It's a wonderful West Hartford Life!

It was an interesting weekend for The King. One of the those weekends that I'll look back on fondly when I'm sitting in a rocking chair next to my bride of 50 years, and hosting our grandchildren in our retirement home telling yarns about West Hartford Life. OK, a little melodramatic, but that OK for a Monday morning, right?

In addition to slaving away around the house and playing with my 2-year old firecracker of a daughter, I attended my 20th high school reunion, enjoyed food and beverage at my neighborhood block party, and watched the Red Sox clinch their spot in the American League Championship Series. We also attended the Park Road Parade - always a fall highlight in West Hartford. I also had the chance to meet a few West Hartford politicians and "introduce myself" to them as The King! You can imagine the reaction. Weekends like this give us that sad feeling of leaving a community that we greatly love and admire.

Obviously each of these episodes contains its own stories and subplots. I'll see how far I can get with all of this in an early morning entry. It's going to be another hellish week at work and home, so I thought I'd get my postings out early this week.

My other half restarted work after maternity leave and even that is an adjustment for all of us here particularly with regard to getting the kids readjusted to daycare, and us readjusted to daycare drop off and pick up. You parents understand the mental drain underlined by feelings of guilt versus their need for learning and socialization, etc. The King gets the villain role in "drop off" duty, and Mommy gets to be the hero playing "pick up". What can you do. That's the balance that keeps harmony in the home.

I attended my High School 20th Reunion on Saturday night. It was meant to be a combined event between Mercy and Xavier. I have to say that I was greatly disappointed by the event for many reasons. In the first place, I was really looking forward to catching up with old friends and schoolmate who I hadn't seen in 20 years, but unfortunately the turn out was exceedingly poor. Out of the sixty three or so people who attended, about 14 were from my class of 220 Xavier grads from the class of 1987.

Having seen a flurry of emails with dozens of address and names, I set the expectation my mind that I would have at least caught up with thirty or so buddies. This isn't to say that I didn't catch up with some old friends, I did and enjoyed having a few drinks with them and finding out how they are making out. Our table was a group of those of us who still keep in touch quite regularly. In fact, we get together about six or seven times a year, and really enjoy getting out families together and navigating through life at the same pace with similar situations. In fact in one case my daughter is two weeks younger than their son, so that makes for great opportunities for the kids to grow up together.

The food was awful. $80 got us very little and we actually expected more than boneless chicken wings and mushroom appetizers. If you are planning an event at Baci Grill in Cromwell or hear of someone planning it - I recommend urging them to find another location. This isn't meant to be a reflection on the organizers who are volunteers and moms and dads etc. The schools (particularly Xavier) could have done a lot more to help, particularly since they devote so much time to reaching out to alumni for donations. The stupidity of these people is beyond belief - even from a business standpoint. Don't they realize that they might have used this opportunity to network and fundraise with alumni for the future? Instead, not one staff member from Xavier showed up to say hello to Alumni. The stories floating around were that the relationship between Mercy and Xavier has greatly deterioted over the past several years since Brother William became headmaster. Having spent four years getting to know William, I'm not surprised in the least to hear the downturn. Tisk, tisk.

And so much for our class president who decided to blow off the event after helping to circulate emails early on and drum up support. If you're going to volunteer and offer to help, carry out the work or at least signal an alarm that you can't follow through. Shame on Dan for dropping the ball. If I knew, I would have helped. Lastly, I do want to thank Mercy for stepping up and including us in the event.

Message to Xavier. Don't expect another dime from me (or those who attended). You guys are on your own.

On to the Red Sox...

The Red Sox seem to be back on track after ending the season in lackluster fashion. Both Manny Ramierez and David Ortiz are hot with the bat again, and it looks like our pitching is on track even though knuckle-baller Tim Wakefield is out with an injury. I honestly didn't expect such a dominating performance by our pitching staff since we've been up and down lately - most notably Dice K has had at least one huge fallout inning per game where he's given up multiple runs.

The best part of the team is that they are playing like a team. This will never be the team of 2004 - which was just special for bringing a world championship to Beantown after 86 years, but its still a fun team to watch and root for. There are a lot of holes in the line up, so this team is going to have to rely on consistency from their star power, and a hope and prayer combined with sheer will to get through the rough spots. Whether its the Yankees or the Indians in the next round, it won't be the cakewalk that we saw over the past three games. Let's face it, the Angels brought their C game. Only Game 2 was competitive. After that late night 9th inning loss on Friday night, they seemed to lack the will to compete, and thus Game 3 was a gimmie.

Our archfoes, the Yankees, won't lie down and die. And Cleveland is also a team gunning for a world title. Enjoy the days off boys, the next round will be harder. You have to love the Sox's chances though... what a great team - Ortiz, Manny, Youkilis, Pedroia, Crisp and consistent Mike Lowell, along with Beckett, Schilling and Papelbon. Bring on the ALCS!

On our Neighborhood block party....
It's great to live in a neighborhood where there is a great mix of people, and everyone has a vested interest in keeping our neighborhood clean and safe. Our immediate neighbors tend to be quiet and keep to themselves, but they are always friendly and willing to say hello or lend a hand if you ever asked for it.
So the block party was a great way to meet a lot of our street friends who all seem to have kids in one stage or the next! The kids enjoyed playing with each other and the grown ups happily shared a beer or two. And we all cooked up a storm and feasted on awesome treats for several hours! It was great to chill out and end the week on such a high note.
I was invited down to watch some of the Sox game with a few neighbors who rolled their television out onto the driveway with a long cable. True Sox fans never let block parties stand in the way of watching the Sox! So with beers in hand, we really yucked it up over a game three win while getting to know each other better.
My two year old daughter really enjoyed getting paint all over herself, her clothes and everything else. And the fabulous West Hartford Fire Department came and let the kids get on the truck and tryout the firefighting gear. They were awesome with the kids. West Hartford Fire ... thank you!! (bizarre sub note... The very truck that was at the block party... just drove past my house as I finished the last sentence ... very, very weird. LOL.) Thanks crew of Quint 2!
So there it is. I'll need to write on my introduction to some of West Hartford's politicos in the next go round. It took me a week to get this entry out!