Willy-nilly Friday 5: Birthday Edition

1.  So yesterday was my birthday – which one is not really relevant.  It’s enough to say that I’m not getting any younger.  We had tickets for a day game at Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox.  In baseball, as in life, hope springs eternal and I was hoping for a win to add to my scorebook.  (Yes, I am a baseball nerd and I do keep score when I go to the games.  My scorebook is one of my favorite things in life.) Well, there was no luck at Fenway yesterday since the Sox lost 8-6, but it was a good day at the ballpark nonetheless.  And as the famous line goes, “There’s no crying in baseball,” which is a damn good thing, because otherwise we’d be crying a lot this year.

2.  The other day I saw on Facebook that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts had a photography exhibit that I really wanted to see.  The exhibit is called In the Wake:  Japanese Photographers Respond to 3/11.  In case you can’t recall the date, it is the day, March 11, 2011, that the tsunami hit the coast of Japan leaving so much devastation behind.  I was interested in this because I recently did a bit of research on the subject for a talk I gave in April as part of a Sunday service at our church concerning radiation in our everyday lives.  The continuing damage resulting from the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is frightening and horrible, but that is beside my point here.  Going to see the exhibit, which was very touching and well worth a visit, encouraged us to park at the museum and walk to Fenway.  It’s a pleasant walk through a beautiful part of Boston.  On the way, I managed to snap this picture of The Prudential building reflected in one of the fens.

3.  After the game, while we were walking back to the car, I noticed this plaque embedded in the sidewalk next to tables with chess boards embedded in them:

A little research got me an explanation of why it is there.  David Woodman is a young man who died during the celebration of the Boston Celtics winning a championship.  They say that he was willing to give up his coat to the homeless he encountered and loved playing chess with them.  I think we would all benefit from remembering that, at the end of the day, we do all end up in the same box.

4.  Speaking of boxes, on the way out of Boston we passed by the House of the Harvard Club of Boston.  There’s a box I wouldn’t fit in either now or at the end of the day.

5.  Because of some pretty nasty Boston traffic, we got home much later than anticipated, so to cap off the night, Greg and I took the five minute drive over to our local Uno’s Pizzeria and I celebrated getting older with an Ultimate Margarita and half a flatbread pizza.  The good thing about that is that our friend and expert musician Jared Fiske was performing there that night.  That was the icing on my non-existent birthday cake.

Oh, by the way, here's me in a pretty bad selfie that I took while sitting in traffic in Boston yesterday.  I was pretty beat from all we did during the day so I look a little on the put-out side, but I wasn't unhappy -- just tired.  But today I am a very happy person thinking about the Supreme Court ruling allowing gay marriage in this country.  Even though I've been around for a good long while, I still feel that life is too short to deny  all consenting adults the happiness of love and marriage if they want it.  Thanks, SCOTUS!

Linking up with Around Roanoke's Willy-nilly Friday 5!