My mind, and the places it goes

There are now available downloadable Red Sox schedules for Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, iCal, Google Calendar, and Yahoo Beta Calendar.

There's a lot of talk this morning about baseball, rituals, and those crazy things fans do to help ensure their teams' wins in big games. I have a baseball-related ritual, but it doesn't really have anything to do with my team's chances. In fact, it started when my team's wins were few and far between.

I first met donovanstitch in 1992, while we were both students at BU. A fellow baseball fan, donovanstitch had the dubious pleasure of living within screaming distance of Fenway, and here he was, a Yankees fan.

For reasons that I can no longer remember, at the end of the sixth game of the 1996 World Series, I picked up the phone and called donovanstitch to wish him congratulations on his team's win. I made an identical phone call at the end of game 4 of 1998, and a tradition was born. As the Yankees took the World Series in 1998, 1999, and 2000, I called donovanstitch at the end of the final game to wish him congratulations.

In 2004, at the end of game 4, as I was sitting there in shock that the Sox had actually managed to win a World Series, the phone rang. This time, it was donovanstitch calling to wish *me* congratulations.

Fast forward to last Wednesday night. As mabfan and I are getting ready to settle in to watch game 1 of the World Series, mabfan picks up the phone and calls donovanstitch, leaving a message when he wasn't home. Somewhere around the 3rd inning or so, the phone rings, and it's donovanstitch. Despite it not fitting our usual pattern, we talk baseball for about 1/2 an hour (until mabfan got a call on the other line that I couldn't defer). I was, to be honest, a bit nervous as to whether varying our ritual would cause a rift in the space-time continuum and mess up the Sox' chances in the Series (what can I say? I'm a Sox fan born and bred; we're a superstitious bunch). The Sox ended up winning games 1-3. And then we got to last night.

And last night's game was a real nailbiter. And it went long. I kept wondering if I should go to bed, but I stuck it out. It was 12:06 AM when the Sox got the last out. I quickly posted and then began the process of getting ready to go to bed. And then the phone rang. I knew who it had to be. And I was right. donovanstitch knew I'd be up, he knew I'd be watching, and I was very pleased that he took the time to call and complete the ritual.

And, next year, who knows. I might be the one placing the end-of-Series call.

-- It's so weird being in the office on a Thursday. I'm just saying.

-- I'm very bad at not working while eating lunch at my desk. I have to get better about that.

-- Apples in New England in the fall are wonderful. ::CRUNCH::

-- This weekend we've got a problem: we've got baseball in Boston in October, but it's the week of Parshat Noach (the week in which we read the Torah portion about the story of Noah), and it almost always rains for Parshat Noach.

-- At Young Israel on Yom Kippur, people were asking me, "So... how's your planet?" It's been a year since the article, but people still ask.

-- Note to chick-what-packed-our-leftovers: writing "chicken" on the top of the carryout container as an identifier of the contents is not so helpful when both of us had chicken leftovers.

-- I work well with deadlines. Really I do. But do I really need *three* between 12 October and 24 October? I think not. And that's just my work-work deadlines. Freelance deadlines are an entirely different animal altogether ("They're an entirely different animal.")

-- In the end, I *did* end up getting the Nine action figure. He's standing next to Ten, with Jack on Ten's other side (and, as it happens, Daniel Jackson standing behind them holding a zat gun).

-- What does it mean when someone writes something one way in a manuscript and then votes the opposite way in my polls?

-- I'm knitting another Dalek. This one will be beige with black Dalek bumps.

-- Is a Dalek bump anything like the Colbert bump?

-- I'm pondering doing an Erev Shabbat Jewish Blogging post about the difference between work and melacha (the categories of "work" disallowed on Shabbat).

-- mabfan and I went to hear the reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. As he mentioned in his writeup of the day, the Declaration reading seemed more crowded this year than it has in years past. The weather was lovely, which may have been a factor, but part of me wonders if other factors may be involved.

-- We're off to Readercon this weekend. I hope to see some of you there!

-- For the main dish for our meal at Readercon tonight, I made this tortellini salad. If folks are interested, I'll report back on it. I'll be serving it with roasted vegetables and cucumber salad (I was looking for things that travel well, since everything has to be brought in coolers, and we have no guarantee of an on-site fridge).

-- On a related note -- foodie posts, yes/no? I've been blathering here about menus for the past couple of weeks (and thanks to everyone who participates in the food discussions), and it finally occurred to me that this foodieness kind of came out of nowhere.

-- My brain has been too fried (with the heat, with the assorted goings-on in my universe, etc.) to write recently. This distresses me. My plan is to pick up the writing again after this weekend.

-- For the first time since the 2004 postseason, last night I spent a significant amount of time watching the Red Sox game on TV (I've seen a number of pieces of games, but no long chunks the way I did last night). I was cooking and then packing, but during breaks or times I had to do other stuff to prepare for the weekend, I was watching the game. And I picked a good night to do so -- the Sox beat the Devil Rays 15-4, with six of those runs coming in the first inning.

-- Note to self: YouTube eats time. Please remember this.

WBZ, our local mostly-all-news station, has committed some Opening Day-related silliness in the tradition of Abbott and Costello.

Thanks to my Abba for the link.

Rav Jonathan asks, what is the first day of spring? Rav Gabriel says, when the trees begin to bud. Rav Joshua says, when pitchers and catchers return to spring training. The halacha is according to Rav Joshua.

It happened that a baseball was found marked Mem-Lamed-Resh. They brought it to Rav Papi, who brought it to the elders. One might believe it belonged to Miller. Don't read "Miller," rather "Mueller." Rav David says "Millar."

We are required to remember the day of the Red Sox breaking the curse of the Bambino "all the days of our lives." Rav Michael says "the days of your life" refers to day games; "all the days of your life" includes night games as well. The chachamim say "the days of your life" tells us we should remember during the regular season; "all the days of your life" comes to include the playoffs.

V'Nomar Garciaparra Amen.