Word up. Let's see, it's been a few days again. Lots of stuff going on. Roy Halladay just won his 21st game of the season with another shutout. I don't want to jinx him, but the man's looking good for the AL Cy Young. The Leafs kicked off the NHL preseason in Finland yesterday with a nice win over Jokerit, a Finnish pro team, but in typical fashion, they've already got a bunch of injured guys. I watched the first period on tape delay on NHL.com; that InterWeb thingie's got a future. Deb and I went to the Sox game last night against Tampa Bay. I got free tickets from work. It was my first game at Fenway in two years, since Cal Ripken's last appearance in Boston. Last year, I was busy with the new baby and then later in the season was kind of annoyed by all the strike talk, so I never bought any tickets. This year, I didn't try again, but tickets were hard to come by because the Sox have been doing so well. The seats were pretty good in the grandstand behind home plate. Pedro Martinez pitched well and the Sox won 3-2, although we left early to beat the crowd to the subway. As is typical, we had this annoying bozo behind us who thought he was hilarious, telling bad jokes throughout the game ("Hey, Marlon Anderson is on the wrong team. He should be on the Marlins. Get it?"). Ugh. It was all I could do to keep from turning around and telling him to shut the fuck up. Other than that, though, it was a good time.

We had a new fence installed yesterday. Our old one was falling apart because the dimwit who used to live here never treated the wood when he installed the damn thing seven years ago. We also replaced the fence behind our house, which actually belonged to the senile old lady who lives behind us, but was leaning into our backyard. We got permission from her daughters to replace it. The new fence is pretty sweet, and it has gates on either side where the driveways start. We can finally let Hannah play in the backyard. Well, there's still the matter of all the dogshit that my mother-in-law's dog deposits on a daily basis, but somehow never gets picked up. Well, you don't expect me to do it, do you? Anyway, that's another issue entirely. Suffice it to say, we'll put in new grass back there when there no more poop production, which could be in the next year or two. The next big project is having our gravel driveways paved over before the winter hits.

Hurricane Isabel is all over the news as it prepares to hit the East Coast. I think all we're supposed to get up here is a bunch of rain on Friday, but the Carolinas are preparing to get whacked.