gerry was taking the day off but cleber was already here this morning continuing his paint work. i left for the honkfest parade, and arrived at my usual spot at the intersection of beech and elm street. as far as parades go, it's the last big one in the greater boston area, and it's usually good for some photo ops. it's also the only parade route that runs just a few blocks away from my house. it's hard to describe exactly what is the honkfest, sort of this combination of marching bands, political protesters, and performance artists. on two occasions strangers on the street asked me what was going on, and i couldn't really give them a good answer. the honkfest is very much anti-establishment and so far there haven't been any corporate sponsors that i know of, a common sight in other large parades. i did see the mayor of somerville though, and possibly the mayor of cambridge, but that was it in terms of politicians.

there seemed to be more spectators than in years past, which could've been due to the nice weather, with temperature in the 60's, a mostly clear sky and a bit of a breeze.

after the procession passed through beech-elm, i hopped back onto my motorcycle and went home, running down to mass ave where i could catch the tail end of the parade a second time, before following them into harvard square, where the annual oktoberfest was taking place.

i didn't stick around for the oktoberfest, but walked back home instead. i passed by a yard sale where i picked up a used bicycle helmet for a dollar. cleber was still busy painting. i asked him if he was thirsty and left him a can of soda. i had a moment of inspiration and went outside with the 4' security cable and managed to figure out a way to lock both bicycle wheels to the u-lock.

i left for belmont soon afterwards. got there just in time to see the red sox with the lead in a must-win game 3 against the los angeles angels. as soon as the announcer said boston needed just 4 outs to win the game, that's when things started to unravel and eventually the red sox lost the game, got swept in the series, and eliminated from the playoffs. i'm not too sad about it, i hadn't been following very closely. plus there were a lot of distractions, the biggest of which was the steroid scandal with both david ortiz and manny ramirez testing positive. i wasn't naive to think baseball is a clean sport, but the game did lose some of its luster after that.

in the late afternoon was the patriots broncos game. in what would shape up to be a bad day for new england sports fan, the pats looked like they were on their way to defeat the unbeaten broncos but denver came back to tie the game and eventually won the game in overtime, with tom brady not even getting the chance to get back onto the field.

after dinner i returned to cambridge. another sunday, another mad men, and once again, it looks like another beloved character is getting the boot, this time sal, the in-the-closet art director, after a client tried to get frisky with him in the editing room and then later exacted revenge by getting him fired. what eventually happened to sal is a bit ambiguous, with him calling his wife from a pay phone in a gay pick-up spot. maybe he'll whore himself out to the client after all and get his old job back. now with both sal and joan gone, the fun has left sterling-cooper.