We had a great time in Story Land up in New Hampshire this past weekend. Story Land is a small amusement/theme park, where the theming revolves around nursery rhymes. The kids had a blast riding the rides and checking out the various buildings and such - they had the Old Woman’s Shoe (the one with too many children), an old-fashioned school house, Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s house (complete with disguised wolf) and such. Most of the rides were fairly tame, but certainly hit the sweet spot with my five and six year olds.

A. and I enjoyed the place, as well. Much like the Disney parks, Story Land was kept meticulously clean. Unlike the Disney parks, everything was very reasonably priced. Admission, food and souvenirs were all priced so as to not bankrupt a family of four. As much as I love Disney, and feel like I get entertainment value for my money, I do sometimes feel like I’m walking around the place with Mickey’s hand in my wallet. Story Land lacks the spectacular, polished feeling of Disney’s rides and shows, but it makes due with what it has and creates a nice family atmosphere.

I did discover one thing this weekend - my 40 year old stomach can no longer handle spinning rides. I took J. on this twisting turtle ride and was out of it for a couple of hours. I find that rides that spin in one direction (like a carousel or the flying Dumbos) are OK, but rides that spin me in two directions at once (like the teacups) make me nauseous. And roller coasters don’t bother me at all. A., however, had a tough time with the small roller coaster there. Needless to say, I avoided any similar rides for the weekend.

So, as they say, a fun time was had by all.

It was disappointing to see the Sox performance on their trip to Colorado and San Francisco. Losing 2 out of 3 to the hapless Rockies was the real let down - I had really hoped to split the six games, and the Sox lost four out of six. The Sox left the bases loaded five times in the first two games in Denver - you just can’t do that if you expect to win a lot of games.

Would the Indians C.C. Sabathia be better off playing defensive tackle in the NFL? I saw him pitch for the Tribe against the White Sox last night on ESPN. The guy is huge! He got squeezed on a couple of ball/strike calls in the first inning and started to get into it with the umpire. Lou Merloni came over to calm Sabathia down (and keep him in the game) and it looked like Sabathia was about three times Lou’s size. The guy really can pitch though. It looks like the Indians are starting to produce a new generation of stars to replace the Manny Ramirez/Jim Thome/Albert Belle generation that left for bigger paychecks elsewhere.