rsc

This past Tuesday was our first visit to the Cambridge house in over a week, so we hadn't checked paper mail in a while, which was a little dangerous with post-season tickets probably about due to arrive. Sure enough, there was a note from Federal Express on the door that said that a third attempt at delivery had been made that very day, and the package would now have to be picked up at their Medford office within two days.

Damn them. They always used to use USPS, in which case I could just walk down to the Post Office. Now I've got to drive to Medford, probably during rush hour. Try to call FedEx to see where the package actually is, but something's wrong with their phone system and I can't get to talk to anyone. Check the web -- it's still out in the truck somewhere. Look at the map to see where they actually are -- oh, yes, I see, straight shot up Route 28 -- look at the FedEx site again: it's at the office as of 4:08 PM.

So I started to head out, and at the moment when I put the key in to lock the door on my way out, the heavens opened and an absolute deluge began; I decided I really didn't want to drive in this -- hell, I didn't want to walk the 15 feet to the car in it -- so I went back into the house to wait for it to let up. Fought my way through the first two movements of the Mozart A minor sonata, and decided it had let up enough to risk it.

Well. A short stretch of Prospect St. was under about 8 inches of water, so things were a bit slow there. Then Route 28 itself was just solid -- I suspect Route 28 north at 4:40 PM is never a good idea, but this was worse than I had imagined. It turned out (eventually) that there was about a foot of water in the underpass where 28 goes under 38, and a car stopped in the left-hand lane (possibly deliberately blocking the worst of the flood), so traffic was just creeping through.

Eventually I did get through, and I was just approaching the intersection with Route 16 just west of the Wellington T stop when it hit me: we were going to the Red Sox game the very next day, which meant that we were leaving the car at the Wellington T stop, which meant that we could have picked up the tickets the next day without going seriously out of our way, and I needn't have fought my way across Somerville and Medford and back at the height of rush hour on a rainy day (even though the rain had stopped by this time).

Well, anyway, I have the tickets now. It's up to the Sox to make them useful.

Tuesday night was English Country Dancing night, so we missed most of the Sox game; but if

fj was home he probably heard two very loud roars, one a little after 10:00 and one just before 10:30. At the end of the dance,

jwg checked the game status on his phone, and found "Baltimore 5, Boston 2, mid 9th" -- not good. The ESPN site must have been a little behind the times, because by the time we got to the car and turned on the radio we found that the Orioles were batting in the top of the 10th! Turned out Todd Walker had hit a 3-run home run to tie it (there's your first roar).

Our route from JP to Storrow Drive takes as down Boylston St. just past Fenway Park (we would avoid this if the game had just gotten out), and we got there as David Ortiz, who has produced many a dramatic moment this season, was coming to bat in the bottom of the 10th. John said "Open the window -- if he hits a home run I want to hear the crowd live". As it turned out, he did -- but not until we were on Storrow Drive, by which time I had given up and closed the window. I'll bet FJ!! heard it, though.

On the way to Wellington on Wednesday I finally made the connection as to why the traffic on 128 south had been so bad the last few times we'd done this. This stretch of 128 "south" actually goes mostly west, and then sort of southwest, which means that between 5:00 and 6:00 PM on a September afternoon you're driving straight into the sun. Since nobody can see, some folks actually slow down, which has inevitable ripple effects. Rain or sun, I can't win.

About the time we boarded the Orange Line, John learned from his trusty phone that the Mariners had lost (sorry,

susandennis!), which meant that the next Sox win would clinch the wildcard. We were hopeful that we would get to see it happen, especially with our 16-3 record.

The Fenway Park out-of-town scoreboard (hand-operated, for those of you who didn't know) normally (invariably, I would have said) indicates that a score is final by leaving hte "inning" column blank rather than replacing the inning number with an "F" like most places. But when we arrived, there it was: somebody had dug up a tile with an "F" on it, and the Seattle-Anaheim score was marked emphatically as "final". They should have known better.

Our charms were powerless against this challenge. Before there were even two outs in the game, the ever-dangerous John Burkett had given up 7 hits, and was out of the game. All 7 eventually scored. Not a good start. And even though the often-unreliable Boston bullpen shut down the Orioles the rest of the way, and the unstoppable Ortiz hit two more home runs, it wasn't enough: Orioles 7, Sox 3.

I really hope they win tonight; I don't want to have to be worrying about them over the weekend during Dance Camp.