5 Things I Learned This Week:

• Hockey really matters – Thanks to the efforts of the Boston Bruins and living with some HARDCORE fans, not even I considered it suffering to watch hockey well into JUNE!
• My neighbors lived in slum – All 6 families jammed into a 2 family house, lived in deplorable conditions. After living next to that house for nearly 40 years, I am surprised I did not know that. The house is being demolished to put up 5 townhouses. I took that as my queue to sneak around in the house after everyone moved out. GROSS would be the only word that comes to mind.
• There is no limit to the number of times I can eat at Pizzeria Regina in the course of a week – As much as I am proud of being a Bostonian, I must say that the pizza here always failed to impress me (blaming the Greeks for that). There are essentially 2 or 3 really exceptional pizza places in the entire city. One being Santarpios in East Boston. No trip to Logan Airport when I was growing up would be complete without a pitstop at Santarpios. The other is Pizzeria Regina. Now that they have opened a location a few miles from my house, I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF THE PIZZA! I will be heading there on Friday….for the 3rd time this week.
• Tapering off Prednisone can bring on even more issues than simply staying on the stuff. I am EXTREMELY tired all day. I am still gaining weight and my mood swings all over the spectrum. I am constantly achey and my head is always swirling. The pinkie and ring figers of both hands are numb enough to make it difficult to throw a baseball or carry groceries. My ankles are swollen. My fingers are swollen to the point that I can’t wear my wedding band (curses!). I sweat like a sweaty fat guy and I need to catch my breath walking up0 a couple of flights of stairs. My legs can develop severe charlie horses that last for hours simply by walking across the street. The tiredness is so deep that I have fallen asleep at very embarrassing times. From the moment I wake up, despite coffee, yerba mate and even those horrible 5 hour energy drinks, I can fall asleep standing up, walking, at the urinal, in meetings, at my desk, on the phone, on the baseball field and other places…did I mention AT THE URINAL?! 
• I cannot sink a free-throw to save my life – Blaming the prednisone…for now.