2-13-40

Today was Leonard's birthday and he would have been 70. Sadly, another beloved member of our family, my mom's uncle Sabatuccio (as everybody called him, pronounced sah-bah-DOOCH around these parts) passed away last week as well. Like Len, he was a great guy that seemed to know of and how to do everything.
That got me searching for pictures of both of them, including our visit to Italy, where Len and Sabatuccio got along famously, plus Sabatuccio's trip to Michigan the following year. Please enjoy the following hilariously awesome pictures of him, as well as a couple great ones of the brothers in wine working on yet another bottle. All pictures come from the Michigan trip, but I'll keep looking for stuff of them together in Italy when I have time.


Drumming in the basement of our house in Livonia


Hard at work in mom's old office


Sharing a toast at our grandma's house in Livonia


And more "salud"ing. I'm pretty sure that's me in the lower left corner, judging by the Mike Piazza Dodgers jersey I'm wearing.

Moleskine notebook (from Liz)

I was just remembering the day we went to Domino Farms and someone had a moleskine notebook and Len told us pretty much the whole history of the notebooks and how there was this whole web site dedicated to people's moleskine notebook drawings. Who knew? I will forever be impressed by his ability to remember all those random facts.

Christmas pictures

Since we're getting pretty close to Christmas, I thought I'd post some of my favorite pictures of the ones we got to celebrate with him:


(This one's actually from their wedding anniversary, which we celebrated at Creekside that year, but it's from just a few days after Christmas, so, close enough)

Scrabble (from Michael Lau)

I remember playing Scrabble at your place with Len and he played 'SITZ' on some triple word score. Then he proceeded to describe exactly what a sitz bath was. Every time I get a Z in scrabble I think about Len :)

Favorite pictures

Here are some of my favorite pictures of Leonard from the last few years (in no particular order):


Ryan's law school graduation at Loyola, Chicago. Len and the rest of us had a great time celebrating despite the addition of a lawyer to the family.



A brunch for Ryan at Fox Hills in Plymouth after he passed the Illinois Bar (and to celebrate his birthday too). These two enjoyed one of their favorite pastimes: eating.


Len and mom at a Charlotte Knights (AAA, White Sox) game in April, 2008 during a trip to visit my aunt and uncle. We all enjoyed the game and the fireworks afterward.


Mom and Len on her 50th birthday in 2006. They both have the ability to look younger than they are.


One of my all-time favorites, mom and Len reading on the porch at our home in Chelsea. Although Len was probably ignoring his book in favor of scanning for deer looking to go after his beloved trees out front. (Yeah I know I already used this one but I really like it. I have it hanging on a wall at my place.)


Len enjoying a cold one at our Memorial Day party in 2008. He was known to partake of a few on occasion.


Discussing God knows what with Mr. Ghosh at IHOP the day after Ryan proposed to Arpita. Those two were so alike they could probably talk for hours and not notice we'd had our pancakes and left.


Walking in the Arb, one of our favorite things to do in Ann Arbor on a nice day.


Chillin' with Bob after both were grillmasters for our Memorial Day party in 2007.

Downward dog, upward butts (As told by Liz)

My back was bothering me one day at work and I complained about it to Tina a few times (perhaps several). Len was coming in that afternoon to pick Tina up and she said she was sure he'd have some advice. I'd heard all about Len's kettle bells and Yoga expertise so I figured he'd be a good person to ask. When Len arrived Tina asked if he could suggest some stretches that might help my back. Without much preamble he got down on the floor of Tina's office in the downward dog Yoga position. I think I stared at him for a moment before realizing he expected us to follow along but Tina I both got into downward dog (much less gracefully than Len) and he enthusiastically led us through several other Yoga positions and stretches. I'm sure that anyone walking by Tina's office seeing all three of us with our butts up in the air or in other varied odd positions, wondered what the heck we were up to. But, Len really seemed to enjoy helping me out despite the fact that Tina and I giggled through the whole thing and probably were not very good students. And, my back did feel much better when we were done.

Flying Leonard, Hidden Tent (as suggested by Wanda)

A few years ago at our house in Chelsea, Leonard had decided that he wanted to get something to cover at least part of the patio in the back yard. We found a nice patio tent kind of thing that was basically a structure with four L-shaped poles connected together at the top like a pyramid, covered with canvas and surrounded by mosquito netting. It was "anchored" to the ground at each corner with very large rocks.
It lasted for a good amount of time, but we get good storms out here sometimes, and with them, big gusts of wind. One day the strong winds rattled the canopy until it came loose from underneath the rocks and began to move ominously. When Len went out to see what was going on, even stronger winds started to carry the whole thing away. He grabbed on to try to keep it in place so it wouldn't fly away and do damage elsewhere, but eventually the wind was too strong and pretty soon he briefly went airborne. After he was forced to let go, the tent continued on its way for a while, crashed to the ground and ended up in some far corner of the property. Leonard was fine despite his brief foray into parasailing.
We've since begun to appreciate our covered porch more.