Alex's Blog

I’m back – and the most likely news item to get me to post when I’m busy is a new Bruce album rumor!! Now, these are only rumors, but they don’t have to be substantiated for me to re-post.
The news is that Ron Aniello, a former Patty Scialfa producer, has been working with Springsteen and drummer Matt Chamberlain over the spring and summer, and that there may be an October release. That’s only a month from now, but this is exactly how 2007′s Magic album happened. So stay tuned…

Check out the full story from Blogness on the Edge of Town here.

Zoey joined our family on Tuesday, Nov. 16th and the last three days have been a blur of joy, exhaustion, and cleaning up after her. Jen and I picked Zoey up from Vicki at West Orchard Labradoodles on Tuesday morning, after she was cleared by the vet to be a breeding dog on Monday evening. Zoey is a standard Labradoodle, and should end up growing to between 50 and 60 pounds. She has a chocolate coat with a strange cream-like undercoat that I’ve learned is the rare “Lavender” coat, which will get silvery pink as she matures. We wanted a pure Chocolate, but this is the pup we could get and she’s a wonderful dog.

Zoey settles in on her first day

We have taken an unusual route to dog ownership – we are Zoey’s guardians, or “forever family”. That means that the breeder, Vicki, gave us this beautiful puppy without payment, in exchange for keeping her “intact” and retaining the right to breed her up to three times over the first six years of Zoey’s life.

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our new puppy, Zoey.

Zoey @ 6 Weeks

Zoey is a chocolate labradoodle and she will be coming home with us Tuesday morning from West Orchard Labradoodles, in Mt. Kisco, NY. Vicki Roosevelt there is a wonderful breeder, and we’ve enjoyed getting to know her and her seven dogs, over the past month. Zoey’s mother, Scout, si a great dog – sturdy, gentle, and sweet, with beautiful light brown eyes. She also started out with a chocolate coat, though she is now a greyish-cream that is referred to as “lavender”. Hopefully, Zoey won’t end up going this route as she ages, though if she’s as great a dog as Scout, then it will be a worthwhile trade-off.

I am a dog person who had, as an adult, grown to loathe the idea of owning a dog. My family had a Golden Retriever – Woody – and a Retriever/St. Bernard mix – Cisco – during my teenage years, and I loved those dogs. Then, I got a yellow lab in my twenties, with my ex-wife, when we first moved out of NYC to the ‘burbs and weren’t yet ready for kids. We got Molson from a fairly amateur breeder in Stamford, CT (they lived directly across the street from the house I lived in during my teens, long since sold by my parents – which was weird), and while his mother wasn’t too big, Molson grew to 105 pounds. He was tall and lanky and uncoordinated and goofy. I was so excited to own “my” first dog as an adult. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Last year, I wrote up my favorite 10 Beatles’ songs as a response to a list that Entertainment Weekly published of its’ opinion of the top 50 Beatles songs. Now, Rolling Stone has weighed in with its’ top 10 list, as a preview of their new collector’s issue “The Beatles 100 Greatest Songs” on sale now.

The interesting thing now, as I noted last year, is that there is no right or wrong answers here, but it is interesting to see which songs make each list. Take a quick look to compare. [Read the rest of this entry...]