I am alive and so is Scooter the corgi. When the Red Sox won last night, I let out a yell while looking skyward (a red lunar eclipse seemed appropriate), and the wine started flowing. Well, we had a little champagne first, but it was awful -- got it at a wedding we went to a few years ago, and while still fizzy, tasted nasty. Three glasses of wine until bed at 1.

Called my 99 year old grandmother (turns 100 in December), a long-time Red Sox fan, this morning and chatted about the game. She stayed up past midnight to see it happen, and said she doesn't feel tired today at all. I hope I inherited some of her genes. She was 14 the last time the Red Sox won, but she doesn't remember it. Wearing my Sox hat today and it will remain on my head all day, even while I teach. Life is good.

Read some of these posts from Royal Rooters of Red Sox Nation, about what people did when Boston won:

*Celebrating with friends at their house. A buddy made a poor attempt at hugging me and nearly broke my nose, it still hurts this morning as the alcohol wears off. We went outside howled at the eclipse, and popped the champagne.

*My whole family and I were in the air, jumping and screaming incoherantly. I fell to my knees and couldn't stop grinning and laughing. My Dad was speechless, my grandfather called to make sure we were still alive.

*Screaming with 9 or 10 of my buddies, spraying each other down with Miller Lite because the bottles of champagne we bought were screw top and not corked. At first we were pissed that we didn't think to ask for the cheapest corked champagne in the store, but we got past that and drank that Andre Brut like it was Cristal.

*I jumped up and down screaming like a girl, did alot of screaming, little crying.....its all a blur. Then i poped some champaign, drank some sprayed myself with some, got some in my eyes, which made me cry some more, sprayed my dog. Hugged my dog,...i dunno its so crazy, Were the World CHampions

*I strapped on my sneakers to start the bottom of the ninth, and as soon as the last out was recorded, I bolted out of my place and went screaming down my street. It was amazing. More so because I wasn't wearing pants.

And Tom Boswell has a nice piece in the Washington Post today as well:

This week, many stuffy voices have already said that Red Sox Nation, with a World Series crown on its collective head, will suddenly be disoriented and suffer an identity crisis.

What will fans of the Red Sox do if they cannot recite, chapter and verse, the catechism of woe that has been befallen them and their forbearers? How boring for Red Sox fans to be just another franchise with no uniqueness, no aura of mythology.

These skeptics are, no doubt, the same clods that wonder how Washingtonians will cope with getting the Expos after 33 years without a major league team. What will we do without our angst-ridden identity as baseball lovers who're denied a team?

The answer, of course, is the same for both groups of the longtime baseball disenfranchised. After a certain necessary period of numbness and disbelief subsides, both will gradually become very, very happy and have a parade. Coping will be blissfully simple after that brief adjustment. And, every spring, Boston fans will be delighted not to answer questions about 1918, just as Washington fans will be pleased not to hear, "Will you ever get a team?"

This evening, there was a lunar eclipse that began about an hour before the game, a rarity that would have produced a blood-red moon during the game if only the sky had been clear instead of cloudy. Perhaps the overcast was better. Lunar eclipses are so mundane, if you think about it. Why, another one is due in 2007 -- barely a blink in baseball time.

The victory that arrived on this evening for the Red Sox and their true believers was far too rare and precious, too long overdue and spectacular in its consummation, to be upstaged by something so commonplace as the earth, moon and stars.

Here, here. Redemption at last.