Relaxing weekend ...

Had a very chill weekend, hung out with Aly on Friday night, went to a Portland Sea Dogs game on Saturday and didn't do much on Sunday.

I hadn't seen Aly in over a week before we hung out on Friday night, so it was more than nice to see her. It sounds completely melodramatic, but I really missed her. The funny thing was, we didn't even do too much Friday night. We went to this awesome Chinese food place and ate like pigs than came home and pretty much went to bed. Actually, the Sox were on so we watched them.

Big Friday night. When I was in high school, I thought that every Friday night was going to be nothing but keggers and random nights of sex. Now that I'm a bit older, I know that stuff doesn't really happen too much, and honestly, I don't want it to. If I acted like I was 16 even though I'm 29, something would be terribly wrong.

Saturday, Ryan and I went up to Machester to watch the Portland Sea Dogs take on the Manchester Fisher Cats. The 'Cats are playing at a modified high school football stadium, that also once was the home of the Manchester Giants. Ryan said the last time he saw the place, it was a complete dump, but it was really nice. You could tell that they did a lot of work on the field and the concession stands. For a one-year band-aid, it works.

The Fisher Cats destroyed the Sea Dogs, BTW. I'm not too sure I'm wild (Ha! What a pun!) about the name, the Fisher Cats. I know that they're indinginous to the NH area, and it's better their original name (the Primaries), but why does every new minor league team have to have a dopey sounding name? The Fisher Cats. The 51s (LA's top minor league team is named after Area 51). Even the Isotopes all sound so hokey, so minor league.

Rye and I didn't go by ourselves, it was a SOSH outing. There were about 20 or 25 people up there and all of them were real cool. With chat rooms and message boards, there is a new sort of social phenomena that has sprung up: meeting someone face to face for the first time, though you may have been talking to them for years. I wish there was a name for this, maybe something like knowfir (short for known first). I don't know, I'm not Daniel Webster.

In any event, the stangest thing is placing names to faces, and finding out exactly what their home lives are like. For example, a guy and his girlfriend (URI and URIette) live together and post on SOSH. They've told a couple of stories about their home life and because they are going to school they live with a couple of other roommates. I pictured their place to be a lot like mine, old two family house with the bedrooms upstairs, the kitchen and den downstairs. But, it turns out that they live in a split ranch.

Totally puts their stories in a completely new dynamic.

Besided getting a better understanding of folks, it also makes me less apt to be combative. Not that I am anyway, but if URI or redsoxstiff or Napkin or someone said something that I didn't agree with, I probably wouldn't go for the jugular and call them a moron or something. I'd give them the benefit of the doubt because everyone I met seemed rational and cool.

Forgot to tell you one thing that was pretty heavy: Nomar got traded yesterday. The weird thing was, I was in the bar with the SOSHers when it came over ESPN news. It was sort of like being with a group of young Democrats on November 23, 1963. People were pretty shocked, even the ones that said they weren't ... because really, how can you not be?