The Red Sox won Game Three

of the World Series last night, 4-1, and without the drama of the eight embarrassing errors of the first two games. They're one game (9 innings) away from their first World Series victory since 1918, but I still don't feel comfortable. Those "Calvinistic clouds of self doubt" still circle around my bald head. How's this for a script? - after being the first team to come back and win a seven-game series after being down 0-3, they turn around and become the second team to lose a seven-game series after being up 3-0.

But I don't think that's going to happen either, and even if it did, it wouldn't matter because we still beat the Yankees! Kirsten was right, the Yankees are a virus, and the Sox are the cure. It's a new millenium, baby. The Boston Red Sox are the team of destiny. I think. If we can just keep from committing those errors . . .

I'm working from home today. Okay, well, I'm not working right now, I'm blogging, but technically I'm working from home. I dropped the car off at Buckhead Jeep this morning to get the driver's-side window fixed (it won't roll up, and has been held up with duct tape since Friday), and then walked a half-block down Piedmont to Enterprise and rented a 2004 Buick LaSabre. I've got a report to edit, so I have billable work for the day, and at 2:00 ComCast is coming over to install a digital phone line and the locksmith who let me in my car on Friday is coming over to re-key the doors to the house. So right now, I'm at my home computer, listening to Harold Budd and trying to find the motivation to start editing that report.

But before I do that, I have to tell you about the horror that appeared in my mailbox yesterday. Not my email Inbox, but my real, honest-to-God, brick-and-mortar, U.S. Postal Service mailbox. When I innocently walked down the driveway to pick up the bills, advertising circulars and other assorted trash that I typically get in the mailbox, I found (drum roll, please) . . . a membership registration to the AARP!!! That's right, the American Association of Retired Persons. As in Old Persons. As in I-turned-50-last-summer-and-I'm-going-to-die-soon, life-as-I-know-it-is-over, do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night, fucking senior citizens!!!.

According to their letter, for only $12.50 ($29.50 for three years if I think I will live that long), I can be a bona-fide, card-carrying member of the AARP!. Apparently, membership will provide me access to their group health insurance and allow me to join any one of their 2,700 local chapters. Plus, I get a subscription to Modern Maturity magazine, which they apparently have wisely renamed "AARP - The Magazine."

Bastards. I don't know how they got my age or my new address. And I imagine this isn't the last I've heard from them. Actually, though, I may join, just so I could walk around with a Membership Card in my wallet and be able to say, in case I ever need to, that I'm an honest-to-God, card-carrying old fart.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas