Summer Recap - August 2012

As much as I don’t want to admit it, the summer is nearing its end.  I haven’t blogged much this year, mostly because I’m lazy, a little because of work being busier, and a little because we haven’t been up to too much. (But mostly the lazy part. Although this head cold I picked up yesterday pretty much forced me to stay home today, which then led me to put this up.  So there you go.)  So now that summer is almost done, and fall and College Football is about to start up, I thought I’d put together a recap of the summer fun we had this year.

The biggest happening in early in the year was probably going to the 100th anniversary game at Fenway Park between the Red Sox and Yankees on April 20th.  This game was on Sage’s radar for many months, and when tickets first went on-sale, this was the game that was the highest priority.  Lucky for us Sox tickets haven’t been in too much of a demand this year, and we got pretty good seats in the right field grandstand.  Little did we know that we’d be witnesses to the greatest collection of Red Sox players ever in one place. The Sox invited back every living player who ever played for the Red Sox, and that ended up being more than 200 who returned.  Some of my favorites to see were Nomar, Pumpsie Green, Kevin Millar, and of course, Terry Francona making his return.  The Sox lost that day (an omen of things to come), but the pregame ceremonies were a site to behold and I’m so glad I was there to see it in person.

We ended up going to about 10 Sox games this summer (as we said, tickets were REALLY easy), and we didn’t bring much luck to the Beantown Nine.  However, I was pretty lucky with batting practice and foul balls this year.  First, I ended up getting 2 home run balls on top of the Green Monster during batting practice (both hit by Mike Aviles, for the record) in May.  Neither were caught on the fly, but on the rebound (including one that seemed to bounce all around Sage as she ducked for cover, and it ended up right next to her feet).  The balls were extra special to get too because they had the Fenway Park 100 Years logo on them. We also ended up on TV that game, as a home run came right over our heads on the Green Monster.

Sage holds up her spoils

Sage cheers the home run while I turn around to see what I missed. (Photo courtesy A. Pettengill)

And then at a game in July, I crazily got another ball, but this one requires more to the story.  We had tickets down the right field line again, and in the 9th we started walking toward the 3rd base line so we could make a quick exit as soon as the game was over. (Over the years we have created a foolproof system of the best way to exit Fenway to beat the crowds.  We’ve also discovered several areas around the Fenway area where we can park for free and are within a 10-minute walk to the Park. We haven’t paid for parking going to a Fenway event in over 2 years. I think that makes me a Wicked Local now.)  So we were walking along the concourse that separates the field box seats from the loge box seats, and were passing by where the 1st base dugout is, when a player for the White Sox hit a foul ball grounder that hit in front of the Red Sox dugout.  The ball took a weird bounce and landed in the box seats kind of in front of us, with a dozen fans all jumping up and reaching to grab the ball.  We stopped to watch, and while I couldn’t see the ball anywhere, it appeared that it was still loose as the group of people were all bending over and trying to grab/look for the ball.  The next thing I know the ball squirts out of the this mass of people and seats, right into the concourse, and right by my feet!  I calmly reached down and grabbed it, turned around, saw a little girl in the row in front of the concourse turning around to look at me, and handed it over.  I got a couple high fives as we continued on down the concourse, and it’s always nice to make a kid’s day at the park by giving them a ball. (When we got home that night we watched the game on Tivo to see if we had been on TV when we got the foul ball.  They didn’t show that foul ball when it went into the stands, BUT immediately after we were caught on camera as we walked by the batter.  We just can’t seem to stay off the TV.)

Hard to tell, but that's Doug over the hitter's right shoulder, and Sage in the red hat over his left shoulder.

Another funny moment at Fenway this year was when we were sitting one afternoon game down the left field line, just in front of the grandstand seats.  We had aisle seats, and right before the game, when a bunch of people were walking up the stairs/aisle to their seats, I noticed a tall man that looked familiar.  I turned to Sage and said, “I think that’s Mike Timlin.”  She goes, “Are you sure?”  I figured there was only one way to find out, so I yelled out, “Hey, Timlin!”  He turned around, and it was definitely him.  I gave him a thumbs-up, and he waved back.  We watched as he headed up the steps until he made his way to seats, IN THE GRANDSTAND, about 12 rows behind us.  We couldn’t believe he actually had worse seats than we did!  And then, later in the game the Jumbotron started showing a Timlin retrospective.  Sage and I started looking around for him, as we figured that the cameras would show him afterwards.  We couldn’t find him for the longest time…until we realized he was standing about 5 feet away!  Because of the camera there was a large crowd around him, and we never did get a photo of (or with) him.  Oh well, it was still pretty cool to see him back at Fenway.

Speaking of Fenway, we attended two non-Red Sox events at the venerable old ballpark this summer as well.  On July 1st we saw Roger Waters perform The Wall in concert.  Sage and I are the definition of aging-80’s hipsters when it comes to music, and we used to listen to Pink Floyd in abundance in high school and college.  It was a fantastic show, with tons of special effects, great lighting, and high-def videos projected on “the wall”.  Later in July we were back at Fenway for a soccer friendly between Liverpool FC and AS Roma.  Thankfully we sat in the “neutral” section so that I didn’t have to be shown rooting for or against either club, and while the quality/excitement of the game was lacking, the atmosphere was pretty good for a European football game in the States.  That made 4 different “types” of events that we saw at Fenway this year:  Baseball game; Soccer game; Concert; and Hockey game.  (In January we went to a UNH game during their 2012 Frozen Fenway event.)

We didn’t do as much hiking as we would have liked this year.  We’re not huge fans of the hikes really close to us, and to get to some good mountain hiking you really have to drive 2-3 hours north or west, which makes for a really long day.  One place we did finally get to this year is the Blue Hills, which is small area just south of Boston that has an old ski area and quarries.  Now it’s criss-crossed with hiking and biking trails, and one morning we went for a nice hike through some pretty good (but crowded with people) trails.  The views of downtown Boston from there are pretty good, and it’s nice that some good hiking trails (and views) are so close to the city.

Downtown Boston from the Blue Hills

The biggest hike we did this year was the Welch-Dickey loop in the White Mountains.  We took a couple days off in July to head up to NH, and this loop is one of our favorite short hikes.  It has great views, huge expanses of open ledge, and it can all be done in less than 3 hours.

Sage makes her way up Mt. Welch

I really wanted to schedule an overnight backpacking trip one of these weekends, but the summer just got away from us.  There MIGHT be time in the fall, but with football season and all, I sense that another year will get away from us without a backpacking trip.  But that’s not to say I didn’t get organized for one.  Earlier this year I pulled out the gear and set it all up in the backyard.  I set up the tent and tested out the water filter and the camp stove to make sure everything was in shape.

Drinking some camp tea in the back yard campsite

In fact, one of the most common things I did this summer was simply to do some “backyard tailgating”.  All that required was a cooler full of beer, a charcoal grill, some chairs and some reading material. “Summertime, and the living is easy” was very often my mantra on hot Sunday afternoons.

We did some other travel as well this summer.  In late June we headed up to Goose Rocks Beach in Maine to spend a couple nights with Lynn, Sue, and the Tipping family at their annual beach house rental.  It was great to get in some relaxing, a little golf, and plenty of games with the family.  And then in mid-July we spent a day in Moultonborough at the Tipping’s lake house, where we celebrated Sue’s birthday with kayaking on Lake Winnepesaukee and dinner at The Camp restaurant.  And just a few weeks ago we headed up to Kittery, ME for a Saturday at Mary’s.  Aunt Mary has hosted a cookout/open house each of the past few summers, and each time we’ve been lucky enough to have great weather and fabulous food.  This year was no different, and the day flew by way too fast for my liking.

Sunset on the shores of Goose Rocks Beach

Looking across the Piscataqua River from Kittery to Portsmouth

Ashley and Sage enjoyed the Kittery coast

Back in February Sage and I began to head over to one of the local bars in Framingham for Monday night Trivia Night.  These are popping up all over the place now, and we always wanted to try it out.  I talked a friend and ex-coworker at ATK to join us, and the first night we attended we ended up coming in first place!  But more important than 1st place was the fact that we had a FABULOUS time.  (My friend, who I will call Goldy, is like us in that he’s in his early 40’s and has a deep love of movies and general pop culture. And his most important aspect -- he's wicked smaht.)  Since then we have played on average every other week, and our results have been pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.  (Most nights there are between 12 and 16 teams.)
16 – Total trivia nights
7 – 1st place finishes
6 – 2nd place finishes
1 – 3rd place finish
1 – 4th place finish
1 – Other
The “Other” was a 9th place finish, and was one of the few nights where it was just me and Sage on our own, and we did NOT have our A-game.  (But, that's not to say that Sage and I can’t get it done, as we went by ourselves 2 other times and got a 2nd and a 3rd on our own.  So while Goldy is definitely a key player on our team, we can hold our own from time to time as well.)  The other fun part of trivia for us are the team names.  We decided early on to change our name each week, and we rotate who gets to pick.  Some of my favorites have been:  Dogs on Linoleum; The Barking Spiders; Choking Dogs (the week after we came in 2nd after leading the entire night up until the last question); The Chudley Cannons; Nathan Wind as Cochese; The Max Fischer Players; and most recently The Pesky Poles, the night that Johnny Pesky passed away.

The other main thing that has kept me busy this year has been my attempt to lose weight.  I hit a new high in early January of this year, and I decided that enough was enough.  I set a goal for myself that I wanted to lose 40 pounds by Thanksgiving.  While I haven’t reached that goal yet, I am happy to say I am very close, and that as of this writing, I have lost a total of 37 pounds.  I haven’t weighed this low since college, and as a result I’ve had to buy a lot new clothes, which is really annoying.  (Yeah, I know what you’re saying…cry me a river Wicinski!)  So how have I lost the weight?  It’s this crazy new 2-pronged theory that I found online that seems to work:  1) Diet; 2) Exercise.  Who’d have thunk it, right?  I wish I could get myself to exercise even more, and earlier this year I began jogging outside, which I haven’t done probably since high school.  (I’ve done jogging on our treadmill at home, but outside is a completely different beast.  For one, if I run a mile away, I can’t simply stop like I could on a treadmill and go sit on the couch!)  I’ve been happy with my running, and while I can’t seem to run more than 15-20 minutes at a time without stopping and walking for a bit, I’m hoping that I can continue to improve and even run a 5K this fall.  And I mean run, not walk half of it.  We’ll see, but so far, so good.  The big worry for me is when I start to watch Hokie games this fall, and the tension begins to gnaw at me and I do what I normally do:  EAT and DRINK.  Hopefully I can keep it under control.

Finally, a garden update.  Since my last update, the big news is that we dug up the potatoes. We got a really good crop of both the Yukon Gold and Red Potatoes.  Some were huge, some really small, but almost all the plants produced something.  We’ve had both kinds so far, and they taste great.

The summer squash hasn’t been as lucky.  We had several of the squash coming in, and then before I knew it they all started rotting.  And then, within a week the plants had entirely died off.  I’m not sure if there was an insect/pest problem, some sort of fungus, or what happened, but these were a big bust.

Another bust ended up being the tomato plant in the upside down topsy-turvy.  Based on the eaten tomatoes found under the plant, it seems that the chipmunks/squirrels found a way to climb onto the plant, OR they took to jumping up and grabbing the tomatoes on the fly.  Next year I have another plan for the tomatoes that will involve some razor wire, a blow torch, and loud music.  Stay tuned.

The peppers are doing great, both the bell peppers and chili peppers.  The plants are growing better than they ever have, and the peppers are larger than ever.  We’re really enjoying these.

Finally, the blackberries are still producing, and while sometimes I feel like something is eating them, I still get enough every day to make me happy.

I planted some more lettuce for the fall, and that’s already started to come up.  And soon enough I’ll be planning my fall planting of garlic, and I guess that’s the way the whole darned human comedy keeps perpetuatin’ itself.