Needed Peaking

Dinner Last Night

Keene Friend rode to the rescue last night and he didn’t even know he was doing it. Since he is feeling much better but the doctors won’t let him return to work he decided to spread some largesse our way in the form of his company. He drove down and arrived just after I returned home from work. It was good to see him in obviously better health and sounding so much more like his normal, inimitable self. We scored a FaceTime call with the New Jersey bunch before we headed out and the First Blog reader remembered Keene Friend’s name from their limited interaction. He does make an impression. My granddaughter is showing signs of really knowing how to play to an audience, obviously dipping into her father’s gene pool. She was her usual charming self and demonstrated her addiction to ketchup and smiles.

She is a Charmer

We took Keene Friend out to dinner at Val’s which provided a great opportunity for us to catch up and for my wife to lecture him on taking better care of himself (welcome to my world). We think of Keene Friend as family so she felt completely within her rights to sermonize. A sure sign he’s feeling better were his attempts at his trademark dry humor with our waitress, something about Greek water which sailed completely over her head.

We were able to convince him to spend the night instead of driving back to Keene and we flipped between the Bruins playoff and Red Sox games. Neither ended well but it was regenerating to have my brother sitting next to my wife and I to dissect the action. I say regenerative again because I was facing a long sought, but dreaded Board meeting this morning and needed all the morale boost that could be bartered for.

It was every bit as painful as expected due to the combined subjects of route reductions and fare increases. This is part of the reason I’m so late blogging today. By the time the meeting was over I was in a near homicidal RAGE. It took me a good three hours to calm down. This is what happens when you put me in the same room (for 2.5 hours) as politicians and the assembled Voices of Inappropriate Worth. That latter group were the same ones that showed up at the public hearings and repeated the exact same nonsense they had at those. The politicians were actually fairly impressive (you may now pick yourself off the floor where I’m sure you ended up after hearing me utter that praise). There were some minor changes made but they all made sense and I now have a pell-mell sprint over the next couple weeks to translate wishes into an actionable plan, but at least they made the needed decisions. I also kind of like the sprint.

Another reason for Morale Boost - Updated Photo of Condo, Ours is 3rd Floor

The Pool Out Front