Day 143: Mt. Auburn Cemetery

As today is the second to last day in Cambridge, I decided it warranted three pictures.  All three come from Mt. Auburn cemetery or thereabouts -- the first is a cozy picture of bikes (hi Yoshi!) just outside Sofra; the second, a beautiful gravestone inside the cemetery; and the third, a spiky chestnut propped carefully in hand, also within the cemetery.

After some mild putzing around in the morning (always advisable after one's going-away party), a bike ride to the part of Cambridge which could almost be considered Belmont was in order.  We went to Sofra, a cafe I'd never been to before, and which was simply delightful.  Also a sort of haven for kitchen odds-and-ends (think: dozens of jars labeled things like "fennel sugar", "pickled green garlic", "raw honey", etc.; oh hell, here's another picture, to the right).  Anyhow, it yielded some very delicious food, and it was right next to our afternoon's destination, the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, which I'd never been to before and which I now sorely regret.  I only had about 45 minutes or so to spend there due to a birthday gathering before Calliope stage call, and I could have spent hours.  Every time I go to Paris, I always want to visit Père Lachaise, and for some reason or other it never works out... cemeteries are often such beautiful places.  And somehow seem the opposite of morbid.  Very peaceful, I think.

After a brief rest, I headed to the birthday party of a former classmate, which was really nice.  Could only stay a minute before Calliope, but was good to see everyone's face one last time.

Tonight's concert went amazingly well.  By far the best performance I've ever been involved with during my (albeit short) tenure in Calliope.  Very hot, so the men didn't wear their jackets, but we managed to get through with no casualties throughout the steamy-rainy evening.  I think the audience really liked it, and lots of friends came, which is always a great feeling.

After, a few friends joined us (us = Calliope) at the Rattlesnake around the corner on Boylston.  The 'Snake had kindly put a sign out for us ("Reserved for the Band") which made us all laugh.  I got to say good-bye to all of the Calliope folks (M. nearly made me die laughing with her depiction of why you should never leave the east coast) and have a beer with some close friends, a great way to spend the last full evening in Cambridge.  Somehow at this point I have still managed not to crack... not breakdowns, not once.  One more day!

Day 141: Surprise cafe

Going through my head all day were the lines from the Rolling Stones song:

This may be the last time
This may be the last time
Maybe the last time
I don't know

:(

Well, today was the last Thursday in Cambridge, and you know what that means.  After work, biking to Calliope quickly for dress rehearsal, hugging a water cooler (see left), frantically searching for food (and finding some at a café that seemed to come out of nowhere on Boylston, Café l'Aroma -- tasty salad! might even have had couscous in it? --, it was time for the Last Time at live-band-karaoke.  While I didn't end up singing that particular song, I did sing some other Stones and Boyan (leader of B11) got me up there for back-ups several times.  I am going to miss those boys -- I know they will keep it rocking though!  And there is now a serious karaoke contingency among my close friends in Cambridge. Three more days!

Day 139: River Gods

The moving continues!  This morning I shipped some extraneous packages that I had been hiding at MIT, and helped G. move some more things from MIT into their new place, as well.  But then it was back to the grind -- to work, then to Calliope.  It felt wonderful to have those tiny bits of sanity back in place, even if it's just for a few more days.

After choir D. and I looked at each other and asked, "Do you have anything planned tonight?" to the other.  It was in a state of shock we realized that there was nothing planned, and so we took the opportunity to go to one of my favorite bars in Cambridge -- River Gods, pictured above. Always cool music (you can't see it, but there is a DJ way up in the corner behind the bar, perhaps even poking his head out?), always cool (and changing) decor, depending on the season, and good veggie options for food (as well as good beers on tap).  The first Friday of grad school at MIT, I remember for some reason my adviser and his wife took me along to Trader Joe's (probably because we were all leaving lab at the same time and they had a car), and as we passed this place on the way back to my house they gave it a shout out.  Very good vibe there.

As D. was giving me some very good life lessons and suggestions for how to proceed in grad school tonight, I got a call from a friend of mine who lives in Colorado but who often travels to Boston for business.  I have been planning on staying with him one of the nights of my trip out west, but he was apparently also in town tonight!  So he swung by and said hi, was nice to see him.  Five more days.

Day 126: Phone a friend

This evening was very phone-y.  Nice to know (especially for future reference when I am in the middle of nowhere, er, rather, the middle of no one I know, i.e., Souther California) that good friends are only a phone call away.  And in my case, currently they will still come running when you call them!  Especially if your gourmand roommate is cooking...

Tonight after errands (dropping off various goods at MIT), full day of work at BBN, choir practice sans D. (who had escaped for some family time at Martha's Vineyard), and a healthy bike ride back, I arrived home to find Z. doing his usually symphonie gastronomique in the kitchen.  Realizing that I hadn't seen his fellow first-year compatriots in a while, I gave J. a call and he and M. came over to hang around and chat in front of our "fireplace" (see photo).  Which I must say was very nice -- a relaxed evening once in awhile is not so bad, not so bad at all.  Over the course of the evening, further phone conversations were had with E., who is still dogsitting in the South End, and D., who was in the throes of a serious game of "before-and-after band names", a game originally construed at Sunday's garden party.  [The idea is simple: think Jeopardy!'s before-and-after categories, and add the constraint that both the "before" and the "after" must be band names.  Some of my favorites include "Tracy ChapMannheim Steamroller", "Animal Collective Soul", or D's very favorite, "Bu(sh)Cher"; and what we call a "level 2", e.g., "The Dave Matthews Band", or "Queen Latifah". We never said we were classy.]

At any rate, it's nice to know your friends are a phone call away, both physically and mentally.

Day 119: The (real) Muddy Charles

The namesake of this Muddy Charles is quite impressive, and tonight after chorus, D. and I finally made good on our summer-long promise to jump in together. [Not a first in the slightest for him – for me, technically it was a first, as my previous experience swimming in the Charles was utterly non-intentional.  A few summers ago, when a bunch of my classmates at MIT and I decided to learn how to sail, we took a three-hour-long class on a very windy Sunday morning.  As I happened to be in a boat with a friend with whom I might be most ill-suited to cooperate of anyone ever, it was no surprise when a miscommunication occurred and I tightened the sail as we turned into the wind…  But what that experience taught me was that the Charles River is actually not an unpleasant, or terribly cold, place to swim.]

Tonight, it was another of those muggy days that turns into a not-quite-so muggy evening, and the water was cool and refreshing.  It was a stressful day, and my racing mind was set at ease a bit by it.  We jumped off a dock somewhere in between Central and Harvard and then walked down a little way to dry off with a beer.  Terribly peaceful evening – and great view of the double-tiered Storrow Dr. and I-90 heading westward into the country.

Day 116: Keezer's Classic Clothing... and empty desks.

Today started out with a bit of relaxing and then the beginning of a quest for a tux.  I find it amusing that I can buy a long black $10 skirt at TJ Maxx or Marshall's or whatever and it counts as "concert black formal", but men are required to acquire something that is priced in the hundreds of dollars even for a rental to achieve the same bar.  It must be the only place in the system where fashion financially favors women (whoa, lots of alliteration there).  Anyhow, I felt it somewhat my responsibility to assist in the tux-searching process since I had coerced D. into singing in the Mercury Orchestra concert, and somewhat less so to join Calliope, both groups requiring fancy concert-wear.

Thus I stopped by Keezer's (cool name for a used tux store, eh?) by myself this morning and had a lively chat with a gentleman who was working there.  It was a pretty kooky and fun place to go, and I sort of wished I got to wear a tux myself.  It's like men just strap these things on and there's a transformation -- I feel like I have to pinch and pull at myself forever to get real change.  It turns out that buying a used tux at Keezer's is oodles cheaper than renting one, and it also turns out that I didn't really need to do a scope-out because they had oodles of tuxes.  And shirts.  And suits.  And other paraphernalia.  It's an adorable place!

The silliness of the tux store (let's admit it; tuxes are pretty ridiculous) was balanced out by the sadness of cleaning out my MIT office this afternoon.  Decision-making is often a difficult process for me, as I like to always choose the best thing, but it's even worse when the thing you are choosing is what to get rid of.  Some of the books will stay at BCS for whomever wants to use them, a few came with me, a couple sold back to Amazon.com, some gifted to Max (who bought me dinner at MoS in exchange -- see Max's story-telling salt and pepper shakers above, all within the territory of hanging out with developmental cognitive scientists).

Day 112: Shakespeare on the Common

The best part of today was all of it.

Day two of biking to work meant that I needed to bike all the way from Fresh Pond to Newbury St. in the evening for Calliope.  I thankfully left in plenty of time, not realizing that bike paths in Boston are actually full of pedestrians (well, mostly runners).  Who knew Boston was so athletic?

It was a fantastic day for the ride.  Biking on the Boston side of the river across from Cambridge turned out to be stunning, even if the path was pedestrian-ridden.  Thank you Dr. Paul Dudley White.

One of the coolest parts of the ride was biking past the hatch shell (see above), which was apparently hosting some crazy cardio exercise which only women were attending.

I had a few moments just before chorus to myself, so I plopped down under a tree (viewed the correct way as shown in the photo) and just breathed for a few minutes.

Rehearsal was a bit rough this evening, but afterward, we had the reprieve of some William S. in the park -- Coriolanus.  Only got there in time to see the last two acts (out of five) -- "I will be loved when I am lacked."

Beautiful day.

Day 105: Have you ever seen the rain? Or, The Importance of Living Above Toscanini's.

Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm.
I know
It's been comin' for some time.


Today was Calliope's second chorus-only practice in a row (well, chorus and orchestra separate, that is) -- and it's always really nice to have Julia (our conductor) to ourselves. The orchestra is amazing, but when it's everyone together there is just so much going on.  Tonight we arranged in small semi-circles in order to hear one another better and get a good mix, and the altos in circle #1 (i.e., the circle I was in!) tore it up.  It was a great rehearsal -- the Bach that so intimidate us a few weeks back is now one of my favorite pieces to sing.


I had ridden my bike into Boston when the sky was only vaguely threatening to do much more than release a light mist, but by the time we were done rehearsing, a downpour had unleashed itself.  After a bike ride over the Harvard bridge, I went back home to dry myself off thinking I might go back out again.  But after a shower and a realization that I could grab ice cream without getting wet, I opted to stay in and play Rock Band with V., who is leaving for Japan on Thursday.

But back to the main point--I realized tonight that I can procure the most delicious saffron ice cream you ever did taste on a stormy Cambridge evening without getting wet.  How many people can say that?  I'd approximate about the 20 that live in my building, and that's it.  Honestly, even without the ice cream (which served as my dinner, mind you), I'd have been happy tonight.  I love summer rain.

Day 98: Biking the city

It was raining today, so after I drove home from work, I took the T to choir rather than biking.  Thank goodness it rained -- the heat just disappeared.  But like most summer rains, this rain was temperamental, and had ceded by the time we were done piping out our Bach [side note: singing Bach's Mass in F Gloria at the appropriate tempo is not easy, but it's a helluvalotta fun].

So after I got home via T, I grabbed my bike to head to Inman Square to meet up for a) Punjabi Dhaba and b) a board game night.  Fewer pleasures greater than biking in a post-rain evening around here (love the smell -- if I'm not going to get to enjoy the crispness of Cambridge's autumn I'll damn well enjoy the cool after the summer rain).  And if it's warm, not so bad biking in the rain either.

Get ready for some sappy posts.  Roomies leaving at the end of the week is hitting me hard.

Day 91: The Tab

Tuesday, Tuesday -- so good to me.

Tuesdays have always held a special place in my heart, ever since J. and I decided they were the best day of the school week when we were around 14 or 15 years old.  I don't remember what are criteria were, but I think we pretty much discounted Friday, since it's basically a day of the weekend in disguise.  On Thursday you're just getting desperate; Wednesday is hump day; and Mondays are clearly spent recovering from the week-end's freedom.  But Tuesdays you might just find yourself having a high work ethic or becoming numb enough to the grind of the week that you don't mind it as much (depending on whether you're an optimist or a pessimist).

Today's Tuesday was probably more like a typical week's Monday for me, except that it still involved Calliope, and therefore still counted as a highlight of my week.  Somehow I always manage to pick only the hottest days in Boston to bike to choir, but there was such a breeze tonight that it didn't seem to matter as much.  We worked exclusively on the Gloria and the Kyrie, which was nice because they are two of my favorites.  Ok, perhaps they're all my favorites (except for the Kedushah... can't wrap my head around that one yet -- but I'm sure I will grow to love it after a bit more practice).

Anyway, after choir there was brief contemplation of a jump into a certain muddy river, but I had made plans to meet some people at the good ol' 'Tab for a friend-of-a-friend's b-day (said friend-of-friend was someone whom I'd hoped to meet for a while), so instead of jumping, there was tabbing, instead.  With a brief pause for some falafel.  Apparently falafel does not mean what I thought it meant -- who knew that falafel was not a generic term for all delicious things coming wrapped up with hummus and other delicious stuff?  Ok, maybe everyone else, but no matter, Falafel Palace has gotten much better since the last time I was there (saying something, given that the last time I was there was probably at like 3am after a bunch of beers).

The Cantab had live bluegrass music (as it does every Tuesday), and Julie (the birthday girl) apparently knew some of the regulars who knew members of the band, which was fun to hear about. Several other friends showed up and it was nice, low-key way to enter back into the Cambridge night scene (they run things differently in Indiana).

Day 87: The Cambrige Street Code

When you live in a city for a long time, certain aspects of the city become like second nature.  Little things that you barely notice on a day-to-day basis, but rules which, when "violated" (when you're traveling, in strange situations, etc.) strike you as very strange. For instance, the other day I was out late-ish at night, and was crossing a street with someone from out of town who tried to stop me as I began to cross at a red light. "Wait!" he exclaimed. "There's a cop right over there!"  I had to explain to him that in _this_ town, pedestrians are treated like gods, bicyclists are given quite the run of the street (though not as much as pedestrians), and cops can barely even get to motorized vehicles through the morass of pedestrians, cyclists, and god-knows-what-else -- maybe even roombas. At the very least, pedestrians jay-walking is not frowned upon in the slightest, and in fact, once a pedestrian is in the street, it is the motor vehicle-ist's responsibility to stay-out-the-way-b****, stay-out-the-way.

What I'd like the reader to come away with here is two-fold: (1) Cambridge and Boston have their own street codes (apparently not obvious to visitors) and (2) it is such that if you have to travel very far not on foot, you should stay-out-the-way.  I.e., Take The Damn MBTA (the "T").

Now, the T is not perfect either. For one thing it stops running about 90 minutes before bars close (terrible planning on the part of the city for the hoi polloi, but great planning if you want to increase the existence of drunk or cab drivers).  For another, there is only one route into Cambridge (well, two if you count the brief foray across the river by the green line to Lechmere, but for Pete's sake).  However, Cambridge-to-Boston's red line is pretty speedy, and it's pretty clean, stations don't smell bad, etc.  Pros outweigh cons.

I have taken to T-ing to choir practice in Back Bay on Tuesdays -- I drive from work to park at home (work is difficult, though not impossible, to get to by public transit) and then grab the red line by my house.  Soon I hope to turn this into biking, but bike is still out of commission due to broken lock (and probably air-less tires).  At any rate, once in a while you meet someone interesting on the T.  A friend once got a long-term girlfriend this way.  I've not quite had that success rate, but I did have a nice chat with a woman with a 3-ish-year-old in a stroller (she was rather precocious -- maybe she was a tiny 4-year-old).

Apart from extolling the T, I'll take this opportunity to extol Dvorak, who wrote the one piece (Stabat Mater Dolorosa) we rehearsed today.  Granted, it's an over-20-min-long piece, so it was warranted.  I realized the other day that our conductor must have a bit of a music-crush on big D because she has included something from his vast repertoire in each of our three concerts.  I don't mind :).  Following up singing about the virgin Mary watching her son dying from torture on a cross (luckily it's in Latin so typically we can ignore this), we celebrated with some beers at the 'Snake down the road.

Day 78: Public Garden

Well.  The weather has finally returned to the beautiful Bostonian summer climate we all know and love.  Highs of 75, balmy evenings, sweet breezes. In the morning when I walk to my car I'm greeted by little petals falling from some of the trees, kids' laughter, and a stray chirper or two.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that it's a perfectly fine endeavour not to be on the "go" all the time, and just to enjoy these things.

During our break at Calliope rehearsal this evening, we seemed to hit that perfect moment of twilight, extended in the summer, where all the greens of the trees seem to be nearly glowing, and a friend had the brilliant idea of taking a short walk during the 15 minutes we had.  Though I had spent every Tuesday evening last summer in this same spot at rehearsal, it did not once cross my mind to walk the fifty paces to the public garden next door.  So tonight, we wandered over for a bit, with barely enough time to make it across the footbridge and back, and it's something I wish to repeat.  I always forget that next to Boston Common (which is nice, but not breathtaking), there is a nicely landscaped area around the pond in the public garden.  It's really quite different.  I think the first time I checked it out in earnest was when J. was visiting from Oregon a few years ago.  Why is it that so often it takes a visitor for us to be tourists in our own city?  I'll have to remember this advice to myself once I move to San Diego.

Day 71: Iggy's Breads of the World

Happy birthday to my beautiful mother! :) To celebrate her birthday (surely this was the reason and not because I think freshly-baked baguettes are delicious), I headed to the very tasty Iggy's Breads of the World with a co-worker for lunch today to pick up fresh sandwich and some java goodness.  One consequence of the recent move of our "unit" to Building 19 is that we are just enough closer to Iggy's to have finally realized it was there, just around the corner from our new building, in a weird wasteland of old warehouses.

BBN is located in a sort of no-man's land in the strip-mall-suburbia area near Fresh Pond, at the other end of Cambridge from my normal stomping grounds, which actually makes getting anywhere for lunch rather difficult.  To get to the Trader Joe's by foot is not terrible but involves crossing some annoying streets -- and forget going to the Whole Foods across Alewife Brook Parkway.  Driving such a short distance seems silly, but might be an alternative if it weren't even more painful due to an excruciating left turn onto Concord Ave. followed by two rotaries from hell.

The discovery of Iggy's for us meant not only access to unlimited breads and coffee, but accessible access!  Er, access that didn't require entering into a mind-fog of navigating Cambridge traffic.

This evening involved enough of that, as I was reminded of the reasons I both love and hate biking in Cambridge in the summer when I bike to and fro for Calliope.  Pros: beautiful evenings solo rides are heavenly; not taking the T is always a plus; not driving a car is always a *big* plus.  Cons: hot, somewhat sweaty late-afternoon rides are not conducive to vocal warm-ups; Boston traffic is still terrifying on a bike (though somewhat more exciting to navigate, somehow); I always forget just how annoying I find the Longfellow Bridge to go up and down (I know, lame of me).  Opted for the "Harvard" Bridge on the way back, as it's much flatter, and repeated last week's veggie burger foray at Miracle of Science because that was a delicious idea.

Day 64: Close Encounters of the Veggie Kind

Truth be told, I have put great efforts into discovery of the best grilled cheese and the best cheeseburger in Cambridge, but not until recently did I come to believe that a similar quest for veggie burgers might be in order.  Mostly because I feel like veggie burgers are usually crumbly bundles of poorly cohered beans and tofu - not so appealing, right?  Well, I stand corrected.

In addition to providing an edgy yet very Cantabrigian environment (complete with the fixture of a periodic table of burgers and other foods chalked onto its back wall and serving as the menu), the Miracle of Science also serves up a damn good veggie burger.  Saved by the grace of not being a vegan burger, some magical creamy sauce saves the day, and it's delicious.  I stopped by with a friend after our choir practice in the Back Bay, and at first we thought we could get away with splitting one... which turned quickly into two (and I'm pretty convinced he could have gone further if we'd have let him).

After a long day of work, softball (we came thisclose to not losing...), and singing some masterful pieces from a piecemeal mass (more on that later), Miracle was the perfect end to the day.

Day 57: The 'Snake

Tuesdays are serious days this summer.  In addition to Calliope (choir), which has always been on Tuesdays, the Straw Dogs softball games are also on Tuesdays this summer, meaning that I dash from the Fresh Pond area down to MIT around 4:30 and don't get home until 10p at the earliest, after Calliope.  Today was the first of such days, so I suppose I shouldn't be speaking in generics quite yet. However, I have a fairly certain feeling that getting home at 10pm on Tuesdays is not going to be the norm, due to the presence of a nice little place we like to affectionately call the 'Snake (the Rattlesnake, located on Boylston St. in Back Bay; pic above taken around the corner on Newbury St.).

It's just around the block from where the choir practices (at Emmanuel Episcopalian, a really pretty church which is beautiful on the inside... the kind of place I used to fantasize about as a kid who wished she went to boarding school; yes, weird).  And it's got some tasty stuff.  D., who just joined the choir after I pestered for a while, was fairly disgusted by my zest for the macaroni and cheese, which, in addition to being basically the antithesis of all things vegan, includes (along! with bacon) Taza chocolate.  Sound gross?  Maybe, but I find it almost as delicious as the peanut butter burgers at both Bukowski's.

Yay softball!  Yay choir!  And yay for adding more chocolate and peanut butter to the world. :-/?

Day 12: Calliope

This morning started out with a brisk bike ride on a beautiful day in to the Back Bay area, where I was meeting with the director of my choral/orchestral ensemble, Calliope to help out a bit with auditions. The morning ended up being extremely pleasant (although only 2/5 women who were auditioning actually showed!) as I chatted with the director and two of the other women in the chorus.

I was quite lucky to stumble upon Calliope just by searching for a choral group to join last summer. The most interesting part about Calliope is that the chorus both performs *and* practices with an orchestra, and it's a really great group of guys and dolls. I always wished I had taken up an orchestra instrument -- the closest I came was oboe in the fifth grade, and I didn't get all too far with that :). So it's a great experience to be able to practice with an orchestra each week, and getting back into singing with a group has been so uplifting.

Anywho, enough of my goings-on about that. After auditions, I biked up to the Armory in Somerville from Boston to meet a friend at the winter farmers' market there - who turned out already to be gone by the time I got there (turns out, I am a bit slower at biking 5 miles, much of it uphill, than I would like!). But that was fine (and the market was really well-organized, I definitely want to go back!), and I headed to my next destination, Starbucks in Davis Square, which usually has outdoor seating. Turns out they haven't put out their tables yet, but the restaurant next door had, so I had a salad while waiting for a friend to join. He checked out my flashy green bike for a bit and I studied some for my biology exam (this post is being written during an *ahem* extended break). Soon I'll bike back home because it's my roommate's birthday tonight and we are hosting the first "real" party chez nous! (At least the first one I will be in attendance at.)

Happy spring to all!

Day 11: Charles Playhouse

This was one of those fabled fortnights in which karaoke happened multiple times each week. Last night's LBK at Asgard was, as always, epic in its own right, but there is something special about going out to karaoke with members of your choir (more on that another time; perhaps tomorrow).

I hung out with several of them at Charles Playhouse located in the theatre district. As a matter of fact, it is also located in the same building which has hosted both the Blue-Man Group (Boston-based, baby!) and the slapstick comedy Shear Madness (murder mystery style) for years (the former I've never seen; the latter, my mom and I attended the summer before I moved out here, and it was ridiculous, in a good way).

In fact, I arrived second to the karaoke venue, preceded by a non-Callioper (who is however a karaoke fiend and aficionado), and we were eventually also joined by a second non-Callioper, a friend of mine who is auditioning for the group this weekend (!). We did a duet (new to me) at the end of the night -- "Picture" by Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock (probably the only Kid Rock song that I can tolerate, and I actually like it very much... "I just called to say I miss you -- come back hooooome.").

Usually at Charles Playhouse, the singers are really great -- apart from the group I was with and a few other outliers, the level of the performance was, ahh, well, slightly sub-par. Ok, actually it was just awful. But still fun! The end of the night was also an experience, as the theatre district is also where all of Boston's serious "clubs" (and hence, skirts shorter than my underwear) are located. All-in-all, a great Charles Playhouse experience.