Winding Down

I'm thinking of winding the machine down for the holidays. Getting it into a low maintenance speed. Take it down a few pegs.
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It's not like we have everything done at Nanepashemet Telecom. But we're substantially caught up, and it's going to be hard to get any response out there. So we'll concentrate on tying up some loose ends and try to get the machine into an idle mode.
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It won't be easy.

Better Type of Worry

It's the end of the year push. Plus we have a couple of great proposals to respond to. Glad I like to work, because the work is piling up.
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I'm not complaining.
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It's so much better to worry about getting work done, than worrying about finding work.

Caroling

Went to the Christmas Reception at Ryan Marine Service, where I met "My Friend Who Doesn't Want his Name Mentioned in the Blog" and his daughter Abby.
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Mark Ryan and Abby convinced me that I don't want a 9.9 HP motor for the Marblehead Gunning Dory. A 5HP should do the trick.
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Anyway..... then I went back to pick up Joanne for the Roper's Christmas Party, where they always gather over the piano and sing Xmas Carols. Those of you that know me best, know that while I am an excellent dancer, my vocal skills are basically sub par.
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So we skipped out before the pressure to sing got too intense.

Snow Day

So it snowed about a foot here and hasn't stopped yet.
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Do you think that bothers me????
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Hell No! I even helped Joanne shovel the driveway !!!
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Being a Mountain of a Man means that you can overcome any obstacle.

Tuna Lips said...

I reckon your mountainship is a fig newton of your imagining. I horse whip the fairer sex if necesscitsatifying to get me a path cleared fer mobilied. Check yerself. And have a Merry fesivizing with your homo friends in Massawhatever, I means that from the bottom of me hart.

Red Belly

There is a ton of bird activity in the backyard and at the feeder this morning. They must sense the snowstorm that is about to hit New England.
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Lots of Sparrows, Nuthatches, Mourning Doves, Blue Jays, even a Robin. Plus the hog Grey Squirrel that is starting to get on my nerves.
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It's also the first time that I've seen a Red Bellied Woodpecker back there.

POTW - Week 50

I'm tired from a trip to Rockland, Maine today, where everything went wrong.
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Couldn't get the trucks up a hill because of snow... so we hired a plow and sanded.
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Couldn't get the 1,100 lb. generator off of the truck because the hydralic lift broke down.... so we muscled it out with a backhoe.
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Clearly, the Universe sent gremlins to torture and challenge us today.... and it came up majorly short. Another score for the "Mountain of a Man" team.
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Speaking of torture...
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ANNOUNCING....
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 50th week of 2008

Ethan Nestor
Marion Hummer
Tim, the Manager at the Penske Truck Rental Place in Portland, Me.
Dick Man
Deborah Burke
Eric Johnson

I expect things to slow down in the next two weeks. Time to get reflective and give you the benefit of some of my best thinking.

Tuna Lips said...

Time to unshod yer feets and let them dogs breathe a spell. I reckon a good snooze and some extended mouth breathin' will fix you up jus fine fer a good run of it over these holiday makin. Drink long and deep of the potion of yer choice, amigo. Joyeux Noel (picked that up from a gap tooth harlot down in N'Orleans, Christmas tide, 1977). Plenty of good folk out there, I reckon. Dummies.

Complications

Nanepashemet Telecom is smoking hot these days. We're at a crucial time of having to add people and equipment to meet the increasing demand for our services. As much as I've tried to keep this business simple, when you give good service , it starts to get complicated.

Tommy McMahon said....
J. After age 25 are you required to have a minimum of a strong buzz to go sledding with your friends?

Yes Tommy, a strong buzz is a requirement for many things.... among them.... sledding.

Macaroni and Cheese Disclosure

It's been a long time since I've given you Peeps a cooking lesson.
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Yes, now that I've taught you about Dark and Stormies, Buffalo Wings, VO and Cider, and Fried Turkey, you would thing that I have exhausted the entire culinary topic.
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But No. I've just made the perfect kettle of macaroni and cheese, and since I'm feeling a bit generous this evening, I've decided to share my expertise with you regarding this ultra important, staple of life, food of champions.
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The first step is important. Get a two quart soup kettle. Fill it half way with cold water and put it on the stove to boil.
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While the water is boiling, place about a cup and a half of whole milk into a saucepan, and turn the burner on medium heat. Go the refridgerator or freezer for 1 1/ 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese and place this into the milk. Stir this until the cheese is melted. The mixture will seem more milky then cheesy.

By now, water will have come to a rolling boil and take a lb. box of elbow macaroni, dump it into the kettle and set the timer for 7 minutes. I prefer Barilla or Prince elbows.
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Keep stirring both the macaroni and the milk and cheese with a wooden spoon. Take 1/4 cup of white flour and stir it into the cheese mixture. It's amazing how this thickens. Keep stirring and cut up one stick of butter and add it to the cheese. Salt and pepper the mixture while continuing to stir.
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Do you notice the stirring theme???? This is macaroni and cheese!! It must be constantly attended to if you want to achieve the pinnacle of success.
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By now the timer has rung.... immediately remove the macaroni from the stove and shut off the burner. Use pot holders, unless you are oblivious to pain. Bring the kettle to a colander that you have placed in the sink before this whole affair began.
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Dump the macaroni to drain in the colander and then refill the kettle with the drained macaroni.
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Take the cheese mixture and mix it into the kettle. Move the kettle onto the burner that the cheese came off of and keep it low. Mix thoroughly with the wooden spoon. Hit it again with some salt and pepper.
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Put a lid on the kettle.
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Enjoy your comfort food to excess.

Tuna Lips said...

Ho Ho Ho and Merry Christmas to youse and yers! TL here, spreadin' cheer and good feelins' like legs in a Tennessee cat house! Ooh ha, I gots a million of 'em.

I was listenin' to the wireless and heard that song about sleigh ridin', and hearin' that whip crack reminded me to slap the back end of Ms. Pudding as a sort of seasons greetification. Filled with the spirit is ole TL! I got me a stocking stuffer for Ms. Pudding, the likes of which she will find most gratified. I calls my bits and bobs the "Three Wise Men." She will knowd the gift of the Magi.

Yer kettle of cheese and noodles reminds me of the hamburger helper stew mama would make, she spared nothin', 'cept the burger of course. Good times, campin' out, thickened us up. Prepared Shoo and me for hoboing days. Christmas was a great time for us, plenty of food to be stoled, and presents for us under every Christmas tree in town!

Saturday Chores

It's a cold Saturday morning and do or die time to get to Amazon and send some gifts to my family in Florida. That's a top priority.
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I still haven't shaken this cold completely so have stayed away from seeing my new grandson, Ethan. Maybe today it will be safe enough to meet him by this afternoon, if this hacking cough has left me by then. I'm sure he's been disappointed by not seeing me yet.
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Other stuff that has to be done includes....

• Covering the Tender for the weekend,
• Hauling the Trash that I forgot to put out this week to the Marblehead Dump
• Cleaning out my file draws and bookcase from irrelevant crap.
• Tons of Nanepashemet paperwork

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Seems doable. Or... I could sit here in my pajamas blogging and watch TV all day. It's not like that never happened before.

Safety First

Up at 5:30AM to head to Rockland, Maine today, but by 7:30 there was ice everywhere and all sorts of power outages in Portland. We couldn't even get gas because the power was out at the gas pumps.
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The thought of another 2 hr drive to Rockland and then trying to navigate up a 30 degree sloped dirt road to the final cell site destination didn't look too promising. So we bagged it and came home to Marblehead. Safety considerations.
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A lesser man would have made the stupid decision to forge ahead.
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But we had breakfast in Portland, and were back in Marblehead by 10:30 AM with a salvaged day, and able to make a run at it again next week.

POTW Week 49

Peeps -
I am most heartfully sorry that I have neglected you.... what with all of the emails threatening suicide and all.... I personally would never kill myself over a freaking blog.... But that's just me.
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If you want to off yourself because of a missing blog post fix, be my guest. But remember... a dead person cannot be a Peep of the Week!!!
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That thought alone should sustain your pathetic, insidious, paltry lives.!!!!
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Which reminds me....

ANNOUNCING.....
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 49th week of 2008.

Harvey Rowe
Susan Raich
Ted Moore
Mike Elsier
Caroline Kennedy
Dan Bennett

Soon the Blog postings will be back to normal again, but Nanepashemet Telecom is caught in that end of the year corporate "I have to make my numbers to get my bonus, so let's thrash the contractors" mode.

Rhino Virus

It's hard to think that a little cold has almost shut down a Mountain of a Man.
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But it happened.
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I haven't even gotten a chance to meet my new grandson because of all this hacking and sneezing.
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But do you see me complaining and whining???? Freaking sniffles are NOTHING!

Happy Birthday Ethan

It's a Happy Birthday extravaganza as Ethan Nestor decided to enter this earthly plane this morning at the healthy 7lbs,9ounces, 19 inches.
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Another damn good looking grandson.
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I'm sure that Ethan will give his older brother, Will, who is a year and a half older, a lot of friendship and competition.
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Their Mom, Courtney, looks pretty happy and relieved. Childbirth is a wonderful experience... I'm thankful that I've experienced it from the fathering side.
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The day Ethan picked to be born on is the same as his grandfather and great grandmother. It's the first cool move in his young life.

POTW Week 49

The end of the year is sneaking up fast.
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Soon it will be time to start thinking of the coveted position of Peep of the Year.
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Michael Murphy has had a rather quiet reign as last year's title holder and wasn't as flamboyant as his POTY predecessor, Tommy McMahon, who made a tremendous spectacle of himself by tackling inebriated trespassers at Fenway Park during the games. But Tom gave up that coveted low paying security position this year.
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There are plenty of good candidates to draw from though, and I welcome your nominations, although they are unlikely to influence the ultimate selection in any way.
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Announcing....
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 49th Week of 2008

Katelyn Nestor
Alex Watts
Dick Man
Mike Rockett
Condoleeza Rice
Sam Khairi

And no..... as much as I would be tempted, I can't select Sarah Palin as the POTY.... but that doesn't mean she is not a HOTTY.

4th Quarter

It's that time of year again. Customers with their end of year expectations and fears. And when you are dealing with large corporations, it's all about finding someone to blame.
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Best thing to do is put your head down, move forward, and not let your ego get sucked into all the craziness.

Work Bench Detour

I've decided that I'm not going to resume the Marblehead Gunning Dory project until I build a suitable workbench. Of course I've done a little research, bought some books from the Taunton Press, and know exactly the type of bench that I will build, and I'm not going to scrimp either.
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I have purchased two front vises from Grizzly and have ordered tail vise hardware from Woodcraft and will be laminating the base from maple and mahoghany. The top will be birch plywood, laminated with CDX or MDF.
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It's going to have lines like this nice Laguna production model, without the cabinet work in the base. I'm going to store it in the basement and cover it in Nanepashemet paperwork when not in use.... which will be most of the time unfortunately.
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All in all, it will be a super cool bench and should be ready for action by February, when the Dory action will get back into the forefront.
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There will be pictures. I hope to keep the quality equal to Will's Toy Chest which I view as my best work thus far, even better than the Herreshoff Columbia Tender, although you haven't seen the pics of the corner TV shelf that I made for Joanne last month.

Gerry Dilemma

The Thanksgiving Day weekend is mercifully coming to a close. On balance, it was a tremendous respite with a few irritating occurrences.
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In general, I ate and drank way too much. Probably with an emphasis on the "drank". Made the mistake of going to the Gerry 5 last night and knocked down many beers that I really didn't need to consume.
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It's funny.... If I told Joanne on a Saturday night that I was going to the Gerry.... it would be hot tongue and cold shoulder for me. But if her Mikey asks me if I want to go... she is all "Why aren't you going to the Gerry?" Even if I don't really feel like going.
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I guess it's the inconsistencies of life that keep things interesting.
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So naturally... the minute I walk into the Gerry, some booze bag misinterprets something I said and tries to call me out. As much as I would have liked to pummel him into oblivion, I avoided the pleasure and talked him down. Getting sued by an inebriated asshole would have been fairly unsavory. Plus, I probably would have been banned by the Gerry. The satisfaction of moving his broken nose to another side of his drunken face just wasn't worth it.
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Once again... a Mountain of a Man Move!
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Today I'll start to mill the birch logs that I have hanging around the garage to begin building some oversized workbench legs. But by the end of the day, I'll be revving up Nanepashemet Telecom. Next week is a big week and I want to have all of the cobwebs shaken out before I wake up tomorrow morning.

Tuna Lips said...

I finds myself regurgitating sweet potato pie at the thought of the harm I done to myself this past festivizing period. There are several recitations of criminalizin facts that strike me all too plausible. Damn that Shoo Fly.

Consequences of Winter

There was a hard frost last night and the temperature is in the 30's. All the leaves are off of the trees, and I actually raked them off of my lawn yesterday. We're ready for winter.
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Every year around this time, I resolve to get some skiing in up North. X-C or Downhill... it doesn't matter. Course I didn't realize that the Nanepashemet business was going to hit like a Tsunami. So the prospects of really hitting this resolution are slight.
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I suppose that this is good.
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Since my skiing skills are only slightly better than than my golfing skills, I've been pretty lucky. After all... you can't get badly hurt golfing... generally.... but skiing is a whole different story.
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If I was badly injured, and couldn't Blog, thousands of Peep lives would be left spinning helplessly out of control. Just because I selfishly chose to ski this year. I couldn't live with myself.

POTW Week 46

With all of the Thanksgiving hub bub, you would have thought that I would have all but forgotten about the Peep of the Week selection.
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Maybe you would, but not me... what with my iron discipline and magnanimous sense of obligation.
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This week is a special week, because we came up with another automatic selection. That is always extra satisfying for me. Plus there is a huge range of choice from all of the annoying/inspirational things that happened at the Bash.
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Still, I'm sure the selections will stir their usual cauldrons of controversy.

Announcing....
Nanepashemet Peeps of the Week for the 46th Week of 2008

Bob Wojcik (Automative Gift of Lagavulin)
Joe Collins
Abby Bruett
Will Nestor
Ginny Hudak
Nick Demakes

Now we can head into the Christmas season.

Upward and Onward

I hope you took the time to reflect upon things you are thankful for this Thanksgiving.
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Most people like to dwell on the stuff that pisses them off. There is a whole series of New Age philosophy called the Law of Attraction that says that this practice attracts more negative stuff and a constant circle of problems and unpleasantness materializes. If this is true, then the current economic downturn must be adding a lot of fuel to this negative thought engine.
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You can't dwell on the bad stuff.
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I'm not saying that you should deny it's existence. Forgive and forget is Bullshit. You have to forgive, but you should never forget. The bad stuff is part of what makes your current existence who you are, and you have to remember it to avoid its recurrence. But if you can forgive yourself and others for the negative stuff that happened, then you don't perpetuate negative stuff that occurs by dwelling upon it.
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That's what I think Christ mean't when he said to love your enemies and turn the other cheek. Disarm the bastards by forgiving them. It is practical advise and allows you to move forward and rise above.
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After all.... Living Well is the Best Revenge.

Tuna Lips said...

Ise taken to cognitatin' on yer ramblings, and whilst i love the baby Jesus and thinks you are spot on in assaying his logic, I also find a sharpened key to the quarter panel of yer fellow person's new pre-owned marcedes has a catheterizing effect. Lives in the moment, carpet days sorta thing.

The ceremonial airing of greivances while dancing around an open fire built with yer high fallutin' neighbors belongings, that can bring a primal stirring to a fellers loins that spells out much of the rule book of this here existing. Take by force and fear, or by guile and a smile.

Tuna Lips, out!