Hidden Benefit

Back to Rockland again to punch out the Coast Guard job. It's getting bad when you feel like leaving the house at quarter of four in the morning is starting to seem like routine.
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But that's where quitting drinking has its benefits.
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Joanne and I took the WhaleEye up the Annisquam River in Gloucester yesterday with the Murray's, then back over to Brown's Island where we tied up with my "Friend who doesn't want his name mentioned in the Blog", and his lovely wife Nancy.
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The weather was perfect, and normally the beer would be flowing like wine and I'd be paying for it today.
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Instead, I bounced out of bed and made the 3 1/2 hour trek to be at the jobsite by 8:00 AM.
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Course, driving home will tend to suck, but that's to be expected.

Flanagan's Shocking Third

It's a fact!
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Exactly one day after she was named as a Nanepashemet Peep of the Week, former Marbleheader Shalane Flanagan placed third in the women's 10,000 meter run.... earning a bronze medal and gunning down two Kenyans to do it.
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I know that the POTW has power, but even I had no idea that it could have this type of effect.
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There were no pundits who predicted this amazing finish for her on the elite international stage.
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Congratulations on a great run!

Semi-Successful

I suppose I should respond to several irritating emails asking if I accomplished the lofty work goals that I set at the beginning of the week. Since I only select six POTW's per week, I can't include all of the annoying Peeps who emailed me, but believe me, I'd like to.
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The week started with the Merrimack Golf Tournament with the Two Bobs and talented newcomer Previte. You will recall that I gave the portable beer can container that we won to Superpeep, Ben Martin.
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I did travel to Gloucester and Bourne and filed for the Coast Guard permits. Only received Glocester, Bourne is in the mail.
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Had some very important customers over to the house for an evening harbor tour and then some tuna steaks. ( I still can't believe how much like prime rib a grilled fresh tuna steak can taste.)
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Headed to Maine to close out the first phase of the Rockland Coast Guard installation. Couldn't close that deal for various shit-happens reasons, and will have to return on Monday to punch it out.
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Filed most of my taxes, so that I wouldn't be legally harrassed by this government of the "Land of the Free". (Don't get me started on this one!!!)
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So I guess I covered a lot of what I set out to do, even if everything didn't end up all packaged with a bow on top. It still was more that the vast majority of you could get done in half a month.

Bar Harbor Maine Lunch

We enjoyed a great lunch right on the water in Bar Harbor at Stewman's Lobster Pound.
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Joanne had the lobster cobb salad, and I went with the staple of life - fried clams.
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Highly recommended.
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Then I bought a cool T-shirt with a lobster on it. I'm sure we'll blend right in with the locals.

Aim High

"The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."

- Michelangelo

Michelangelo would never last in a big corporation. I'm pretty sure that his relationship with the Vatican was contentious as well.

Can you imagine the freaking paint-by-numbers mess that the Sistine Chapel would have become if Michelangelo was a corporate, ass-covering weenie???

Week 33 POTW

When we finally got to Rockland, Maine at about 6:00PM this evening, we headed straight for the Somerset Resort Hotel. Their website said they had plenty of rooms available.... but not so! We were turned away.
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Even with my natural charm and persuasive ability, I was not able to convince the young check-in meister that I was not your average guest, and that my presense would lend intangible prestige to his lodging house for the next two days.
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Who needs the freaking Somerset anyway??? Been there, Done that.
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We ended up in a brand new extended stay room at the TradeWinds, complete with a jacuzzi, fireplace, and nice view of the harbor. And far cheaper than the Somerset.
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See That??? When God closes one door, he opens another. There is no bad luck - only our limited vision, and time impaired judgement of events.
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Speaking of bad luck, it's time to announce the Peep of the Week Selections.
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ANNOUNCING
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 33rd week of 2008

Bob Brown (automatic Lagavulin criteria)
Bob Wojcik (also an automatic)
Michael Phelps
Bela Karoli
Tom McMahon
Shalane Flanagan

Plus, Joanne is within walking distance of all of the downtown Rockland attractions - galleries, museums, shops and restaurants. I'll have our car parked two miles from town at the freaking cell site all day..... pounding away on line with the excessive documentation that this job entails.

Business Focus

It's Thurs. and I'm about ready to head up to Maine as soon as I can finish my tax filing.

That will be a relief, but there is a big deadline on the Coast Guard project that we are trying to accomplish by the close of business Friday.
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Joanne is making the trip with me to Rockland, but she will have to cope at staying at the Samoset Hotel Pool by herself as I will be at the cell site closing down the first construction phase.
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It's all Business Baby. What can I say? I'm focused on the ultimate dominance of Nanepashemet Telecom.
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I know that you're probably worried that I'll forget about the POTW selections this evening.... well Chill OUT!!! I've got it all under control.

Olympic Progress

So how do you think the Olympics are turning out????? Here's what jumps out at me.....
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Michael Phelps can freaking swim.
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No way are the Chinese Women Gynnasts 16 years old.
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Bela Karoli, the Romanian who runs the US Women's Gymnast program, is just a little over the top.
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The Chinese really overdid the opening ceremony and lost it with the lipsynching kid.
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The Water Cube is very cool architecture.
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As much as I am fond of President Bush, he should get his ass back to Washington.
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Synchronized diving gives me the creeps.
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Alicia Sacramone, from Winchester, MA, on the Women's Gymnastic team is very, very cute.
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The NBA Basketball players seem out of place.
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Women Gymnasts are better looking than Women Swimmers, but the US Women's Beach Volleyball Team is by far the hottest.
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Dara Torres, the 41 year old Californian Mother, is the most incredible swimmer at the games.... Phelps included.
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It's been interesting so far, but the real deal for me begins with the Track and Field events. Shalene Flanagan from Marblehead is running the 10,000 meters. I've followed her career a little and have seen her running in Town here, and it will be interesting to see if she can get into the Final and be competitive at this level.

Merrimack Football Tournament results

So I receive hundreds of emails from you Peeps asking how I golfed yesterday. Since you already know that I suck, you can imagine how irritating this is.
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I pretty much delivered on my reputation, although I did have to carry the foursome on my back on a number of occasions. The "Crusher" was in attendance and managed to mangle a few of the dimpled spheroids.
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Bob "Mountain of a Man" Brown was clearly off his PGA rated standard game, and Bob "the Insidious" Wojcik (the one who screwed up my knee) was not particularly impressive. But they totally redeemed themselves by giving me a fifth of Lagavulin which obviously has automatic POTW connotations.
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The one bright spot was talented newcomer, Jeff Previte of EBI Consulting, who consistently rained vulgar insults on himself after every other shot. Quite entertaining.
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At least we cleaned up on the raffle at dinner after the game, with three winners out of five tickets. I gave Ben Martin, the worthy Merrimack Offensive Line Coach, one of the prizes... a collapsable gadget that holds thirty beer cans. I'm sure he can get some use out of it.
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All in all, the Merrimack Football team stands a little taller today, and Nanepashemet Telecom was happy to oblige.

Packed Agenda

This week is shaping up to be a real doozy.
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Did I just say "doozy"? If I did, I apologize.
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Anyway....
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The week starts out with getting permits in Gloucester and Bourne on Monday and Tues. And I have to fit in the Merrimack Football Golf Tournament in Windham, NH today. In retrospect, I really can't afford the time to golf, but I've lined up a good foursome. Hope my game shows up.
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Wed., Thurs., and Fri., I'll be up in Rockland, Maine to close out the first phase of the Coast Guard site that Nanepashemet Telecom is building. All of the issues with other customers will be handled remotely because my Internet Card works great up there.
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In the middle of all this I have to file the Sundance taxes by Friday.
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"How will it all get done???" you ask.
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Why don't you just pay attention to what you have to do this week, and let me worry about that.

Root Ball

I've been thinking about moving the fir tree in my front lawn for some time now and today was the day. Not sure where that motivation came from, but I put my work boots on and went with the flow.
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The tree is about 12' tall with a 4" caliper trunk. I cut the lower branches with my sawzall so that I could dig a ring about 1 1/2 feet around the trunk. The soil was relatively easy to move because of the heavy rains of late around here.
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After digging about eighteen inches down around the circumference of the truck I rocked the root ball back and forth until the ball was separated from the surrounding hole. Then I got out my six foot iron crow bar and used it to leverage the root ball onto a dolley.
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Archimedes said that if he had a place to stand and a large enough lever, he could move the earth. I don't know about that, but the crow bar worked fine on the root ball.
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From there, it was simply to transfer the tree to a hole that I had dug in the corner of my backyard and backfill the tree and the hole in my front lawn.
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I know that this isn't particularly fascinating, but nobody made you freaking read this now... did they? I mean... I could have written about how I weed crabgrass, but that would have even bored me.

Olympic Recollections

The Beijing Olympics start tonight. It's the 29th Olympiad.
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As a former track athlete, this was always a huge highlight for me. I particularly remember the Mexico City, Munich, and Montreal Olympics.
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Then President Jimmy Carter decided to boycott the Moscow Olympics due to the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. What an idiot, but that's getting off of the subject.
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The Russians returned the favor and boycotted the Los Angeles Games four years later.
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Carter accomplished nothing but screwing up the lives of athletes who simply wanted to compete against the best, with no other pretense. After Carter made his so called "point" eight years of athletes non-political highest hopes had been dashed. So the ensuing Olympiads were not as memorable to me, and I had to pay attention to making a living anyway.
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I remember .....
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Jim Ryun losing to Kip Keino in Mexico City in the 1500M.
Dave Wottle with the stupid hat, coming from behind in the 800M,
Dave Hemery, who became a coach at BU, winning the 400M hurdles,
Joan Benoit Samuelson winning the Marathon,
Frank Shorter doing the same with an imposter coming into the stadium before him,
Tommy Smith and John Carlos on the 200M medals stand with their fists raised in the air,
Steve Prefontaine losing the 5000 to the Finn, Laisse Viren, who I always thought was a blood doper.
Al Oerter winning the Discus - for the fourth time,
Jim Toomey and Bruce Jenner winning the Decathlon,
Bob Beamon, popping a 29' long jump, that obliterated the world record by a foot and a half,
Flo Jo Griffith Joyner with her fingernails, winning the 100 and 200m sprints.
Dick Fosbury, reinventing the high jump, with his backwards, "Fosbury Flop" (I actually used this technique to get my earth bound body over a 5'1" high jump bar, which still amazes me, since I could just manage to touch the bottom of the net in basketball.)
Michael Johnson, with his weird backwards slant, winning the 400.

Lots of others......
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My brother and I were big track fans, and we knew of all of the athletes and their records in the 60's and 70's. My best track times were 4:30 in the mile and 9:44 in the two mile, and I had a couple of cross country races in high school and college where I exceeded my ability, but I was always a better fan than participant. Since then my interest has waned.
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Back then, all of the sprinters were Black and all of the distance guys were White. The jumpers were Black and the throwers were White. There were articles in Sports Illustrated that tried to say that the trends were due to the different muscle fibers found in the races, but time has proven that the classifications are made more around cultural and political lines than biological ones.
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Since those analyses, we've seen the Kenyans dominate distance running and many white and Asian sprinters emerge... I think that it really has to do with the priorities and choices available to some groups over the other.
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I'm probably opening a can of worms here, so I think that I'll just do a slow fade.

Week 32 POTW

The other day somebody asked me what the criteria was for selecting the Peep of the Week.
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I suppose that's not a stupid question.
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After all.... there are no stupid questions... only stupid people who ask the questions.
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Every once in awhile, my patience gets severely tested. That's when I thank the good Lord for blessing me with great tolerance and forebearance. But to think that in this advanced period, there are those who still reside in such sheltered, cloistered, and uninformed existences that they ask the ultimate fundamental question.
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"What does it take to be named a Peep of the Week?"
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Aggravating, isn't it?
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Once again... if you've been......

Annoying or Stupid,
Inspirational,
You're Not Dead,
You're Not an Animal,
or
You've given me the Gift of Lagavulin (the King of Scotch) in the past week....

Then there is a slight chance that you may be named a POTW. Of course, you can always take the automatic Lagavulin route, which is the vastly preferred alternative.

The following people have met the criteria for this week's selection.

ANNOUNCING.....
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 32nd week of 2008

Nancy Bruett
Louis Casale
Dennis Fai
Joan Samuelson
Mike Sullivan
Paris Hilton

Now the criteria should be crystal clear.

Wonder Drugs

So I go to see my physician, Dr. Louis Casale, yesterday, because the gout in my big toe was really starting to make me wince, and I hate to show the slightest bit of acknowledgement to pain.
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Casale wants me to take a pill every day to prevent gout, which I am reluctant to do because I'm leery of any side effects, but Casale says that the side effect of not taking the med is that I'll be afflicted with mind numbing gout again.
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The guy has a point.
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He gives me two prescriptions... one to take the immediate gout pain away, and the other to prevent it's recurrence.
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Drugs are a wonderful thing. Four pills later and my toe is fine, and I'm feeling freaking good all over. Dr. Casale is a brilliant man. I can't wait to start taking the rest of the pills.

The Joy of Giving

Ben Martin is coming by to pick up the Nanepashemet Telecom check for the golf foursome at the Windham Country Club. It's the fifth annual Golf Tournament fundraiser hosted to support the Merrimack College Football Team.
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The Merrimack Football Team is a charity that we have taken heart to, and you would too if you saw those deserving young men dedicated to driving their pointy ended ball into opposing end zones.
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Makes me tear up just thinking about it. I'm bringing some of my favorite customers to donate their golf game to this worthy cause.

Happy Birthday Caroline Bruett

Caroline Riley Bruett stepped onto the starting line for her position in the human race at 7:05PM last night, weighing in with a fighting weight of 8lbs. 9 0z.
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Give it hell Caroline! Looking forward to seeing you!

Return to Form

If you're like most of the other Peeps who frequent this Blog (for whatever mysterious/absurd reason), one of the first things that you do is check out my training log.
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It's pretty accurate.
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I really did miss half of June and all of July, due to throwing my back out while lugging the Tender over the mud flats when I got caught at low tide in Marblehead Harbor. By the time my back improved, my gout reoccurred in my right big toe.
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But did you see me whining and complaining all the time about all of the pain that I was in???? Pain that would incapacitate the vast majority of lesser men???? No, you didn't.... so once again I humbly assert my inherent superiority over the rest of you.
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Anyway, I finally broke the pattern and got on the Cybex late this afternoon. Worked up a good sweat and peddled seven miles. Maybe this stretch will get me to where I can get some runs in again.
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This time, I'm going to swear off drinking until I lose at least 20 lbs. That's no Lagavulin, no Dark and Stormies, no Guinness, no Jameson's, no Sam's. I know it sounds harsh, but I've made up my mind and there's no turning back.

Bud Collins said...

Swear off tennis, too. Please.

John Nestor said...

That's it "Buddy Boy" !!!!! I'll bet you a three pack of Penn Championship Extra Duty Felt Balls that I can kick your serve and volley ass. I'll do my talking on the court. Any time, any place.... provided it's two months from today.

Clean Gutters

Having splurged on a nice evening at the Johnson's house last night and fishing during the day with Katelyn, I resolved today to get some mundane chores done. Cleaning the gutters seemed to fit the bill. After all, they were so clogged with dirt and leaves that a number of plants had vigorously taken root.
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So I got out the ladders and with a little help from Jim Bob Peabody, then Tommy O, had the extension ladder moving right along across the roof ridge at the front of the house. Cleaned out the gutter, shot in a couple of supporting screws and caulked the gutter seams.
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So far, so good.
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When I got to the garage gutter, the complications kicked in.
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First I ran into a hornets nest and one of the little bastards stung me in my right bicep. God Damn, did that hurt, and it still is sore as hell.
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I sprayed the nest, but then the thunder and rain rolled in... a bit of a delay. When the rain stopped, the gutter cleaning proceeded without further incident..... until I got to the gutter at the back of the garage.
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Cleaned out that gutter, but the downspout is completely clogged and the gutter is coming off of the fascia board because of extensive rot.
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Now I have to remove the gutter, and take out the rotten fascia board. Can't wait to see what the roof joists look like. They are probably pulpy too.
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All I wanted to do was clean out the freaking gutters, now I have a sore arm and a semi-major maintenance project. And all of you pathetic peeps think it must be so cool to be me!!!

Fishing by Fright

The word around New Hampshire's Newfound Lake is that this five pound smallmouth bass was so distraught after seeing Tommy O on skis, that he floated to the surface belly up.
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Poor Fish. What a way to Go!

Week 31 - Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week

I broke down and let "Bud Collins" have the last word after all.
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A big part of being the Mountain of a Man that I am, is letting the little people have their say.
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A lesser man would have pummeled the hapless "Bud", but I have the God given ability to rise above it all.... be the bigger man.... turn the other cheek.
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The fact that Bud is a worthless, wiggling, wimpy, weenie doesn't give me the right to shut him down by taking the last word. That would be unsuitable on my part. So enjoy your last word, "Bud", you pathetic POS!!!!
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Speaking of unsuitable....... time for the insidious weekly selection.
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ANNOUNCING
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 31st week of 2008

Jeremy Johnson
Charlie Jellison
Jim Peabody
Jack Henderson
Manny Ramirez
Mike McLellan

Time to resume living and let living.