Close win

It took an overtime period and a shootout but the Bruins eventually got around to beating the Golden Knights 3-2 last night.

Things got a little chippy during the game with the Golden Knights accruing 19 penalty minutes. That's a minute short of a playing short-handed for an entire period.

They are off now until Thursday when they go to Pittsburgh and take on the Penguins

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Three members of the Boston Red Sox won awards recently - Wilyer Abreu, Ceddanne Rafaela and Caleb Durbin all won Rawlings Golden Gloves.

Payton Tolle is one of three finalists for Rookie of the Year.

Chad Tracy is one of three finalists for Manager of the Year

Now if the players and the owners can agree on a collective bargaining agreement, I'll be a happy guy.

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Today is election day and that means the political commercials are almost over with.

Now I just have to put up with news broadcasts that consist mostly of guessing what the outcomes are going to be.

Trust me, they have no idea what the outcomes are going to be.

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I looked up all of the charges on my gas bill today and now I'm kinda pissed.

These are not all the line items, just the ones that matter::

• Actual cost of gas: $11.72 - This is how much I paid for the LNG I used last month. Pretty damned reasonable if you ask me.


• Customer Charge: $12.20 - This is what they charge me to be a customer. This is bullshit.


• Distribution Charge: $34.24 - This is what they charge me to deliver the LNG to my house. This is okay because someone has to pay for the pipes but given that Healey cancelled the pipelines, I'm not entirely sure what pipes we are paying for...


• Revenue Decoupling Charge: $36.52 - Not only is this the most expensive line item on my bill, it is the deepest pile of bullshit imaginable. It represents the difference between what the state said they could earn and how much they actually earned. In other words, I have to pay them because they didn't make as much money as the state said they could.


• Distribution Adjustment Charge: $5.43 - State mandated fees to fund Mass Save. In other words, this is what I pay so other people can upgrade their furnaces.


• Energy Efficiency Charge: $13.15 - State mandated fee to fund energy-savings programs. In other words, this is what I pay so other people can upgrade their furnaces.


• Residential Assistance Charge: $3.10 - This is the money used to help out people who can't afford to heat their homes. I don't have a problem with that.

Look at the bill and you will see that I pay a lot of money for almost nothing and a little money for something. If the state was more concerned about what I pay to heat my house than they are about how much money the utility makes, my monthly gas bill would be around $50 instead of the $118 it was.

Oh, and no, I do not know the difference between the "Distribution Adjustment Charge" and the "Energy Efficiency Charge". They seem to both exist for the same reason.

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My fertilizer guy called today and said they would apply my final feed and lime tomorrow so my wife and I cleaned the lawn of leaves.

This is what my lawn looked like at 1:00 this afternoon:

Hopefully it looks that good when the fertilizer guy shows up tomorrow...

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Here are some links:

• Researchers: Contributing to the betterment of our society or a complete waste of perfectly good oxygen.



• Oh, that? Yea, that's just a bottle.



• Starbucks is gonna sue them for stealing their business model.

It's football time.

The Patriots are down in Miami to take on the Dolphins and it looks like they won't have A.J. Brown, Marcus Bryant or TreVeyon Henderson.

This is a bad thing for them but if the offensive line can hold together for Maye, he might be able to find targets.

Either that or their gonna have to rely on their running game...

Kickoff was at 4:25 this afternoon and CBS is carrying the game. As of this moment, it is tied 3-3 with 1:20 left in the first quarter.

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We had a fairly successful Halloween last night with 60+ youngster coming to our door.

Here's my observations of the evening:

Parents that dress up in costume when they take their little ones out are saints and should be praised for their efforts. I always offered them candy.

Teenagers that bring their younger siblings with them are also saints and I gave them extra candy.

The crew that showed up in a highly decorated pickup truck pulling a sided trailer filled with little kids should win an award for their effort. Also, one of your kids took off their sneakers and tossed them out of the trailer because there is a pair of tiny black sneakers on the side of the road near my house.

All-in-all, everyone seemed to be having an enjoyable evening and the weather held nicely. I did notice it was a bit chilly because the little two-year old dressed as a pumpkin who kept insisting that I high-five her had some very cold hands. She also flashed an excellent "thumbs up" while walking down my driveway.

For the record, our youngest grandchild was a strawberry, the middle grandchild was "Princess Rosalina" from Super Mario Galaxy and the eldest grandchild was "Man Dog".

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In three more days, the mid-term elections will be over.

Thank God...

If I have to sit through one more television commercial exclaiming "Richie Neal is from Springfield!" or "Nadia Milleron is not a MAGA!" or "John Deaton beat cancer!" or "Mike Minogue invented a heart pump!" or "Maura Healey is trying to lower your utility bills!", I'm gonna have a brain aneurysm.

Yes, Neal is from Springfield but he's spent the last 36 year in congress representing the people of Ireland.

Milleron is probably not MAGA but she is full-tilt bozo's. She's what we used to call "a ditz".

Yes, Deaton beat cancer. What does that have to do with his ability to be a good senator? All he really has to do is say, "I'm not Markey!" and he'd probablly win.

Minogue did not invent a heart pump, he ran a company where someone invented a heart pump and he took credit for it. That does not mean he would be a good governor. Or maybe it does mean he'd be a good govenor. What the hell do I know...

Then again, Minogue is up against Healey who is flat-out lying about lowering our utility costs. Hell, she's the one that caused them to go up so high in the first place.

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Here are some links:

• Key lie in this story: "At the end of the day, the Mass Save program is voluntary."
  Does that mean I don't have to pay the line items for it on my utility bills?



• If this shit spreads to the US, they should be aware that I will defend my home.



• Here's a bunch of crap you don't need to know.



• You can call them names, you can say their way of thinking is dumb but you can't threaten to kill them.



• Um, this seems pretty inappropriate.

Nice win this afternoon.

It looked like the Bruins were going to lose today's game but with 10 seconds left in regulation, they scored their 4^th goal, tying the game 4-4 and sending it to overtime.

Then, 2½ minutes into the overtime period, they scored and won the game 5-4.

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We have prepared our candy bowl and we are awaiting the arrival of our first trick-or-treaters.

And when I say we have "prepared", what I mean is we have taken out a a share of all the candy we like because we don't expect a ton of kids.

Candy for everybody! Including us!

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We got the lawn cleared today. And by "we", I mean my wife got the leaves out of her gardens and onto the lawn and I picked up all the leaves with my lawn tractor.

All things considered, it went pretty well. It took us about 2 hours to clear the entire property.

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Here are some links:

• This is not good.



• Apparently they're handing out guns for Halloween in D.C.



• Maybe I'm a prepper because some of those pictures look like our typical trip to Costco.

A loss

The Bruins played like crap last night and ended up losing 4-1 to the Blues.

They are still in 1^st place in the Atlantic division and still in 2^nd place in the Eastern conference which is good but if they keep getting outplayed, that'll change for the worse.

They are back in Boston where tomorrow afternoon they will take on the Blackhawks. Puck drops at 1:00pm so I'll be able to watch all 3 periods.

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Here are some links:

• I'm pretty sure being squished to death isn't in our near future.



• Here's a headline I never thought I'd see.



• This is in the Pacific NorthWest...



• Can't someone just say, "Each bitcoin is now worth a nickel!" Because that's how it got so expensive in the first place - someone said it was worth something when it had no actual value at all.

Excellent baseball was played.

The Brewers beat the Rays 4-1 last night and won the World Series.

So now we are in the off-season and there is a very strong possibility that there might not be any on-season in 2027.

The MLB collective bargaining agreement between the players union and the owners ends on December 1st and, so far, negotiations for the next agreement are not going well. The owners want to spend less money (a lot less money) by instituting a salary cap and the players want to earn more money (a lot more money!) by rejecting the owners proposed salary cap.

There are a lot of other things in both proposals (here's a good breakdown) but those are the big points of contention.

Here's my opinion: This is nothing more than a bunch of rich people, playing my favorite childhood game, arguing over who should become richer. And the people who suffer the most during these negotiations are all the support people.

The only people who are going to suffer during these negotiations are the people who sell the peanuts at the ballpark, the people who clean the floors at the ballpark, the people who wash the players uniforms, the people selling the game programs at the ballpark, etc...

That's who is going to suffer, not the multi-billionaire owners or the multi-millionaire players.

On the upside, the MiLB will probably have record-setting attendance for their games...

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Here are some links:

• If this turns out to be true, it is a big deal and it goes a long way in supporting Trump's constant whining about elections.



• Make it so.



• Helmet-Hair Hegseth is at it again.



• This is the latest and greatest cure-all I was refering to in yesterday's post.