Lunar Corn Sox

I missed last night's lunar eclipse, which is sad because I enjoy gazing at moon. I heard it was a beautiful shade of orange and red, not necessarily Red Sox red, but it was close enough. More about them later.

While the eclipse was happening, I was bagging frozen corn at the Second Harvest Food Bank warehouse. Whenever we volunteer, we never know what task we'll be tackling. Usually, we're assigned to reclamation, where we inspect, categorize and repack various food items that grocery stores deem too damaged to put on the shelves. The packaging may look less than perfect, but the food is still good.

Last night's task involved corn. Lots and lots of corn. While bagging and boxing corn may not seem like an obvious source of fun, it was at least a ton of fun (once you got beyond all of the corny jokes). In the span of two hours, our team of eleven bagged and boxed roughly 6,870 ears of corn.

If well-oiled machines wore hair nets, aprons and latex gloves, then we were a well-oiled machine with numb hands. My bin of corn happened to be extra frozen. While other bins were relativitely easy to plow through, mine required some corn on corn chiseling (a.k.a. corn abuse) to break the ears loose.

Afterwards, after the clouds had moved in to obscure any evidence of the eclipsed moon, we went to BJ's Restaurant and Brewery, which was showing the World Series on every screen. We arrived just in time to watch the ninth inning as Boston attempted to finish off St. Louis.

One person from the bar cheered when Pujols led off with a hit, but the entire place went wild with cheers and applause when Renteria grounded back to the pitcher, Foulke, for the final out of the series. It was unreal and I was overjoyed.

For most Red Sox fans, they've been waiting a lifetime for yesterday's win. The wait was nicely expressed by a Nike commercial of all things. It showed two friends and lifelong Boston fans watching baseball from the front row of Fenway Park. As the years pass from 1919 up to 2004, we see the men grow from young boys to old men, the whole time rooting for their team to win and enduring many years of disappointment. It finishes on the happy note of this year's championship victory.

For San Francisco fans, like myself, I only hope we don't have to wait 36 more years to see the Giants accomplish the same feat.