I was there last night for Jon Lester’s no-hitter. It was our annual company trip to Fenway. I was sitting way back in right field with about fifteen of my coworkers, and we spent the first five innings drinking beer and trading office gossip. Then we realized what was happening in front of us.

Until about then, the crowd had been heavily invested in Manny Ramirez’s pursuit of his 500th home run. But as Jon Lester retired one Royal after another, the atmosphere in the old ballpark became increasingly giddy and electric, with moments of expectant silence broken by cheers after every strike, groans after every ball, and gasps after every grounder. The sunset blazed pink and orange over the left field wall.

I woke up this morning and it seemed like a dream. Last night I had this crazy dream, and I was at Fenway Park in May but it was really really cold, and for some reason, all my coworkers were there, and then Jon Lester threw a no-no!

I’ve seen a lot of great moments at Fenway over the past 26 years, but when Lester recorded the final out, the cry of jubilation that erupted in the Fens sounded unlike any other cheer I have ever heard there. It wasn’t the lusty roar I’ve heard at playoff games, and it wasn’t anything like the triumphant crowing you hear at Yankee games. It was the sound of 37,000 people surrendering themselves to euphoria, falling into 100% pure, unadulterated, grade-A baseball love. In fact, I may have given in to the euphoria of the moment a little too much, if possible. No need to go into too much detail, but if you were in Kenmore Square last night and saw a blond woman, about 5′6″, leaning into the brick facade of Fenway Park and apparently attempting to hug the venerable edifice, let’s just say you weren’t hallucinating.

The night was better suited for October than May. There was a wind whipping through Boston that put whitecaps on the Charles. Dust blew into my eyes on the way to the park. It was the kind of night you expected fly balls to become home runs and pop-ups to become singles. That Jon Lester threw a no-hitter is amazing enough. That he did it in such a gale? Unbelievable. Except that I was there and I saw it with my own eyes.

I walked back across the river, the moon and the Citgo sign shining brightly on the water. I could still see the white glow of Fenway’s light towers. The night didn’t feel so cold anymore—the wind had died down. I fell into talking with a couple of guys who were also making the trek back to the Cambridge side of the Charles. I’ve high-fived with strangers in Kenmore after a great game, but I’ve never had thirty-minute conversations with them. But maybe this is just normal, post-no-hitter behavior—who knows? They told me a great story. They were sitting next to an elderly woman. Last year, she gave her tickets to Clay Buchholz’s no-no last year to her daughter and granddaughter. There may be no crying in baseball, but I do believe there is karma.

A-Rod was attacked by Fenway Park’s resident red-tailed hawk yesterday.

No, not that A-Rod.

Alexa Rodriguez, an 8th grader whose coach calls her A-Rod, was taking a tour of Fenway with her class when the bird, who was nesting, dove for her head. The girl was taken to the hospital for a minor scratch on her scalp. And no one, it appears, can resist tying the incident to superstar Yankee Alex Rodriguez, who also tends to get a nasty reception at the Fens.

The feathered assailant is a long-time resident of Fenway Park:

The 3 1/2-pound hawk has been building nests at Fenway since 2002, but has always been chased out before opening day so she and her mate could find a new home, said Tom French, assistant director of MassWildlife.

However, it appears the bird is not quite the avian June Cleaver:

This spring the raptor used a brown-knit cap and twigs from trees on Yawkee Way to build a nest on a green overhang near the press booth above home plate. She laid a brown-speckled egg last week, but it rolled off the nest, wasn’t properly incubated, and was no longer viable, French said.

Resourceful, perhaps, and protective, certainly—but hardly a parenting role model.

So I come home after a long day at work and sit down to one of my many benign guilty pleasures: flipping through the day’s catalogs. Tonight, we’ve got a good haul: LL Bean, J Crew, and Red Envelope. Browsing through this last, which specializes in expensive shit you don’t need (a.k.a., “gifts”), I noticed some expensive shit I actually might have wanted, if it weren’t so expensive:

This pen, which is “crafted from authentic stadium-seat wood from America’s most famous and beloved stadiums,” available in Yankee Stadium (royal blue), Wrigley Field (dark green), Fenway Park (dark blue), Dodger Stadium (Dodger blue) and Busch Stadium (gray).

And these cuff links, “crafted of salvaged seats from America’s most famous and beloved stadiums,” available in Yankee Stadium (royal blue), Wrigley Field (dark green), Fenway Park (dark blue), Dodger Stadium (Dodger blue), RFK Stadium (orange), Busch Stadium (gray), Tiger Stadium (dark green), Comiskey Park (light green), or Shea Stadium (orange).

It’s not that I’m shocked at three-digit price tags for office supplies or glorified buttons. No, what has my knickers in a twist is that while all of the pens are in the $170 to $190 (for Yankee Stadium) range, the Fenway Park pen is a whopping $250. Likewise, all of the cuff links are priced at $150—except, again, for the Fenway Park links, which are $230. Clearly, they think the most rabid fans in the game can be counted on to pony up more dough. Well, Mr. Director of Sales, the Fenway Faithful may pay more for tickets than other fans do, but we’re not stupid, and we’re not made of money. I might have bought my boyfriend $150 cuff links made of Fenway Park, but I ain’t shelling out 230 clams for those puppies. You just priced yourself out of a sale.

This member of Red Sox Nation will be saving her pennies for StubHub.

This week’s Metro column, in which I alternately fume, lament, seethe, weep, stew, rail, and ululate over getting priced out of our family’s weekend ticket package, which I have enjoyed lo these many years, by the evil sharks swimming slimily through Fenway Park’s front office, who spend their days tearing at all that is good and decent in the world with their insatiable rows of glinting teeth.