Hometown boy at heart

I had a nice visit with an old college roommate (are there any other kind now?) and his wife today, who have a daughter about to graduate from Skidmore.

Finally, somebody somebody to talk to who really cares about the injuries to Mike Cameron and Jacoby Ellsbury and remembers Don Buddin (Red Sox) marvels at the magic of Rajon Rondo (Celtics) and is worried sick that the Bruins might blow their 3-0 lead in the Stanley Cup playoffs (hockey).

He is the same guy I was golfing with a couple of years ago with my long-time best friend from here and realized that between them they had known me for most of my life. They could stitch together a pretty complete biography of me all of these years later (even back to the girls we thought were cute in junior high school) if anybody cared enough. Emily, of course, is a Boston-area girl, as anyone who has ever heard her say "scissors'' will attest.

I remember getting a shock when our kids were small and after a trip back to Boston they made fun of the accents of their cousins. Now Ellen is living there and Janice would like to.

Although we ended up not settling down in my home town or even in the Boston area (as my friend did, after a short stint in New York City) I am a homebody at heart, which I' sure explains in part why I've ended up living here for 26 years. Albany is more home to me now than any other place has been.

When we packed up to leave Massachusetts 36 years ago for Rochester to start work at my third paper in five years, little did I realize that I would live upstate for (probably) the rest of my life and for the same company even. That's not supposed to happen.

I'm glad it did. I'm also glad I still have connections to where I grew up.