Notes from a quiet weekend:

Going to the rock shows Within 48 hours got tickets to two shows about two weeks apart. On September 17 we'll be seeing Coldplay, a group I admittedly know little about but whose music I like. They're playing the FleetBoston Pavilion, which used to be the more euphoniously named Harbor Lights. Some group called Ash is opening, and I know absolutely nothing about them.

On October 1, we're making our return to the Fleet Center proper to see Paul McCartney again. This makes Sir Paul the second musical act I've seen twice in concert, the first being Rush. Who, come to think of it, may have been the last thing I saw at the Boston Garden (though it's more likely a Beanpot or Hockey East playoff game would fill that role).

Shop until the drops Facing a Sunday without anything planned and both of us needing a quality clothing item (a dress for Sarah and the elusive sneakers for me), we figured it was a good time to visit one of the area's fine outlet malls. It was a choice between the Worcester Common Outlets (formerly the Worcester Common Fashion Outlets, but now apparently so much more!) and the Wrentham Village Premium Outlets. The latter seems to have more options, and it has the added bonus of not being in Worcester. So off to Wrentham we went.

In my mind, outlet shopping is what you do in vast warehouse-type places that sell all the stuff they couldn't get rid of otherwise. Not so with Wrentham Village, which was nicer than some malls I'm familiar with.

In any case, Sarah found a dress the first place we looked. How often does that happen?

My sneaker hunt took us to Adidas first, and apprently the Euros don't have feet as big as mine. Second stop was Reebok, and that's where my five years of footwear frustration finally finished. Got a decent pair of cross-trainers, $40. Now I'm all set until 2007.

It's an open-air sort of affair, with covered and uncovered walkways between buildings. Which is why it was good we finished before the rain started, even if there wasn't much rain to worry about.

Was that it? Pretty much. Spent a fair amount of time lounging about the apartment, worked out on Saturday, made a stop at Jiffy Lube to change the oil, and had a lovely drive past Cochituate State Park.

NEWS FLASH Allen Iverson had 13 of the 14 counts against him thrown out by a judge today, leaving only the charge about making terroristic threats. I suppose he'll have the family over again.

NEWS FLASH Budget, 15 passenger van provider to BU College Bowl lo these many years filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today. In some way, this explains why they never had the van in Allston waiting for us.

One of the drawbacks to watching any of the programming on Fox this summer is the interminable promotion of shows premiering in the fall (sort of like how the World Series last year was seemingly brought to us by Keifer Sutherland). There are four shows that have, after much, much promotion, stuck in my head.

Fastlane The Fox website touts it as being brought to us by the director of Charlie's Angels and the writer of The Fugitive, which is at best half promising.

The set-up is like pretty much every other cop show. Using a vast warehouse of luxury cars, high performance motorcycles, and tony designer clothing and accessories, a pair of LA's finest fight crime while reporting to a supervisor who looks like a magazine cover model.

Clearly, the folks behind this show have exposed themselves to a dangerous mixture of The Fast and the Furious, Grand Theft Auto, and Robo trippin', but have had to clean things up for network TV. Even Fox has standards. I think.

My brother is a cop. Admittedly, he works in Chelsea, Massachusetts, not the sort of place where a lot of confiscated Rolexes and Ducatis are going to wind up. But I don't remember him ever mentioning that officers got to use impounded goods for anything. And I certainly don't think his supervisor ever appeared on the cover of Cosmo, Teen, YM, or Sophisticate's Hairstyle Guide.

I'm sure Vin Diesel will appear as the cheif of some sort of Gen Y hardbody police squad during sweeps.

girls club I don't even know where to start with how much the promos for this have turned me off. Let us count the ways.

1. It's a David E. Kelley production. His forays into the legal world include the self-hating and self-absorbed defenders on The Practice and the loopy, anorexic, and self-absorbed shysters on Ally McBeal. They say bad things come in threes.

2. Gretchen Mol plays the blonde lawyer. For those of you not familar with Mol, Vanity Fair tapped her as the "next big thing" back in 1998 just as she made her foray into major films in Rounders, a not bad film starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton. The only problem was someone forgot to tell Mol that she was supposed to be big. Four years later, she's mostly been in smaller movies and crap (The Thirteenth Floor and Get Carter, the latter of which she tried to duck by being uncredited).

I don't know if Mol's trying to channel Kim Novak in the cool blonde department, but it's not working. Mol seems more detached than cool, which (for me at least) leads to apathy, if not dread, of her performances.

That and Kim Novak's not dead! Don't channel the living, it'll screw up some sort of inter-dimensional barrier. Didn't Superman II teach us anything?

3. The name of the show is in all lowercase. The estate of e. e. cummings, contact your attorney.

4. The three lead actresses are blonde, brunette, and redheaded. Couldn't we just have a live action Powerpuff Girls instead?

5. Giancarlo Esposito apparently plays one of the partners of the law firm the show follows. I have a bad identification with Esposito from the last season of Homicide. He wasn't the worst offender (I'm looking at you, Jon Seda!), but was emblematic of the way the show tanked at the end.

6. Felicity Huffman is resigned to doing this show? What the hell? It's not as bad as Josh Malina getting stuck with Imagine That, but yikes! How have these people pissed Aaron Sorkin off? Can't we use Rob Lowe's salary to fund some recurring roles to save people from crap?

7. The ad uses a Madonna song. Personal problem.

8. The show hasn't aired episode one, and Fox already has message boards up for it. Again I say, what the hell?

I know, it's trying to take the Ally time slot and demo and run, so as an over 30 male I shouldn't be interested. And I'm not. Mission accomplished, I guess.

John Doe A man who knows everything doesn't know his own name or how he got where he is. Kind of like if Dwight Kidder got knocked on the head and left in a corn field in Nebraska.

It's in the Friday at 9 slot, so it's going for that X Files/Millenium/Dark Angel vibe. It at least appears moderately interesting.

Firefly It's 400 years in the future, there's been some sort of "universal civil war" according to the show's Fox website (how can a civil war be universal? Aren't civil wars intra- rather than inter-?). A transport ship cruises the outer planets trying to dodge the powers that be while hauling stuff, doing some things that aren't wholly legal, and otherwise participating in the sort of affairs that are normally left to folks on Star Trek or crappy syndicated shows.

Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame is in charge of this, so I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. But I'm out if space demons start showing up.

The one new show that didn't stick in my head was Cedric the Entertainer Presents. It's sketch comedy, it's a large man dancing, it's on Wednesday at 8:30 when I'll be looking for improvement out of Ed.

It's always nice to find out well after the fact that a wooden sailing vessel you once cruised on may not be as seaworthy as you'd have hoped.

To be fair, though, the folks on the Ernestina are great, and the cruise we took from New Bedford to Boston was great, even if we had to go under engines rather than sail (and I don't think it took 20 people to get the sail up; I may be misremembering, but I'd like to think we were heartier souls). Any trip that lets you say that you skippered a schooner, even for a little while, is worth doing.

I had a law professor who used to say that the truth of a case lies in the footnotes. There's the old saying that the devil is in the details. And, of course, there's the old White Cloud toilet paper commercial that reminded us all that "little things mean a lot."

All of these things are crossing my mind as, with the installation of new computers in my office, I discover that perhaps the smallest change is causing the most problems.

My mouse doesn't have one of those scroll wheels on it.

How much am I missing it? The first thing I did when I grabbed the mouse to read the Globe this morning was try to find the wheel to scroll down.

I'll readjust to not having one, just as I have to adjust from PC to Mac (and vice versa) commands on an almost daily basis. It's just going to stink for a while as I paw at the top of my mouse to no avail.

If there's ever been a case for contraction during a game, this may be it.

Would anyone who doesn't live within 10 miles of I-4 miss this team? Heck, how about five miles?

MLB money well spent keeping this franchise afloat.

So I go to the trouble of making that little quiz, and I screwed up one of the answers. Won't tell you which one (for those who haven't taken it yet), but I can check for all of you if you're that interested.

In completely unrelated news, the Braves-Phillies are playing tonight wearing 1970s retro unis. While the Braves are wearing some horrible blue ensemble (which may be the unis they wore when Hank Aaron set the home run mark), the Phils are wearing the old maroon and white jobbies. I actually think I like them better than the new set.

Take the first of what will probably be a number of tests about me, me, me!

Click here for the test. It should really be called "Mark: The Early Years."

Blame Sorenson for this.

Some quick hits:

* Apparently, if you appeared on more than one episode of The West Wing last season, you got an Emmy nod. Same seems to be the case for Six Feet Under, but not having HBO I can't confirm this.

My least favorite West Wing nom has to be Mary-Louise Parker for playing shrill feminist Amy Gardner. An annoying character, complicated by Parker still looking like the trailer park mom she played in The Client.

* Notably reduced presence for the Emmys: ER. Someone finally noticed the show is on fumes.

* Notably hackneyed presence for the Emmys: Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce. These nominations may be the only proof that Frasier is still on the air.

* Buffy continues to get snubbed in categories outside of hair, make-up, and music. I've not seen much of UPN Buffy, but I can't imagine it's that much different from WB Buffy, which was eminently nomination-worthy.

* Everyone who thought Lance Armstrong was in trouble please stand and take your catcalls. Consider that if he wasn't involved in an accident during an earlier stage, he could have retaken the yellow jersey days ago.

Lance went from about 30 seconds down to leading by just over 70 seconds. He could be up by five minutes before the weekend's out. Or he could be in a battle with a younger climber and I'll have to eat my hat.

* They key to using the "watch this auction" function on eBay is actually bidding on items before they expire. I think I miss about 80 percent of the items I've marked. Which is probably a good thing, budget-wise.

I did manage to remember today, and bid on a BU-Tufts football program (which I lost) and a game called Billionaire that I once owned as a kid. It was one of my few purchases during the year or two when my mother dragged me to a local flea market every so often (usually with a friend of hers and her son, so at least I had company most of the time).

Funny thing is my mom probably bought as much as I did at this flea market. Not that there weren't things to get; it was huge, and had some decent stuff. I think she went mostly to get more books to read at work (romance novels by the pound, basically, as they were easy to put down and pick up again when a patient at the nursing home needed help). I did get a bike there (a 10 speed, back before everyone had a mountain bike), and it wasn't bad. Of course, it got stolen, and was eventually recovered, but broken in such a way that it was of little use from then on. Thanks.

* Is it a bad sign that at the tender age of 32 I've already turned to the lottery as my main investment strategy for the golden years?

OK, "main investment strategy" is a little extreme. But we do buy a Mega Millions (nee Big Game) ticket or two every week. I know, it's a kind of regressive tax, but it's not like we blow our food money on it.

* Several Red Sox moments on the top 10 baseball fights listed on Sports Center tonight. Pedro mixing it up with the Devil Rays, Izzy Alcantera kicking the catcher, and one I had forgotten about. Aaron Sele plunked George Bell in 1993. Bell charged the mound, missing Sele with a haymaker (as White Sox fans can attest, swinging and missing was Bell's hallmark that year). Before he could regroup, Mo Vaughn dropped him with a nice block. Had be been a Patriot, he'd have gotten credit for the pancake.

* In the space of 90 minutes tonight, I saw a pug, a daschund, and a Westie out on walks (not all together). As I've said before, my male biological clock is ticking: I need to have a dog.

You can stop making that face, Sarah!

OK, I'm not proud to admit this, but I have been watching American Idol.

I'm not much into pop music, and I generally dislike the non-game show entries into the reality TV genre. So how is it that I'm watching this latest overnight programming sensation?

Well, Sarah was watching it.

Which is how I seem to get dragged into most of Fox's reality programming. Not that I watched copious amounts of Hardbody Atoll or Whores Ahoy!, and neither of us saw a second of Loose Women on the Last Frontier. But where I've seen bits and pieces that usually return me to my book, in this case I've actually decided to keep with the show.

Why? Well, here are some of the things that don't keep me tuning in every week:

1. The hosts Ostensibly, the show is hosted by two guys named Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. If they don't sound familiar, that's OK. They shouldn't. Unless you have a memory for people who play characters like "waiter" or "customer." Seacrest apparently has hosting experience from a number of shows I've never heard of (The Click? Gladiators 2000?). This does give him an iota of presence, and I'm sure his Mark McGrath lite looks help with the target demographic. The less said about Dunkleman the better.

The co-host banter is weak, their interplay with the judges predictable, and the questions they pose to the contestants mostly obvious. The co-hosts mostly serve to link performances, judging, and the many, many commercials.

Speaking of which...

2. The ads American Idol is stuffed with ads. And I don't just mean the obvious ones. The show's two biggest sponsors are Coke and Ford (in their continuing quest to brand the Focus to Gen Y types; sorry, Ford, but when I was in Maine last weekend I saw a Focus being driven by an elderly couple. Ha!). The Coke presence on the show is obvious. All the judges have Coke cups in front of them. There was a Coke machine in the green room in earlier shows. Contestants are shown holding Coke products. The co-hosts make an occasional heavy-handed reference to Coke.

Ford couldn't be so sneaky. So they went the complete opposite direction. Each show contains the "Focus on the contestants" section, where the kids get to play around a car or two, or pretend to drive one while musing on their performance. The spots are lame, but are at least in the open.

The ultimate problem regarding advertising is that the show doesn't have enough material to fill its time slot. This is especially true for the half-hour selection shows, which may feature more ad time per minute than anything this side of QVC. Clorette DePasto didn't use so much padding when she scored with Larry "Pinto" Kroger in Animal House.

3. The "conflict" Most of the show's current buzz centers around judge Simon Cowell, whose tart-tongued dismissal of contestants who don't perform to his standard raises hackles with fans, contestants, the idiot co-hosts, and fellow judges Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul (I won't even go into the problem with having Abdul serve as a judge).

This boiled over a few weeks ago, to the point where Jackson got up and looked like he wanted to fight Simon over comments made to a contestant. This then turned into an "us versus them" thing, where the nasty Brit was taking on America, where everyone deserves praise!

Except that they don't.

Now Simon is some sort of Snidley Whiplash sort of character, a mock villain who is roundly booed by the audience and dissed by judges and the occasional contestant. Simon takes it in good fun for the most part, but does get serious when defending his outlook: they're there to judge who's got the most superstar potential, and those who don't have it need to leave.

Could Simon be less confrontational? Probably. But he also knows what he's talking about. The two contestants he pegged losers were the least successful performers this week, clearly. And if the one who managed to get through does win, it would be a failure. Just one of those failures that don't really impact the public at large, like New Coke or adopting the metric system.

And didn't Anne Robinson teach us anything? Or at least soften us up for acid-tongued Brits dressed in black?

Most of the confrontation between Simon and the judges, hosts, and audience feels fake. I know, something related to the music industry that's fake. Who'd have thought?

So why do I keep watching? I don't know. I certainly don't fall into that 13-24 demographic that the producers covet, and I obviously think that there's an overall lack of quality with the show. I suppose what I do like it that the show is, to some extent, merit-based. It's not about forming alliances, screwing someone over, or having the mediocre gang up on the talented. The public does vote on winners, but in large part they vote for the better performers.

Except in the case of A. J. Gil, whose continued presence on the show is a mystery. My guess is that he's got a relative working for the phone company.

In the end, for all the furor over the show now, I can't see American Idol making a lasting impression on the American entertainment landscape. Whoever wins this show will probably be the 21st century equivalent of Sam Harris. The show may come back for a future run, but the fickle, what's new attitude of the show's primary demographic- teens- will most likely be its undoing.

So watch it while you can. Or don't.

While watching SportsCenter tonight, their piece about cloning athletes mentioned this oddly prescient volume.

You have to think that the first reporter who comes up with a library check-out record or Amazon.com purchase by John Henry Williams is going to be short-listed for a Pulitzer.

Did I mention that I got spammed by the Republican National Committee?

Technically, I got spammed by the good folks at directoffers.net, but it's not like they do this sort of thing out of charity. Or perhaps they do. Can't say I know the GOP's stance on spam, but I can see where they'd vaguely support it as good for commerce (as opposed to the Dems, who could back spam on a First Amendment basis).

The email starts:

"The Republican Party's cadre of Team Leaders is on the march, and you will be a valuable member.  As a member of this team, you are part of a fast growing network of volunteers who help President Bush achieve his agenda for America by spreading his message and helping elect more Republicans across the nation."

Why does having a cadre of leaders sound like Enron's management plan? Shouldn't the Team Leaders be at the head of the cadres? Of course, the word "cadre" was pretty well co-opted by the commies, so to put it in a parlance that even W would understand, it sounds like too many cowboys and not enough Indians (not that they'd be all that welcome in the GOP). Not that the Wellesley cadre would have any cowboys, either. The spurs might catch on the leather interior of their M-class Mercedes SUV.

Now that the RNC admits that Bush has an agenda, can gay people now oppose him claiming they need to stop the "dim-witted grown up frat boy" agenda?

The email continues with that line we've all come to know and love when unexpected email arrives in our box:

"This email has been sent to you in order to verify your subscription to receive email updates from the Republican National Committee."

I did send my reply to the listed address to ask the fine people at directoffers.net to remove from this list, but we'll see. Perhaps I'll be asked to join the Team Followers cadres, or get to let Dick Cheney stay over one night to keep him on the move and away from terrorists. Or helping OJ find the real killers. Whatever he's up to when he's on the move.

I suppose if I were a Republican, I would feel a little sad that the party is now on the same level as the herbal Viagra and inkjet cartridge refill people. Actually, I feel that way regardless. Maybe the Dems will put passes making random people super-delegates for the 2004 convention in Value-Paks.

Then again, both parties seem skilled at spamming themselves.

Greater threat to the US: Islamic terrorists or crooked corporate execs? Discuss.

I hope that if I ever get charged with a variety of felonies and misdemeanors- little things like criminal trespass, violations of firearms laws, and making terroristic threats- that I get a few days to chill at home and have the family over for a party.

From what I can tell, the delay in Allen Iverson's case is due to his attorney being on vacation. All I know is that if it's me facing those charges, I'd be rotting away in, say, Norfolk or the big house waiting for my court-appointed defender to learn how to spell my name.

I've had this odd build-up behind my sinuses for the past week.

It started on Friday, when a serendipitous lunch with Shawn and Laura DeVeau (met out of the blue at, of all places, Burrito Max) was interrupted with the news that Ted Wiliams had died.

Pressure built as the Sox lost 2 of 3 in Detroit, was alleviated slightly by the Home Run Derby, and came back with a vengance in the wake of the All Star Game. It reached titanic proportions with the flood of talk regarding labor, steroids, and fiscal ill health.

Oh, and there's the whole Ted on Ice thing, too. That's not helping.

It could be the only thing that'll clear my head is to chuck baseball. Again.

About 10 years ago, I would tell just about anyone who brought the subject up that I was sick of baseball. The 1990 lockout was still in people's minds, and after a divison title that year the Sox were slumping to medocrity. Consider that their big off season signings for the 1991 season were Matt Young, Danny Darwin, and a very old Jack Clark.

Then 1994 came around. The nadir. As far off my radar screen as baseball was before the strike, it was buried deep after that.

But then baseball came back. Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak. The Sox stopped stinking. And I undertook the previously mentioned baseball book a week challenge specifically in an attempt to become interested in baseball again.

It worked. Baseball still wasn't my favorite sport, but I watched a lot more, and followed the sport more closely. Fantasy sports, as often as they're derided for eroding fandom into rooting for individuals and situations, brought more interest into learning who certain players were and who was coming up and wrapping up.

But now that feeling's back. That feeling that my revived interest in baseball is about to be stomped on by men both in cleats and in Gucci loafers. That feeling that I might as well adopt NASCAR as my summer sport of choice to fill time between the Stanley Cup playoffs and preseason football. That feeling that anyone who has any pull in major league baseball doesn't care one whit about my interest- except when I'm paying for tickets, buying overpriced concessions, or plumping ad revenue when I watch at home, generating ratings.

As I've said, I'm dubious about orgainzed fan action against baseball. I don't think there are enough hardcore fans to make a strike work, be it for one day or the whole season. I also think that, for most folks, spouting rhetoric is enough to make them feel better; venting often fills the bill, even if it's venting aimed at sparking a course of action. Unlike this person, I don't see such action as a sign of jealousy. Yes, there are bigger things to get outraged over. But baseball relies on fan support. Without fannies in the seats or people watching at home, there'd be no money to pay anyone. When the powers that be treat their consumers in a fashion akin to the way Godzilla treats the Ginza, the consumers should respond.

How should they respond? Just walk away. No torchlight rallies, no wailing and gnashing of teeth, no impassioned speeches decrying players and owners alike. Just tuck your money back in your billfold and find something else to do when you'd normally focus on baseball. Rent a movie. Read a book. Go to a musuem. Spend time with family just talking.

Most important: once you walk away, don't look back. Orpheus learned the hard way about looking back before you get what you want. Baseball fans should heed that lesson if we lose another season.

Songs That I Like But Shouldn't, Part 1

Days Go By by Dirty Vegas - it's a dance/techno song popularized by a car commercial. All the things that, together, should make me turn the dial in agony the second this song cues up. But instead I listen to the whole thing. Why?

It's the video. Your classic "boy has girl, boy loses girl, years later man breakdances to win girl back" story. I must have a weakness for kickin' it old school.

Can't Get You Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue - Perhaps the most apropos song title of the last decade. The song is annoying as all get out, but it infects your brain and forces you to listen- even after the song's been over for 20 minutes.

Thankfully, it's not on that much anymore.

Hot in Herre by Nelly - I'm not a fan of hip-hop, and the title misspelling is just dumb. But when you have an opening line like "Good gracious, ass is bodacious," it's hard not to stick with it. The best use of a thesaurus since Madonna went on about the bourgeois in that horrid little song of hers.

I suppose I should say something about Ted Williams, but if you read Couture's blog (or journal or diary or precious memory book or whatever the hell he wants to call it) he's pretty much said what I'm thinking.

My current problem is that the whole cryo thing has me thinking about a book I read in something like 3rd or 4th grade and I can't remember the title. Quick synopsis: boy growing up in some sort of dystopic version of California (OK, a different dystopic version of California) stumbles across a doctor who perfected suspended animation using noble gases or some crap like that, foils the fascist lite power structure, and gets everyone he loves to the buried passenger train that the doc has fitted out. They all breathe deep and wake up in the future, ready to start anew.

Not childhood classic by any means (more of a hint about my leanings towards alternative historical fiction). More apt as the sort of stuff that Scholastic Books pushed on us before their recent campaign to turn kids into devil worshipers.

A question for any armchair theologians out there:

If you go to church only to find that the Mass schedule has changed without your knowing it, and the service you planned to attend wasn't being held (due to a summer schedule), do you still get credit for the service? Assume that there are no other services within a reasonable distance (which, as far as I know, is the case).

Any similarities between this and George Carlin's "Heavy Mystery" routine is accidental.

The sun's finally beginning to get through all the smoke from those forest fires in Canada. I suppose it's fair trade for all the acid raid we caused them over the last few decades.

For a one day holiday, I'm getting quite the celebratory mileage out of the 4th this year. To wit:

Wednesday Drove up to Manchester to see the fireworks, for the first time (ever or in a really long time, couldn't figure out which) held at Singing Beach. We actually drove to my brother's house in Peabody and shuttled out from there. What was originally a full-on family event turned into me, Sarah, my future sister in law Jen, and two of my brother's kids as my brother's oldest and two of my sister's kids were sick (probably heat-induced).

Every time we drive up from Wellesley to points north, we get stuck in traffic on 95 from about Burlington to Lynnfield. Always. This day was no different, as it took longer to get between those two points than it did for us to get from Peabody to Wellesley afterwards. And for people who scoff at public transportation, consider what this sort of gridlock would be like if everyone had to take their own vehicle to work.

Anyway, by the time we got to the beach, we'd dropped 20-25 degrees from the heat in Wellesley. You never realize what a difference the coast makes until you don't live along it anymore. Despite the name, the sand at Singing Beach really doesn't sing that much. A succession of storms and attendant erosion have done something to make the sand less harmonious. It's kind of like what happened to Julie Andrews, but not really.

The fireworks were actually quite good for such a small town. Some could have used more height, but all things considered I've seen larger municipalities put on less of a display. Turnout was huge, spurred by the double enticement of cooler temps and shit blowing up.

Thursday Kicked off by making another drive to Manchester for the parade. We were on the fence about this, but as it was our only likely parade option. Got there in good time, and settled in up the street from our old house. That wasn't as odd as I thought it would be; what was odd was driving away afterwards and seeing the new occupants of the house on the porch. That really drove it home that I wouldn't be watching parades from there anymore.

The parade itself was a typical Manchester 4th of July affair. You get:

1. Fire engines. Many of them. All with sirens going. Ouch.
2. Antique cars. Fewer of the pre-1950 cars, more from the 1950 to 1970 range.
3. Non-antique cars. There's a local Corvette club that drove a variety of models, and the usual display of local Harley-Davidson riders. A couple of them were friends of mine (older ones) in high school, but we've really not kept up at all.
4. "Floats." In quotes because the offerings will never be mistaken for Tournament of Roses entries. Yankee Fleet, a deep sea fishing and whale watching outfit in Gloucester, had a good one with a breaching humpback that blew water out of its blowhole.
5. Bands. Not the high school band, though. I don't think they've marched in a good 15 years in any parade. Instead, a number of what I guess are professional bands are trucked in from all over to play. Three were from the Boston area, but there was one from Orlando as well. The best-received band is usually a local steel drum outfit who are among the few non-white people in the parade. The Manchester version of diversity.
6. Military, retired military, or faux-military. Most often American Legion reps and war recreationists.
7. Politicians. All local- selectment, state rep and senator, perhaps even someone running against the incumbent. No Democrats, given the GOP majority in our districts.
8. Delays. It's not the most well organized parade, so you get two or three intermissions.

The last facet of the parade changes greatly at the end of the route, where my friend Nancy and her husband Dave (who I suppose is a friend as well, though I really don't know him all that well) have just moved into a house. Visited with them after the parade finished at our location, only to run into the end of the parade at their house. At their location, the parade was pretty much individual units with a minute or two between each. At their point, the parade was something like 2 hours long.

From there, we went up to my sister's. There is no easy way to get from Manchester to Plaistow, New Hampshire. Mapquest wants to send you back down 128 to 93, then back up to 495. In reality, there are state routes (133 and 97) that are as fast, especially on holidays. We took 97, which goes through a number of the lightly populated towns that barely count as Boston suburbs- Boxford, Topsfield, the hated Georgetown (high school rivals), and Groveland. Got lost in Haverhill, missing the turn off that would have taken us right up to my sister's. Nothing like getting lost when the bank you pass is showing 100 degrees on its sign.

By the time we got to my sister's house, we were half wacky from the heat. This prompted an emergency trip to Wal Mart, where we bought really cheap and ugly (at least mine) bathing suits. I then spent most of the afternoon in my sister's pool. It was a typical cookout/party at my sister's house, got to see my family and several friends of my sister's who I really don't know.

Got home, watched the Boston Pops concert and fireworks. I could have done without Barry Manilow. There was an 8 year old girl who put the Pledge of Allegiance to music and performed it, which was fine except for all the sunshine apostles who cheered when she sang the "under God" line. I'm sure we'll see all of them in church on Sunday.

Friday The original four day work week at Babson would have had us open today, unless you could squeeze the Friday hours into Monday through Wednesday. And then on Monday afternoon our new president declared Friday a "presidential holiday." Which is why I'm writing this from the terminal room at BU's computing center on Cummington Street, waiting for Sarah to get out of work so we can go to my brother's for a cookout.

I'm going to need the weekend just to recover from the week.

Remember how irradiating the mail was supposed to knock out anthrax and make the world safe again for useless coupons for local services you don't use? Well, it's apparently not that simple.

Seems that irradiated mail may be making mail handlers sick. My favorite quote from Senator Charles Grassley:

"Irradiating the mail was and is a big experiment."

Last time I checked, if you were going to experiment on humans you needed their permission. This may not be the same as strapping someone down and making them ingest a half gallon of Bactine, but it seems a little short-sighted to zap the mail without establishing some sort of protocols to protect the people who spend the most time with the mail.

Another example of how Congress is looking out for the working man!

Twice yesterday I tried to post about the Sox-Braves game, as Sarah and I were in attendance for the extra innings fiasco. Twice the computer or human error led to no post. So, suffice it to say, it was a good comeback wasted.

I'm still not sure why Grady Little tried to pinch hit with Tony Clark (who as a hitter is in more of a funk than Bootsy Collins) or why he left Ugie out to pitch a second inning. Most folks will remember Willie Banks dropping the ball while trying to make the force out a first, but the game was well out of reach by then.

I suppose a five game set against the Blue Jays just may be what the doctor ordered to break the interleague play-induced slump, but there's a definite crash and burn into the All Star break option, too.

Speaking of the All Star game, nice to see that Joe Torre and Bob Brenley didn't load up on marginally deserving players from their own teams.

Oh, wait. Never mind.

Did a few things over the weekend of marginal interest:

Joined a health club Sarah and I are now members of the BSC in Wellesley, which is located about 500 feet from where we live. Unfortunately, it's at the bottom of a hill, so if we walk it means we're hiking up the hill after whatever workout we do, which kind of sucks.

The club's pretty nice, lots of machines in good order, tennis, lap pool, whirlpool, steam, and sauna. Went Sunday morning and did some treadmill and bike while watching Brazil win one for the thumb.

If I can keep going when the place is empty, I think I'll be OK with it. Working out at peak times probably not so much, but I'll just have to suck it up.

Saw The Bourne Identity Didn't plan to go to the movies on Friday night, but a two hour campus-wide power outage to improve something in the electrical system led us to leave campus to find entertainment. Wound up seeing this as (a) tickets for Minority Report aren't available on-line, and (b) it started the latest of movies we were interested in, giving us the most time to eat (dined at Bennigan's, which was OK).

The movie was loud. I suppose that's something you can say about any movie nowadays; I imagine there were parts of Lilo & Stitch that would make your fillings rattle. Both Sarah and I are of the opinion that Matt Damon is a better actor than Ben Affleck, which is also probably not that surprising a statement. Not that either of them are blowing people away with their craft. It could be that Damon's failings (All the Pretty Horses, The Legend of Bagger Vance for example) are less noticable than Affleck's (Pearl Harbor, Reindeer Games and so on). Or that Damon occasionally plays an interesting character (Bourne, Tom Ripley), while Affleck plays guys with big teeth.

All things being equal, we probably should have scouted around for a place showing Monsoon Wedding.

Played some NTN For those of you who aren't aware of what NTN is, it's an interactive multiple choice trivia game you play at bars and restaurants. You get a little keyboard-type thing (officially called a "Playmaker") and punch in answers.

It's not always the easiest game to find (most bars around here seem to keep it in the corner, to isolate the geeks from the rest of the customers), but the aforementioned Bennigan's in Framingham has it, and as Sarah had reached soul-sucking levels of boredom (I was content watching Apollo 13, even if it was edited for TV) we trooped over.

I suppose it wasn't a bad night out, as we both had fun, and I got to beat Sarah in every game we played (even the music game, which was surprising, as it's not my strength). The one downside was the ripping off as far as beer prices go. Paid $5 a pint for a good local beer. Lots of locals (or a mix of Framingham State students and locals home from wherever they go), no real problems though (occasionally you'll get the drunk person who will ask you what you're doing while a game's going, and try to apply drunken idiot logic as to why NTN may be preferable to pounding Bud Light).

Kind of an up and down weekend, but fairly restful. Which I'll need going into the holiday and the crush of family that comes with it.

Speaking of holiday, happy Canada Day!