I was feeling a bit bored around the house yesterday, and it being a bright, sunny, not to mention HOT day in the city of Boston, I got a little different idea to get out the house for a bit. The Red Sox had an afternoon game at 2:00, so I thought I'd take my three (almost 4) year-old and head down to Fenway to walk around and soak up a bit of the atmospere. No need to go inside, I figured we'd have a walk, but a hot dog and a t-shirt - that kind of thing.

My wife was feeling tired, so it was a good opportunity for us to go out and give here a break from kid mayhem for a couple of hours.

Ordinarily I despise city driving, having had more than my fill of it, by I've found if you leave sufficiently early for the game, you can get in and get a space on the street without paying 20 bucks for game parking, and without driving around the block 25 times waiting for a meter to open (and it being Sunday, the meters are free). This gets to be a little less of a sure thing once the BU students are back, but we're right on the cusp of when they should be returning.

So, we saddled up the Saturn, drove in meeting only relatively mild traffic, took the first right onto Bay State Road after getting off Storrow Drive and sure enough, the first thing we see is a couple of guys vacating a space right there. The parking gods were smiling this day.

Now, I'd love to take my girl in to see the game, but decent tickets are scarce, and I hate dealing with scalpers. And there are LOADS of scalpers around Fenway. They sell the tickets completely openly right in front of the cops. Meanwhile, an honest fan can't get a seat for love or money. Well, maybe money.

Anyway, the first thing we did was stop for my daughter's first vendor-purchased Fenway Frank. Well, it wasn't really a Fenway Frank, more of a foot long dog in a sausage bun. Add a Coke - 7 bucks. But that's OK, it was the only expenditure of the day (I took a pass on the $20 kid-sized "Pokey" shirt) and it was money well-spent. Aside from a couple of bites stolen by dad, she ate the whole damn thing. Here's a couple of shots I took as we stood and ate outside the radio broadcast booth:

I'm not sure she quite put together that what was going on inside was the stuff we watch on the TV at home, although she was quite interested when we passed by a corner of the ballpark where we could peak-in and see the big score board - "Look! A giant TV!" That got her attention.

I almost got sucked in and bought a ticket, but by that time we had been wandering around a couple of hours and someone wanted to go home already. Maybe next time.

Anyway, here's a gratuitous picture of the trip we took to Halibut Point State Park in Rockport last Wednesday. Tossing happless snails into a tide-pool. (I got poison ivy.)