what's happened in the past few days:
i purchased tickets to san francisco, going with the tuesday evening to sunday night/monday morning red-eye plan. plan is oakland on wednesday, pac bell on friday and saturday nights, tbd for all of thursday and sunday. perhaps solo-tourism.


brother dave came out to the ballpark on saturday afternoon and got the grand tour. it's always fun when brother dave shows up. dave had to head out before the game, but he was around for about an hour.


mommy and daddy made it out to the saturday night game, got their name on the scoreboard and everything. we announced a season-high crowd of 6,018, the game was quick and well-played. it's so fun when the stands are packed and the crowd is into it and things like that. en route to post-game ihop (mommy and daddy following me - - they were heading to grandma's post-game), i decided beer was more appealing than ihop. free beer on dad rules.


saturday morning resulted in a funny occurence. you'll recall, perhaps, that i plowed through nick hornby's high fidelity in late may. same off day that i got high fidelity, i also placed an 'order' through the library for fever pitch, his book about his obsession with british football club arsenal. after months without hearing a thing, i called to check on it on wednesday, july 9th. they explained that the copy reserved for me was checked out in 2001, which means it ain't coming back. but they offered to pursue a copy from a non-area library, asking patience because it would take 3-4 weeks.

well anyway, they proceeded to call three days later, and i picked it up saturday morning, the 12th. i'm about halfway through. yesterday, on saturday morning, the 19th, while i was showering, the davenport public library called again, saying they'd obtained the book i wanted. i called back to see if this was indeed the same book. and it was, only this copy came from des moines (the one i'm currently reading came from dubuque.). efficient, yet inefficient.

sideways rain from the perspective of a fifth-floor apartment rules. no loud thunder...just plentiful lightning and solid, solid rain.

and a note to my pal flax: thanks for your loyalty to these ramblings.