Journal of a Sabbatical

February 16, 2001

warming trend

Today's Reading: In Audubon's Labrador by Charles Wendell Townsend

Today's Starting Pitcher: Pitchers and catchers report tomorrow!!

I sat down to write this entry at 9:04 PM, typed the title and the sidebar, got distracted by a phone call, and now at 10:30 PM I have no idea why I entitled it "warming trend" as it is snowing out. I also have no idea what I intended to write about.

The day was pretty ordinary. Worked on the draft of the beach grass opus for Donald (or Don as he is called in Salisbury). Went to the hardware store by one of those little wrenches to fix the garbage disposal and to make photocopies of the receipts for the Hungarians' G4 so that all relevant people here have copies and I can take the originals with me for customs. Went for coffee and ran into - in succession with some overlap -

Dan, Geri, and Hussein

Tom

Ned

Julie

Next week is apparently a popular week to be away from here. Hussein's boss (the notorious Enzo) will be on vacation leaving him in charge of the shop. Ned is taking the family to Florida for the week (it's school vacation week). And I am leaving for Budapest.

Pitchers and catchers report tomorrow although some of them are already there in Ft. Myers. Other than the fact that it looks like Duquette is running an old pitchers' home with folks like David Cone, pennant fever is already sweeping the nation (uh, that's Red Sox Nation for readers not familiar with Dan Shaughnessey's appellation for this region). I mean with Manny Ramirez added for offense and all these pitchers... And isn't there some rule that whichever team has David Cone on it in October wins the World Series? It's in that same rule book with the famous ex-Cub rule - whichever team has the most ex-Cubs loses. I don't know whether the ex-Cub rule and the David Cone rule have ever collided and if so which takes precedence. Something to think about while waiting for the snow to finish melting and Jimy with one M to establish the pitching rotation.