type of reality that defies a fictional account.
~
John Adams had a remarkable life, and Americans have benefited because of it ever since.