'Tis the season! I had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with my family and some friends. I hope you were able to have a great Thanksgiving weekend too.
I'm happy to report that right before Thanksgiving, we launched our 2nd annual 12 Strays Of Christmas Pet Food & Supply Drive on 102.3 WSUS The Christmas Station, The Tri-State's Rock Station 103.7 NNJ, and The Tri-State's #1 For New Country 106.3 The Bear! We have had such an amazing time with Stuff The Bus all of these years helping so many in Sussex County, I wanted to see if we could get any luck with something similar. While we gladly take any pet food and supplies during our Stuff The Bus food drive, it isn't the base of our radiothon promotion. For years we've heard of folks struggling so much, that they pick feeding their pets instead of feeding themselves, or keeping their heat low just so they can afford to feed their pets. This couldn't happen without your immediate help and support. I'm so grateful for our sponsor drop off locations Scotty's Automotive on 206 in Montague, and Sussex Rural Electric. Thank you for continuing to support these local friends who are all diehard animal lovers. I'm talking their entire teams! They're psyched each year I show up with a big box for donations. Where will these donations go after we collect them at these locations? Just like last year we are doing it three fold. Everything we collect stays local, going to Father John's Animal House, One Step Closer Animal Rescue OSCAR, and The Sussex County Division Of Social Services food pantry. We want to help both local pets and their families too. I'm very proud of this whole promotion. One more huge, fun great thing about this?
We do a grand finale party at Father John's Animal House, where we showcase 12 Pets during a Facebook Live video simulcast on all 3 of our radio station Facebook pages Saturday December 14th! Many friends thought I was crazy coming up with this idea and trying to showcase our 12 Strays Of Christmas all in LIVE video at the same exact time. I get it. Just handling one pet at a time during my Adopt A Pet Of The Week Thursdays at 3:45pm can be a tall enough task. I'm happy to report it went amazing! You want to talk about what I think is a win win? We get to help local people, pets, then celebrate with 12 adoptable pets all at the same time! Last year we got 10 of 12 adopted within 4 days after our video. I'm hopeful next year we can get even more drop off locations and make this even bigger!!! Thank you so much for your support. You can see more about this by clicking here.
Wednesday night I did my usual Thanksgiving Eve celebration with some amazing, close friends. Besties Brad, Lesley, Shawn, Gayle, Roy and Denise all showed up to hang with me. I'm very grateful for them, even if I was on fumes after our amazing Stuff The Bus weekend that had us working wall to wall all weekend.
Thursday morning I was on the road by 7:15am, and at my parents house in Mansfield, Massachusetts by 11:15am. 4 hours on Thanksgiving morning again, despite the hard, cold, nonstop rain. I'll take that all day!
I had a wonderful time with my family. We were at the Cousins / Kids Table, where we always have a great time. I had a great time getting to catch up with my family. They're so amazing, generous, and patient with me! They've all always been so supportive of me my whole life. I'm a truly lucky guy.
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We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I still can't believe that Detroit Lions Chicago Bears game. I swear my whole family along with the rest of America was yelling at the TV "What are you guys doing?" We weren't even rooting for the Bears, just couldn't believe how unorganized they were at the end of that game. Crazy. Then the NY Giants did their part to make their games potentially more affordable for me to attend by losing again.
Friday I had a great lunch out with my parents at a place in Mansfield called Jake & Joe's. It's a sports pub that I still get emails from whenever they have sales, and they had a Black Friday sale that we had fun enjoying.
Friday night I was able to meet up with besties Tracy and Matt. They had that beautiful wedding on Cape Cod I went to back in September, where they were amazing despite the 9 inches of rain we had up there during their wedding weekend. We had a great time meeting up at a Boston Tavern in Middleboro, ironically where they had their first ever date. We then ended up at an intimate, cozy, fun (trying so hard to not say dive,) place in downtown Middleboro later. I had such a wonderful time catching up with them, while sharing so many great belly laughs and stories together.
Saturday I went to Wrentham Village Premium Outlets in nearby Wrentham, Massachusetts for my first time in a few years. If you're ever up there, I will say that they have made many much needed modernization upgrades. I never liked their food court too much, now they replaced that basically with several food trucks that looked pretty delicious. They also have a restaurant in the mall that wasn't previously at this location. I had a great shopping experience at their Skechers outlet getting new sneakers just like the ones I normally get. It felt to be able to get them in person at a brick & mortar instead of Skechers.com, usually I have trouble getting my 8.5 size at their brick & mortar options.
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Saturday night I had a great dinner bunch fun with Madre, Padre, Uncle Jeff/JDawg, and Aunty Soup/Sue. We had a great time together. Friday night I had my parents watch The Netflix special on The Red Sox, The Comeback covering their 2003 season then the big 2004 86 year Curse ending World Series win. It was fun watching it with my parents even though I had seen it once already.
Sunday morning I was on the road by 7:45am. I basically just woke up, packed up, hugged and kiss my parents, teared up a little like I do pretty much every time, then hit the road. I was sorry that I just missed my sister Suzanne who tried swinging by early to see me just before going to work. I was in a hurry to beat traffic. I've learned on Thanksgiving weekend, if I leave Boston by 8am, usually it can take me just 4 hours to get back here in Jersey. If I wait until 8:30am? Then it becomes 5 hours. If I wait until 9 or 10, it then becomes 6 or 7. All set with avoiding that if possible.
I didn't have much energy after returning, but was able to watch football at The Cottage with besties Artie, Roy, Paul M and B Rad. We were enjoying all of the football action, even if our teams didn't win. All good.
Then at 5ish, I was called into work. Radio life as a Program Director, sometimes your people get sick. Life happens. I was able to go back after getting done with work, and watch the rest of action packed 4pm Sunday NFL games with friends, all good.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read my Epic Weekend In Pictures. Time to start planning next weekend! I would love to go New England and see friends next weekend, but back to back weekends for a short time might be to tough for even me to pull off. We will see. Either way this past weekend was amazing, and hopefully next weekend will be too!