Hola, jalapenos. Just posting some bloggishness before we head off to NJ for the rest of the week. I'm getting out of work at 12:30 tomorrow and we're hitting the road for what undoubtedly will be a long, arduous journey. I've been spoiled the last few years, as we've hosted T-giving here in Beverly, so tomorrow I'll have to suck it up and hope it doesn't take much longer than six hours. Hopefully Hannah will take a nice nap for some of the trip, too.

So my car misadventures continue. I went into work for a few hours Saturday morning and on my way home I noticed I was having some problems accelerating after a stop. Then I got the lovely smell of radiator fluid. I stopped about a mile from my house because I didn't think I'd make it home. Long story short, it was the head gasket, which could cost big bucks to fix. If it gets into the $1,500-$2,000 stratosphere, we may just say screw it and not bother. At this point, it's just not worth it. One possibility could be to buy my mom-in-law's '97 Escort, because she may be getting a new vehicle in a few months. I only need a car to get to Marblehead and back every day, a 15-mile round trip.

Things got a little better Saturday when I watched the Heritage Classic, the first NHL outdoor hockey game ever. They held it in Edmonton at the football stadium there, and damn, did it look cold. Temps were around zero F. It was Edmonton vs. Montreal and was preceded by an oldtimers game featuring Gretzky, Messier, Kurri et al vs. the Montreal geezers with Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson, etc. Boy, did that bring back a lot of memories. The old bastards put on a good show, too. They played two 15-minute halves, with a short break to allow the players to shovel off the snow, just like a real pond hockey game. The Oilers won 2-0, but the current Oil lost in the nightcap, 5-2. It was good game, though. Got me psyched to get out on the ponds once it gets cold enough.

The end of the year is coming, so that means lots of lists. I'll hold off on my top whatever of the year until the year actually ends, but the folks at Pitchfork are posting their revised Top 100 albums of the '90s list. The strange thing is, they did one at the actual end of the '90s, but apparently they felt the urge to do a little revisionist history and update it. Seems a little cheesy to me--maybe they were embarrassed by all the Color Me Badd albums they included the first time around. Speaking of cheese, the vacuous blowhards at Rolling Stone have graced us with their Top 500 albums of all time list, for whatever that's worth. These chumps come out with lists like these about three times a year, in between soft-core Britney covers. God, do they suck-diddly-uck. Still, I enjoy reading these lists, if only to disagree with them. List-making is so subjective, there will always be disagreements. But hopefully, the writers at least do a good job justifying their picks. I just skimmed these two, and of course, Pitchfork's is more enjoyable to read, in their Superior Indie Rock Nerd fashion.

Aiight, I'm off to play some hockey. Rock on and don't eat too much turducken, or in Master OJ's case, too much tofurkey. Werd.