Downtown Malden, with one of its sixty-zillion nail salons. SRSLY?

If you recall correctly,  Business Week magazine named Malden as the best place to raise kids in Massachusetts.  This was in 2008, and Malden sucked then.  It’s getting worse now, yet Malden flies banners all over the place squawking about this *honor*.

The truth is, the place SUCKS, and it’s not even a good place to raise PETS.  A lot of that has to do with the fact that most of the homes here are rentals, and most landlords won’t even allow pets.  yet landlords are forever bitching and moaning that they can’t find anyone to rent their units.  Well, maybe if they allowed pets, they’d have a better choice of tenants than they do now.  And pet owners are much better tenants than Section 8 people who have a zillion kids.  When they keep the pet owners out, those people go elsewhere, and the landlords have no choice to rent to whatever white trash comes along.  These are trashy people who cry poverty, yet seem to have enough money to spend on a playstation 3 and sixty-zillion games to go with it. Yet they pay NO taxes, and they dump their trash near our cans, because they don’t want to pay for the city trash bags, and would rather get US and others in trouble for putting out non-bagged trash.

If you need another good reason not to move here, check this out: Eight injured in Malden blaze last Friday; department reflects on fighting fires after budget cuts.  This house is three doors away, and it’s scary.  All the more reason to want to move, if the city feels that public safety is less important than spending money on useless crap.

Finally, let’s not forget this:  Malden Shootout Leaves 1 Dead, 2 Wounded.  Just a few blocks away from my house.  I suppose the next budget cuts will be cops.

This is a big part of why we’ll be moving to New Hampshire when our current lease is up.  Enough is enough.

The primary reason for this trip was to see a few Portland Sea Dogs vs. New Hampshire Fisher Cats games.  But hopefully, we’ll have time to do other things, as well.

The timing was not so good – Hurricane Earl is about to hit us up here.  It started raining during the game, it was tied in the 7th, so we left before it got really bad.  The Fisher Cats, who we were rooting for, ended up losing anyway.  I found out today that wearing a Fisher Cats jersey at Hadlock Field causes other fans to give you the fish-eye.  Just as well we left, tomorrow I’ll wear a non-baseball shirt.

When in Portland, we always stay at the Inn at St. John.  It’s an easy walk to the Sea Dogs ballpark, but it’s not in the middle of downtown.  But that’s okay, the #1 Metro bus stops right across the street, and it’ll take you right downtown, and easy walk to all of the cool stuff that the Old Port has to offer.  If you love good beer, be sure to visit Gritty McDuff’s, Sebago Brewing Company, and/or Shipyard Brewing Company.  All are in the Old Port, the first two are brewpubs, Shipyard is a brewery with a gift shop.  There is also lots of shopping and other restaurants, as well as trolley and boat tours (in season).

The fact that the Inn at St. John is NOT smack in the middle of downtown makes it an excellent value – you have easy access to the Old Port without the high prices.  Rooms range from luxury, which contain such amenities as jacuzzi tubs, to value rooms, which have shared bathrooms in the hall and involve climbing a lot of stairs. The choice is yours, depends on your preference and your budget. Pets are welcome in many rooms.

If the weather people are correct, Earl will be out of here tomorrow, and the rest of the weekend is supposed to be lovely.  Let’s hope so!

Well, if you want to see baseball playoffs right in your own back yard, look no further than the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, who play in the Queen City, Manchester, NH.  The Class AA affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, the Fisher Cats have been playing their hearts out this year.  I don’t think they’ve ever been below second place the whole season, and now, they have officially clinched their spot in the Eastern League playoffs.  We’re only now waiting to see whether they finish the season in first or second place in their division; how they place will dictate where the home games will be played.

If the Fisher Cats finish in first place, the home games for the first round of playoffs will be held on Wednesday, September 8, Thursday, September 9, and, if necessary, Sunday, September 12.  Should they finish in second, the home games would be on Friday, September 10 and, if necessary, Saturday, September 11.

Should the Fisher Cats make it to the finals, those home games are scheduled for Thursday, September 16, Friday, September 17, and Saturday, September 18.

The Fisher Cats are now selling playoff tickets – playoff ticket strips are on sale at nhfishercats.com, as well as at the ticket office or over the phone.  See the website for details.  Ticket strips are for all six possible playoff home games; if any games are not played for any reason, the Fisher Cats will either issue refunds for unused tickets, or offer credit for tickets for any game in the 2011 season.  So you really can’t lose!

So, you could spend your time online doing a medical job search or some such thing…or you can enjoy what the fisher Cats have to offer, and join in on playoff fever!  I know where I’ll be!

Melrose-Wakefield Hospital - stay far, far away unless you have a death wish!

I can’t believe that summer is almost over!  As David Letterman just said, “summer has gone by quicker than a Brett Favre retirement”.  And this summer was a good one – nice weather, and no major medical issues.  As you may know, we’ve had a couple of summers all but ruined due to the ineptitude of Melrose-Wakefield Hospital.  If you do a search of that name on this blog, you’ll see some of the horror stories about that dump.  Not only did they almost kill my husband, but did you also know that they could very well have gotten him addicted to morphine?

It’s true.  A few years ago, Mike had to have an emergency appendectomy.  After the surgery, he was hooked up to this IV thing where you push a little button and it puts morphine into your system, in order to reduce any pain.

But the thing was, he wasn’t in very much pain, so he barely hit that little button.  Also, he knew that it was morphine, and he didn’t want to risk getting hooked on the stuff.

So you would think that the nurses would be happy that he wasn’t in much pain and did not need to use much of the drug.  But NOOOOOO…they YELLED at him for NOT using enough of the stuff!  Can you believe it?

WHY?  Did they WANT to get him hooked on the stuff?  We know that they like to keep patients in this hospital for as long as possible, in order to soak the insurance companies for as much as possible.  We know that Hallmark Health has been having money problems.  Is getting a patient hooked on a narcotic drug another way to keep patients incarcerated for longer?  Who knows?

As far as I know, Melrose-Wakefield does not do any sort of detox/drug rehab stuff.  So what would they do with a drug addict, except keep him there and keep feeding him the dope?

If Mike had gotten addicted to this drug, possibly the only way he’d ever have a chance of resuming his life and his career is to go to a rapid detox center. Rapid detox is an intensive treatment, in which the patient is withdrawn from the drug within a few hours, as opposed to a week or more.  This reduces the symptoms of withdrawal dramatically.

However, this is only for the physical dependence on the drug, the patient would still need to get the appropriate psychological counseling.

I don’t know how many such places are in the United States, but I know of this one place out in Las Vegas.  Hey, I like Vegas, but this isn’t my idea of what I’d want to do while there!  And it is rather pricey – starting at $13,000, and not covered by insurance.  They do offer various forms of financing, though.  And I think it’s well worth it for those addicts who truly want to get their lives back.

But still I wonder, WHY would a nurse, a medical professional, want to try to force a patient to take such a drug, risk getting addicted, when it was not truly needed for pain?  I mean, in Mike’s case, just some regular over-the-counter Tylenol would have been sufficient.  I know people who really do suffer chronic pain and are on narcotic pain-killers.  Without them, they cannot function.  But these people are also under the care of specialized pain doctors, who carefully monitor their patients’ use of these drugs.  They do not want to see their patients abusing these drugs and turning into addicts who need a rapid detox program.

This whole thing with Mike and the morphine happened years ago, but I’m still shaking my head over the insanity of it all.  Needless to say, we will never so much as get a Band-Aid from any Hallmark Health facility ever again.  We now get all of our health care from Lahey Clinic, which is a much better place.  Thanks to their excellent level of care, Mike is no longer in and out of the hospital all the time, as he was when he was still with Melrose-Wakefield.  Lahey prefers to keep people OUT of the hospital, by caring for their patients properly in the first place.

So, once again, I remind you that if you want to live a good quality life, stay away from Hallmark Health!

Beer served in a plastic cup at the Sam Adams Bar & Grill at Merchantsauto.com Stadium, Manchester, NH

You’ve probably heard the story about a man being killed by a shard of glass from a beer mug, as the result of a bar fight at the Landsdowne Pub in Boston.  Now, this bar is serving all drinks in plastic cups.  I don’t know what this bar is like, because I’ve never been there, but this is probably a good idea.

But now, according to an article on BeerAdvocate.com, the Boston licensing board is considering banning glass containers in ALL of the city’s bars.

It’s one thing to drink beer from plastic cups at a baseball game or other sporting event.    In addition to eliminating the risk of drunken fans throwing glass containers at players on the field, or at other fans in the stands, there are other practical reasons.  The cost of breakage would go through the roof, and make ballpark beer even more expensive than it already it.  And then they’d have to worry about washing all those glasses that don’t get broken.

Even at the Sam Adams Bar & Grill, which is located inside the NH Fisher Cats’ ballpark in Manchester, all drinks are served in plastic or paper cups.  This place has a really nice mahogany bar and all, and looks like the sort of place where you’d not expect your beer to be served in a plastic cup.  But they also allow people to take drinks out of the place and into the seating area of the ballpark.  They can’t watch every single person the whole time, so plastic all around makes the most sense.

On the other hand, I would not want to go into a nice beer bar and have my beer served in a plastic cup.  Different styles of beer are supposed to be served in different kinds of glassware; something they can’t do if they were forced to use only plastic.  Rather than give you a lesson on proper beer glassware, here’s a basic article about it from BeerAdvocate.com.  Many beer lovers have assorted glassware in their homes (we have a good collection), and we expect bartenders at better beer bars to know what beer goes in what glass.

The banning of glass would hurt these businesses.  Who is going to pay top dollar for a fine beer dinner, when all of the brews are served in plastic cups?  Beer geeks will simply go to places outside of Boston, the people who plan the beer dinners will have them at other restaurants, etc.

Also, at these higher-end establishments, people are less likely to get so drunk that they get into fights.  There is a huge difference between “beer geeks” like us, and people who go into some dive bar to get drunk on Bud Light or some other cheap, mass-produced swill.  Beer geeks enjoy the flavor of beer, we don’t drink to get so drunk that we can’t taste anything.  We’ve grown way beyond the college days of keggers and cases upon cases of Natty Light.

Those who drink to get drunk do not only not care what their beer is served in, they also do not care what beer they drink, as long as it’s cheap and there is plenty of it.  So the places that cater to such a clientele should, by all means, eliminate serving anything in glass.  But they should also be paying more attention to patrons who’ve had too much, and shut them off as necessary.  This not just because of potential bar fights, but for the safety of the general public.  You would not want someone to get so drunk that they cannot safely drive home.  Even the better beer bars should be paying attention; they would not likely serve somebody endless glasses of some 9.0% ABV double IPA.  As much as I personally love beers like this, I might have one serving at the beer bar, and then switch over to something with a lower ABV (alcohol by volume).

Hopefully, the owners of beer bars and brewpubs in Boston will speak out against this stupid law, and it will never be passed.  Let the bar and restaurant owners decide what to do, according to what would be best for them.  But don’t put people out of business over an issue which is not applicable to their establishment.

The good news is that if you get repeated calls from the same number, spoofed or not, you can block these calls.  Where I live,  Verizon doesn’t offer a call-blocking service.  But fear not – many cordless phones are available out there that offer a call-blocking feature.  When our old landline phone was dying, we took advantage of that to look for a new one that had the call-blocking feature.  We read a lot of cordless phone reviews, looked in a lot of stores, both online and brick & mortar.  We found that we’d have to pay more for the call-blocking feature, but if it meant that we’d have to get fewer repeat telephone calls from annoying people, it would be worth every penny.

We bought a nice cordless phone set from Panasonic, and we’ve been very pleased.  What happens with this phone if you block a number is that it will ring once, then the computer inside the phone checks the number, and if it is on the blocked list, the caller on the other end gets a busy signal.  We have found that eventually, the calls will stop because people get tired of the endless busy signal.

Still, the government needs to do better with the Do Not Call Registry.  Not sure exactly WHAT they can do, but they need to work on it.  In the meantime, consider buying a new cordless telephone that has a call-blocking feature.  It also works great when you are getting calls from collection agencies for someone who had your number before you did.  We were getting these all the time, and now that I’ve blocked them, they stopped calling completely.

Now I wish I could find a cell phone with call blocking.  Can the CrackBerry do this?  i was thinking of getting one, but if it has call blocking, I’d definitely buy one!

My husband Mike, at Jerry Remy's Sports Bar & Grill, July 2010

Have you ever heard of St. Baldrick’s Day?  It is an annual event that is usually held at around the halfway point to the next St. Patrick’s Day.  Volunteers have their heads shaved in public to show support for kids with cancer who lose their hair due to chemo, and to raise money for childhood cancer research.

This year, my husband Mike will be participating in a St. Baldrick’s Day event, as a shavee.  As you can see, he doesn’t have much hair to begin with, but he’ll be growing it out for the event.

He is a part of Team Last Call, who will be getting “buzzed” at the Wild Rover Celtic Festival, to be held on Sunday, September 12, at the Wild Rover Pub in Manchester, NH.  The event also includes a 5K road race, which benefits the Make-A-Wish Foundation.  And of course, there is the entertainment, many great bands and dance groups will be performing.

Admission to the event is free, but you have to buy your own food and beer at the event if you want any.  And hopefully, you will want to make donations to the charities involved.  Parking is free in the garage across the street from the Rover.  For more info, visit the event page.  They had the first annual Celtic Fest last year, and it was a lot of fun.  It looks to be bigger and better this year!

If you can’t make it to the event in person, you can always donate to Mike’s cause online, at his official St. Baldrick’s page.  There will be pictures of all head-shavings posted, so you’ll be able to see who really got shaved!  Thanks in advance!

Yes!  It’s true!  1964…The Tribute will be playing on this coming Thursday, August 12, at MerchantsAuto.com Stadium, home of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, in beautiful downtown Manchester.  The team is out of town this week, so now the grounds crew and other staff are busy gearing up for this exciting concert.  No, there won’t be any patio cushions or anything, seating will be in the regular seating bowl only.  Not on the field, as they did for the Bob Dylan concert that was there a few years ago.

All tickets are $10, and there was some limited reserved seating available; that might be sold out by now, you’ll have to check.  All other seats are general admission, which means you can sit anywhere you like, except for the reserved sections.  We have our regular seats that we do for the ball games, and no doubt we’ll have to kick people out of them.  And so it goes…

Anyhoo, this concert is a benefit for Manchester’s gorgeous Palace Theatre; if you have never seen a show there, you are missing out.  No, this concert will not be there, or course, it will be at the ballpark, but I’m sure you will be able to learn much more about the theatre at this concert.

So this concert is only a couple of days away, so if you want to go, get your tickets now, before they sell out.  Gates open at 5PM (4:30 PM for Fisher Cats season ticket holders), and no doubt the Sam Adams Bar & Grill will be open for your drinking and dining enjoyment.  The concert itself will begin at 7PM, and there will be an Atlas Fireworks show right after the concert.

Please visit nhfishercats.com for more info and to purchase tickets.

Mike and I have always loved the Beatles, and are greatly looking forward to this concert!

The Fisher Cats are the Class AA affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, and are part of the Eastern League.  They play their home games at MerchantsAuto.com Stadium, located in downtown Manchester, on the banks of the Merrimack River.  They are easily accessible from Boston and many other ares of New England, just an hour’s drive away.  Think of how long you spend on the MBTA, or being stuck in traffic near Fenway to go to a Red Sox game, and an hour is not such a long time, now, is it?

These games also cost MUCH less!  Seats start at $6, with premium box seats going for just $12.  Concessions are much less expensive, as well.  And in addition to getting to see future Major Leaguers, they have some fun between-inning games and entertainment.  MerchantsAuto.com Stadium is very family-friendly, kids 3 and under get in free, as long as they are being carried in something like an Ergo baby carrier, or can sit on a parent’s lap…as long as they are not taking up a seat. Especially one of ours.  just because we get up together to get food and beer does NOT mean we are not coming back!

Anyhoo, the Fisher Cats are almost definitely going to the post-season, and tickets are on sale NOW!  We don’t yet know when the home games will be played, it will depend on how the team finishes at the end of the season.  You can purchase tickets for all six possible home playoff games; check HERE to see how the playoffs work in each possible scenario.  If you buy tickets for any games that end up not being played, you have the option of either getting a refund, or crediting the amount toward 2011 Fisher Cats tickets.  You really have nothing to lose by making sure you have good seats now!  Please visit nhfishercats.com for more information, and to buy tickets.

Playoff ticket prices are the same as those for the regular season; at least they were when I bought our tickets this morning.  Can you even breathe the air in Fenway Park for $12, never mind get in for just $6?  No, you can’t!

The New Hampshire Fisher Cats, of Manchester, NH, will be hosting their second annual “Renew Your Wedding Vows Night” on Saturday, August 7, prior to the 7:05 PM game vs. the Bowie BaySox.  Mike and I participated in the first annual event, and it was a lot of fun.  Since it was so successful, the Fisher Cats are doing it again this year.

If you would like to participate, you will need to contact Joel Leroy at the Fisher Cats to sign up – email him at jleroy@nhfishercats.com or give him a call at (603) 641-2005 ext. 111. He’s a nice guy, he’ll make sure you are signed up and let you know what you need to do.  You will also need to buy tickets to the game; you can buy them online at nhfishercats.com, or just talk to Joel if you prefer to order your tickets over the phone.

Prizes will be awarded at the ceremony.  There will be prizes for the Best-Dressed couple; the couple who won that last year had the bride wearing her original wedding dress (and a Fisher Cats hat on her head); the groom wore one of those T-shirts with a tuxedo printed on it.  Also, a prize for the Longest-Married, not us, I’m sure there will be someone married longer than ten years!  One couple will also win a six-night stay at Steele Hill Resort up in NH; if I remember correctly from last year, that was a “lucky envelope” thing.  Each couple was given an envelope and told not to open it until they were told to.  One couple got the trip, everyone else got two tickets to a Fisher Cats game later that season.  We got tickets to a game, I’ll never turn that down, and we went.  So everybody got something, and it was a lot of fun for all involved.  They will also once again have an Atlas Fireworks show after the game.

If you come, why not make a weekend of it, as we are?  We currently have the Sunday mini-plan, so we already had tickets for the game the next day.  So we’ll be staying at the Hilton Garden Inn that faces the ballpark, which is a very nice place, not too spendy, and you don’t have to worry about parking.  You can also primp up for your wedding there, and just walk out to the ballpark when it’s time.  But if you are more the camping type, and got a good rv insurance quote, I’m sure there are campgrounds that are not too far; I just don’t know where they are. I just know that you can’t park RVs near the ballpark or on the street in Manch, so you’d have to plan ahead. I prefer the hotel!

Even if you don’t want to participate, I’d love it if you wanted to come out and watch the ceremony anyway!  Gates open at 6:05 PM, the ceremony will be held shortly thereafter, before the 7:05 PM game time.  Would love to see you there!