Could my diet be any worse? I am having Cheetos for dinner. Last night, I had Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cookie Dough, after I’d had a couple of martinis and some hors d’oeuvres in a bar earlier in the evening. You have to ask yourself at some point where your body is finding the nutrition it needs to keep functioning.

But it’s been a big couple of weeks here in Boston, and the food pyramid hasn’t exactly been top of mind. Here are some highlights:

• Did you hear? The Red Sox broke the curse and won the World Series! I saw grown men cry, really, as fathers and sons who had gone to Fenway for forty or fifty years together to watch the Sox finally got to stand and cheer during the rolling rally on the Saturday morning after the series ended. What the world may not realize is that winning the World Series actually felt kind of anti-climactic beating the Yankees in the American League series. Nothing makes the citizens of Red Sox Nation feel better than beating the Yankees in the post-season, and last year’s loss in Game Seven just made this year’s win truly sweet. After the World Series win, the Boston papers were sprinkled with full-page ads taken out by various companies, congratulating the Red Sox. My favorite – the Metamucil ad that simply showed their product with the words “Way to Go.”

• Kerry lost the election. The city is depressed. As a registered Republican (one of maybe eight in Massachusetts), I have mixed feelings. I have found Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility troubling in the extreme almost from the outset. (Who, may I ask, institutes a tax cut during wartime??)  I also wasn’t thrilled when the Bush administration quietly closed the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach during their first year in office. On the other hand, my father enjoys reminding me that no one liked Harry Truman when he was in office, either, but Harry made decisions and that’s why we remember him in a positive light.  Kelley finds my political affiliation a source of endless amusement – as if I had some sort of mildly freakish secret defect, like eleven toes or an inability to whistle.

• I got the job! My cell phone rang in Seattle, two days after my interview, and the company president made me an offer. It’s been a stressful couple of weeks since then, but in a good way. I can’t make a bad decision here. On the other hand, I do need to make a decision. The partners are in the loop and have done their best to make me feel like a VIP inside the office. What kills me, though, is my staff – on my worst days at the firm, it’s been my staff that have cheered me and kept me sane, and it’s my staff I’ll truly miss if I leave. I doubt I will find people of this quality in private industry. I’ll meet my potential new staff on Monday, after a weekend spent touring Red Bank with a realtor to see how I like the area. It’s stressful but exciting.

• I saw the largest spider I have ever seen. It lives in the geranium I put out on the lower deck, right outside the sunporch off my bedroom. Oh, I knew there was a spider in the vicinity – I removed the webs, after all – but in my hubris and denial I cavalierly went forth and begin plucking the dead leaves from the geranium. This went well until one of the leaves moved independently, earning my attention. On the underside, as it turned out, clung a spider the size of a grape. A large grape. My previously untested standing jump capabilities proved to be impressive. Sometimes, at night, I think I hear the spider knocking on the sunporch window, demanding vengeance for its fractured web.  I have decided not to include the geranium in the annual fall cleanup, and might go near it sometime in January, after a good week of sub-zero weather. But maybe not even then.

I am hopeful that, once events return to equilibrium, the empty calorie cravings will cease and I will return to a semi-decent eating pattern. (I had lunch at the Four Seasons today – dry chicken and a great chocolate mousse – and all it cost me was two hours of listening to speeches at an Insurance Library award ceremony. As a side note, I am always amused to think of how the outside world might view the Insurance Library. It’s hard to top the excitement and glamour of the insurance industry, unless it’s by considering the field of librarianship, and you have to think people walk by the Insurance Library Luncheon sign in the Four Seasons lobby and just shudder.) Right now, though, I need to get up, grab a paper towel, and wipe some of this orange crud off my fingers.

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