Fenway, escape from New York, good karma, blog on return…check.

Labor Day weekend. Summertime, long weekend, means leave NYC – no matter what. I love the Big Apple; I seriously think it is the city from which I will finally stake my claim to life. I love the people, I love the hustle, I love rolling my eyes at tourist as I occasionally lower my shoulder and give one a slight New-York-nudge, I love Central Park, I love the Hudson River and East River and that I live walking distance from both – get it? Good. However, it is the only city I’ve ever lived in where suddenly I get the OVERWHELMING compulsion to escape. I can’t even describe to you the feeling --- I’m sure most New Yorkers understand it…. You wake up and suddenly you are on the phone making plans to get the fuck out. It is at these moments that I flip open the phone – I don’t even know who I plan to call or what I plan to say, but I open it and hit a letter – this time “R” – Rachel… Yes, Rachel. She picks up, yes. “Hey, is this weekend Labor Day?” “Not sure.” “I think it is, I just heard that … what are you up to this weekend?” Not sure, I’m on the cape right now with Scott, we’ve been here all week.” “What!?! What about work?” “I don’t know, I just needed to be out.” “Well, I need to be out of New York this weekend.” She understood, so I’ll see you and Scott and JACK (my favorite dog, ever!) on Saturday.

One thing about living and working in New York is that I can never plan to be anywhere on Friday. Well, I can, but that means I will either have to carry work with me…and then not do it… and then feel sick the night before work or very early before work after a long weekend away trying to make last week’s deadline before Monday morning. I used to do that all the time ---but (1) I got tired of the work hanging over my head guilting-me all weekend, (2) the nausea of returning home knowing that I need to boot-up the computer, (3) being that boring person who talks about the work he must do that weekend, (4) and working with people who work all weekend. About #4, thank you Blackberry and IPhone for changing Friday deadlines from Monday morning before 9AM to actually Friday night/Saturday morning (so long as I don’t go to sleep). Perhaps it is actually #4, also, that made me realize and write numbers 1-3 in hopes that you would be fooled to thinking I would have changed my procrastinating/high-risk behavior without corporate-America lowering its shoulder and giving me a little nudge. Anyway, sorry for the tangent --- I just watched Vicious Circle, please blame Dane Cook. I just get places on Saturday.

So Boston comes with promises of apple-picking, hiking, drinks, laughing, arguing over movie trivia, sharpening my Jedi-skills with one of the most skilled Jedis I know. Sorry, that I cannot explain what I mean by this – if you know, you know. If you are a Jedi (or a Dark Sith Lord, Kenji), we’ve likely been over this. If not, you probably don’t want to get into it with me.

As it turns out, apple-picking and hiking got replaced by Red Sox v. White Sox. Somehow it came up that I had never been to Fenway which probably shouldn’t be the case for a baseball fan – even a diehard Yankee fan --- so we made it happen.

Fenway = great. Experience = best possible experience. This means, I got to see Ken Griffey Jr. play, got to see Thome hit a bomb, got to see Wakefield throw 67-mile per hour knuckle balls, and I got to see Boston lose – but in the right way. By this, I mean, usually I like to see the home team win when visiting a Stadium, it adds to the experience, but my beloved Yankees are 8.5 games back and Boston needs to lose and the Yankees need to win for all to be right in the universe. However, this was the best possible loss --- I mean, Boston had already won the series, the Yankees, unfortunately lost, and the Red Sox rallied in the 9^th which appeased the fans. This means, I didn’t have to watch grown men cry or children pouting. Several White Sox fans did get kicked out of the game at the bottom of the 8^th/top of the 9^th which was just weird…but, okay. A little sun-burn, but much better than a broken jaw – I was forced to leave my Yankee hat at home.

All in all, the weekend away was exactly what I needed… My phone died (last phone call was to my crush --- I had to call to explain why I wrote and emailed her 3 Haiku at 7:45 Saturday morning – no idea, actually, but she’s a Jedi and I’m sure she knows better than I do), Rachel held me to my wish not to check email all weekend, and I dropped 85 dollars only to have someone leave their number at the bar offering to return it! Yes, I easily spent $85-plus celebrating the return of the money and showing my appreciation to the finders-but-not-keepers, but it is nice to know I have good karma in bean town. I am rested and ready to return to the big apple.