Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus!

Another Christmas is history, but Barbara and I hope that yours was as happy as ours was.

It was a great weekend of visiting family and eating far too much, while the insulin pump got a good workout!

We headed to Buffalo on Wednesday, arriving in time to enjoy a bucket of wings at Duff's, our favorite wing joint in the Buffalo area.

The fine dining continued on Christmas Eve, with breakfast at Tim Horton's in Amherst, NY and lunch at Johnny's Hamburgers in Scarborough.

Johnny's hasn't changed since my high school days, and the burgers, fries and shakes still taste as good 40 years later!

We had a great visit with my family in Canada. Christmas Eve at my brother's home, followed by a quiet Christmas Day spent with my parents, and Boxing Day was capped by the entire Penstone clan gathering for a fabulous dinner at my sister's house.

For the uninformed, Boxing Day is the day after Christmas Day, and is celebrated by people rushing out in the pre-dawn darkness to buy things they don't need or use up the gift cards they got the day before.

I believe that down here it's called "Black Friday."

Sunday was an early day for us, starting (of course) with another stop at another Tim Horton's before we headed for Pittsburgh to see the Penguins and Maple Leafs.

Fortunately, the weather was good, the increased security at the border didn't slow us down too much, and we made it to da 'Burgh well before game time.

We stayed at the Marriott across the road from the Mellon, and enjoyed a pre-game meal in the lobby bar. That gave Barb a chance to catch some of her Broncos stumblin' and bumblin' against the Iggles -- whoda thunk it that they would come back and almost beat Philly??

As is always the case when the Leafs visit Pittsburgh, there were a lot of Leafs fans in the hotel bar, which made for some interesting banter that continued inside the Mellon. All in good fun, with no one getting too carried away.

With the Leafs losing to Montreal in overtime the night before, I wasn't expecting much from them against the reigning Stanley Cup champs. But Santa must think I've been a good boy, because they were able to come away with a 4-3 win,
thanks to Ian White's late 3rd period goal just after the Pens had tied it up.

JoeBa was at the game -- I found that out when I read his email after getting back to the hotel. While I can't post most of what he wrote here, he didn't like what he saw:

Pens played lethargicly, the Leafs inspired! Is 'lethargicly' a word??

An interesting side note -- while it took Barb and I less than a half-hour to cross the border at Buffalo, apparently members of the Toronto press corps weren't so lucky.

Mike Ziesberger wrote in today's Toronto Sun:

Meanwhile, due to airport chaos and flight cancellations yesterday, only one reporter from a Toronto newspaper - that being a representative from the Toronto Sun -- was on hand for the Leafs-Pittsburgh Penguins game at Mellon Arena last night.

In fact, in more than a decade of covering the Leafs, yours truly has never seen so few Toronto reporters sitting on press row at a Leaf game. There were only two, with AM 640's Jonas Siegel being the other.

Hmmm - if only the Toronto radio crew hadn't made it! Hey, a guy can dream at Christmas, can't he??? Oh well, I'll be back at the Mellon in a couple of weeks for the Icers and Robert Morris.