Clinched!

Red Sox vs Indians, 9/23/08

Sox 5 Indians 4

In attendance: Chris

An excellent game on a cold night, at which the Red Sox reminded us that the wild card is better than nothing at all (and by nothing at all, I am referring to the freshly sealed fate of the 2008 Yankees). 

Here's some of the celebration. Jonathan Papelbon mercifully did not strip down to his underwear this year- he opted instead for handing out the bases to the fans. 

Weddings, therapy, scenery

Writing is therapeutic. Maybe not as much as, say, a martini (the many qualities of which I have thankfully rediscovered lately), but therapeutic nonetheless. So, to those of you who read here, thank you for reading and assisting in my therapy. 

On to more interesting topics. 

I went to a wedding back where I grew up in CT this past weekend, and it was surreal on several levels. Always odd to see someone you have known for decades getting married, especially when you barely know the person they are marrying. But even weirder was that for the second time, without my prior knowledge, I was called out in a wedding speech. I should say from the outset that I am not someone who enjoys having any type of public attention put on them, so the idea of being singled out in front of hundreds of people is generally mortifying to me. 

This ended up being an amusing surprise, however, as the bride's father took the time to acknowledge my longtime friendship with the bride. I'm not entirely sure how thrilled the groom was that I got quite so many minutes in the speech, but it was nice nonetheless, even if it did completely catch me off guard. 

It was nothing like the great Nantucket wedding speech debacle of 2005, in which I was singled out as the idiot who turned down the bride when she asked me out a few years earlier (thus leading to the genesis of the relationship of said bride and her groom). I believe there were about 200 people at that wedding, all of whom laughed as I was forced to stand up and wave. If I could have swam off the island at that moment, I would have. 

Anyway, the weather this past weekend was absolutely perfect. As much as I love living in Cambridge, a day like that in Guilford makes me want to move back tomorrow. That won't be happening of course, but here's a few pictures from some of my favorite places there. 

Grass Island

Chaffinch Island

Jacob's Beach

Rambling

Another week, another trip to Texas behind me. This was my seventh trip there since last August, and it is safe to say that I am not too eager to get back again anytime soon. As far as these trips go, this one was fairly standard- ridiculously busy days, and lots of eating. In my normal life I eat well- cook for myself, bring lunch to work, etc. On business trips, I eat 3 meals out every day, and after 5 days of that I'm ready for some sort of crash diet/detox/hunger strike. This trip included lots of bar food, some Tex-Mex that I thoroughly regretted the next day, cajun food, and a lot of Jimmy Johns, a damn good sandwich chain that hasn't made its way up north yet.





Anyway, I stayed at the lovely yet poorly named Gaylord Texan once again. It's always my first pick, despite the complete over the top nature of the place. As I mentioned earlier it's a bit like a big bio-dome- a gargantuan enclosed resort, complete with restaurants, bars, shopping, without ever having to step outside.














We tend to spend the most time at Texan Station, which is the big sports bar here. Not sure if this picture does it too much justice, but the square footage of the screen is bigger than that of my condo.




But even better than potentially watching 5 baseball games simultaneously (I did it, it is amazing) is the people watching in this place. Besides being a hotel and resort for regular people, the Gaylord operates as a major convention center. Which basically results in hordes of people moving in and out every day for some sales conference or convention. If there was any question that the business world remains male-dominated, look no further than late night at Texan Station. The place is crawling with, well, men, many of whom clearly don't have too many opportunities to go out drinkin' with the boys. Picture lots of loud and awkward drunkenness by guys in lanyards and matching polos with the company logo embroidered on the front.


Then there's the interactions with the very few women who actually are there, or even better, the local cougars who hang out at the bar waiting to get free drinks from the convention guys. And let me just say this- you have not seen a cougar until you have seen a Dallas cougar on the prowl. Frightening and fascinating.


To follow up on my earlier post, I was very disappointed in the Whataburger crowd- they started off strong with a weird rally outside the window of my room, but I didn't see much of them again. Besides them, we had a jet-ski conference, an elevator conference, and some group having to do with surety bonds (no idea).


What else? Listened to the Steve Harvey show every morning (awesome), drank lots of Shiner Bock (wish I could get that up here), tried something called Spudzilla, which is sort of a cross between a potato chip and a french fry (artery clogging but delicious), and realized that one of my Texas co-workers is a die hard democrat (didn't know we had any down there). She told me this is the first year that she could come out of the closet about it to other people. I felt so proud. She gave me this pin:





Maybe I could get to like Texas...

Is anyone else freaked out by this thing?

Fascinating photos of this supercollider that gets fired up for the first time tomorrow. Should be pretty cool as long as it doesn't create black holes that swallow up the earth. 

Day 3

I'm staying once again at the Gaylord Texan (stop laughing), which is a giant hotel/resort/convention center/bio dome in North Dallas. I'll post some photos but in short, if the bomb gets dropped some day, i'm pretty sure civilization will live on in this place for awhile. It is huge.

The funny thing about it is that there seems to be a different convention rolling through every day, which packs the place with middle aged sales guys with bad facial hair who are away from their families for a few days and getting wasted. It's an odd scene. Monday night was a Jet Ski sales meeting, and last night I was walking to the gym and the lobby was packed with people for the Whataburger convention. What happens at a Whataburger convention? I hope to find out. They seem like a rowdy bunch...

Dallas, revisited

(Big Tex, once again)

Another week, another trip to the exotic world of suburban Dallas. 

Posts from the road to follow.