Way back in the time machine for this one. Here I am as a young lad receiving some bogus and very vague award. I thought all that touchy feely self-esteem nonsense came after I was out of school, but I guess it’s been around a bit longer. At least we had the times-tables-gold-star bar chart for all to see back then. I can’t quite figure out my facial expression in this photo; it almost looks like I’m rolling my eyes, but I’m sure I wasn’t quite that cynical at that age. Oh, and how depressing is it that this photo is in black and white? :-)

Here’s a pic from the 90s with Adam and I posing in the parking lot behind the apartment I had at the time. We had been playing 1-v-1 fast pitch wiffleball, apparently. The cardboard hanging on the wall was the strike zone, and I’m sure the pitcher’s mound was a bit farther back than is shown here.

I’ve been enjoying the blog’s recent focus on posting older photos with captions (along with random jumps back to the present here and there). So as this photo illustrates, I’m going to continue looking back while moving forward for a while longer.

Don’t you wish you were shoveling snow right now? While I much prefer summer, I must say that I do enjoy the snow quite a bit. It's the darkness and cold that gets me.

Just as I did during the TV writers strike, I'm using the summer "off season" to discover new shows. My current favorite is House. After watching a couple of episodes, I decided to take a chance on it and buy the DVDs of the first three seasons. I wasn't disappointed. Now I'm watching season 4 week-by-week every Monday night (it's on FOX after Bones). Last week's episode even featured an Alanis song from her new album, which is a bit odd since the album just came out and that episode originally aired in the fall.

Back to the year 2000... it’s the four bros at Lime Rock Park for a track event. The car I had at the time was an Eagle Talon TSi AWD. I had bought it used for a few grand and drove it until the transmission went (at the end I only had 1st and 5th gears, which made it a bit tricky to drive). I remember having a lot of fun on this trip, including the ride to and from the track. I’m sure none of us will forget out synchronized getaway from a stoplight to pass a long line of cars.

It was a beautiful sunrise this morning, and for some reason I was there to see it. :-)

Excuse me for interrupting my trip down memory lane for a moment. I have been remiss in not posting any pics from my recent trip up to Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix. I had a general admission ticket, so I walked all around the island that the track is built on and checked out a few different vantage points for viewing the race. I also managed to have my photo taken with a Honda F1 car. I was hoping for rain to give my driver a chance, but though it briefly clouded up right before the start, it was not to be. So I had to settle for a spectacularly beautiful day in a beautiful city.

This was the end result of the worst car accident I’ve had (hmm, that kind of makes it sound like I’ve had quite a few). My trusty Taurus was destroyed, the airbags deployed (awful smell BTW) and I was completely, and I must say unexpectedly, unhurt. Fortunately, the driver of the other vehicle that was coming the other way and spun into my lane on that snowy day a few years ago was also uninjured. And the insurance company came through with what became a nice down payment towards my next vehicle.

Going to the supercute puppy well once again. Here we are in 2000 with baby Jazzy at the old homestead in Sterling. And the reason I’m blogging so late in the day is because I watched the Celtics come back to beat the Lakers after being down more than 20 (and me almost giving up on the game and heading to bed).

Hey, it’s me a few years back with a baby cow that thought it was a dog. You couldn’t really blame it - it was about the same size and spent more time with them than with the other cows. And it probably saw Babe and figured that if a pig could do it...

Back into the time machine for a trip way back to the days where the shorts I’m wearing in this pic were actually fashionable. Yes, it’s hard to believe they ever were - such is the power of time. This photo was taken in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida by my buddy Jf when we took a trip down there one summer in college.

This one wasn’t all that long ago in real time, even though it feels like a lifetime ago. Ruins in Rome. Everything there was just so beautiful and larger than life - the sense of scale of the structures is truly impressive. It’s a magical place, and I hope to get back there someday.

Going farther back in time (I don’t even want to calculate how far), I found this photo of the boys from my sixth grade class. I don’t know where the girls are - at this point we didn’t find them “ickey” anymore. Apparently, we were all trying to act tough for the pic (perhaps to impress the girls with our manliness) since there isn’t even one smile. Just off the top of my head, I can remember the names of over half the kids in this photo, which is surprising since I’m not known for having a particularly good memory.

So I’ve got some news about this blog; I think it’s time to go in a different direction with it, but I haven’t decided what direction that will be quite yet. In the meantime, I’m going to post some of my favorite old photos with a caption. The good news is that I’ll be posting regularly with the pics until I figure it out. This photo is in honor of Jazzy’s birthday, which was last week (May 28th). Jazzy is now 8 years old, which is 45 to you and me, according to this conversion calculator. The photo is from way back in 2000, when Jazzy and and her paler sister Bailey were just pups.