Three out of four, baby!

I can't remember if I've ever talked about baseball before, but this weekend the Orioles took three games of a four-game series against the division-leading Boston Red Sox. This puts them just two games out of first place as they go into the All-Star break.

For those of us who've suffered through some truly crappy years with the Os in recent times, this is amazing. I keep waiting for them to somehow screw it up... but they never do. They lose a few, they get them back. The give up some runs, they get them back.

I've been doing a variety of things this weekend. Among other things, Sarah came by, at my invitation, to pick some raspberries. The wild reds are mellower this year but just as large as last year, and there are far more than I could ever pick. She was happy to do so, and we talked and got along just fine.

She says she's still in love with me, but I really think it's just the cats and the house she adores. She really likes the place, and kept trying to talk me into renting it to her. Uh... where do I get to live, then???

I extricated the mower deck from the swamp on Saturday. Got the Ford going, took my nylon tow rope down there, and dragged the thing out. I discovered that the heavy rain and my tractor-tire ruts had produced a small frog pond down there, fed by the spring overflow, and there were actually frogs in it! What's more, I spotted a small gray kitten running across the barnyard and under my old dead red Saab. I think she's sneaking into the locked part of the barn through a hole Mr. Woodchuck's ancestors made several years ago, and eating the leftover dog food Avery left.

Avery is coming by this week and clearing the rest of the junk out of there. For me, the urgency has passed... it was really him and his dogs, and the sense that I was never alone here, that were most corrosive. I had never expected how sensitive to that sort of thing. Maybe I should have.

The house is much cleaner now. It bloes ass when the biggest news I have is about... vacuuming. Seems like other types of Hoovers are what most of you tune in for, but those have been in quite short supply lately.