I’ve been remiss in posting an update of our trek to the day game against Oakland on Wednesday.

It was a perfect spring day at Fenway; the game was a little more interesting than it should have been. In the 9th inning, one strike away from a save despite giving up two runs, and the entire crowd cheering him on, Keith Foulke gave up a 2 run home run to Eric Byrnes, putting the Sox behind. He was rightly booed after finally finishing up the inning. With Varitek’s walk-off 2-run home run the next half-inning, you pretty much couldn’t ask for more from a game drama-wise. Which on one hand is not good, because what is up with Foulke?!, but on the other hand is good, since we’ve only managed to get tickets to two games this season, so they’d better be memorable! The next one comes in June, when my cousins are coming up from the ‘Burgh to see the Pirates in inter-league play. So it will no doubt be fun, regardless of how good the game is.

A couple of baseball-related links before signing off.

First, since Terri’s veg, and has pretty dismal options for snacking at Fenway, a recent post in the Food Museum Blog reminds us that it doesn’t need to be that way, especially for an otherwise vegetarian-friendly town like Boston. The veg options at SBC park seem tasty enough that even I, a devotee of the Lord’s hot dog, would be tempted.

Second, I’ve often had difficulty in identifying the song clips played before the batters step up to the plate. I need wonder no more, thanks to this thing which Terri pointed out to me today. [For the record, I did correctly identify that Bill Mueller’s at-bat song was Rush the other day…

Terri continues to en-Flickr scans of the lovely photos she took on old-school film. More coming, no doubt.

Of the many words I love, “quiddity” as been very close to the top of the list since I discovered it. I forget the context, but I feel like it was a summer or two ago, it came up (I have no idea how or why) when I was visiting the parents. My mom was looking it up, but I tried to guess what it meant from my smidgie of Latin: I guessed “what-ness” or “thingitude”. I was close:

quid di ty (kwi(d’i(-te-) pronunciation
n., pl. -ties.

1. The real nature of a thing; the essence.
2. A hairsplitting distinction; a quibble.

Or even better, from WordNet,

The noun quiddity has 2 meanings:

1. Meaning #1: an evasion of the point of an argument by raising irrelevant distinctions or objections
   Synonym: quibble
2. Meaning #2: the essence that makes something the kind of thing it is and makes it different from any other

On the Latin theme, I may start writing error messages in Latin after reading this.

It’s been a rainy planet weekend. The weather has been rainy, and it recalls the weather of the original rainy May days when Terri and I became friends, many a year ago, which we called the Rainy Planet. (Yes, hence the name we’re using for the press). In fact, one of those rainy days we hung out was the day of the Kentucky Derby, as was this past Saturday. We were supposed to go to my friends Kelly & Brecky’s derby party (they’re from Louisville), and I got confused about which Beacon Street it was on. I assumed Somerville, since they lived in Somerville; in fact, it was Beacon Street in Boston. So we ended up walking around in the rain back and forth down Beacon Street in Somerville, and we eventually just gave up and went (I think) to the Thirsty Scholar. Anyway, that was 1997. Fast forward to the rainy planet of 2005.

Friday night we scrambled to get a bit of gardening in. We had some flowers that really needed to get in the ground, and the forecast for the whole weekend was rain. So Terri did some clearing & weeding in the afternoon, and when I got home from work, we just beat the sunset and the impending raindrops.

The main innovation is that we are sort of reclaiming the sort of no-man’s land which we haven’t messed with because it’s hard to tell where the property line is. But our neighbors rent and don’t really keep it up, and it visually looks like it should go with our place. So, we’re just going to start taking care of it. What’s the worst that can happen? We basically just pulled up some weeds, planted some cleome, and put down some mulch, leaving the lilies, irises, and tulips that were already there.

Saturday, we took another trip through inclement weather to Chicopee Mass. to Letterpress Things. John had an impressive amount of new equipment (well, none of it’s new) that was there on consignnment from someone’s Kelsey shop. There were hundreds of cases of type, three presses, and lots of interesting ephemera and oddities, all practically brand new. Seemed like someone bought a bunch of stuff with good intentions, and never really used it. We ended up with four new cases of type, some decorations and borders, and some new plates. Still no great source for rollers. John mentioned a New England company which he is trying to talk into taking orders from small shops and hobbyists. But in the meantime, I’m getting a little impatient with an idle press. I was hoping for rubber, but honestly, I’m just thinking of getting them recovered with the old-school “composition” stuff from Tar Heel Rollers.

This afternoon, I’m going to run a few things the tedious hand-inking way.

Blogged to death, but if you haven’t head about it yet, those wacky MIT kids are throwing a time traveller’s convention. It’s cute and strangely heartfelt, and this is possibly the most earnest plea for viral marketing I’ve ever seen:

We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in MAJOR outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them.

Ok, so just for posterity, it’s at

May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(events start at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
3 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02142
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

Be there early and often.

Here are some links to some recommended free music.

I found them through Salon’s Audiofile column which concentrates on free samples of mostly indie stuff. I almost never agree with the Thomas Bartlett, the writer’s, opinions and I hate much of his writing (particularly odious was his review of the Interpol Radio City show). But it’s a useful source of free new stuff.

First recommendation: “Reflections after Jane“, Clientele. I tend to dislike things that are just period pieces, and this is so very soaked in 60’s Britain (or worse, 80’s Britain imitating 60’s Britain) that it’s almost a little too cute. But it’s really good at capturing a certain mood that I think is a little more timeless than just a set of musical influences. And I can’t get it out of my head. My brain consistently confounds “Clinic” and “Clientele“, and I’ve never cared enough to try too hard; maybe I’ll be able to keep them straight now.

Second recommendation: “Train from Kansas City“, Neko Case. I’m not a full-time Neko Case fan, though Terri will verify that I have been known to belt out The New Pornographers’ “Letter From An Occupant” at frightening volume in the car. I like this, though. I like the Wall of Sound production, I like how the song itself is like one of those 70’s country story songs.

From the Globe:

Its creators saw it as a bright, well-intentioned idea. An antilittering campaign designed for East Boston’s heavily immigrant population: Amusing street mimes, transcending language barriers, would perform in public spaces, grab residents’ attention, and help persuade them to stop dropping trash on neighborhood streets.

I just don’t know where to begin. I guess the thing that makes me laugh the hardest is that the reporter is really being way too generous here. Who could possibly have thought this was a bright, well-intentioned idea? Who could possibly have thought “It’s kind of messy here. Should we pay some people to clean it up? Buy some new spiffy trash cans? Enforce some littering fines? Nah, let’s call in the mimes!”

The press lives!

Well, sort of. I had to fake it. I’ve still not been able to either buy new rollers or re-cover my existing (but moldy (ick) and deteriorated) rollers. So I bought a hand brayer and used that to ink the type. I just made a dumb little test thing, but I’m happy with the result. It looks like a Chance card from Monopoly.

This May Day marked the second anniversary of our home ownership. Amy made us a fabulous dinner. (Happy Birthday, A). I almost, almost got something actually printed on the press. The Sox won.

I think that is all.

Here’s The Crimson’s story.