Doins a-transpirin'

Exhibit A: Colleen now works at Bluesocket. I haven't been at work past 6:30 since she started on Monday. Excellent.

Exhibit B: Jill and I finagled tickets to three consecutive Red Sox games this week. We opted to give tonight's to Jill's associate Abby, who gave us the Thursday seats, but last night kicked off the week well. Jason treated Ali, Jill and I to our first Bud Roof experience, where we watched most of the game from an exclusive deck above right field. After the game, I walked by Jerry Remy leaving the stadium, and reached out to tap him on the shoulder as if I knew him from back in the day or something. Fortunately, I realized who he was just in time to withdraw my hand and mumble something like "you sure are Jerry Remy." Brilliant.

Exhibit C: This weekend will be the biggest QHS grad outing yet (in which I've been involved), as we'll roll as many as 17 deep (including 7 princesses) into the Parting Glass and other greater Queensbury region haunts before and after two days of betting the ponies at the track in Saratoga.

On albums, iPods, Alan Embree, and the end of Six Feet Under

Because Eric did, my top 50 albums of the last 25 years:

1 OK Computer , Radiohead
2 Tigermilk , Belle & Sebastian
3 The Queen is Dead , The Smiths
4 Grace , Jeff Buckley
5 Nevermind , Nirvana
6 Things Fall Apart , The Roots
7 If You're Feeling Sinister , Belle & Sebastian
8 Rain Dogs , Tom Waits
9 The Bends , Radiohead
10 Paul's Boutique , The Beastie Boys
11 Reckoning , REM
12 Homogenic , Bjork
13 Stankonia , OutKast
14 Siamese Dream , The Smashing Pumpkins
15 Loveless , My Bloody Valentine
16 Chutes Too Narrow , The Shins
17 Being There , Wilco
18 Wowee Zowee , Pavement
19 Dummy , Portishead
20 Surfer Rosa , The Pixies
21 Fear of a Black Planet , Public Enemy
22 A Northern Soul , The Verve
23 Aenima , Tool
24 The Low End Theory , A Tribe Called Quest
25 Thriller , Michael Jackson
26 Van Lear Rose , Loretta Lynn
27 Agaetis Byrjun , Sigur Ros
28 When the Pawn… , Fiona Apple
29 The Marshall Mathers LP , Eminem
30 The Chronic , Dr. Dre
31 Parklife , Blur
32 Elephant , The White Stripes
33 New Adventures in Hi-Fi , REM
34 Weezer , Weezer
35 Aquemini , OutKast
36 Moon Safari , Air
37 XO , Elliot Smith
38 In it for the Money , Supergrass
39 Dig Your Own Hole , The Chemical Brothers
40 The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill , Lauryn Hill
41 Yankee Hotel Foxtrot , Wilco
42 Ritual de lo Habitual , Jane's Addiction
43 Poses , Rufus Wainwright
44 Sea Change , Beck
45 Central Reservation , Beth Orton
46 The Stone Roses , The Stone Roses
47 Is this It? , The Strokes
48 Exile in Guyville , Liz Phair
49 Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia , The Dandy Warhols
50 Daydream Nation , Sonic Youth

In quasi-related news, my upgrade to a 60GB photo iPod (I bought it more for the extra 10,000 songs worth of space than the photo capability) has gone less than swimmingly. My first major stride towards a 4500-song database on the new toy came this evening, when I gave up on my over-iTunesed laptop and installed iTunes on Jill's desktop (using my external hard drive for storage, of course). By tomorrow, I anticipate having a third of my collection in the car with me.

I don't make a practice of quoting others in this space, but the ever-clever Bill Simmons dropped this gem earlier this week: "Watching the Yankees keep throwing Alan Embree out there is like watching your arch-enemy in college unknowingly start dating a girl with VD." God bless 'em.

And finally, as I blog, I'm watching the last episode of Six Feet Under. I always thought I'd watch the last episode of The Simpsons and think 'there goes the best television show of my (or probably anyone's) lifetime'. But after four or five supbar seasons of The Simpsons possibly stripped it of that title, I'm feeling the same way about a show that debuted long after The Simpsons peaked. I probably won't even know when the Simpsons' series finale happens, so I'll relish this moment, bidding farewell to a masterpiece with my fiance in her chair, a bottle of Pinot Noir in my hand, and my iPod filling up at about 2 gigs an hour.

1992

In an impromptu effort to revisit my youth, I watched three Little League World Series games today, ate a burrito at Jack Arnold's (ah, to be 23 again), and played some wiffle ball with 11-year-olds (and a few of Jill's associates) at Mark's place in Somerville.

I found out that I can still bring the gas, taking a no-hitter into the fourth, when I did all I could to let the 11-year-olds celebrate, but couldn't break the scoreless tie, even with a few 3-2 meatballs. I also learned that my little league hitting skills haven't changed much, not managing so much as a single until one kid got desperate on a 12-0 pitch and hung a changeup right over the plate.

September is shaping up to be a huge month for the bmoconline staff. Expect some top notch journalism (by which I mean half-assed recaps every eight or nine days).

Tax Free

I see no reason to bore you with a recap of all the vacation activities I outlined before the trip, so I'll just say that the week was loaded with driving and drinking, almost always in that order. Highlights included corn (the long way) as every other clue in two games of Cranium Conga, Colleen swimming back from the lighthouse on Lake Cobbosseecontee, and today's tax-free exploits (I saved $60 by purchasing a 60GB iPod and two wedding bands on Massachusetts's tax free holiday). And I'm still off of work for another 39 hours.

Vacation

In three days, I begin my first full week of non-Christmas vacation of my post-college career. The tentative agenda:

Friday: I put the finishing touches on a wedding gift and contemplate how to spend my bonus.

Saturday: my first visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame in many years; Jill's first visit ever

Sunday: Beth becomes the fourth of twenty cousins on my dad's side to tie the knot, in a ceremony in the Finger Lakes.

Monday: a visit to the old stomping grounds, where we'll be entertained by one two-year-old's blossoming vocabulary and several two-year-olds' speed around a racetrack

Tuesday: We return home and I take a special guest to Bluesocket for a visit. More on this later?

Wednesday: The Marstons' camp on Lake Cobbosseecontee beckons, and we just might answer.

Thursday: On the way home from Maine, Jill and I show off North Shore wedding sites to my parents and Colleen.

Friday: down the street for the Liberatore family dinner; sure to be a large, loud, and delicious affair

Saturday: lunch with the Jeffreys on the O'Connors' way out of town; a quicker, quieter gathering

Sunday: I sit on the couch, baffled that the week is over, I have to go back to the cracker factory tomorrow, and not a single home improvement was done.

I updated my seen, listened to, and read lists today for the first time in a while. Make sure to vote in the poll to the right.