Need I say more?



Way to go, guys. You did it.
We've been waiting all our lives for this. We love you!

Rest in peace, Babe.

Update: You should hear the horns honking out there in Magoun Square!

Another Update: Pablo called from Harvard Square - it sounded like pandemonium. He was having the time of his life...

Oh, the Globe headline is sweet: At Last! Pigs can fly, hell is frozen, the slipper finally fits,
and Impossible Dreams really can come true...The Red Sox have won the World Series!

Just one more via Drudge: The last time they won the World Series... the first World War was about to end... Lucky Lindy was a teenager dreaming of flying across the ocean... John Kennedy was an infant... penicillin didn't exist...TV didn't exist... radio was just starting... "Red Sox Win First World Series Since 1918."

Good night, now. I've got to try get some sleep.

Guarda la bella luna rosa.





At 11:10 pm tonight a beautiful, beautiful lunar eclipse was visible through the branches of a pincherry tree in my backyard. The air was clear, soft, warm, calm - not what we're used this time of year up here on the Jungfrau of Somerville. Didn't want to come back in, except I had to. I needed to get back inside to check on how the Sox were doing.

Bottom of the 8th - 3-0 Sox. May they keep it up.
May I wake up tomorrow morning to very good news.

Criminy

Bottom of the 8th, Sox up by four. I'm not watching! In fact, I think it's bedtime. Que sera sera (et dum spero spero.)

Update: Fast inning. Sox are now three up. One game to go to win the series...or four games to go to lose it, as the Yanks learned the hard way last week. (Boston fatalism, theah.)

Ha.

So, it turns out that one of the books picked up at the Somerville Library sale this weekend (paid $1.50 for it) is worth around not quite 1000x that. Ha.

All I have to say to the nice lady there who felt the need to politically educate the 'great unwashed:' spend a bit more time doing your job and less time being an activist, and maybe things would work out better. Obviously you all dropped the ball here, and it wasn't going to be George Bush's fault if the glorious new addition to the Winter Hill Atheneum had ended up in a dumpster.

Lots to relate, but lately, this has been the last place that I've felt like visiting. I think I'm emotionally overloaded between hating my job, watching baseball, anticipating how the Democrats are going to turn this election into a sham.

Hopefully I'll get out a bit this week to get the knee looked at some more. Finally have the doctor appointments lined up - I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there will be no last minute work snafu that causes me to cancel them yet again.

Anna Maria, Me and a new friend at one of Salem, MA's "Haunted Happenings" 

Today's flower is a lovely little leguminous thing from the Jasper Beach up in Machiasport, Maine. 

Had a pretty nice weekend which included more finds at a book fair, beer, pizza, a trip to Salem, MA, baseball, and some nice lazy, catnappy afternoons.

Hennaed my hair as I'd figured on going to a Halloween party as Elisabeth Siddal. Didn't happen, so I'm just the autumnal version of myself. Heck, if the leaves on the trees can change, why can't my hair do so to match them?

It's definately soup weather. Did a clean out the fridge thing that turned out to be pretty lovely. I've got some slow cooking in the crockpot right now for the rest of the week, in fact. What ended up in the pot? A couple carrots, a couple stalks of celery, a cup or so of cabbage, some chopped tomatoes, about 1/2 a dozen cloves of garlic, a half can of black beans, a few spoonfuls of spaghetti sauce, a pinch of rosemary, of basil and of marjoram. Six cubes of veggie boullion. Oh, and some shell pasta.

Boil everything together until it's soft enough. That's it.

Incredible, isn't it,

That we live in a country where we pay farmers not to produce and where libraries throw books away?

Somerville library had their annual book fair, so of course, we visited. Got a lot of nice stuff, but ultimately I was disappointed with the sale in general.
Not very well set up, sort of weird hours, rather unhelpful and not nice help.

I think that the thing that stuck out in my mind the most was the contrast between one book sale volunteer's call to us to vote for Kerry because 'the current president probably want to burn these books anyway' and a staff member's statement later on that the books at the sale that weren't sold would be dumpstered later on.

Go figure.

Go figure.

I watch the first game of the series, and they play like little leaguers.
I opt out of the second one, top of the eighth, they've a five run lead, still.
Better quit while I'm ahead.
(Until tomorrow, then, regarding baseball.)

Does this beat all or what?

Generally, the only people I've heard complain about Halloween celebrations are the staunch old Irish Catholic ladies in my old neighborhood in East Boston who objected to the pagan underpinnings of the holiday. I'd smile and nod and just go about collecting up my candy and pumpkins for the little ghouls and goblins who'd come visiting that night.

Never in a million years would I think that we'd hear of the celebration being banned due to potential offensiveness to wiccans.

About as striking to me as Damon's comeback grand slam, Timlin's steely gaze and the image of the Sox whooping it up in the middle of the field at Yankee Stadium was this gorgeous Nike ad. In general, my hat's off to the design team involved in their publicity - it's poetic stuff. This, though, really catches at the heart.

Oh My God! Oh My God! Oh My God!





At the beginning of this week, would anyone have guessed that they'd actually do it? Four games in a row they won. Two of the longest games in baseball history played (two nights ago having clocked in at nearly six hours. One Yankee player said that the couple days in Boston actually felt like a month). Gosh, they really wanted this one.

Now - this is the first time since 1986 that they've made it to the series, and what a heartbreaker that was. (I remember it like it was yesterday - I was a sophomore in high school, and the only Sox fan aside from the Korean exchange student.) Will this be 86 all over again? Should we even worry? My goodness, they not only beat the Yankees...they crushed them! After being behind 3/0. My word.

NY Times lead article

Boston Globe lead article.

I've got to go to bed now.
Tomorrow, off to find something pink hopefully.
Good night!

Mental health, or superstition?

Okay - I'm still not watching.
(Did catch a replay of Damon's *gorgeous* grand slam, though.)
I did not hear 'who's your daddy?'
I did not see Timlin pitch that beautiful eighth inning.
I'm not watching any of this.
Really.

If they win this (!ojala!), I'm getting something pink to celebrate.
And maybe I'll watch a game or two in the world series.
Maybe. I don't want to jinx anyone, though.

When life gives you crabapples....

I never really thought much about Martha Stewart,to be honest, but this story warms me up to her. Makes me think of a stylish Euell Gibbons update.

Geesh.

I heard that, though he was a bit hobbled, Schilling had an arm of steel last night. I'm still not watching the games, as it's gotten to be a bit of a superstitious thing for me now. This is amazing, though, and, I find that in spite of myself, I'm getting the hopes up.

May they win it and silence that stadium tonight.

This weekend, we had sort of a mixed bag of films.
We're still working on the Marilyn Monroe Diamond Collection: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Monkey Business were leftovers from last weekend. (We saw Seven Year Itch last week.) I think that I preferred Gentlemen, as I tend to prefer musicals (Boy, aside from being a bombshell, Jane Russell is pretty darned talented. Have to look for more of her stuff. Any recommendations?), and Monkey Business was typical Cary Grant as the Absent-Minded Professor. I do have to say, though, that Ginger Rogers was a treat in that one, and I'd love to see more of her 'on her own.' (Again - any recommendations?)

The best of the lot this weekend, however, was Crimes and Misdemeanors. Both Hal and the back of the DVD container had listed this work as a comedy. Though there were moments of levity in it, I found it to be pretty heavy fare, bordering on nihilistic. To me, it felt like Crime and Punishment, only without the redemption of the protagonist at the end. (Maybe more like The Immoralist? I'll have to think about it some more and, of course, see it again, as we do see in the film that the main character gets to questioning his faith - but in the other direction from Gide's protagonist.) Food for thought. Food for thought.

As I've said, I'm not your standard 'bouquet of roses' type of girl.


"Dear Bev,
This weeks Monday flower is a milkweed- I think it deserves flower
status even though it's a pod.
xo, Hal"

Yeah, like he's not got me figured out in some ways. 

Come on, honey, make love to the camera. No, don't snap at it, just be enticing. 

This dinosaur exhibited no such shyness towards us. In fact, I was a bit nervous at how close Hal was getting to him. He was fast, and, as you know, if a snapper doesn't swat you with its tail, it'll make an attempt to grab you with its beak.