Dwarf Planet in Purple

Both of my favorite Major League Baseball teams had their Opening Day games postponed today -- the Red Sox for rain up in Boston, the Nationals for several covid-19 positive tests. Boston will play tomorrow, but who knows about Washington?

I am still feeling no effects from the first Pfizer jab. However, I have a slight bruise from the blood test at the doctor's office on March 25.

I wish I could get R. to get his vaccine. He is 69 years old and lives in Loudoun County, Virginia. He has been eligible for a while now, and the rest of the Virginia adult populace will become eligible on April 18, so there will be another rush. But R. just complains darkly about how "Fairfax County has been prioritized for vaccinations." I tell him I've heard no such things on the news. Maybe Fairfax County represents all the parts of political liberalism that he hates so much.

Honestly, I have no idea where R. even gets his news these days. He doesn't own a TV set. The radio in his 1993 Honda Accord has been busted for years. He says the internet connection to his apartment is very poor and he can't get online very often, but his ADSL provider cannot fix it because that would require him to let them into his apartment during business hours, but he can't possibly take the time off to do that because he is under so much time pressure at work, yadda yadda yadda. So he is living as if this is still 1993. Except ... it's NOT 1993 anymore.

All things considered, I think the boy toy and I are doing a pretty good job of maintaining a daily routine during the pandemic. He gets up first to make the coffee and feed the cat and start preparing breakfast. Then he wakes me up when breakfast is almost ready. I put on actual clothes and shoes instead of staying in a bathrobe and slippers all day. We have pretty much the same mealtimes every day. I try not to stay up too late at night.

Today I went to "virtual church" via Zoom. The minister wove some sports metaphors into the service -- baseball, play, game, team, practice -- so afterward the boy toy and I put some episodes of Ken Burns' Baseball documentary series on the tube. (Yes, I still call flat-screen television "the tube.") We got out the sewing machine and made a second mask for each of us. I don't think the mask requirement is going to go away anytime soon, so it's time to expand our facial wardrobes a bit.

After I went for a late-afternoon walk, we put on the Downton Abbey movie and watched it during dinner. I'd seen it on the big screen, but it was still good to rewatch it.

I'm trying not to do a lot of "work for pay" on weekends unless I have to. I still have some assignments to crank out. But tomorrow is another day.

Where to begin ... ?

I guess I should just start with the personal deets. I'm in good health. After nine and a half years of freelancing, I'm really used to spending a lot of time at home. One of my clients is taking a long time to pay me, though, and since the stock market is doing its ultra-roller-coaster thing, I am extremely nervous about the tiny little sliver that's left of my retirement fund.

I am getting very good at using Zoom for videoconferencing. Heck, it even enables me to attend two different meetings (barony meeting and Toastmasters club officers, or church budget team and Toastmasters club officers) in different towns on the same evening. In the "real world" or "meatspace," I'd have to choose between one or the other.

The boy toy and I are taking turns going out shopping (because that's a recommendation). Yesterday I went to the local food co-op (really, a small supermarket) to get a few things that were 5 percent cheaper on the monthly "patron appreciation day." I couldn't help noticing how bare the paper-products shelves looked.


Today was *supposed* to be Opening Day for Major League Baseball. Ha ha ha, COVID-19 had other ideas. So MLB came up with the idea of picking a classic game from each team's history -- a winning game, of course -- and streaming it. For the Nationals they picked Game 7 of last year's World Series (of course) and for the Red Sox they picked Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, which was a lengthy and hard-fought victory when our dear Sox were down 3 games to 0. So, yeah, I actually listened to large chunks of both games.

During disasters, people do things they don't normally do. The boy toy has been baking bread -- he made a very tasty loaf of rosemary bread -- and then he moved on to something non-edible. Since the last round of hair dye we used left our hair feeling drier than usual, he decided to make an all-natural "deep conditioner" out of pumpkin puree and honey. We have lots of frozen pumpkin puree and non-frozen honey. He blended some of each together and this morning we doused our hair with it. His hair, which is quite a bit thicker than mine, came out great, but mine came out ... gritty. I have *not* had a haircut in over a year and the little bits of orange pumpkin pulp got caught in the split ends. Or something. Bleah.

I have been giving the boy toy haircuts for several years now, and after today, he actually volunteered to give me a trim. At least a couple of inches. Another sign of the times. :-)

Finally, something that has not been covered as much as it should have been: Happy 80th Birthday, Nancy Patricia Pelosi! What a nice middle name you have. :-)

Colorimetry is weird. Don't believe me? Try looking up "Planckian locus" or "MacAdam sphere" or "CIELUV." Granted, I've long known about color temperature, both instinctively and scientifically, but some of this other stuff is … just weird. (I am writing a short newsbrief about this stuff, due tomorrow, so that's why I'm noodling over it while watching Game 6 of the World Series.)

Incidentally, this game is taking the same overall shape as so many of the playoff games that have preceded it: some early fireworks go off before the contest settles into a pitchers' duel. Except this time Houston is ahead 2-1 and Strasburg is getting into trouble. >:-(

*sigh* Maybe I'll go raid the fridge.

Apparently it was 1 year ago today that the Red Sox advanced to the World Series. The Washington Nationals did that just a few nights ago. So, both of my favorite baseball teams in the Series in two successive years! How 'bout THAT?

Tomorrow I'm going to the MD Renaissance Festival with R. It's the closing weekend, so it will be a total zoo. Twice as many people as Pennsic packed into a quarter of the space … remind me how this is supposed to be fun? Eh, I suppose it'll be as fun as I make it. Plus, I have been going every single year since 1993, so why break the streak now?

Happy Birthday, wookiemonster!!! The guy who remembers everyone else's LJ/DW birthday deserves some reciprocation!!!

Today I felt weirdly sad for some reason. Maybe it had to do with last night's shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Maybe I just felt overwhelmed. (I wish I didn't have so many big bills due right before Pennsic.) Last night I *had* been planning to mention the Red Sox vs. Yankees series, but the Gilroy news cleared the decks of my mind, so to speak.

The boy toy picked up five new stakes for my tent, plus a new air pump ... but the pump takes C batteries, and the only C batteries I had were labeled "Best Used By 2006." Uh. He's going to Harbor Freight tomorrow.

Tonight Mistress Teleri's little A&S group had a soap-making session. I splashed a little bit of the newly made soap (not straight lye) on my shirt. Now I smell like patchouli and jasmine. Mostly patchouli. :-)

In other news, both my favorite baseball teams lost today. The Red Sox are out of the postseason entirely; the Nationals are hanging on by a thread. *sigh*

Today has been the 11th anniversary of the Boston Red Sox victory in the 2004 World Series. Guess which long-sleeved shirt I am wearing. Yeah, that one. :-)

Nowadays, of course, the World Series begins later than ever before, because there has to be a play-in round before the ALDS and NLDS. Gee, why don't we give all the teams a gold star, like in a kindergarten competition?

Today's bit of exercise involved planting some bulbs that I bought at Aldi last month. If all goes well, next spring I should have some purple flowers mixed in with the daffodils in my tiny condo garden. Julia watched me through the bedroom window. She looked as if she was thinking, "Hey, you're wetting down the place where MY birdies like to take dust baths!"

So, how 'bout those RED SOX???!!!??? ( Cut to spare those who are uninterested. )

The other night, I was driving to dance/music practice and I saw that the sign in front of the university's Ritchie Coliseum said something like "WELCOME AORE, WWW.AORE.ORG." I wondered what the heck AORE stands for. American Organization of Renal Endocrinologists? Association of Outstanding Reticulated Entomologists? Obviously I figured it out once I got home, but I think my other ideas are more interesting, don't you?

Anyway ... I'm still getting used to Standard Time and the lack of Major League Baseball games, and I really, really ought to write more about the SCA.

Yeah, I stayed up last night and watched the historic Red Sox collapse. Aaarrrrrggghhhhh. I have to admit that, for fans of the Orioles, it must have been an utterly fabulous way to end an otherwise undistinguished season.

But for Red Sox Nation? Gaah, what might have been....

Seems as if a lot of people are now calling for the head of manager Terry "Tito" Francona, but I'm not one of them. I still think he's the best manager for the Red Sox. I don't know enough about baseball to assign blame, but I'd say the team HAS to get rid of Lackey, and probably Crawford too. I see Ellsbury, Pedroia, and Youkilis (when Youk gets over his injury) as the core of next year's team.

Baseball is such a funny game. It's like the opposite of football. The NFL has a 16-game season, so it is not that uncommon to have teams finish 15-1 or 1-15. But Major League Baseball is six months and 162 games. The best teams have a record around .600 and the worst teams are around .400. Regression toward the mean or something like that. Even the best teams have "off" nights when no one can hit or catch properly. Even the worst teams have flashes of athletic brilliance.

Funny, but at the end of the game last night, I was thinking about how I tried to make myself root for the Orioles back in the 1990s, when I was a new transplant to Maryland and DC had no prospects of getting an MLB team. After all, the O's still had Cal Ripken Jr., who I still think is an incredible class act. The O's led the AL East for the entire 1997 season, then lost in the playoffs (ALDS, IIRC) and then Peter Angelos fired Davey Johnson and the O's haven't had a winning season since. I can't stand Angelos as a team owner, and I guess this experience is one reason why I think the Sox should keep Francona. (Incidentally, Davey Johnson is now managing the Nationals, which gives me hope for the future of that team. I would really like to have a good NL team in DC.)

Guess I'll wrap this up with a couple of links.

Chad Finn: Red Sox did this to themselves
Nate Silver: Bill Buckner strikes again