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AUG

10

2005

i coded for 6 hours today then i went out to find a birthday present for julie. for some reason i had chia pet in mind, but i went to 2 different places and neither had them. i made my way to the everett mega strip mall with it's slew of chain stores and decided to get a pair of fiskar bypass pruning shears, a mix of my love of gadgetry with julie's fondness for gardening. the one that i got was the only one they had, and for some reason it range up as an unknown item, so one of the guys in the tools department just wrote an SKU number on the package. coming back, i had a conversation with a young man riding a racing motorcycle. if you ever wondered what bikers talk about, wonder no more: he had just been to revere beach and was telling me how the place was crawling with motorcycles. i found out he's a hardcore year-round rider, biking during our cold new england winters.

by 8:30pm julie was still a no-show, so i was ready to get started on the chicken wings and the baby back ribs without her. that's when she called and said she'd be right over. tonight was the last game in their softball league, and despite the close loss, they still went out to celebrate a little bit, hence the delay. when julie arrived, not only was there ribs waiting but also some anchor steam beer (her favorite). it was a total deja vu dinner for her, because last night she had a birthday dinner at her parents' place, and they ate and drank the exact same thing. later i brought out a carvell ice cream cake (shaped like a baseball no less), which sent julie into a coincidence overload because they had a carvell cake last night as well.

we watched the red sox sweep the texas rangers in the series, including the painful 8th inning when the red sox bats became red hot and the team tacked on an extra 8 insurance runs. tonight we're 5.5 games above the yankees, who's only highlight in their afternoon game was a young fan leaping from the balcony seats of yankee stadium down into the protective netting.