Nico placed third in the 2020 Gorham Savings Bank Maine Amputee Open golf tournament held at the Brunswick Golf Club in Maine. The 36 hole stroke play event was run by the Amputee Association of Maine and is Nico’s first competitive tournament. He shot a pair of 81s competing in the above-the-knee amputee category. I suspect he was the only participant who played without a prosthetic and question if that left him on equal footing, no pun intended. I have a feeling this will not be the last post about Nico’s golf exploits. Local television news coverage of the event can be found here.

While attending my soccer teammate’s birthday party yesterday, I captured this image of him with his adult daughter. Steve and I share Italian ancestry and I love that our people demonstrate a propensity for close physical contact with family and friends.

I am the oldest member of my over-55 soccer team at 62 but some of my teammates are not far behind. Steve, pictured center, enjoys a surprise 60th birthday to which we were invited. The gathering included dozens of friends and family but I think Steve was most surprised to see us there. We gave him a signed soccer ball and a Team Italia soccer jersey with his name printed on the back. Later, a group of us met up at a local sports bar and grille to watch the EuroCup finals. Obviously, I was rooting for Italy based on my ancestry and represented a small fraction of the bar patrons I was surrounded by. Their victory was even sweeter as a member of the vocal minority. Even so, I do feel sorry for all of my English friends who had to endure yet another penalty kick defeat.

Seemingly overnight, our backyard has erupted with a crop of mushrooms. Fortunately, our groundhog, Gary, cannot get enough of them and can be seen dining on them throughout the day. I used to think bird identification was difficult. The world of fungi is something on an entirely different level. Currently, scientists have identified some 120,000 species of fungi and recent estimates put the total number on this planet between 2.2 and 3.8 million! Identified mushrooms, however, number a mere 14,000. Suffice it to say, I gave up trying to identify this mushroom rather quickly.

Nicolai and his soccer teammate, Rafa (left), met with the Mayor of Revere, Brian Arrigo (2nd from left), and Artur Braga, a representative of Brazillian radio station Nossa Ràdio USA. They have secured the use of the Revere Stadium for a US National Amputee Soccer Team intrasquad friendly to be held August 7th. Over that weekend the American Amputee Soccer Association will be conducting an ID camp to determine which players will represent the United States in upcoming international competition.

We celebrated Nico’s 27th birthday at the Dumpling House in Cambridge this evening. The dinner was great, the conversation even better, and the opportunity to enjoy each other’s company; priceless.

To date, I have been the keeper of birth certificates, social security cards, and vaccination records for the children. This evening each received an envelope containing their respective documents and are now in charge of their security and retention. They all groused. Perhaps the handoff represented the final acknowledgment of their status as bonafide adults. I, on the other hand, felt a sense of liberation from a responsibility I had grown weary of. Although he chose to pose with the meal’s leftovers, Nicolai’s package also included his Master’s Degree diploma which arrived at our house earlier in the week.

My nephew Mario, a day older than Nicolai, turned 27 today. A scholar and athlete and the nicest person you will ever meet. Among the cousins, he is the most proficient at self-levitation.

Nico, Maya, and I drove to Hartford, CT this afternoon to watch the US National Women’s Soccer Team (USNWST) play Mexico in their final match before heading to Japan for the Olympics. The US looked very sharp in the first half, scoring 4 unanswered goals, each a masterpiece in its own right and very exciting. The scoreless second half was played with less intensity and I suspect that the priority was to ensure no one got injured ahead of the Games. It was a great outing that will be long remembered and left us with an even greater desire to follow our women’s team on their quest for gold.

Jeanine took this photo of her sister Susan over the long weekend while visiting with her in Burlington, VT. The two spent a lot of time indoors playing Dominos with friend Jean Cass because of inclement weather but did manage an outing to Lake Champlain during a break in the rain.

Each 4th of July, the USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”), the world’s oldest ship of any type still afloat, sails 1 nautical mile from the Charlestown Navy Yard to Castle Island and fires a 21-gun salute. She is often incorrectly described as the oldest commissioned warship. That honor, however, belongs to the HMS Victory, but she has been in dry dock since 1922. This morning, I drove down to Fort Independence to experience the 21 cannon salute in person. It was quite thrilling and definitely worth the effort. I hope one day to photograph her with more than one tiny sail deployed.

On my way home, I stopped at the Mount Auburn Cemetery and climbed Washington Tower for a view of downtown Boston. I contemplate returning in the evening to photograph the fireworks from this vantage but learned that the cemetery closes at 8 pm.

Jeanine is spending the long weekend with her sister in Burlington, VT. I spent most of the day at Kyle’s new house where I helped him to deconstruct part of the basement. When he purchased the house, he did so with an eye to renovating and then renting out this space. We spent a little more than 4 hours removing walls, drywall, ceiling tiles, and paneling. Nicolai arrived at noon with burritos which we enjoyed while watching the Denmark vs. Czech Republic UEFA/Euro 2020 quarterfinal soccer match. We put in another hour of work before relaxing to the England vs. Ukraine match. Although my back continues to bother me, Kyle did all of the heavy lifting and I otherwise thoroughly enjoyed spending the day with my boys.

My semi-retirement is off to a good start. I picked up two additional technical consulting clients this week and have a line of sight on two more. My goal is to work no more than half-time in aggregate and only on projects that are really fun. Speaking of fun, my soccer team had our end-of-season dinner in the Seaport District at Davio’s, a northern Italian steakhouse. The food was phenomenal, as was the company. With each season, the tales of past glory seem to grow ever more impressive.

I had a meeting in Cambridge this afternoon with a venture capital/startup incubator that is looking for an engineering executive to help out with some of their portfolio companies. It sounds like a very interesting opportunity and one that is compatible with my desire to transition to part-time work only. While I was in the neighborhood, I decided to stop in at Superpedestrian to visit with my old colleagues. The guys have done a tremendous job with the business which has grown from 20 employees to roughly 200 by way of a strategic acquisition. When I left, we had just completed our first electric scooter prototypes. Now the company has some 35,000 deployed around the world. Bravo! On my drive home, my car registered an outside temperature of 103°F while passing the Alewife T Station. Boston reached 97°F, the highest temperature ever measured for this date since records have been kept.

There are two very large trees on our property that are a threat to the house. Earlier this year, we received permission from the Concord Natural Resource Commission to have them removed. To offset their loss, we were asked to plant four bushes from a list of native species. We choose Spartan High Bush Blueberries. Thus far, they seem to be very happy along the river bank and have been undisturbed by the local critters. This cultivar produces berries that are quarter-sized and very delicious. Hopefully, we will get to taste them in a few weeks.