Clip, Clip, Clip

This is the fifth of five entries about my Boston vacation. To start at the beginning, go here.

I rounded out my vacation yesterday mostly either reading or pruning bushes and trees in my Mom's yard.

The yard is just filled with greenery, and it grows like mad. Some of the yard is pretty overgrown now, although some of the problems are caused by trees on other lawns or on the sidewalk growing so tall that they're blocking the sunlight. I was mainly interested in pruning the bushes and trees around the driveway and sidewalk to make the path from the driveway look a little more manicured, and restore the view of the street from my Mom's deck. I did a pretty good job, using an extension shear to prune a lot of tree branches, and sawing off a number of small trees that had volunteered to grow along the edge of the yard. Vile things; one of them had large thorns and gave me a cut in one finger.

I also pruned back some huge maple trees growing north of the house which were partially obscuring Mom's garden. Now it should get a lot of sunlight. Plus I pulled off many dead branches from one of the tall pine trees.

Not bad, if I do say so myself. I enjoy doing some physical labor from time to time. I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day, though.

I'm writing most of the entries for this trip on the plane ride home. I got to the airport in record time - the trains and buses were just showing up right on time, and I had two and a half hours after checking in (the line was short!) before my plane took off.

Well, actually even more than that, since after boarding it turned out that bad weather around Chicago delayed our takeoff by two hours. By the time we arrived, of course, I had to get booked onto a later flight. But that went fairly smoothly, and I think I even saw my suitcase being loaded into the cargo hold! So if all goes well, I'll just be arriving late and everything else will basically go smoothly.

Debbi drove me to the airport a week ago, and she's picking me up tonight. She and her friend Lisa split the duties of watching my kitties. Debbi spent a few nights at my place on the weekends, too. I'm sure the cats enjoyed the company.

What else to mention about my vacation?

My Mom's cat, Jenny, is a strong-willed creature, who doesn't want to do anything that isn't her idea. Funny since she's just a little snip of a thing, despite having double front paws. She growled and hissed at me my first weekend there, but warmed up to me later, and even snoozed with me in the mornings when my Mom had left. I bet she'll miss me a bit now that I'm gone.

Watched a bunch of baseball while I was on vacation. The Red Sox' only home series was against the Hated Yankees, so obviously I couldn't get tickets. The Sox split the home series, though, and took two of three the next weekend in New York, and have won 7 of 11 overall from the Yorkies, and have a 2-game lead in the division. So things seem to be humming along fairly well.

The Red Sox are surprisingly good this year, and surprisingly fun to watch. Unlike last year, they seem to be a team of guys who like playing and like playing together. Carlos Baerga seems to be the team's unofficial cheerleader, as he's always shouting something from the dugout. He's hitting fairly well, too. Hard to believe, since his career seemed washed up four years ago. I have no illusions that this exuberance results in more wins (like the saying goes, the early-70s Athletics took time out of their busy schedule of clubhouse fights to win three World Series titles), but it makes the games more fun to watch.

Needless to say, I did a bunch of reading on my vacation. I haven't had time to write about it yet, but hopefully I'll finish off that detail later this week.

Well, my plane finally got in at 8 pm, and Debbi picked me up and drove me home. My luggage even made it onto my rebooked flight with me! So all turned out well, if a little later than expected. Well, it's better to have the airplane gods show their wrath at the end of a vacation than at the beginning.