I have finished my research in Alexandria and Baltimore, so I am leaving this morning for Holy Cross Monastery on the Hudson River in West Park, NY.  I will probably be out of touch by e-mail for several days, which is great.  Saturday I will be connecting with Stephanie, Duncan, and Emma in Albany, NY, for a wedding.  It will be great to be back with them.

I took some time out from my researching tonight to go to a minor league baseball game.  It was the New Britain Rock Cats vs. Bowie Baysox.  The weather was great, clear skies and not too hot.  And to top it all off, it was dollar night at the ballpark, so my admission was just $1.00.

I certainly got my money’s worth.  It was a double header, so we got two games in a row.  And both of them went to extra innings.  Now, I am a huge baseball fan, but that is a bit much even for me.  We lost the first game and won the second one, although the second one ended with a throwing error by the pitcher trying to get a runner scoring from third.  But at least it was exciting!

Now, back to the research.

I drove all day today, and I am now at Virginia Theological Seminary.  I feel holier already!  I am going to be here for about ten days doing research.  I need to write about fifteen more entries for the New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, finish up a paper I am delivering in Budapest, and start some research on the dating of the Priestly source in the Pentateuch.  I know — it sounds so exciting that you wish you could be me!

I am staying in the guest house for the first six days, and then will be staying with a friend who is a professor here.  Next Sunday, I will drive up to Baltimore to stay with another friend so I can do some research at the Johns Hopkins library.

I did my book signing today. Since this is an academic activity, I have blogged it on the Blue Cord Biblioblog. You may read about it there.

Having gotten the car up and running, we left West Virginia this morning to head to Ohio.  My first stop was the Akron airport, where I dropped of Stephanie and the kids.  They flew to Massachusetts to be with Stephanie’s parents.  Stephanie is going to her high school reunion in Troy, NY, this weekend.  I then drove to Columbus, where I checked into my luxury suite at the Motel 6.

This evening I went to a minor league baseball game.  I always try to visit minor league teams when I am in a new area, so I headed out to see the Columbus Clippers, the AAA farm team of the New York Yankees.  An added bonus to seeing them play was the fact that their opponents were the Ottawa Lynx, the farm club of the Baltimore Orioles.  I love keeping a score card, and that is always easier to do when I go to these games alone.  Although the Clippers won (as an Orioles fan I was rooting for Ottawa), it was an exciting game.  It was tied until the 9th inning, when Ottawa got a go ahead run.  The Clippers came back to win it with a two run double in the bottom of the ninth.  It ended with a close play at the plate.  Although my team lost, I will take an exciting loss like that any day over a boring win (except in the playoffs).