Nice Outcome

For all of you Peeps who were wondering how my big telecom meeting went today, I have to say that it was far better than expected. Today fully qualifies as a power day in the grand scheme of things. Now I have to harness the power.

Quality, Comfort, and Embarrassment

I buy my furniture at Bernie and Phyl's in Saugus, MA.
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They have a good selection, competitive prices, and are convenient to our house in Marblehead.
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But , Man! They have the worse TV ads ever. They have their two sons sitting on a couch like fifth graders telling you what their Mom and Dad says. It is so degrading to those two thirty somethings that you have to think that they are either half wits, or hopelessly dependent upon the family money.
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It's painful to watch. You feel like just telling them to cut it out, because they seem like nice people.

Osama Bin Stupid

Six years after 9/11.... we still haven't found that mongrel Bin Ladin. I hope he is enjoying the hole he is living in. With our system of justice, death would be too good for him and prison would be a big step up in his standard of living. So maybe he can stay in his dirt hole.
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What did Al Queda accomplish by their suicide mission??? Unless your actions can capture hearts and minds, it is merely self destruction. A lot of people carry deep prejudice toward Islamic people now, who really shouldn't.
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In the immortal words of New York Firefighter, Michael Moran, more than five years ago, Osama bin Laden can "kiss my royal Irish ass."
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Nice job Osama. Enjoy the fruits of your labor. You've engendered deep anger towards your people for decades to come.
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I had a good chance to be on the United flight to LA that crashed into one of the Towers. There was a trade show in LA that I was scheduled to attend that day, and my normal procedure traveling to the West Coast was to take that 7:30 flight from Logan landing in LA at 11:00 AM Pacific time. But then we had a major screw up in Pittsburgh, so I canceled the trade show plans. Screw ups can be beneficial.
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It wasn't my time.
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I plan to use these bonus years teaching my grandkids to blog and build boats among other things.

Little Will

I was just about ready to shut the Blog down for the night and watch the last innings of the Red Sox - Tampa game, when Aunt Sarah Crawford sent me these great photos of little Will Crawford in his first week of life on Earth.
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He's a keeper and will merit the family discount at Sundance Pre-School in a few short years.

Getting Started

For the record, no construction today. But I have been thinking about the flat dory bottom that will be the foundation of this boat, since the garage has been cleaned and the strongback is ready for a new mold.
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Unlike the tender, the dory does not have rabbeted keel... it has a flat bottom that is rockered and 12 feet long.
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The plans call for a lamination of two 3/8 pieces of marine plywood with a maximum width amidship of 21 inches. I'm thinking of using two 1x12 pine boards, joined in the middle with a strip of meranti mahogany, since it will be ecapsulated in epoxy/fiberglass anyway. The meranti will add a nice design element.
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Maybe I'll toughen up the bottom by fastening 1/4" thick strips of aluminum.
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Regardless of what material I choose, the absolute first step will be to construct a template of one quarter of the bottom from 1/4 inch luan plywood. This will be used to trace a perfect relica of the bottom curve at both ends of the bottom piece.
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Thinking about building the Dory probably doesn't count in the actual construction process. I intend to keep a record of the time, methods and materials. If you factored in thinking, it would be way past budget.

Preparing for Take Off

Tomorrow we have a customer meeting that I have been working on since April. If you had told me then that it would be September when we pulled this off, I would have dismissed you as unrealistically pessimistic.
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Does that make me unrealistically optimistic?
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Maybe, but at least I have the freaking meeting tomorrow. I'm thinking that our telecom business could really take off, but I'm afraid to see if all of the anticipation has been unfounded.
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No Matter.
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If it doesn't take off tomorrow, it will take off another day.

Not Dancing

We were ready to rock and roll this morning, but the music never came on. It's probably a good thing because we needed some quiet time to write a proposal. I also paid some bills which is always a triumph for me. Even when I have the money, paying bills is such a stressful chore.
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I'm tempted to get into the garage and start the template for the Dory bottom, but I really have to finish this proposal.
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Anybody seen Tuna Lips???

Lucky Break

We innocently offered to take Katelyn back to South Boston from Marblehead, but when we arrived it was obvious that her car had been towed. OhBoy!
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Lucky for me that I was in the mood for a heaping "Stress Sandwich". After a relaxing ride around South Boston and Dorchester, with Katelyn cursing and screaming, we found the car and unraveled a plan to get it back in her possession.
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Good thing I was in the mood to miss the Patriots- Jets game. The Patriots managed to beat the 6 point spread by scroing 24 points more than the Jets.
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There was no way that I wanted to sit on the couch in Marblehead and relax this afternoon. Some days you just get lucky.

Work Break

With the telecom work rolling in, the week is starting early. I'm going to hit the Harbor for a row, then work on the Garage reorg. That should leave the afternoon open to crank on the Telecom work.
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Normally the weekends should be reserved for weekend stuff, but today has to be an exception.

A Great Wedding.

The wedding of Tina and Colin Rhodes was easily one of the best that we have attended in years. It was brutally hot, the air conditioning was broken and the windows in the reception hall were painted shut.
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People were sweating in places that they didn't know they had. But the whole group decided that they wouldn't let this disrupt the joy of Tina and Colin. They had wedded bliss welded to their countenances.

The food was great and the dancing was way more vigorous that usual, despite the enormous discomfort. They had real Dark and Stormies - with Baritt's Ginger Beer and Gosling's Black Seal Rum - the closest to perfection other than my own. I've never seen that at a Wedding before, and it was a real nice touch.

There were the MegaPeeps - Brian and Stacey Butler - in attendance as well as Lindsay Kepnes. Jaime Ferrara came as Jaime Andrews, and we met her husband, which brought that whole issue to a good resolution.
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We had a blast. Good Luck - Tina and Colin.

Another Day Off

Needless to say, the boat construction is not proceeding today with Tina's Wedding and all.
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So I took a long row from Riverhead Landing at the end of Marblehead Harbor, all the way out and around Marblehead Rock and then back through the Harbor on the Fort Sewall side.. Once I got out by the Lighthouse, I trolled for stripers and circumnavigated Marblehead Rock, which really stinks close in.
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The only one violating the no-wake zone was the Marblehead Harbormaster. I''m sure he had a good reason.

A New Entry

William Sandison Crawford III was born last night. 7 lbs. 12 oz. Will and Lauren are doing well, but Peter, the new Grandpa is questionable.
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Welcome William. Have a great run.

Dale and Gail Johnson

Dale and Gail came over for a dinner of grilled tuna and mussels. Naturally, Joanne did a great job at dinner and Dale was present for the entire time. Luckily, his alter ego, Buck, did not make an appearance.
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Dale is all worked up because he has to go to London for a presentation to a Venture Capital company regarding his metals recycling company. From my perspective, it is a slam dunk for him because of his talent and business sense, but he is still pensive about the outcome.
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We always have a good time with Dale and Gail, because they laugh at our jokes, and we laugh at theirs. In the end, that is all that is required.

Wedding Hype

Tina James and Colin Rhodes are getting married tomorrow. I know that the Peeps expect me to attend all of their weddings, but I can only do so much.
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Murph last week and Tina this week were special Peeps though, who did a lot of hanging around Beverly Ave. while they were growing up. Just because I am attending these weddings doesn't make me official wedding invitation bait. I would go to their weddings even if they were not POTW alumni.
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I don't know the Rhodes family, but Tina's family is really great, and I'm looking forward to the Saturday nuptials. Plus Katelyn is a bridesmaid, and I have some cool new dance moves to try out on her at the reception.
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Plus the huge rumor is that Lindsay Kepnes is in town for the event. How great is that!!!

From Tuna Lips

This one was too good to be hidden in the comments....

t was October 1, 1949. That Chink Mao was declaring the world was red, Frankie Laine released the album "Mule Train", which made me snuffle for ole Sal, and Dick Button won the men's figure skating championships. He sure could glide, that Dick. I was making my way to do some logging as I was a lumberjack, hoboing on Sardis & Delta Railroad near Sardis, Mississippi. What once was an honorable craft, hoboing around for work, was becoming a boiling cauldron of theivin', gamblin', and whorin', with the not infrequent enough encounter with buggery preverts. It was fall, and there was plenty of wood to chop and send down the river, and I was plenty hungry, having only eaten a red capped woodpecker and some cow corn in the past week. My body smelled, my teeth hurt, and my droppings were as hard as a cow's turd in winter. It was a tryin' time for this pilgrim, leading this life that was not at one with nature, as I had a great fondness for things of the woods, but was chopping down trees, which was where my friends, the birds of the sky, resided, and I had nothing to eat. Momma had learnt us not to steal, but poppa would steal a hot stove if it was available, and he was no worse, though now paralyzed due to being hit on the head with a sledge hammer by an angry Chinese feller in pajamas who was working the railroad, and did not like poppa stealing his poppy paste that made the town folk drool. No good rice eatin heathen! It was at this time that the local orchard was pulling in the apples, and the town folk was pressing cider and curing hams, and boy o boy did I like cider and ham. So, I took the road into town, and decided to look around for an entreprenuer's opportunity, the kind of thing that made this fine country great, and the kind of thing that would stop me from molesting mother nature and get me some cider and ham. As I ambled into town, tape worm dangling, in need of a bath and a mule, it dawned on me. I was to . . . .

Synchronicity

Depending upon how the noon time customer call goes, I might be down in NY early next week, and we have a bunch of other stuff hitting next week.
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Why do diverse things seem to come to a head at the same time? Does it happen to you? It seems too coincidental that stuff that you have been pursuing with different people and different activities would culminate at the same focal point.
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I suppose there is a metaphysical explanation, and we'll have to wait until we are dead when we look and say "A Ha! That is how that was connected!" Either that, or we fade into oblivion, which doesn't seem logical either.

POTW Week 35

The ride back from Albany was torture.

We had barbeque with the customer, and whatever I ate decided to have an immediate party in my intestines.

A lesser man would have pulled over to the side of the road and called it quits, but I gamely hit my own bathroom in Marblehead at 11:30 PM last night with no messy incidents.

Announcing....
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 35th week of 2007

• Michael Murphy
• Beth Murphy
• Lauren Rathbone
• Ryan Nestor
• Jeremy Johnson
• Keith DiMatteo

I'm eating light today.

Emotional Response

Peeps -

Enough of the congrats on the Blog anniversary!!!
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I would never have mentioned it if I thought that everyone was going to get so sappy and emotional.
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It's just a blog....
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You've got to find more substance in your lives.

Speaking of which, the POTW selections may be delayed this evening because I have to attend a business dinner in Albany, NY.... then drive all the way back to Marblehead. Not to panic though, because this weeks nominations are not too difficult. As aways, I am open to your suggestions for selection, and will continue to ignore most of them.

Moving into the Cycle

September is shaping up as busier than August for Nanepashemet Telecom. And August was close to a show stopper.
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The shift from business development to operations is in full swing. We'll be able to implement the easiest type of business development - repeat business through great service. That's a nice cycle to get into.

A Year of the Blog

This is the first anniversary of the Nanepashemet Blog. On September 5 of last year, I posted an entry regarding the Herreshoff Columbia Yacht Tender, and pretty much posted every day since then.
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The Blog has caused both joy and pain, and I'm amazed at the impact that words can have, and the interest that they can engender. I'll have to admit that the Blog was originally intended as notes to myself, with the added implication that it can't be too frank because of business and confidential situations. The fact that a bunch of other people started to constantly look over my shoulder is both flattering and confusing.
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At times I've gone over the line, which I regret, but in general it has been a fun mode of expression that adds a dimension to my relationship with some of you that I couldn't achieve just by regular discourse.
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People ask where I find the time, but it seems that this Blog gets written by itself sometimes, and I am just a bystander. I've always found it easy to write, and most of this stuff gets done between sips of Dark and Stormies at night or coffee in the morning.
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If you don't like the Blog, then why are you reading this? Life is too short to be preoccupied with getting pissed off at these ramblings. If you do like it, I can't see where I'll be stopping soon.... so RockOn Peeps.
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Keep on Keeping it Real.