The Sawx Suck, Boston Does Not

The oddest selfie I have ever taken.

The Boston Red Sox are pretty bad this year. The local sports radio station, which lives to tear apart struggling local teams, has been having a field day. The Red Sox are for sale! Their manager shows up late for games! They're moving the team to Vermont! Ahhhhhhhh!

And that's just NPR.

The Red Sox are an inescapable part of living in Boston. Though I was kidding about NPR, a few weeks ago the local NPR station (WBUR) did spend 15 minutes breaking down a Red Sox trade. Usually, NPR announcers can't pronounce players' names correctly. It's a different kind of town.

Around 10:30 p.m., during a rain delay.

That's what has made the tradition to city life a difficult one. It's a different kind of town. Obviously, I've had some trouble getting myself, my dog and The Wife acquainted. One thing we were not prepared for: Humidity. July and August are pretty miserable months just about anywhere, but to have them as your first two months is rough.

We have two small window-unit air conditioners in our condo. They could barely keep the apartment tolerable during the warmest (and most humid) summer on record. I currently think living on the West Coast sounds spectacular, due to an utter lack of humidity. I've long argued that if it wasn't for money factors, everyone would live in San Diego. I would hire a moving company for the first time in my life if that were to actually happen.

But hold off on registering Good Evening From San Diego as a blog name. Temperatures have dropped. TW has started her work routine and likes it, generally speaking. The last three days have been cloudless, with temperatures in the 70s.

It's funny that things like weather have a profound effect on our perceptions. For instance, if you go skiing at a ski resort that hasn't had snow in two weeks, your experience will be a little different than if you go during or just after a big dump. That's what skiers call big snowstorms. I apologize for skiers.

Boston's South End is amazing and incredibly expensive.
My Dad needs to win the Powerball lottery if we're going
to live there.

A multitude of people have asked the obvious question: Do you like Boston? Until a few days ago, the answer was a pretty firm no. We don't have any friends. It's hot. We don't live in the nice part of town. Boo hoo. Etc.

And then the last 48 hours happened. I drove 12 minutes to pick up TW at work. We had a lovely Thai food lunch. We'll be doing that every week, it's been decided. That wasn't our only date. We met last night at an Irish pub with an amazing beer list and a few cheap appetizers. Then we took the subway home.

I took another 12 minute drive this morning. Dove through the tunnel with Daisy Duke riding shotgun, then up onto Storrow Drive. If you're a tourist, Storrow Drive is the highway from hell. It has weird left exits. There's generally traffic and there's generally people honking.

But at 11 a.m. on a beautiful sunny day, Storrow Drive is absolutely stunning. The road winds along the Charles River, basically on top of it, really. There's sailing clubs, runners, and most importantly, convenient access to a Trader Joe's that had a near-empty parking lot. I forgot the gluten-free macaroni and cheese, but that's OK. I'll go back tomorrow.

Daisy Duke and I were bombing down Storrow at 40 mph (no easy feat, I assure you), when I saw my favorite part of Boston dead ahead: A gigantic Citgo sign. It's not the sign so much as what the sign sits behind, Fenway Park.

On my first trip to Fenway, I was coming down from a job interview in New Hampshire. I had no freaking idea where I was going. With no map and no pre-planning, I just figured I'd drive down the river and look for Fenway. It was the dumbest thing I'd ever done to that point while driving a car, but amid 5 p.m. traffic on Storrow Drive, fighting for my rental car's life, I saw the Citgo sign and knew exactly where to go.

The river. Trader Joe's. Fenway Park. Date nights on the subway. Do I like Boston? I do, but it would be great if the Red Sox would fire Bobby Valentine.

A Doggone Fool

There's a lot of stories about Boston. There's a little dog park up the hill from our condo that's about an acre of open land. At the top of the hill, there's a large rock with a plaque that tells of the park's history as a military for the British in the 1600s and the Americans in the late 1700s. 

A more recent story involves skunks. To an outsider, "Boston" and "skunks" seems like a contradiction, but they're everywhere in Eastie. I saw one within my first few nights of living in East Boston. You see them only at night, in fact, but you see them relatively often. 

The Wife heard a story at the dog park up the hill about the skunks. Supposedly, the skunks were brought in by the city to control the rat population. Maybe they've had success with that. I have yet to see a rat in Boston.

Join the smelly side, Daisy.

There is, however, another mammalian in East Boston, and it was always likely they would meet. Daisy Duke is an affable chocolate Lab who is prone to late-night bowel antics. In Portland, Maine, she made a habit of tearing after squirrels, often into traffic, just to say hi to the things. I honestly don't think she would ever bite another living animal. She's that tame.

Unfortunately, to a 2-year-old Lab, squirrels and skunks kind of look alike. And they both have names that star with the letter "S." Daisy Duke has been well aware of the Eastie skunk population. Daisy Duke goes for a quick walk to the park around 1 a.m. on nights I get home from work. She has seen the skunks, oh yes. She's just so damn curious about them. Do they want to race her? Play fetch against her? It's just so different.

It was inevitable that the two great forces, Daisy Duke and the Skunk, would collide. Like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, they were drawn to each other. 

Last night, at 1:10 a.m., I left the house to take Daisy Duke on her nightly constitutional. The Wife had gone to bed early, leaving the late-night chore to us. That's not unusual, but some nights are easier than others.

As we approached the park, I did my usual skunk check. I smelled. No skunk. Then I made the critical error. I let Daisy Duke off her leash. 

Daisy Duke took off like a laser-guided missile. The skunk was about 75 feet to our right and, at 1 a.m., the city lights don't light every corner of the park. Time went into slow motion for me.

"Well, I always figured this was going to happen," I thought.

The skunk wasn't quite facing my dog as Daisy Duke slowed her approach. There was a 1-second pause, a slight hissing sound, then DD skittered away, confused. What the hell is that thing?

Then she smelled it.

I couldn't smell it. But you could just tell. Daisy almost immediately flopped (and when I say flopped, I mean she threw herself) onto the ground. Thankfully, it had just rained and the grass was wet. She writhed for a minute. She got up. She looked at the skunk. "My God. What the hell is that thing?"

She ran a little farther away and flopped. And writhed. Got up. Flopped. And writhed. She was inconsolable, not that I was trying to do any consoling. She'd gotten herself into this mess and I was content to let her writhe on wet grass as long as she was willing.

After about 5 minutes, I texted TW. "Your dog got sprayed by a skunk."

Then, a follow-up: "It doesn't smell nearly as bad as you think it would."

That was true. I don't know if it was a young skunk or a whole-grain, organic-food-only skunk, or if the skunk had somehow missed spraying Daisy Duke. The smell was only about a fifth, maybe one-tenth as bad as you think it's going to be.

Still. It was bad and it would not (WILL not) go away. 

Back at home, TW was Googling "deskunk a dog." Always great in a crisis, she also updated her Facebook status to let the world know what she was Googling. TW's Best Friend just had a baby and was all over the post at 4 a.m. Dislike.

I arrived around 1:30. The bedroom doors were closed. Contain the damage. TW found a cleansing recipe for skunk smell. It called for hydrogen peroxide. A couple of things struck me funny about this de-skunking recipe:

1. You can't mix it ahead of time because it can explode. Like with fire and such.

2. You can't leave it in the dog's hair for long because it will bleach it. 

The good thing about living in Eastie: It takes about 2 minutes to get to Walgreens, which is open 24 hours. Also, hydrogen peroxide costs $1.50 for a pint, cheaper than beer. I bought five.

Back at home, TW was naked. Normally, this is a very good thing. But here's the thing about the de-skunking process. You don't want to smell like skunk and you don't want your clothes bleached. I joined her, because dog bathing is a two-person job in the best of circumstances. Least sexy duel nudity in history. Sorry, Mom.

Daisy Duke did something she never does: She jumped into the tub. Normally, she despises baths and has to be airlifted into the vessel. Not at 1:40 a.m. after a skunk attack.

The mixture of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish soap was applied, rubbed in, and rinsed out. Daisy Duke was then given a regular soap-and-water rinse. Then she was banished to her crate for the evening.

We were laughing almost the entire time, aided by the fact that, blessedly, it didn't stink that much. We've seen far, far worse. 

If we can glean a positive, other than the fact I got to see TW naked, it is the attitude adjustment in Daisy Duke. TW reports that DD was very hesitant to go outside this morning. That's just as well. We don't need to add any more episodes to the lore of Boston.

Making a Home, a Home

As I so often say on behalf of my dog: Get in my belly.

I take comfort in food. You know this about me. Entering 10th grade, I was 5-foot-1 and weighed 235 pounds. I still have the stretch marks.

In adulthood, I've figured out how to appropriately manage my weight. I exercise like a fiend and try to eat a lot of vegetables, because I like vegetables. Preferably with blue cheese dressing. But I'm flexible on that.

Here we are in Boston. My 16th move, or whatever insane number it is. We have no friends. Going to the grocery store is arduous. Going for a run is difficult. The dew point is roughly equal to the temperature. My dog is panting on the floor under the air conditioner. We have Comcast. I'm not happy.

So when someone mentions apple crisp at work, my ears perk up as they did a couple of nights ago. It was jokingly suggested that we celebrate the first actual day of the GOP convention with a potluck. This is how newspapers work. We mostly want to eat. We run spell check with buffalo wing sauce on our fingertips. I do, anyway.

I immediately volunteered to make "my" apple crisp. The recipe comes from a cookbook our elementary school (Afton-Lakeland pride, ba-by!) put out as a fundraiser when I was in first grade. The cookbook had Nicole Oakland's apple crisp recipe. My Mom tried it and made it roughly 100 times during my childhood (only her raisin bran muffins were a more common site in the oven; I don't care if I ever eat another).

In Duluth, MN., I was feeling unsettled in the fall of 2003. I was 26. I owned my own home, but I didn't really cook for myself. I asked my Mom for the apple crisp recipe; I still have and refer to the recipe, though I know it by heart.

The recipe has been tweaked. In Duluth, it was followed to the letter. In Salt Lake, I experimented with gluten-free flours. That was mostly a failed experiment. In our home in Stansbury Park, Utah, I doubled the amount of ingredients in the crust. When we moved to downtown Salt Lake, I don't think we made the crisp.

But New England is leafy and apple-y. Portland saw many an apple crisp. I'd buy a half bushel of Cortland apples and make a giant tray. I went back to plain-old, whole wheat flour. I figured out how to chop the apples. Cut it like a tomato. Stand the apple straight up. Cut down like you're slicing a tomato, leaving a little wider chunk for the seeds in the middle. Take the middle and cut off the sides. Cut those to make bite-size pieces. Take your big slices, stack them up like you're trying to reconstitute half the apple and make lengthwise slices. Then make crosswise cuts. I can do an apple in about 30 seconds.

Those giant trays of apple crisp would serve as my breakfast for a week.

With the oven at 375 degrees, I can already smell the crisp crisping. The toppings were appropriately doubled, so the top of the apple crisp is essentially a giant oatmeal cookie (with cinnamon mixed in). The apples aren't right. We only had Fujis, but I was too lazy to go to the grocery store for the third time in 48 hours. But that oatmeal crust is about right.

I make it a little different every time, but it's pretty much the same. I probably won't even eat any at work tonight. I know exactly what it tastes like. Everything is different. But that apple crisp is a constant.

RECIPE

Cut 6-8 Cortland apples into a 9x13 baking dish (ungreased)

Mix together:
1 cup white sugar
1 and 1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour
2 cups oatmeal
1 tablespoon cinammon
1 cup Promise/butter/Country Crock

Cover the apples with the topping. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes to an hour.

A Wonderful Summer Day/Poop-pocalypse Pt. II



T-minus 5 minutes to bowel eruption.

It isn't often that I feel the need to warn readers about content. There will be no gratuitious swearing nor descriptions of horrible violence to come in this space. There will, however, be a flashback to one of the grossest nights of my life. Avert your eyes if you are offended by the word poop. Well, it's too late now. You might as well keep reading. That's the worst word I'm going to use, though there might be some technical anatomical descriptions.

Saturday was marvelous. It was the first day temperatures and the humidity were both under 80. The Wife and I had been looking for a fresh-water river into which we could throw tennis balls for Daisy Duke, our 2-year-old chocolate Lab and the love of TW's life.

A tactical error was made.

We went to the Neponset River, which seemed like it might not be too salty for Daisy Duke. Daisy is a water enthusiast who enjoys swimming with great vigor to retrieve items. The problem is, when a tennis ball is in her mouth, her lower jaw goes well below the water line and she drinks/inhales water all the way back to shore.

Why go in water at all? Daisy Duke enjoys it with such enthusiasm that it feels like a crime to keep her away, and she hasn't swam since moving to Boston. And TW delights in watching our dog turn into a psychotic spaz.

It was going better than planned at the Neponset River. After about 15 minutes, boats and rafts started making their way past us, engaged in some kind of water fight. Kids were throwing water balloons at each other and squirting water guns. Some guy had something that looked like a potato gun. People wore goofy hats and somebody shouted at us. It was all in good fun. I even asked TW to take a photo of some of the boats, pictured above, because it was such an excellent experience.

After a half an hour of swimming, Daisy Duke was wearing down. Probably. It's hard to tell with her. She's every bit as spazzy on Minute 30 as she is on Minute 1, where tennis balls and large bodies are concerned.

TW was encouraging me to give Daisy Duke one last heave when I noticed she was having trouble breathing. This happens all the time, due to the water in the lungs issue.

Then she threw up in the grass at my feet.

"No, I think we're good here," I said.

I wasn't concerned. I'd sniffed the dog and her tennis ball to determine salinity of the water and didn't detect much. Besides, she's consumed massive quantities of water many times.

It became clear pretty quickly that it wasn't just a volume issue.

Daisy Duke jogged out of the grassy area, shook a few times to get the excess water off, and then proceeded to poop off to the side of the sidewalk. It was runny and it smelled vile. TW, normally an avid poop-picker-upper, decided to let this pile stay, as it was in deep grass. And wretched.

Then, she pooped a second time. Then a third. There was no consistency. It was brown water. As we walked along the sidewalk, we came upon a guy and a little fox terrier. We started to say hi, but Daisy threw up a couple of times on the sidewalk.

There's not much you can do for a dog who's consumed too much salt water. Daisy was fine, other than the fact she was pooping constantly.

Seriously. There's video of this kind of thing on YouTube.

At a point, the dog gave up on anything resembling dignity. She just walked down the sidewalk, occasionally spraying water out of her butt.

We, of course, felt horrible. But there's nothing much to do. You can't put the dog in the car because, well, it's your car. Even with 165,000 miles on it, we still care a tiny bit about our little SUV. All we could do was walk her around the sidewalks, give her some *fresh* water, and wait for the storm to subside.

It only took about a half hour for the intestines to calm down. Daisy lapped up a bucket of water that TW had the foresight to bring from home. When we got back home, Daisy destroyed her water bowl (which was filled with filtered water, naturally). Later, in the park, she wheezed and gagged while chasing a tennis ball in the park. There was still a little salt water in her lungs.

She peed heavily, the normal way, the remainder of the day. She didn't have a stroke or a seizure, which is good. Today, at the park, she grabbed a random tennis ball and continually dropped it at my feet. She isn't scarred by her experience with tennis balls. And I guarantee she'd belly flop back into the river with no second thoughts. Or thoughts of any kind. She's a dog. That's what she's programmed to do.

She didn't learn her lesson, but her owners did.

Our Neighborhood is Weirder Than Yours



Yes, this is what I want my funeral to look like.

 If there's a respectful way to mock people, I would choose to do that. I would, but I can't think of such a way. Just know that as I type about our neighborhood, this is the look on my face: bug eyes, head shaking left and right as I finally give up trying to understand what it is I am seeing.

Those experiences come often in Eastie.

Fifty years ago, East Boston was a neighborhood filled with Italian immigrants. I don't actually know that for a fact, but it seems like it should be the case, and Wikipedia is never wrong.

There are signs of our neighborhoods old Italian roots. The market down the street sells cold cuts, olives and bread. And nothing else. On hot days, the Italians pop chairs out in front of their houses and just sit there, as if air conditioning and cable TV don't exist. It's so sterotypical a scene that I'm afraid my description of the Italians having a discussion (yelling) at each other in front of their homes will sound like some hack writing from a TV show. But it actually happens.

Among other short commutes, such as the 10-minute walk to the airport, we live in close proximity to a large Catholic church a block from our house. As a recovering Catholic, you couldn't pay me to walk inside the church. But the dog and I were at the park Saturday when I noticed another classy Catholic funeral going on. This much is certain: When I die (riding a Harley, naked), I want a black El Camino stuffed to the brim with roses.

That, or a rollicking party in an Irish pub, with no funeral service to speak of. Whichever.


In fairness, it was rather warm this day.


The thing is, I kind of love it all. I've lived in the suburbs, where people rarely come out of their houses to talk. I've lived in downtown Salt Lake, but there wasn't much ... ethnic diversity. Diversity is a good thing, if just for the blog fodder.

It's simply everywhere, the fodder. On a walk to the subway, a pair of 60-ish Italians had out sun parasols. I have lived in Florida. I've been to Las Vegas in July. Salt Lake is guaranteed to be sunny for four months out of the year. I have never seen anybody walking with a sun parasol before moving to Boston, and now, I've seen two people using them. I can die happy. On a Harley.

Get Around, Round, I Get Around

It's totally safe to text and bike, right? That's not illegal yet.

Visiting a big city with mass transit was always something of a novelty when I visited from the backwoods or New Hampshire or Salt Lake City. You don't have to drive! It's relatively cheap!

When you move to the big city, you get a little perspective. It's not that you don't have to drive, it's that you would never want to. It's relatively cheap but you can forget about seeing your wife wear any type of shoe with a heel on it to walk to the subway.

Oddly, I sort of love driving in the big city. More specifically, I love driving under it. Driving through the tunnels is fun. And for, shall we say, "aggressive drivers," there's not much to adjust to. Just stick the nose of your car into traffic and go. And expect others to do the same.

The more tentative drivers among us do not necessarily fare well. The Wife is probably still annoyed by an incident on Monday. We were trying to make a right turn onto a not-terribly-busy street. There was a city bus to our left and a few cars were coming up behind it. The bus driver waved to TW to encourage her to go ahead and make her turn. Her foot went off the brake, then back on the brake. Off the brake, then back on the brake.

"Well, what about those cars behind the bus?" she murmured.

Go. Just go. That's how you drive in Boston. Gogogogo and do it right now. This is not a problem for me.

TW eventually pulled out in front of the bus, muttering, "I *hate* it here."

City life is an aquired taste when you are used to suburbs and air conditioning. The subway is particularly loathesome because it requires a 10-minute walk, then standing around underground in a station that is a solid 10 degrees warmer than the outdoor air temperature. I'm not even sure how that's possible. Isn't heat supposed to rise?

Again, this doesn't really concern me because I'm just going to the movies, out for a beer, or doing touristy things. TW will be going to work and likes to look cute. This is a problem when riding the subway.

There has, however, already been one transportation victory in Boston. It's called the Hubway, and it is glorious. My God, just look at the station map. They're everywhere!

Riding a bike might be the easiest way to get around town. There are, essentially, no significant hills in Boston, so the riding's easy. You can run stoplights, when safe, with aplomb because ... you're on a bike! It's a lawless land of bike ridin'.

They're great when tourists are in town, which works well for Hotel Patrick. I've had family in town for the past couple of weeks. The bikes are a superb way to get around town, avoid crowds, and prevent cranky tourist feet.

Here's the technical info: Bike rentals cost $5 for a 24-hour period. But. You have to return the bikes within a half hour or you get charged an extra $2. Bonus: You can get an annual membership for $70. I'm getting one next summer. TW just found this out just now. Back there. Three sentences ago.

We're figuring it out. Driving: Generally bad. Subway: Sweaty in the summer. Bikes: God's gift to Boston.

An Apology to Mrs. Gelhar

This is the square in the center of our neighborhood, convenient to
the T (our subway), Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, a Chinese place
and little else of interest.

I could never understand the classic essay template. Start your essay with a thesis statement. The second sentence should be a supporting statement for your thesis. The third sentence should be a second supporting statement for your thesis. Then, if you're still following along, the start of your second paragraph should be exactly the same as the second sentence of your essay.

I didn't know anything about writing at the time, but I knew it was ludicrous (and just bad writing) to repeat the exact same sentence. But our tenth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Gelhar, was old-school. Or just plain old. Her teeth stains had teeth stains. She was a modern-day equivalent of a nun teaching in a Catholic school. Form is all that matters, not the thought.

And I just couldn't get with the program, which is why you see before you a meandering two-paragraph lead about tenth-grade English.

But thesis statements are important. Not that this blog has ever had one ("My name's Jim and I'm a male blogger"), but consider this a preview of what's to come.

We kind of live in the ghetto of Boston, and I am OK with that. That is our working thesis statement here.

As far as the federal government is concerned, TW and I live in Boston. Our zip code is a Boston zip code. We will put Boston on our tax forms. But to anyone from Boston, or from Massachusetts, we are Easties.

East Boston, which is where we live, is not Boston. Not really. It's not what you think of when you think of Boston. Virtually everybody reading this blog is not from Boston and many readers have visited Fenway, The Old North End or Boston Common.

Not only do we not live nextdoor to those places, we literally live across the water from all of it. The Mystic River is about three-quarters of a mile wide, maybe a mile wide off the tip of Piers Park.

It is a world of difference, and it's not.

We moved to East Boston because it was easy. The Boston apartment market is unusual. In late April, when we started looking for a place, it was considered too late to move in July 1. That's because the vast majority of rentals are run by management firms and management firms like to have a steady stream of income. There are real estate agents dedicated to rental housing only and they often get paid the equivalent of your first month's rent.

This is, of course, absurd if you have ever lived pretty much anywhere else in the United States, but certainly if you've ever lived in the Midwest, where there's plenty of land and not that many people.

We looked at a lot of apartment on the Internet in April. Most people couldn't be bothered to clean their apartments before the company took photos for their website. And you didn't get much for your money. $1,800 will not buy you much in the Fenway, Kenmore, Beacon Hill neighborhoods of Boston.

On a whim, I looked at Boston real estate on Craigslist one day. I'd been daunted by the prospect of figuring out where we were going to live. It's fair to say the listing for a place in East Boston jumped out at me.

It had: A dog park a half block away; two off-street parking spots; a subway line a half mile away; heat included; granite countertops and stainless steel appliances.

And it was smack in the middle of our price range.

There had to be a catch. That catch is that East Boston is considered to be one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. Maybe it is, but it's not like we're talking about the worst neighborhood in Detroit here. The worst neighborhood in Boston is still not that bad, as I've discovered. And it's affordable. Relatively speaking.

Chances are, you've been in my neighborhood if you've flown to Boston. Anybody who flies into Boston is actually flying into East Boston. My daily (OK, four-times-a-week) run takes me through the E terminal and over the sky bridge to the A terminal. I'll stop at a water fountain and enjoy the air conditioning *during* my workout. The car rental lots for Alamo, Hertz, Enterprise, National and Avis are literally a two-minute walk from our front door. I walked to the airport for a flight last week.

The parks are amazingly nice. They are manicured. There's a workout area that I'm using in the park nearest our house. There are running trails sunken into old trolley lines gouged into canyons beneath the streets. There's a killer Chinese restaurant just down the street and there are about 1,500 little convenience stores that specialize in Brazilian, Colombian, Mexican, Puerto Rican or Peruvian eccentricities, depending on the eccentricities of the owner.

The funny thing is, we're closer to the touristy part of Boston than anybody in any of those neighborhoods I listed above (unless they have a helicopter pad, which, let's face it, is entirely possible). TW and I are a seven-minute walk from the T, Boston's subway. From our stop on the Blue Line, it is a two-minute ride to the New England Acquarium, which is right next to The Old North End, Fanieul Hall and Quincy market. We're right there, only we don't have to pay to live right there.

Eventually, we might choose to live right there. TW and I are always talking about our next move. But East Boston isn't so bad. It's not, after all, Rawlins, Wyo. We all know how I feel about that.

Mrs. Gelhar, of course, probably doesn't approve of all this writing. She was big on rules. The last of which was that your final sentence in your essay should be the same as your thesis statement. I could never understand the classic essay template.