Sitting in Logan right now, waiting to head to DC and then the short 11 hour 54 minute trip to Kuwait, Kuwait… Wait, is that right? Is that like New York, New York just hotter?

All packed, and I promise you it’s 1/100th what a woman would pack for an eight-day trip and I will NOT have to wear any underwear two times.

The USO doesn’t permit family to travel with you so I am taking one of my old college roommates and good friends, Ty Van Dyke. Ty will likely chime in with a few ‘Curt’ stories (such as the first time he ever saw me, much less met me, I was passed out in a bath tub), and he’s one of the funniest men you’ll ever meet. He’ll also have one responsibility, to video blog the crap out of this trip.

The DOD has rules in place (understandably so) for video stuff so I don’t know what the timing, if any, will be for me to post or put up any video blogging. Likely we will compile everything and put something together when we return.

I’m a bit nervous, won’t lie. Even though it’s a USO trip it’s still an active war zone, and people are trying to kill other people. That being said I can only reiterate what I said earlier in that this is one of the biggest thrills of my entire life.

I have about 3,000 38 Studios patches to hand out, I bought a ton of ’sundries’ that I know folks over there are desperate for as well.

My goal this year for Medfield 4 the Military will be to find folks over there that will be away from their families and see if we can’t help get gifts to their loved ones back here in the states. It will be a challenge but we’ll try.

I’ll update once in DC as we have a lay over there. We depart sometime around 10 tonight and the first two days are spent in Kuwait so I should have some internet access. After that it will be limited at best. I certainly won’t be pushing in line to get access on military bases with soldiers over there trying to get on.

(Update: 4:50 p.m.)

It begins.

Apparently the folks running United Airlines believe their passengers communicate telepathically, or through some other method not used by the rest of the modern world. It took a man well past his 120th birthday to inform me that our flight from Boston had changed departure time, from 4:40 to 5:35. All the while I am sitting like 15 feet from the gate and departure desk, you know that thing with a microphone that most airlines use to communicate travel information with passengers? Ya, that one.

So a slight delay to the start. Ty is already in Washington, having arrived from Flagstaff via the Pony Express to LA or somewhere close that actually has modern transportation!

We aren’t slated to depart D.C. until late this evening so I don’t foresee any issues with connections.

The only thing I’m concerned about on this leg, other than landing safely on both stops, is the rumor I have heard that approximately 50 percent of your luggage is lost in flights into Kuwait. That means I’m possibly landing there with NOTHING to hand out to the troops, or one pair of underwear for 8 days.

To WEEI.com. I am going to begin working with Rob Bradford and the folks over at EEI to blog going forward. I have way too much going on to keep up here without some sort of push, and help. I have immense respect for Rob and am comfortable that he’s a fan first and a writer second. He has yet to write anything that I didn’t know to be true, which in and of itself sets him apart from many.

So I started a write up about Thanksgiving, 5 years ago, and it will be posted there.

Check out WEEI.COM for all the latest.

Oh and just know that there are some conditions to moving. One of them is that I don’t get edited (though that might be a good thing in the end) and the content I write gets posted as written. That won’t change. I’ll also continue to keep the forum open to responses and posts, but will hopefully move to doing some more interactive Q&A stuff as well as more interesting baseball and 38 Studios stuff as time goes by.

Munch patch, originally uploaded by gehrig38.

The patch is done! Looks great and I can’t wait to start handing them out! Stay tuned as 38 Studios will be selling these when I return, with a portion of the proceeds to go to families of injured and fallen warriors of the U.S. Military!

Ya the economy is a mess, but people still need our help.

December 10th at the Omni Parker House Hotel from 6-9pm Shonda and the SHADE Foundation will be hosting their 3rd Annual Bubbles and Bites Benefit for the SHADE Foundation.

You can check out the details at the link above or call AJ Williams at 617 267 2244 or Crystal Thomas at 602 267 2244 or email at shade@creativeeventsinc.com.

A huge thank you to the Brigham Women’s Hospital Department of Dermatology and the Omni Parker House for sponsoring this years event!

For you World of Warcraft players out there, you now have a chance to win 1 of 4 hand drawn Todd Mcfarlane originals of YOUR World of Warcraft character for signing up at the Azeroth Advisor Website!

Not often you can get an original Todd McFarlane drawing, of something you want him to draw!

Congratulations to Dustin Pedroia, the 2008 American League MVP.

I met Petey 3 years ago while on rehab in Pawtucket and I can assure you the guy you see in Boston is the same red ass ‘kick your teeth in no matter how big you are, or how hard you throw’ guy he was there.

he respects the game, his teammates and he plays the game hard, he plays the game right and there isn’t a pitcher on the planet that he thinks can get him out.

I’d relate a ton of stories but there isn’t one I can tell that doesn’t contain multiple four letter expletives about himself, or the guy that got him out (on the rare occasion that would happen).

He earned this and we’re proud as hell to call him a teammate and a friend.

We have relaunched the Azeroth Advisor with newer, fresher content!

The launch of Wrath of the Lich King is our first opportunity to service level 70s with content relevant information, the original reason for the Azeroth Advisor way back when. This new content, classes, skills, instances, all of that, is now part of the AA and makes it more useful than ever for WoW players, regardless of your level!

Comments like this make it easy to understand, from an athletes standpoint, why and how the media, no matter how good, can never fully grasp what you do, and how hard what you do is for a living.

“Please, spare me the Dr. Phil nonsense that Varitek’s personal problems somehow affected his performance this season. If anything, they would affect his mental preparation, not his ability to connect with a fastball traveling above 87 mph.”

In talking about Jason, much has obviously been said and he has a pretty passionate group of supporters on the staff. But to imply the above is a borderline admission of ignorance. To say that there is little to no connection with your mental state of mind, and your physical performance, tells me the person talking has never been asked to, or able to, perform a physical activity at a level few others in the world can.

Jason would be the last, and likely never would, to make any excuses for the poor offensive year and a half he has had. I will tell you that what he had to endure physically and mentally absolutely impacted him in a negative way performance wise. People don’t know that he twice last year had a serious viral sickness. He was completely wiped out on two different occasions. Both times he lost significant weight and strength and he did so in the midst of playing. Back on the field in a time frame I would guess was NOT in his best health interest. The other ’stuff’ are a very big deal here because regardless of what tabloid journalism might have said this guy lived for his children and was and always will be the best father he can be, of that I have no doubt. I’ve lockered next to him for 5 years, he’s as good a man and human as I’ve known. Sure that paints severe bias into the picture but that doesn’t make it false either.

The more important piece to this, and one that was in full view for the pitchers, was the fact that never once did he allow his offensive woes to follow him behind the plate or affect his pre-game preparation, and planning, two crucial elements we as ‘his staff’ valued so highly. The reason I make that statement is that over 20 years of playing at this level that makes him incredibly rare at his position. Few catchers, well none really, that I ever played with put the initial time and effort into game prep he did, but fewer still ever had the ability to separate their offensive woes from their defensive responsibility. As their average went, so did their defensive commitment.

I know the ‘anti’ Tek camp is big, and that’s fine, but at the end of the day his value is far beyond a measurable statistic and I think that’s what rubs so many wrong. You’ll know it when it’s gone, it will be a visibly absent thing.

Do you pay him 15 a year for 4 years, I don’t know but who gives a 36 year old catcher a 4 year deal? If there was ever a guy to get that deal you could argue this was the guy because you know beyond a shadow of a doubt he’ll be in better shape than any catcher in the game for however many years he gets. It really comes down to someone understanding how much of his contract is being paid for those ‘intangibles’ so many argue for, or against.

This guy is the consummate team first, play the game right 24/7 pro. Many don’t care about that aspect, and that’s fine too, there are a ton of utility players that play the same way, but they aren’t worth 15×4 or whatever. But those things matter inside a clubhouse where you inherit a family for 9 months a year. Those things, when absent, can wear a team down fast, but when present they are the things that help a team over the hump as well. This clubhouse has gained, in addition to immense young talent, an incredibly good and deep roster of players with many of those same traits. That bodes well for the coming years, and I would argue Jason is a huge part of that.