Surrendering to Spring

After carefully weighing the odds on the safety of declaring spring has actually arrived I’ve decided two days with temperatures nearing seventy qualify. I’ve still got a couple piles of snow gamely defying the onslaught but winter seems to finally given up the ghost. It certainly did not go down without a heartfelt fight; good riddance.

The clearest sign of the season change was on full display at Fenway Park yesterday where the Red Sox staged their season home opener. Fenway is probably the only place in New England right now that’s sporting authentic green grass and it looked magnificent; of course the grass has always seems a little greener at Fenway.

These Looked Good Together

The Sox did their usual fantastic effort at deftly pulling at heart strings and reconnecting with the region which seems ready to forgive them for the abysmal 2014. Of course it could be a shared thanksgiving that winter really has departed; “winter weary” would be a vast understatement for New England. The founder of the ice bucket challenge, Pete Frates was honored with a Red Sox contract and Tom Brady, Pedro Martinez, and David Ortiz all went out of their way to offer seemingly genuine gestures of support to Frates. I watched all of this from my office where I was supposed to be getting some work done, but come on, a native New Englander on opening day at Fenway – puhleeeze!  

I Guess They Were Right About this Mookie Guy!

The opening ceremony was overmatched by the game itself where the Sox skull dragged supposedly the best team in the National League who looked horribly inept at fielding baseballs. My Cali-Daughter and Wingman were also reconnecting with baseball taking in a game at Chavez Ravine last night in LA LA land.

Meanwhile on the Left Coast

We have a new mystery on our hands at home. Somehow Buddy has been staging a subtle (nopt his strong suit) escape plan that rivals the best traditions of world war two stalag busters. I noticed over the weekend that most of the screws holding his kennel together were missing. I thought my sister had removed them when she was dog sitting after Buddy experienced one of his gastrointestinal “events” but she disabused me of that theory last night. It’s a mystery because the screws are not on the floor next to the kennel where they would have fallen. Buddy is the only one with access to the area who also boasts the evident self-interest of defeating the confines of the kennel and hiding the evidence. Things that make you go, “Hmmmm?”

Escape Artist?

I raced through Christopher Nuttall’s latest sci-fi opus, Never Surrender, finishing it yesterday. This may be the best book in his entire Empire series, of which this is the tenth. He picks up the story of the Wolfbane-Commonwealth successor state interstellar war and combines story lines from several of his earlier books.

The dedicated female marine Jasmine Yamane thankfully returns to kicking ass and taking names. When last seen she was being herded into a POW camp. She only stays a few days there before escaping, conquering the planet, invading Wolfbane, and several other galactic impacting events. Nuttall supplies a true kick ass hero but still bequeaths her the self-doubt and humanity lacking in many of her genre’s counterparts. A great read, I can’t wait for Nuttall’s concluding books to come out so we can learn the fate of his redoubtable marines. I’m in a true quandary now as I’ve exhausted my stable of authors, again. Please send me any suggestions for an author you think I might enjoy.