The city of Boston stopped work at 4 pm yesterday in order to crowd around televisions in bars or at home to watch the 3rd game of the Red Sox Angels series. My dad was at the game with the one ticket he had managed to finagle through the lottery with his shared season tickets.

After some moving back and forth between Tommy O'doyles and Flat Top Johnny's we landed in seats in front of the projector in the back of Tommy O'Doyles. The back and forth was because Robert thought that Tommy's was a better place to recruit Swedish Nurse candidates while Hattie likes the atmosphere of Flat Top's better. As it turned out there weren't any seats in Flat Top's which sealed our fate.

After six innings I had gotten a voicemail from Lisa, my sister, to try to co-ordinate on the carpooling to Marshfield. The plan to go to Marshfield was based on some research that the Patriots cheerleaders were going to be making an appearance in a bar. Because we already had postponed my dad's birthday for over two months we were going to all drive out there and have a little party and then sleep at the house in Marshfield.

This short email from my dad was the gist of the plan:

“Dan We should obviously go. I have one ticket to friday's playoff game and I will go, but we could head down to marshfield after the game and stay over after the pat's cheerleader thing. Should we do my birthday then too?
-Dad”

The Sox looked like they had the game all wrapped-up with a six run lead so Robert left to do some work online to recruit more nurses. The Angels swung into action and scored six runs to tie the game with a grand slam off of our relief pitcher. Sarah had come by in her car so that we could get out to Marshfield.

Since the food isn't edible at Tommy's we picked-up and moved to CBC. I finally called Lisa back and she explained that both her and Dave didn't have working cars so they needed to bum a ride off of us. So they took the subway to One Kendall. Sarah wasn't too happy about the idea of a crowd in her car because the back was full of her work toys but I laid a guilt trip on her about all the times I had gone with her to get her car repaired to tag team driving back and forth.

I wanted to order the tuna and a salad and split it with Sarah but she opted for a burger. While Lisa and Dave weren't there they had us order a veggie burger for Lisa and a burger for Dave. We were sitting next to some obnoxious Yankee's fans who kept cheering for the Angels. They did look noticably guilty when their cheering upset a pair of children, aged about seven, dressed in Red Sox shirts who were watching the game with their parents.

The Red Sox pulled off a spectacular win with a walk-off home run by David Ortiz in the twelth inning. The game had gone about an hour longer than expected so it was almost 8:30 when the game had finally ended.

Then the family circus began. As soon as the game ended I talked to my dad who was revelling near Fenway in the glory of our playoff victory. Since it was so late due to the high scoring extra inning game we decided that there was no way to make the 45 minute drive to Marshfield. During this conversation I learned that my mom was angry because nobody had called her about the arrangements and she had not eaten all night while waiting in Newton for someone to call.

We decided to meet my dad and mom at the coolidge corner club house. So as we were driving there Sarah, who was frustrated from having driven all day took the corner on commonwealth after the Star Market that is now Shaws too tight and popped her rear tire on the curb. The car with Dave, Lisa, Sarah, and me skidded into a parking space in front of the Porsche dealership.near Harvard Street.

I called my dad to inform him of our troubles and he told me that we had a major problem doing anything because my mother was very angry about not having been called all evening and not being able to eat dinner because she had waited for Lisa to call her back since 7 pm. Meanwhile Sarah had fumes coming out of her ears because she has now gotten three flat tires in three months. I called my mom and put Lisa on and my mom took offense because Lisa was laughing about the incident.

My dad was disappointed because now with the family exploding into an argument about why mom was never called and who was acting irresponsibly or irrationally he was going to continue to have a crappy birthday even if it was two months late.

So my dad came by to take me back to my car and Lisa and Dave stayed with Sarah to keep her calm while waiting for the AAA. All of us listened to parts of the evenings presidential debates as we moved about town. Dad and I drove back to my place and I sat listening to dad in a conversation with mom where she was accusing her children of never calling her and intentionally ignoring her when making plans. While that was an interesting conversation there was a more interesting conversation going on between a couple outside of my open car door where the man was trying to break-up with the woman and she was so upset that she broke into tears.

Finally my dad calmed down my mom and we went together to watch the end of the Yankees-Twins game.

Apparently the AAA service that Sarah had gotten was terrible. The driver had taken about two hours to arrive and when he did he started to fight with the tire to the point where he was pummeling the tire with a piece of wood to get it off of the wheel.

I drove Dave and Lisa back to Cambridge where we had a heated debate about the debate and whether there is a vast conspiracy that led to Iraq led by Haliburton merely to profit from the sale of weapons, reconstruction programs, and oil.

Upon returning home from this I found that Sarah was extremely sick and was vomiting not just out of frustration from the driving experience but most likely from food poisoning from the hamburger that she had for dinner.