mike contacted me last night, he had an extra ticket for the rescheduled red sox/bluejays game for this afternoon and wondered if i'd be interested in going (his girlfriend cathy couldn't make it). i'm probably never going to get to go to a real playoff game in my lifetime, so i figured this would be the next closest thing, a game one week prior to the postseason.

i woke up and worked a little bit, before i rode the motorcycle into kenmore square. i figured it'd be easy to park the bike anywhere, but i didn't plan on the mad congestion of cars and people. fortunately i could weave and dodge between the cars, but it was a pretty dangerous 20 minutes of trying to work my way out of that maze, while the whole time mike was buzzing me on the phone but i couldn't answer it because i was still riding around. i eventually found my way to a residential parking spot and stashed the bike there. i met mike at gate C, he had to leave the game (which had already started, and while waiting to get inside the park, i could hear the crowd cheering over something) to give me my ticket so i could come in. our tickets were for the center field bleacher seats, but since this counts as a day game, those seats were covered up for some reason, and we had to just sit at whatever seats we could find that was available. the seats we did get were okay, but the whole time i felt like we'd be kicked out as soon as the rightful ticket holders showed up (they never did).

the weather was surprisingly warm, especially sitting out in the bright sun, a farcry from last night when it was rainy and miserable. it felt like the weekend for some reason, although there were a lot of children (isn't it a school day?) and businessmen (a work day?) in the crowd. the thing with seeing a baseball game live is that the game almost becomes secondary; i'm too busy being distracted by the sights of sounds of the ball park, the people watching, the eavesdropping, the spectacle of red sox nation. there were a lot of ortiz and ramirez and varitek t-shirts, but occasionally you'd find that person who's a fan of timlin or renteria, or old-school fans of shea hillenbrand (former red sox player now a bluejay). we sat behind a pair of mothers with their kids; the children were especially animated and i was hoping their cuteness would be caught on camera so i could get a chance to be on the jumbotron (or better yet, broadcast television).

by the time we sat down the score was already 2-0 in the first inning. the game went quickly behind wakefield's mastery of the knuckleball, and the red sox ended up winning 3-1 in under 2:30. despite the fact that i was nowhere near my usual nature spots, nature could still be had, even inside fenway park: a pair of hawks soared through the stadium towards the later innings, causing people to cheer (one jokester behind us started singing "let the eagles soar"), while a large dragonfly (darner?) buzzed overhead at another point during the game (i think i was probably the only person who noticed it).

it was a nightmare getting into fenway park but a pleasure getting out. once i got on my motorcycle, i raced home effortlessly, didn't have to brave the crush of people trying to catch the MBTA.

i found jawei already home, watching the postgame report on television. he fell asleep on the couch while i went to my room to take a nap that was supposed to last an hour but i only slept for about 15 minutes before i couldn't sleep anymore and went across the street to buy some groceries for tonight's dinner.

i was making pizza tonight, figured it'd impress jawei, but turns out he worked as a pizza chef in taiwan, and i ended up asking him for directions while we were assembling our pie: a hawaiian style with ham and pineapples along with a generous helping of chopped up garlic.

the rest of the evening was spent watching the second game of the red sox doubleheader. it would've been the perfect game for the red sox to win since the indians and the yankees lost as well, but the bluejays played very well and ended up beating us in a come-from-behind victory.

after midnight, with jawei in his bedroom studying over his english vocabulary, i went outside on the backyard deck and saw a bright "star" in the sky that i knew right away to be the planet mars. i showed jawei, along with the constellation taurus (aldebaran forms the eye of the bull) and the open cluster M45 aka the pleiades. i really should get back to astronomy, my winter sport of choice. (photo taken with my nikon 4500 on an 8-second time-lapse exposure using a tripod).