Cold, rainy weather made for less than desirable conditions for my soccer match this morning in Danvers. Our 9-0 win made up for them. After the game, my team gathered at a local bar for lunch and to watch the Manchester United vs Arsenal match. This was made very annoying by the fact that one of the pendant lights surrounding the bar was directly in front of the TV screen. I suggested that we tie two of the lights together so as to provide an unencumbered view. This quick fix was much appreciated by my teammates.

Jeanine shared this picture from her road trip. Who knew there were so many flavors of beef jerky? Can you believe there are two different versions of Bohemian Garlic? It remains to be seen whether she will bring back an assortment for the family to sample.

I spent the better part of the afternoon doing yard work, mostly collecting small branches and trimming dead wood from otherwise healthy trees. When we acquired the property, it had received little attention for the past 40 years. Since taking ownership, we have been tackling different sections of the yard each spring. This year, for the first time, the task seemed less daunting since I only had to deal with one year’s worth of detritus for most sections of the yard.

By all reports, Jeanine and Kris are enjoying their RV road trip to Charleston. Kris sent this picture of Jeanine sporting a newly acquired hat. At last check, they have started the return drive to Florida and were camping on Blythe Island.

Here in Concord, we are having typical spring weather with plants and flowers starting to bloom.

It is that time of year when tom turkeys be struttin’ their stuff and gobbling so loud that you can hear them a quarter of a mile away. The ruckus this morning was so loud that I was compelled to investigate, resulting in the photo above. Click on it for a more detailed view of these truly bizarre-looking birds. I snapped the photo below last night with my iPhone of these two guys squaring off in some kind of male domination showdown.

Today, the kids consummated the purchase of a triplex in Somerville. Kyle and Maya attended the closing in Natick while Nicolai signed forms electronically from Washington, DC, where he will be playing amputee soccer for the US when they take on France in the McCourt Global Amputee Soccer Invitational this Sunday.

Although they own the building jointly, the triplex has three nearly identical units. Maya has taken the 3rd floor, Kyle the 2nd, and Nico will be on the first floor. Each kid can choose to live in their unit or rent it out for the cash flow. Nicolai will be the first to move in when his current lease expires. We are postponing a proper celebration until Jeanine and Nico return so we can do so as a family.

As she has been known to do, Jeanine is getting maximum mileage out of her birthday. As she and Kris dine their way through the finer restaurants in Charleston, I suspect each venue will be celebrating the anniversary of the week of her birth. I do not make this observation in a critical way, for I have been indoctrinated in this practice of multi-week birthday celebrations. When she returns next week, I have little doubt that another fete will be on the agenda.

Last week, after dropping Jeanine off at the airport, I stopped in the Seaport District to do a little shopping at the Helly Hansen store. Looking ahead to our trip to Antarctica, we will need some offshore sailing gear to protect us during Zodiac shore excursions, and Helly Hansen has a great reputation for such outerwear. Although I did not find what I was looking for, I decided to spend some time walking around the area, which has become quite the Boston hotspot. As I was walking along Fan Pier, I noticed a massive jellyfish in the water (~30 inches in diameter). It was hovering a few feet below the surface, making it difficult to bring it into focus, and there was a lot of debris in the water, which I removed with some PhotoShop magic. In the end, it is not a particularly good photo, but it is my first of a live jellyfish in the wild.

It is the custom on my soccer team to follow every match with an aprés at one of our houses or a restaurant if we are playing an away game. I volunteered to host today’s gathering and decided to try something new. Since we had an early game (8 am), I thought it would be fun to do breakfast food on the griddle rather than the customary burgers and beer. We had pancakes, breakfast sausage, bacon, eggs, and hash browns. Thankfully, one of my teammates offered to help me man the grill, allowing us to keep pace with demand. In addition to the cooked food, we had homemade bread baked by one of our players, and macerated strawberries to top the pancakes. I didn’t have time to get a photo, so I pulled this one from our security system.

Oh yeah, we won our game 9-1.

As expected, I took a lot of abuse for not attending Nico’s award ceremony on Friday, where nine of my teammates showed up to surprise me and show support for Nico. Fortunately, or perhaps not, that debacle was topped with an even greater one that soon drew most of the team’s attention. One of our players who lives far away spent the night at the home of one of our local players. As soon as he set foot in the house, he was promptly bitten by the family dog, leaving a nasty wound on his calf. Despite his anguish, I was happy to no longer be the center of attention.

Jeanine shared these photos from Florida, where she is getting ready to embark on an RV adventure with her friend Kris (sitting opposite). Check out her smile as she gets comfortable in the driver’s seat. The grin is not because she is looking forward to piloting a big rig. It is because she is actually in the much larger RV of Kris’s son-in-law, and she knows I am worried about her driving something big and unfamiliar to her. Pictured below, she enjoys a day-before-her-birthday dinner with Kris’s husband, Rob, and daughter Bethany.

This evening, Nico was honored by the Soccer Unity Project for his athletic record, his work to grow amputee soccer, and his advocacy for sports inclusivity. It was a swank affair at the Park Plaza Hotel. In attendance were several of Nico’s close friends and 9 of my soccer teammates. Not attending were either of his parents. I dropped Jeanine at the airport earlier in the day for her flight to West Palm Beach, where she will meet up with her childhood girlfriend, Kris. The two are set to embark on a ten-day RV trip to Charleston. Not knowing that my teammates had secretly planned to attend, I decided, after checking in with Nico, to sit out this event. For an introvert, getting decked out to attend a fancy ball is just not my jam, and going without Jeanine only made me that much less interested. I can only imagine the abuse I am going to receive from my teammates at our game on Sunday. It may take years for them to let me live this down. I will happily take it all on the chin as I try to adequately thank them for their generous show of support for Nico, which means the world to me.

I have been following the voyage of Artemis 2 very closely on the NASA live stream since the launch and am looking forward to splashdown tomorrow. I remember following the Apollo program with similar fascination, and I do not doubt that doing so contributed to my desire to pursue engineering as a profession. The photo above, taken by the crew, is one of my favorites so far. It is a stark reminder of how precious our little blue marble is.

The Common Mergansers have returned to our stretch of the Sudbury River. It is fun to watch each spring as various species of birds return to the area either as a migratory stopover or to take up residence for the rest of the season. In the photo below, I am actually scoping an immature Bald Eagle as it prepares to do a little fishing on the river. Thus far, it has made at least three attempts and come up empty each time. I suspect that as it grows older, it will become more proficient.

Nico was the principal guest on the GP Soccer podcast (Season 14, Episode 5), where he covered a broad range of topics with host Giovanni Pacini. Nico’s segment starts at the 17:30 mark and can be heard by following this link and clicking the PLAY button. It is really nice to see Nico being recognized for his advocacy work on behalf of the sport of amputee soccer, and also to gain insight into the competitive drive that has fueled his success as an elite athlete.

Kyle shared this photo of the view from his new interim office. Not too shabby! From here, he is developing plans for the next chapter in his career. After a decade in the corporate world, most recently as an engineering manager at Hims & Hers, he is now going independent, running a data studio focused on analytics engineering, data strategy, and the infrastructure that makes both possible. He plans to work with founders and operators in healthtech, fintech, edtech, and ecommerce who are past the early chaos but not yet data-mature. If your team is flying blind, reinventing the wheel, or can’t answer basic business questions from your data, consider reaching out to Kyle .

kylecalabria92@gmail.com