Everything has to get to the mark

Tuesday 4/8/25

My niece Lilah had a sleepover at Grammie's Saturday night--just her. Pretty exciting! She has been feeling, I'm told, kind of down lately as the middle child, with her older brother doing his older brother things, and then, of course, the little one--though don't let her catch you calling her that--monopolizing a lot of time and energy. Got to say hi to her late Sunday morning on my way to Charlestown.

It disappoints me some that a peanut isn't a nut.

Fantastic work on "By Water." Everything has to get to the mark of as good as anything I've ever done, and we're getting close now with this one. I almost put some of it up on here this morning, but I'm going to save that for a different post.

The story is 1000 longer than it was the other day. I guess typically to someone that would suggest that those words followed on from the last words that had been there, but that's often not the case with me. I go in and I add. Or it can be that. The story already had a first and last word.

I find it hard to be roused at all with college basketball and football here in the transfer portal age and this would be the case if I wasn't in the situation in this life worse than being in hell. I add the caveat because there's nothing I enjoy right now. It's not like that. You couldn't enjoy anything when this is what life is for you, getting up to this, being in this spot, this war, with all that is being done to and against, what is denied.

Don't need to cover that ground here in this entry. But I'll often think, "Okay, if you had what you should have, and there you are, what would your thoughts and feelings on this given subject be? Would you look forward to it?"

And I just wouldn't care much about college sports with what they've become. Can no one be part of something else and not be all about themselves?

Everything gets worse. That is the way of our society, culture, world. I'd say our times, but that has a for now implication, when it could be for all time from now on out.

If I don't get to where I'm trying to go, it will be, in my estimation.

Red Sox are up and down over their first eleven games. Devers looks like he's digging himself out a bit. If you're a slumping Sox left-handed hitter, get to Fenway and go the other way. That'll fix you. They're have been some good things and some not so good things. The comeback win--from down two--in the ninth the other day was nice. Then they went out and mashed and took the second game of that doubleheader as well, but were beat fairly soundly by Toronto last night in that series opener.

Most worrisome aspect? The starting pitching. The defense has been okay, Abreu has been great, some of their presumed bigger sticks are starting to wake up. Buehler has been terrible in his two starts, ditto Houck. Richard Fitts took the loss last night, dropping him to 0-2. He's done the same thing both times out: Six innings pitched, three earned runs. Isn't it something that you can have a 4.50 ERA for a game and get a quality start? That's not bad from him--all you want from Fitts is to keep you in the game so that you're offense can do its thing, but the truth is, he's been one of their better starters.

Sean Newcomb battled through his start in the first game of the Saturday doubleheader, but this is a thirty-one-year-old career minor leaguer, and that was the best you're going to get from him: one run in four innings, with a lot of traffic on the base paths, which could have been five or six runs against, and it would have been more often than not. That's what I mean by battled. The success, as such, he had in those four innings was the exception rather than the rule. That was what, game nine of the 162? And he's already made two starts for you?

Renewed my membership to the Peabody Essex Museum. Didn't have access for a few months.

Watched the 1957 film, Back from the Dead, for an Easter piece I'm writing. It's a coastal horror about possession. A craggy coast and a compromised soul.

Sat there last night as I do many nights listening to "Dark Star"--the 1971 Halloween version from Cleveland this time. Here is the version on Dick's Picks Volume Two, but you want the full soundboard show, which you won't get with the official release.

Felt like going to the Brattle over the weekend and would have if there was anything of note at all playing, but there wasn't. There won't be for the next stretch, then they'll have stuff I'm into every day for a different stretch.

It's definitely over a year now since I had any bread, a chip, any red meat, a hot chocolate, or pizza, because I know it was on a day in March last year when I renounced all. I can do a lot better, but that's still pretty good to give up all of that at once and stick with it. I need to eat more grains. Also, celery.

No recurrence of groin issues. I got some good advice (that it was likely a strain, and to give it a some time).

Walked six miles Friday. Then walked ten on Saturday and did 300 push-ups and five circuits of stairs in the Monument. There were a lot of people--had to wait in line. A lot of people invariably means a lot of stupid and out of shape people. They can't figure out which side of the stairs to be on, they take up space, have no sense of the space they consume, don't move, get angry when you politely say "excuse me" because people believe everything in the world should simply be how they feel they want it. It's like being in there with a couple dozen rude, self-congratulatory, entitled bovines (and no shortage of misandrist women speaking aloud in stock social media phraseology--more on which later). On Sunday I did 200 push-ups and ran 5000 stairs at City Hall. Not much yesterday. Sunday also marked 3192 days, or 456 weeks, without a drink.