Day 118: The hidden outdoors

This blog acts as an existence proof that I really am quite fond of Cambridge.  But I will say this: it could use a bit more green space.  There are some small parks that dot many of the neighborhoods, but it has nothing to counter the likes of Brooklyn's Prospect Park or Boston's Public Garden.  But if you look for it, you can find a few venues which at least have some outdoor seating space (some favorites are of course Charlie's Kitchen in Harvard Square and Daedalus just south of it).

It was only recently that I discovered that The Field, a nearby pub I've always been sort of "meh" about, has a back deck as well.  Its interest to me suddenly went up about ten-fold upon learning this, and so it was there that I might T., and later E., for an after-work and pre-rehearsal drink this afternoon.  We were joined later by one of our more elusive friends who it was good to see, especially as the summer seems to be rapidly coming to a close.

Tonight's Rumors practice was optional, and ended up being mostly filled with goofing off doing characters in various silly voices, but it was sort of nice to have most of the cast together for a night off, not even trying to be all business.  Also nice to bike from The Field to Arlington with E. for the rehearsal - we made a good biking duo, silent-style.

A final surprise came with C. was returning to Boston from a weekend visit to NYC, and wanted to hang out after practice.  We ended up mostly hanging out on my "stoop" (i.e., my fire escape), another "hidden" way to be outdoors in the city.  A very textured day full of good friends.

Day 93: Snappy Sushi

Two outings in Davis Square in a week!  After work, E. and I snapped up some sushi at Snappy Sushi in Davis before rehearsal for Rumors in Arlington.  It's too rare E. and I have one-on-one time these days, and even rare that it involves sushi, so it was a welcome treat.

Our read-through tonight was absolutely the best yet in terms of quality (if a little abundant in terms of quantity -- we have quite the chatty crew :)).  I have high hopes for this production.  Something I never got to hope for in high school plays was that they would actually be _good_!

Perhaps I'm becoming a bit of a broken record when it comes to reporting for duty on Thursday nights, but I won't give myself too much grief, because they usually rock.  Post-rehearsal live-band-karaoke this week was a lot of fun.  Ok, bear with me for one nerdy / mundane second while I relay the following boring story.  Boyan (the leader of the ominous, anonymous group B11) had posted online today that there would be three new songs for our live-band-karaoke enjoyment.  If you (yes you, reader) had to pick three current songs that one might add to such a list, which would you pick?  Think songs that are way over-played but somehow you hate to love and love anyway -- ?  If you picked that song by Gotye, the call me maybe song that has been meme-ed to the white house and back [sidebar: I was told I look like Carly Rae this past weekend at the wedding, which was weird until I realized she's not all that young], and the song by Fun that goes like this - "Toonniiiiiight we are yoooouuuuung " - then you are right.  Bnap and D rocked the former (er, the first) and I very much wish I'd passed out business cards with my digits on it for my rendition of Ms. Jepsen's masterpiece.  The best part of all that is that we don't have to do them again.

This reminds me of the best pick-up line that has ever been used on me.  It was at a party in Central sometime last year, and I believe it was perpetrated by a very nice (if exceedingly nerdy) grad student from systems biology or something, and it went a little like this: "May I have the integer representation of your contact information?"  If only I could recreate the voice.  [I facebooked him instead -- such a product of my generation, I know.  Honestly Carly Rae is giving a throwback when she asks us to call her maybe -- why don't we just send her a gchat instead?  So much easier.]

Day 73: Rumors -- A Farce

As I have previously mentioned, it has come to pass recently that I have some pretty great friends who are truly going to make this play thing happen.  The play is called Rumors, and it's a farce by the lovely Neil Simon.  Today marked the final night of try-outs, again at S's house, and might I say that there is so much talent involved in this!  I was blown away by so many performances over the course of both nights.

For me, today was a bit of a farce in itself.  I had some tasks that one would think might be simple -- go to the doctor's office because my eye seemed to be acting up, pick up some cat food, pick up a prescription.  But for various reasons, any simple task I engaged in seemed to have about a thousand barriers keeping me from accomplishing.  I'll take the cat food for example.  As many readers may know, my cat (Jack) is obese.  Not mildly chubby, not just kind of fluffy -- utterly obese.  Therefore I do my best to keep him on a strict diet of just over half a cup of diet cat food per day, fed to him over the course of the day by my wonderful roommates and me.  However, it is rather difficult to procure this cat food, and I don't like the idea of switching up on him briefly, so I try to carefully plan to stop by the vet the weekend before he's about to run out.

Needless to say, I didn't get around to that this time, and he needed cat food NOW.  So I found a pet store near my work that has a vet in-house (which, apparently, is required for the sale of "prescription cat food").  This cat food is seriously just like all other cat foods except that it's a little harder to chew (supposed to be great for the teeth), is higher proteins, and is lower in carbs.  Sigh.  I am getting frustrated just re-telling this story so I will abridge.

How to buy prescription cat food in 25 steps or less

1. Call store;
2. They will tell you to fax the prescription;
3. Call your cat's vet;
4. The vet will fax the prescription;
5. Go to store;
6. They will give you a prescription card;
7. They will point you to the prescription cat food;
8. The woman might start to say to say "it's in a turquoise bag" and you will tell her "oh, yeah, I buy it all the time, thanks";
9. You could even get two bags;
10. You go to the cash register;
11. They check the prescription card;
12. You leave;
13. You get home;
14. You open the bag. It's dog food that was mixed in the with cat food and in a nearly identical bag.;
15. You look dumbly at your cat who is starving.;
16. You call the pet store;
17. The pet stores says you can exchange, no worries;
18. Your house is far from the pet store, but the pet store is on your way to your play auditions;
19. You pick up your friends from their house in Somerville, and then you drive to the pet store in north Cambridge by where you work;
20. You bring in the dog food;
21. You go get the cat food;
22. You un-pay for the dog food;
23. You pay for the cat food;
24. Eventually you get rid of the friends; (:))
25. You give your cat the cat food.

Addendum: Then you go sing your usual live-band-karaoke song.

Day 72: Solstice Acrobatics

The summer solstice certainly let us know when she came this year.  After weird weather all winter and beautiful, clear days randomly placed through early spring, summer finally hit hard on her arrival day, with Bostonians and Cantabrigians practically swimming through the humid, 97-degree air.  Tonight was night 1 of try-outs for Rumors (more than after tomorrow), and thankfully S. (director who was hosting at his place) had access to two window-unit ACs and a fan.  At least when it's that hot, even the non-sweaters amongst us are in no luck and we can all be gross together.

After try-outs, I joined up with a friend whose girlfriend is an acrobat -- more precisely, she is fantastic silks and trapeze artist.  Somehow she was supposed to be performing at the Plough and Stars -- a bar I go to occasionally, and which often has live bands, but in which I could not imagine a whole acrobatic troupe performing.  Particularly in 97-degree swampy heat.  But -- there was!  Including a bar-dancing clown (terrifying to me to dance on a slippery bar... but was fantastic to watch!).

At the end of the acrobatics, I had a text from B.Nap (who had been at the auditions earlier) to come join up for karaoke at Highland Kitchen.  I really like Highland Kitchen.  It has a great feel, adult spelling bees on Tuesdays, and apparently the light fixtures look like sex toys, according to E. (I have never even attempted to verify this myself, nor do I ever remember to check when I'm there, and I'm pretty happy with that state of things!).  However, it is located atop Winter Hill, and I am not typically located atop Winter Hill.  That said, I was already so icky at this point of the night, and since I had biked from home to the Plough, I decided a quick nip up a silly hill for karaoke would be worth it.  Which... I *think* it was.  Right?  Song of choice was "Walking on Sunshine" - which yes, have done many times, but seemed so very appropriate for the evening.

Day 54: City-hopping

Each day I drive around this area, I find myself adding more pieces to the jigsaw puzzle in my brain that encompasses Cambridge. It took me long enough even to connect Harvard Square to Porter -- you can imagine my difficulty in trying to connect Powderhouse Square to Medford, for instance.

Well, today was a treat for my mental representation of said puzzle and pieces, for it took me to six different cities in the Boston/Cambridge area -- all so very accessible with my little Corolla.  I'll abbreviate as much as I can, but it was such a fun day that I might indulge in description just a little.  Hemingway was never my favorite author anyhow.

First, back to Fresh Pond (in Cambridge) for a little work in Building 19 (see previous post).  The original plan was to pick up B., pick up a gift, and head with her to an anniversary barbecue (note: it was raining. all. day.).  Then she was thinking of going to another birthday party later in the day. And now, for what actually happened. [Note: skip the next paragraph if you don't to read tedium about a missing phone.]

Last night, I realized when I got home that my phone was no longer in my bag (which, admittedly, was a slouchy, open bag with no zipper/etc.).  I retraced some of my steps but forgot to check at Zuzu (probably the easiest place to lose track of stuff in Central, given that people are always setting their bags on tables in order to dance -- precisely what I did).  So after work, I decided to go there first in order to see if they had miraculously found it, and if not, to at least leave my email address.  Zuzu didn't have the phone but took my info and directed me to the box office at the Middle East where the main lost and found is located for the entire Zuzu/Middle East/Upstairs/Downstairs/Corner Bar complex (yes, 5 entities!).  There I was told that they only had soft stuff like clothes/etc., and that the valuables were kept in the manager's office at the Corner Bar.  So, I was a "barfly" (except for the drinking part) for a bit while the Corner Bar bartenders hunted down the manager from his lair so he could check for me.  No phone was found, but on the plus side I was a) asked if I was a songwriter for a They Might Be Giants song (I was singing a few bars of "Whistling in the Dark"--there was a reason but I'll spare a *few* details) and b) I didn't get a parking ticket even though my hazards were on / my meter runneth empty.

Next stop was to pick up B. from a party she was going to in Somerville -- a so-called "Brew-off", where 7 different amateur brewers allowed their friends to rate their (anonymous) beers.  Pretty cool concept. Ended up staying for a bit to chat and taste beers 6, 7, and 4 (my favorite), and then we headed onward to pick a present for the fifteenth anniversary of two of our friends.  B. noted that the anniversary was the "crystal" gift year, so she first suggested Cristal... when I vetoed this and asked for another gimmicky "crystal" idea, she brilliantly voted for "Crystal Light", and we ended up bringing a nice bottle of vodka and some powder-y lemonade sugar-y goodness in a yellow bottle, with a bright yellow bow I had picked up earlier in the day adorning the booze.

Stop with B. #2 was in Boston, in the South End -- the anniversary barbecue. Rain or no rain, those boys were outside grilling.  Lots of good people there, including E. and his brother and dad.  When I asked about his mom, E.'s dad replied that she was still at home in Waltham, on "baby duty" -- E.'s middle brother and wife were expecting TWINS and the doctor had said it could be any time (though they had scheduled her for several weeks down the line).  An hour or so later, E. got a phone call -- and if you haven't guessed where this is going, you have under-estimated the epic-ness of this city-hopping night.  The twins were coming!

After lots of jumping and hugging and the exodus of all family members related to said twins, B. and I also departed from Boston, and made for destination #3 together: Arlington, where a friend was having his birthday party at B.'s brother's house.  Lots of delicious food, a fun party game, and then B. and I were again departing for our (almost) final destination -- Belmont, where most of the clan was hanging out, waiting for news from the hospital, with E'.s brother's older child (he's 15 months and was sleeping when we got there).

First, a pit stop at a 7-11 for coffee, ice cream, and other midnight-baby-waiting essentials.  And when we walked in the door at stop, #4, Belmont -- they had ARRIVED. Phone calls were happening just then (in a lovely mixture of English and Spanish) and there is now even more beauty in the world.

Stop #5 for B. and me was to take the boys (read: E. and his brother) back to Medford, beautiful Medford, with a sing-a-long to Robert Plant and Allison Krauss along the way.  A beautiful end to a beautiful, rainy day, when two beautiful little girls came into the world.  Cheers to June 2!