Friday, November 9, 2007

#12 Boston - One Game a Year, One! - August 26, 2007

Well, what can we say - Renee and I have a little bone to pick with the Boston Red Sox. Is it too much to ask for the one game per year that we attend, to have a win in store for us, huh? It's not too much to ask, I think. Every year, the same thing - Bruce (our very nice boss) gives us a couple of tickets, and Renee and I head to the holy grail of baseball stadiums, Fenway Park. Eeeeevery year, same thing - the Sox loose. Don't even dare to think that this is our fault, because it is not. We had a good time at the ballpark anyway, needless to say, one had to consume some beeaah, a sausage, or in my case a cheese steak, and just enjoy the general goings on. Fenway Park always makes me happy - everyone is there to have a good time, everyone loves the Red Sox, and the Big Green Monster, the ginormous green wall located in the outfield. (http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/bos/ballpark/index.jsp). My favorite part takes place in the eight inning when everyone sings Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline". So good, so good, so good....

The Red Sox game was one of the events on my social calendar last weekend, which did start with the bike ride along the Minuteman Bikeway, and then segued easily into a party at my friends Diane and Peter in the North End. The North End, Boston's Not-so-Little Italy, was celebrating yet another feast that night to honor a saint, and everyone, I mean everyone, was out on the street. (http://www.northendboston.com/) Good thing Diane and Peter's flat was way away from the festivities and their apartment faced the back, so we were safe from Italian lounge singers and hordes of tourists. The party was lovely, even though for some reason there was a virus going around that made everybody spill stuff. Granted I started it, but I think an exploding Seltzer bottle cannot be attributed completely to my usual clumsiness and not for other people's butterfingers.

Sunday was the Red Sox game, as you know, and we rounded out the weekend with a night at the movies, this time to watch "The Bourne Ultimatum", which I have to say was a kickass movie!! It is one of those flicks that you have to see in the movie theater - let's just leave it at that. V.g.

So, the week was a slow one, and you know what I appreciated it tremendously, knowing that once September starts, work is going to kick in the turbo, and I will be busy out of my mind. I just went to work every day, did what I had to do, and in the evenings went for a swim. After a few days of "feels-like-fall" weather, Mother Nature kicked it up a notch, and we had disgustingly humid and hot weather in the upper 90s.

I just returned from a lovely weekend in Peterborough, New Hampshire (http://www.townofpeterborough.com/), where our extended family hosted a very nice retreat, which included a reading by my cousin Rebecca Barry - you may remember her as the famous author of "Later at the Bar", which I know all of you have read by now (if you have not, I am cutting you out of my will, just so that you know.....). The reading toook place at Harlow's - a lovely pub in the town of Peterborough (http://www.harlowspub.com/index.html) - very cozy, with some good beers (including an organic ale) and a very congenial atmosphere. This was followed by a quick stroll to some of Peterborough's cute stores, including Toadstool, the bookstore who sponsored the whole reading shindig. (http://www.toadbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp)

Actually I have to give a big shoutout to the Maclaurin family in Peterborough, New Hampshire, who organized the whole weekend, and kept everyone happy, entertained and well fed. After escaping from downtown Peterborough and the grueling heat of 97 degrees and 200 % humidity, a whole group of us (Ken, Tom, Sven, Rebecca, Tommy, Dawson, Liam and myself) headed down the road to a lovely pond, and hopped in for some nice cooling off.

This was the perfect thing to do, and of course could only be topped off by visiting the barn up the street, where a rope invited for some swinging around, and being the novice rope swinger that I am, I can show the rope burn to prove it. Despite a very impressive (albeit brief) demonstration by Ken on how to swing on the rope and gracefully hop back onto the plank where we started from, only Rebecca's husband Tommy managed to accomplish what needed to be done, whereas the rest of us in rather ungraceful and klutzy fashion bumbled around the barn hanging on to the rope for dear life. I still had fun, and will give rope swinging another try should the opportunity arise some day.





The evening was spent with a lovely dinner party, which included wonderful company - friends, relatives and neighbors, spectacularly scrumptious food and cocktails, and a more than balmy summer evening with a lightning display to follow later at night. It was one of those evenings, where everyone was very relaxed and had a good time - life was good. The weekend was rounded out today with a nice hike through the woods, chasing after newts and frogs, eating fresh blackberries, and visiting a nearby graveyard that told a passionate yet sad story of a married couple in the 19th century.

A little more about Peterborough for the historically inclined among you - you may remember the town from Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town", which he wrote while residing at the local MacDowell Art Colony. You may also remember Peterborough from my frequent hiking exploits to the Mt Monadnock area (http://images.google.com/images?q=Mt+Monadnock&svnum=10&um=1&hl=en) which can be seen from the Maclaurin house on a good day (such as today). Rumor has it the town derived its name from the Earl of Peterborough, but no one can prove it, and so your guess is as good as mine. The town was officially incorporated in 1760, the town clock was purchased in 1856 and so was the "the necessary apparatus for the extinguishment of fires." New Hampshire's first state park was also created here, Miller State Park, in 1891 and it is named after General James Miller, a hero of the Battle of Lundy's Lane in the War of 1812.

That's it for today, I am heading home now (I am actually writing this week's diatribe from my office, since I managed to kill my wireless set-up at home and am now faced with an internet-free home) and may just have another beer to finish off the weekend in style.

Hope this finds you all well :)

pet:)

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