Grapes have always seemed to me to be pretty much useless. I don’t like wine. I don’t like Welch’s grape juice. I don’t like those little packets of grape jelly that come with toast in restaurant breakfasts. And while Steinbeck’s famous Dust Bowl novel isn’t bad, it should be noted that none of the principal characters is actually a grape.

The closest I come to being a vegan is when I’m asleep. I used to think I was also meeting the strict standards of veganism when I was drinking beer, which would have made me about eighty-five percent vegan, because I spend at least that much of every day either sleeping or drinking beer. But my calculations have been called into question by knowledgeable experts on the vegan lifestyle, by which I mean a couple of people I met in a bar.

Strict vegans, they told me, consider yeast an animal, so they don’t consume alcoholic beverages.

The Portland Sea Dogs, the Double-A minor-league affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, finished last season with the worst record in franchise history. To the best of my recollection, the Dogs won about three games during the entire summer, all of them on days when I wasn’t at Hadlock Field. This was discouraging to endure, but I’m not a fair-weather fan.

I’m not a big believer in GPS. My wife, who wears one of those medical alert bracelets that notifies rescue workers that she’s “Directionally Impaired,” recently used her son’s GPS to navigate from Fryeburg to Bethel. Apparently, no one told the device that Route 113 is partially closed in the winter. Because not only is that the road the authoritative voice sent her on, it’s also the one it kept trying to return her to after she discovered the way blocked.

She only made it home after the unusually early spring melt.