Greetings from Cooperstown!

We're here for my 40th birthday trip. When A. asked me if I wanted to go away for my birthday, I told her that I wanted to go somewhere, but I wasn't sure that she would want to go. I told her I wanted to go to Cooperstown, since I hadn't been here since the weekend before J. came home. She said that was fine, "as long as we stayed somewhere nice." So here we are at the Inn at Cooperstown bed & breakfast.

I discovered the Inn at Cooperstown has wireless Internet access. So before we left, I re-installed the Airport card that came with my iBook. After we got here I booted up and the thing works like a charm. I didn't even have to configure anything. Apple's Rendezvous technology got me right in without a hitch.

The inn itself is very nice. It's was originally built in 1874 and was rebuilt as an inn in the 1980's. It's about 3 blocks from the Hall of Fame, which is very convenient. I don't have to worry about parking my car or any of that stuff. We also get breakfast in the morning, which I'm expecting will be good based on the quality of everything else so far.

On the way to dinner we wandered by Doubleday Field, the site of the annual Hall of Fame game, and the legendary site where Abner Doubleday supposedly put together the first baseball diamond. There was a game of some kind going on - maybe some kind of semi-pro league. We watched for a half-inning, which I really enjoyed. There are games all day tomorrow, so I'll probably stop by and catch a couple of innings.

We just had dinner at the Hoffman Lane Bistro, which was excellent. I had an extremely good pasta dish, and A. had salmon which she said was very tasty. I had a couple of Old Slugger beers, from the Cooperstown Brewing Company. I couldn't resist trying it because of the name. It was a very nice pale ale, not too bitter like some pale ales are. The brewery is only about 8 miles from where we're staying, so we're going to go check it out tomorrow afternoon after I get done at the Hall of Fame.

The other big baseball event of the week was my second trip up to the Monster Seats on Wednesday night. The Monster Seats are, without a doubt, the best seats I've ever watched a ballgame from. I went with my friends Dave, Bill and Karen and we had an amazing time watching the Sox beat the Oakland A's 9-6. The key play of the game was a bases clearing error by the A's shortstop Bobby Crosby. With the bases loaded, a routine ground ball was hit to Crosby that would have ended the inning. He bobbled the grounder, then hurried his throw to second and the ball went sailing out into right field. All three Sox runners came home and that play really broke open the game for the Red Sox. Jason Varitek hit a massive home run right over our heads to really put the game on ice.

The other highlight of the game was the fact that we got on the Jumbotron. When the P.A. system played "Sweet Caroline between halves of the 8th inning, the four of us were swaying to the music and we were shown on the big screen in center field. Only Dave saw it, but then a friend of ours called on Bill's cell phone and told us that her husband had seen us! That really just topped off the experience.

That's it for now. More tomorrow if I have a chance.