(X) Boston 7, Yanks 5

Pavano, two runs in three innings. But supposedly he looked good.

Got a call from, among other people, Robbie-Boy over the weekend. RB said, "I knew you were busy at work. I always know that when you drop your blog for a few days."

Bingo. I started this because I could never keep a diary for more than a few weeks. Somehow this made it all easier, and I hate myself when I let it go a few days. Blame the run-up to Spring Break.

It has taken me this long to realize that February and March are the best two months to be a college English teacher, especially at a community college, and for three reasons:

1) Spring Break!

2) Conferences, those out-of-town junkets that prove, once again, that nothing beats checking into a hotel someone else has paid for, sitting down to a meal someone else has paid for, and--best of all--boarding a plane someone else has paid for.

3) Mindful that April is usually the month for textbook aquisitions, publishers descend on us starting in February and treat us to, among other things, some really nice meals. It is quite a switch: I go ten months a year, hectored by secretaries, hounded by deans, and then for six weeks or so I find myself at the best restaurant in town, drinking a single-malt scotch older than most of my students as a prelude to the sort of dinner I can afford to treat Astro-girl and myself to maybe once a month.

The past two years, I have been doubly blessed. The past two years, I have been invited to present at the 4 C's (or rather, CCCC, an acronym for something I can never keep straight, though one C stands for "Composition" and the other "Convention"). It follows hard upon Spring Break, essentially (except for two days) keeping me away from my place of employment between March 9 and 28th. Thus the pile of work I did in the run-up to Spring Break, and the equally depressing pile that awaits me when I return.

Our college has a loose rule: get yourself invited to a conference, one conference a year, and they'll pay travel, accomodations. Last year, it was Chicago, and my introduction to the Palmer House, the El, the Chicago Art Institute, and--by sheer accident, as Astro-girl and I walked through the business district back to our hotel one stunning Sunday afternoon--the Billy Goat Tavern, the inspiration for Belushi and Ackroyd's "Cheese-bugga, Cheese-bugga" skit on SNL. Since it was a Sunday, and since the Billy Goat caters mostly to the business district types, the place was empty, and in fact AG and I were the only customers. That day's Goat employees, both men, seemed about twenty, surely the youthful descendants of the Greek proprietor portrayed so well by Belushi, and had well absorbed the insitutional DNA of the place. The conversation between one of them and Astro-girl went about as follows:

AG: "I don't know what I want."

Kid: "You want cheesebugga."

AG: "Well (scanning the menu above the counter), maybe I'll have . . ."

Kid: "You want cheesebugga."

The one salutory fact was that this was one of only two meals we purchased all week. Publishers, thank you.

This year, New York. I think I'll have the fish.