MeSoFun Blog

We are easily entertained. Man-cations. Man-dates. Man-night. Those Manly things are all tired plays on the word Man. What does it mean to be a man? Surely not enjoying Mancations with your Man friends while doing Manly things. And yet, cliches are cliches for a reason. It is with regret that I report on the goings-on of Monday evening. I walked to the Boston airport and hopped a bus to Portland to visit The Bearded Beernut and Nacho, Nacho Man (and Nacho Man's brother, Dandy). We were going to play pegs and aces, drink beer and eat bacon. It drives me batty to bend to stereotypes. Truly. You should know that. But when you see bacon-dusted french fries on the menu at Nosh, you order them. Then, at LFK, when you see bacon-covered macaroni and cheese, you order that. At Taco Escobar, our third restaurant of the evening, Nacho Man decided it would be awesome to order nachos. And it was. At The Great Lost Bear, the fourth dining establishment of our evening, Nacho Man order nachos agai...

Just hanging out on a wooden Navy ship, preparing to shoot cannons at the British, or hordes of elderly tourists. Whichever.    About five years ago, Ross-mosis wanted to go see a band called The Killers play a show in Utah. I guarantee you know their biggest hit song, Mom. "Somebody told me, that you had a boyfriend, that looks like a girlfriend, that I had in February of last year. No? Ok, Mom,  here's a link to the video . Careful. It's catchy. Ross-mosis and I were pretty sure this was going to be awesome because the band was playing an old airplane hangar out by the Great Salt Lake. It was a bizarre location and it couldn't have been more than 2,000 people at the show. Ross-mosis and I powered our way to within about 30 feet of the stage. I looked around at the crowd a few minutes before the show started (after an amazing set by Louis XVI, the best opening act I've ever seen). "Ross-mosis, do you realize we are in the upper 5 percent of age of all the peo...

If you look closely, you might see Daisy Duke swimming out to greet the crew of the USS Constitution. The difference between living in Boston and, say, Lakeland, Minnesota (population 1,993) is there tends to be wonderful surprises that come with living both by the water and in the big city. About half an hour ago, I got into my car to go return a video game to Red Box. I took the back way home to avoid traffic and pedestrians. There was a fire boat out on the Mystic River blaring water out of every nozzle. That's not so unusual. But trailing a couple hundred yards behind the fire boat was the USS Constitution, the oldest boat in the Navy, celebrating the 225th anniversary of its first sail in 1787. I quickly parked and jogged out to the end of the pier to take a picture. As usual, the first picture was the best, though I put a couple more at the bottom of the blog. A couple of Italian guys were hanging out on the dock talking loudly to nobody in particular, which is par for the co...

The oddest selfie I have ever taken. The Boston Red Sox are pretty bad this year. The local sports radio station, which lives to tear apart struggling local teams, has been having a field day. The Red Sox are for sale! Their manager shows up late for games! They're moving the team to Vermont! Ahhhhhhhh! And that's just NPR.  The Red Sox are an inescapable part of living in Boston. Though I was kidding about NPR, a few weeks ago the local NPR station (WBUR) did spend 15 minutes breaking down a Red Sox trade. Usually, NPR announcers can't pronounce players' names correctly. It's a different kind of town. Around 10:30 p.m., during a rain delay. That's what has made the tradition to city life a difficult one. It's a different kind of town. Obviously, I've  had some trouble  getting myself,  my dog  and The Wife  acquainted . One thing we were not prepared for: Humidity. July and August are pretty miserable months just about anywhere, but to have them as your...

There's a lot of stories about Boston. There's a little dog park up the hill from our condo that's about an acre of open land. At the top of the hill, there's a large rock with a plaque that tells of the park's history as a military for the British in the 1600s and the Americans in the late 1700s.  A more recent story involves skunks. To an outsider, "Boston" and "skunks" seems like a contradiction, but they're everywhere in Eastie. I saw one within my first few nights of living in East Boston. You see them only at night, in fact, but you see them relatively often.  The Wife heard a story at the dog park up the hill about the skunks. Supposedly, the skunks were brought in by the city to control the rat population. Maybe they've had success with that. I have yet to see a rat in Boston. Join the smelly side, Daisy. There is, however, another mammalian in East Boston, and it was always likely they would meet. Daisy Duke is an affable chocola...

As I so often say on behalf of my dog: Get in my belly. I take comfort in food. You know this about me. Entering 10th grade, I was 5-foot-1 and weighed 235 pounds. I still have the stretch marks. In adulthood, I've figured out how to appropriately manage my weight. I exercise like a fiend and try to eat a lot of vegetables, because I like vegetables. Preferably with blue cheese dressing. But I'm flexible on that. Here we are in Boston. My 16th move, or whatever insane number it is. We have no friends. Going to the grocery store is arduous. Going for a run is difficult. The dew point is roughly equal to the temperature. My dog is panting on the floor under the air conditioner. We have Comcast. I'm not happy. So when someone mentions apple crisp at work, my ears perk up as they did a couple of nights ago. It was jokingly suggested that we celebrate the first actual day of the GOP convention with a potluck. This is how newspapers work. We mostly want to eat. We run spell check...

 T-minus 5 minutes to bowel eruption.  It isn't often that I feel the need to warn readers about content. There will be no gratuitious swearing nor descriptions of horrible violence to come in this space. There will, however, be a flashback to one of the grossest nights of my life . Avert your eyes if you are offended by the word poop. Well, it's too late now. You might as well keep reading. That's the worst word I'm going to use, though there might be some technical anatomical descriptions. Saturday was marvelous. It was the first day temperatures and the humidity were both under 80. The Wife and I had been looking for a fresh-water river into which we could throw tennis balls for Daisy Duke, our 2-year-old chocolate Lab and the love of TW's life. A tactical error was made. We went to the Neponset River, which seemed like it might not be too salty for Daisy Duke. Daisy is a water enthusiast who enjoys swimming with great vigor to retrieve items. The problem is,...