Boston Blogger

The thing about sportsradio …

I listened to WEEI for a bit on my drive to work yesterday morning (I hadn’t updated my iPod before leaving the house), and the morning-show guys (Dennis and Callahan) were getting all fired up about last night’s first-round, Game 4 matchup between the Boston Celtics and Atlanta Hawks.

According to D&C, the Celtics had all the motivation they needed to deliver an ass-whipping, as they were still stewing over Atlanta rookie Al Horford’s taunt of Boston captain Paul Pierece in the closing moments of the Hawks’ Game 3 upset of the Green. 

The Hawks didn’t stand a chance, D&C said. The veteran Celtics would put the foolish Horford and his young teammates in their place. Boston would take Game 4 and then come home and close out the series in Game 5. No sweat.

But what actually happened last night? The 8th-seeded Hawks overcame a poor start and a 10-point deficit at the start of the 4th quarter to knock off the Celtics once again, 97-92, and they evened the best-of-seven series, 2-2.

The thing is … the sportsradio hosts think it’s their job — and I guess it is — to make outlandish statements about how a game will turn out, even though they have no more idea about its outcome than any of the rest of us do. They just get paid lots and lots of money to shout their opinions.

Getting itchy

Spoke to Stella this morning during their final day in Nairobi. She, Amani, and the kids were hanging out at the pool at Roasters.

Amani got on the phone for a bit and said “hi,” “mambo,” and “Daddy.” I welled up pretty quickly. He and Stella have been gone for 28 days, and I’m getting itchy for their return, which thankfully comes tomorrow night.

I’m trying to do some organizing around the house today (shredding old documents, washing clothes and dishes, etc.) to get the house in top-top shape.

Things are mighty quiet without Amani here. I’ve enjoyed this time alone (Viola has spent the last week with Mercy, John, and Sydney in Lowell), but I’m missing the laughter, noise, and spirit that fill the house when an 18-year-old is running around wreaking havoc. I’ll have all that again some 31 hours from now
— I can’t wait!

A night for ice cream

With temperatures getting into the 80s again today (my car showed as high as 84F/29C this afternoon), I treated myself to an ice cream at a nearby shop tonight.

I was boring and went with a sort-serve vanilla cone — but it sure tasted good!

So nice to have the warm temps over the last week or so. Yesterday’s spring morning had me in such high spirits that I drove most of the way to work with the windows all the way down, blasting some good beats as I went!

Flickr photo by WayTru. 

Think Day in Portsmouth

I headed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Sunday for a solo afternoon of R&R. I did some reading, writing, and ruminating. I called it Think Day, in a tip of the cap to Granite Stater Chip Griffin, who recently returned from his own Think Week.

Some takeaways and reflections from the afternoon: 

• There’s still something downright gratifying about doing the non-digital thing every once in a while. I read a print magazine special feature article (ironically, about the rise of digital nomads), handwrote (well, printed is more precise – I didn’t use cursive) a long-overdue letter my friend Yulanda, who is in her second year of Peace Corps stint; and snapped a few photos with – get this – a 35-millimeter camera.
  
  
• I need to do more writing — whether that’s with pen and paper or hammering it out on a computer keyboard. I began 2008 with the goal of writing and blogging more often and more consistently. But taking the actionable steps to make sure a goal is realized is the true test, and that’s where I’ve fallen down over the last four months.
  
  
• Creativity often requires a step back from the day-to-day grind. If all we ever do is move from one e-mail, Twitter post, or Excel report to the next, our brains don’t get the space and time they need to work through the creative process. It’s the reason I look forward to long drives or time alone with book/notebook in a café. I’m at ease, and my brain can work its magic.
  
  
• As offline as most of the day was, it was my digital connections that helped shaped much of the afternoon’s itinerary. Portsmouth was recommended to me by Sarah LaLiberte, a fellow Syracuse University alum who I’ve reconnected with thanks to Twitter and LinkedIn over the month; my Monster co-worker and social networking comrade in arms, Lou Susi, unknowingly suggested my Portsmouth lunch venue, The Friendly Toast, in an e-mail about a potential venue for a future Social Media Breakfast; and I picked up that Economist story on digital nomads only after hearing about it in a report from Dan York on the For Immediate Podcast that I had listened to just prior to departing for Portsmouth on Sunday morning.

Above all, Think Day reminded me of the importance of balance and moderation, from how much time I spend glued to a computer to how I define and follow through on goals and creative projects that are meaningful to me.

Remembering my first blogging attempt in late 2003 — and starting over in 2008

Assuming you can count 14 posts over a couple of months as a real blog (and I’m not counting a random post or two I tested shortly before leaving Australia in early 2003), BostonBlogger.com was my first actual attempt at blogging, and I took that plunge in late 2003, about a month before Stella and Viola came over from Australia.

The site was published on Blogger/Blogspot (weren’t all blogs back then?), and I even had worked in a photo or two from my first snowstorm in the United States after having been on the other side of the world the previous two winters. Here are a couple of them:

The previous month, in November, I was so gung-ho on the whole blogging thing that I managed to convince Bill McGuire, my talented friend in Brisbane, to build an a stop-motion character of me fleeing a knife-wielding turkey on Thanksgiving Day:

This “character” of mine was going to be appearing in all sorts of interesting scenes that represented my event-filled life.

Uhm, well … about that.

My initial enthusiasm for the blog obviously dried up pretty quickly, because I didn’t really post again on the site after December 13, 2003, when I took a job at some officials leading the BigDig project.

Two other short postings — one falsely predicting that the blog was coming “back to life” on August 11, 2004 and another testing FTP settings on April 2, 2005 — were all that I would make on the site.

So what’s next … really?

I don’t know, to be honest. I offer no promises here that trying to revive this blog on the Tumblr platform will suddenly lead to an extended, sustained stretch of posts. I’d like to think I’m capable of that, but I can get bored and/or distracted pretty quickly.

At the moment, though, here are some initial thoughts:

• I’d like to be able to rant and rave about the Boston Red Sox from time to time. These days, there really isn’t much to rant about, as the Old Towne Team is off to a 14-7 start and playing like the “defending champions” title they’ll continue to own until someone else wins a World Series
• I don’t actually venture into Boston all that often these days. But, on occasions like last Saturday afternoon, when I gave Twitter pal Dave Fleet a tour of the downtown area (and perhaps walking too much and killing any chance he had of finishing today’s Boston Marathon in under 3 hours in the process), I’d like an outlet to blog about it. BryanPerson.com focuses on social media/social networking — and so I need someplace else.
• I have a problem with far too much self-editing when I blog. I hope to help overcome that by writing here in a far more freewheeling, off-the-cuff style.
• BostonBlogger.com is just too cool of a domain name to let go to waste!