Happenings Around Town

I am officially stimulated. I stroll the streets in the Back Bay and feel a real fear to enter the endless boutiques and eateries, not to mention the high-end organic food stores and condomworld. There is too much here. The sidewalks are flooded with college types--pudgy around the middle with bosooms to the wind. Strange, yet sad. Oddly comforting.

So first things first, the house. I spent yesterday on the phone with plumbers, architects, real estate agents, Dani, and my sister as along the way we determined that our kitchen sink drains into the bedroom of the tenant below. Charming. I also learned that last year there was a "rat problem" that has been "temporarily solved." Luckily I do not fear rats. Of course I have never lived with them. I discovered that the garden behind the house is lovely, however. It was even on the Back Bay garden tour this year. Come and have tea with me before the weather turns too bitter and the rats come home to sit by the fire!

Events: of course, now I get the whole Red Sox thing. We can hear Fenway park when it is in a tizzy. So we shall get tickets, eat peanuts and drink beer while I struggle in vain to explain why the batter gets a free base if the pitcher hits him. Baseball appears simple, but this is true only if you have grown up in a country that has it in its blood. We rob it of its metaphors for goodness sake. Do the Brits have cricket metaphors? I promise to buy us Boston Sox garb for the event. Here are my burning questions: Why Red? Why S-o-x and not socks?

Other events: we are headed to Newtonville for an author reading. Book Club get jealous: Anita Diamant of The Red Tent will be there to read and sign her new book, The Last Days of Dog Town: A Novel. I picked up the new novel last night and have already tucked into the first several chapters. A world away from The Red Tent, but I'll reserve comments until I have more to say about it!

Other fun stuff: We are trying to get tickets to the White Stripes concert in a few weeks. They will play in the Boston Opera House, of all places.

And before either Anita or the Whites there is Garrison Keillor, the American Jewel, at the Kansas State Fair.

Yes, it does feel like the Fall of Rome.