something else
November 4, 2001

Today's Starting Pitchers
Diamondbacks: Curt Schilling
Yankees: Roger Clemens

This Year's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island Year List

Today's Reading:
The Gilgit Game by John Keay, Used and Rare by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

This Year's Reading:
2001 Book List

I was so exhausted when I got home from the cat shelter yesterday that I called Nancy and told her we were going to have to watch the baseball game in our separate domiciles because I was way too tired to drive to Providence. It's only an hour and a half drive, but considering I could barely drag myself from room to room it might as well be a three day hike.

Rejuvenated after a good night's sleep and a convincing Diamondbacks win, I drove down to Providence this morning. It's unseasonably warm. It feels nothing at all like November. At Cafe Zog on Wickenden Street we have our omelets, bagels, and coffee outside in the courtyard/bamboo grove and watch the sparrows forage for crumbs that fall from the tables. I can't believe I'm basking in the sun in a bamboo grove in Providence on a November Sunday afternoon. Too weird.

Masses of starlings whirl overhead like fast moving, chirping clouds. They're worked up about something. They must think this doesn't feel like November either. If starlings think, that is. After all, their brains are very small...

We both admit to turning off the TV once the Diamondbacks had a fifteen run lead.

After the ritual browse in the Brown Bookstore and a trip to Colt State Park to see if the wintering brant have arrived yet (they haven't) we decide to get an early dinner at Taste of India. The people at the next table are talking about the World Series. Somebody quotes a line from somewhere (Saturday Night Live?) about the fact that Red Sox fans are rooting for the Yankees, which caused yesterday's loss: "If the Boston fans rooted for gravity we'd all fly off the planet." Hmm, exactly how many Red Sox fans are rooting for the Yankees? I know it's supposedly our patriotic duty to root for the Yankees this year, but President Bush has also asked us to resume our normal lives. That means we have official federal permission to root for the D'backs doesn't it?

And so another late -- but extremely satisfying -- night.

Diamondbacks! Diamondbacks! Diamondbacks!

Baseball wins big! This is the best World Series I've watched since 1975. There's life in the national sport yet.