So this afternoon someone at work posted about two tickets she had for sale for tonight’s Red Sox/Twins game. I jumped at them, since she was selling them for half-price. Amy and I took the train to Fenway, had some horrid nachos at a “mexican” restaurant, and headed in to the park to find our seats.

First inning, third batter is David Ortiz. Earlier this week, he’d tied a Red Sox record of 50 home runs in a single season. Would this be the night he broke the record set in 1938?

The windup – Santana delivers – and Big Papi launches one to right-center field, deep into the stands! 51!!!! The crowd goes wild!

Fifth inning – Ortiz is up again – and nails another one out of the park. The crowd starts chanting “M-V-P! M-V-P!”

So much fun to see history in the making. I’ll not forget the goosebumps of those moments for a long time. I think I’m a newly converted Red Sox fan. After being in Fenway tonight, I get it.

So S?  It stands for Sox!

More photos in the series from tonight are here.

So I’m a reader.  I can read until all hours of the night (well, morning, rather.)  I can read almost anytime, with the sole exception of when I’m riding in a car.  I can’t even read a map when I’m riding in a car (although, interestingly enough, I CAN read a map when I’m driving the car…)  I can read things from many genres of literature.  I read fiction, non-fiction, adult fiction, YA fiction, picture books, and just about everything in-between.

My recent reads are in my LibraryThing library – you can browse through it to see what I’ve been reading for the past few years, how I rate those books, and how I mentallly organize them with tags.  

But there are books I read before I started tracking them on LibraryThing – books that really influenced me, or touched me, or that I read over and over and over again. Most of these, as you’ll see, share a YA orientation.  They’re still amazing books.

• Anne of Green Gables (and everything else by L.M. Montgomery)
• Watership Down by Richard Adams
• The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein (and all of his poetry books too)
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
• Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace

What are your favorites?  Share in the comments, or with a link to your Bibliophil or LibraryThing catalog. 

I never got into the hunting scene myself (although I love to eat the results when cooked correctly), probably due to an incident with my brother.

One year, Dad came home with his take of the ducks from the hunt.  Being somewhat cool out, he stored the ducks in the garage until it was time for him to pluck and butcher them.  (Do you butcher ducks?  It doesn’t sound quite right.)  At any rate, there was a pile of ducks sitting there, and my brother and I were hanging out in the garage, when all of a sudden, he grabbed one of those mallards, shoved it at me, and squeezed it.

And damn if that dead duck didn’t quack right in my face.  I’ve never been quite the same since then.  Still like to eat duck, though.   

My all-time favorite poet is Shel Silverstein.  Laugh if you will, because that’s what his poems are all about!  Good stories, great rhythms, captivating imagery, and lots of giggles… I find him fabulous after all these years.  One of my favorites has always been "Sick".  Any child (or adult) who’s had the urge to skip school (or work) for any reason will appreciate this one.  I also love "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout" (listen here).

Some good sites for poetry, silly or serious, adult-oriented or kid-oriented:

Poets.org

Poetry 180 

LION: Literature Online: Poets Onscreen (limited to people affiliated with a subscribing library – check at your local library)

Happy National Poetry Month! 

What is most amazing about Sam is the amount of work she has done in the local (Philadelphia) area to raise awareness of ovarian cancer among younger women like her.  Because of her connections to her climbing gym, to Phillyknitters, and to the LJ community, she’s been able to get a lot of young women thinking about the symptoms of ovarian cancer.  She’s been instrumental in getting many women I know to go in for regular gynecological exams.

Later this year, Sam will be doing a benefit climb in Utah for the HERA Women’s Cancer Foundation.  She’s trying to raise $7000 in donations.  If you know a woman who has had ovarian cancer, I urge you to donate any amount you can to Sam’s cause.  If you know a woman who might get ovarian cancer, I urge you to donate any amount you can to Sam’s cause.  If you know a woman who has had endometrial or uterine cancer, I urge you to donate any amount you can to Sam’s cause.  Your donation is 100% tax-deductible. 

Please help Sam raise this money – for her, for me, and for all the women and men out there who are touched in some way by these diseases.  Click on the button, follow the link, and give what you can today. 

And after you do that, come back here, and read about some of the symptoms of ovarian cancer, and explore a whole website on understanding ovarian cancer.  Then go call your doctor and schedule your annual gynecological exam if you’re due or overdue for one.

And so I offer these links, so that you know this information is out there, in the event that the wingnuts succeed.

• Emergency Contraception Website (including a nifty page on pills available in different countries and the dosage to take for EC purposes)
• A Woman’s Book of Choices: Abortion, Menstrual Extraction, RU-486 from the Feminist Women’s Health Collective in Seattle.  They also offer some great information on finding clinics, finding funding for an abortion, personal stories, options and choices, etc.
• The Center for Reproductive Rights – because any decision that I make about what goes on in my uterus shouldn’t be mandated by the state.  A highlight is the publication "What if Roe Fell?" (full text in PDF).
• I’m Not Sorry – a web site with stories from women who have had abortions and SHOCK OF ALL SHOCKS, aren’t sorry for their (highly personal) choices.

Take your reproductive rights seriously, folks.  Don’t let the wingnuts control your body.  It’s your choice – fight for your rights.  And for the love of all that is right, if you live in South Dakota, move the hell away! 

This week has been a new job.  Last August it was a new dog.  But usually what I like that’s NEW is a little bit smaller in scope.  For example: it pleases me to no end that Amy and I, in the course of moving in together, got to buy a new shower curtain.  For the first time in my life, I got a liner and a fabric curtain!  New all around.  Today, I hied over to the nearest Target and got myself (among other things), some new socks.  I LOVE new socks!  They feel so nice against my feet.

Other new things that I like: music, dog toys, items to read in Bloglines, email, leaves on trees, flowers in the spring, snow, razors,  routes for going routine places, books, and insights.

What new things do you like? 

P.S. Fill out my Johari Window! 

I’ve moved on many times in my life – some by choice, others by circumstance.  My favorite moving on was from Iowa to Philadelphia.  It was the first time I was moving to a big city – a really BIG city.  I was moving on from a job that I only liked, and into a job that I knew I was going to love.  From the time I was in grad school and had an interview at a library in Philadelphia, I knew in my heart that some day I’d be moving here.

And that time came, and it’s been so wonderful.  There are a list of things I’m going to miss about here, in this moving on:

1. My co-workers
2. The students
3. The faculty
4. The campus
5. The day-to-day rhythms of the job
6. The Crum Creek
7. My house
8. Clark Park
9. Fu-Wah’s tofu hoagies
10. Dahlak (and yes, yes, I know that there is the Abyssinia camp too.  I’m just not it in!)
11. The Green Line Cafe
12. The dog park crew – Tony, Christine, Michael, Kathy, Kimba, Tuna, Iggy, Zoe, and everyone/dog else
13. Amy’s housemates
14. The hockey team

And a lot of other things that are hard to enumerate right now.

But it is a moving on, and so I move on.  Tomorrow we move ourselves on to get a moving truck (and lots of Dunkin’ Donuts and the Papa Johns). And then we are moving on from here.  

Bye-bye, Philadelphia!  It’s been a great 5 and a half years.  I’ll miss you, but don’t you worry.  I’ll be back to visit. 

I’m moving next weekend.  My yarn is packed.  My needles are packed.  We don’t have cable in the new place yet, and I gave away the bunny-ears attenae when I sold my television.  Rest assured that Amy doesn’t own any of those antiquated things.

And February 10?  Well, that’s just a few short days after I move into a new place, after Amy and I pack up our houses and move 350+ miles to a new city where we will put the bulk of our possessions into a storage unit and will try to figure out how to merge the rest of our stuff into a 7-month rental in a city I’ve never lived in before.  And then just 3 days after the Knitting Olympics begin, I will start that new job I wrote about earlier and trust me when I say that I will be brain-dead at the end of each day and how on EARTH do I think that I’m going to be able to knit up 400 yards of heathery navy blue and heathery purple corriedale wool into a multidirectional diagonal scarf?  In 16 days?

That, my friends, is lunacy. 

So Team Wales, you get me, whether you want me or not.

Which is really hard to do when all your stash, needles, and WIPs are packed away in boxes.   Soon, though, I’ll be able to get back into it.  I’ve decided my next project is going to be the multidirectional diagonal scarf my mom was making when she so graciously and helpfully flew into town last weekend to pack up my kitchen and office.  I’ve got yarn in mind, and a recipient in mind too.  I had planned to make a scarf for this person for Christmas ’05, to no avail.  Maybe if I start in February ’06 it’ll get done in time for next Christmas!