Winter is Here

Not coming Ned. Here.

It's been a minute, as they say.

I know that many of you await these posts with the same degree of anticipation as you would the next episode of Severance, or perhaps your next colonoscopy. To each their own. Either way, I don't like keeping you waiting.

But... we haven't really been anywhere of late, and I know this is ostensibly a travel blog. Thus, no blog posts. Still, I feel a different sense of obligation to this overpriced blog platform subscription thingy that gives me a set number of emails I'm allowed per month before reaching my quota, but of which have been going to waste these past few months because I haven't sent any emails. Use it or lose it. I abhor waste, especially "dead soldiers" (opened barely touched abandoned beer cans at the party), but other kinds of waste too, like tax dollars and pre-paid emails.

So I thought it was maybe a good time for a general, life-is-hard, life-is-funny, what's it all mean, get it off my chest, existential rant. But knowing that you might not read that, I settled for a lightning recap of events since the last post.

And there hasn't been no travel. We did pop down to the Big Apple over Thanksgiving for our usual nonsense. The highlight this year was discovering just how many actual Irish people work in Irish bars there. We try to go into every Irish bar we pass in Manhattan, which means we're stopping every half block or so in most neighborhoods. And instead of a surly gal from New Jersey womanning the taps, we get genuine, shamrocked Dubliners with their adorable accents. What is this 1845? (And how have they managed to evade ICE for so long? Oh... right, I keep forgetting, they're white.)

This is a Brew & Dew:

A Guinness plus a side car of Tullamore Dew (for a special low price).

God, I love the Irish. I just feel like they understand me.

After Thanksgiving, we had an epic family Christmastime housefull with our children, a niece from London, a nephew from Nashview, one of my brothers and all their respective partners. It snowed. We did all manner of Vermonty things like going to a high school basketball game (Go Wolves), some Burlington pub crawls, loads of delicious meals, and even a water color painting trip out to Shelburne farms.

And apparently, judging from the recylcing we are still catching up on a full month later, we did a bit of drinking.

The recycling bin returned to its former Covid glory

From some of the artists in the group, mine looked identical to my 2nd grade compositions

As the new year rolled around, we attended a "society" wedding (or what passes for that in Vermont at least) up at the Stowe Mountain Resort. Fancy. Black tie. As in, put Tom in a tuxedo and shoehorn Lori into a tight strapless gown. I'm sorry, did I say shoehorn? I meant to say slip, slip her into it a tight strapless gown.

All Dressed Up

It's fun to dress up. Occasionally. Get us out of our Vermont uniform of flannel and Carhartt and into some fine threads. But, dude, I'm telling you, if I did it more than once a decade, I would need a butler and several ladies maids. No wonder they had so many servants on Downton Abbey. The main reason was so one of them was always lurking nearby to overhear some juicy family gossip that would drive that week's plot line. But the other reason was because it takes some serious work to dress this way. We had to rent a small trailer just to schlep the extra clothes up to Stowe for the weekend. And the prep time... we began getting dressed for the 2PM Saturday wedding at 7AM the prior Monday.

The wedding didn't disappoint. Lots of fireworks. For example, two of the groomsmen got into some Jagerbombs just before pictures and thought it would be fun to show up in only their boxer shorts. That went over like yellow sugar-on-snow (which is a Vermont saying I just made up) with the bride's mother, I can tell you. Later, the Maid of Honor upended the champagne fountain when she was doing the electric slide during Mr. Brightside.

Skyrockets in Flight!

I'm kidding, of course. Everyone, was very well behaved. They actually had fireworks. Like from China (and the tariffs on those bad boys had to be steeeep). Pretty impressive, especially managing to get the whole thing past the local constabulary. Still, you've seen one brightly colored explosion in the sky, you've seen them all. Of more interest to my discerning tastes was the open bar on Saturday night. Thankfully, when it comes to top-shelf bourbon and gin, obtained with a mere snap of the fingers—I have the willpower of a Labrador puppy who has been told not to wag or wriggle.

Hence, it may be the last society wedding invitation I receive. Even more tragically, I have had to let my Butler "Sleeves" go. It was a good run Sleeves.

Another reason that I've been too busy to write to you all is that for a very brief and heady moment, I was the Head Coach of the South Burlington Boys Varsity Basketball Team.

After the game we won

For real. Some of you know that I've been second banana for about 30 years. But that's a soft gig. You show up. You bark at the kids a bit. You go home. I could train Sleeves to do it. But after a tiny misunderstanding between our coach and a few other members of the august Vermont basketball community; I was thrust into the role of Interim Head Coach, which is the same 60-hour-a-week high stress job as the actual Head Coach, but for the comically low salary that you were making before. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and my tenure only lasted a couple of weeks and two games. But, for a hot second, I was out there in the teeth of the gale, steely-eyed and ready to re-invent the game of basketball as we know it.

Stories will be told. Songs will be sung. We went 1 and 1.

When I emerged from the film room and the gym, back into the real world, I was not at all stunned to discover that things had become even weirder on the world stage, especially in the reality presidency known as Carbon, Corruption, and Crazy - America Edition. This month, we are shipping all the undesirables (you know who you are) off to a penal colony on Greenland to drill (baby) for more carbon deposits (fossilized muskoxen turds) that we can burn, because I think we can all agree there is way too much ice on Greenland if we're going to put Trump golf courses and resorts staffed with genuine Irish bartenders on it.

Still, I shouldn't complain. At least Americans enjoy affordable healthcare and a justice system where no one (who has less than a cool million in the bank) is above the law.

It's enough to drive a man to drink.

"Sleeves! Where are you dammit? Fetch me another Old Fashioned!"