Day 38: Foraged Banquet

With each passing day living here, my heart breaks a little more at the thought of leaving.  I know that learning to love a new city will be an incredible process, but - and here I interrupt myself because I can go no further with that train of thought.  Instead, I will reiterate how much fun it is to write this silly blog and remind myself how lucky I am to have moved to this city and met such wonderful people.

Tonight, E. and I went again to Gallery 263, where our friend sits on the board and also helped start the place a few years ago.  It's an amazing little place with soaring ceilings, beautiful molding, and a great location in the heart of Cambridgeport.  And boy, do they host a good event.  This was probably my third time (?) being there, the first two having been for art-only events -- meaning that the art was the primary focus.  One was an opening for a set of pieces (see blog post #3) with the theme "Gooey, Gobby, Gummy", and one was a silent auction.

Tonight, the primary goal was not to look at the art (though the member show was absolutely fantastic) -- the primary goal was to help raise money for the art gallery by attending a "foraged dinner".  The friend of mine on the board of said gallery is a researcher by day and a forager by - well, by other parts of other days.  Along with a chef (whose cookbook looked great!) he created a menu and a meal which fed us, and helped the gallery out a little bit.  There were speeches, allusions to t-shirt contests, and much, much sangria, and afterward the night went out with a bang at our usual Thursday-night live band karaoke spot (followed by Cantab (!) for a few of us).

Day 31: Park

Today I had the happy circumstance of meeting an old acquaintance, who is really a friend of friends, at a new establishment in Cambridge. He works at the Kennedy School at Harvard (public policy) and alerted me to the fact that this place had emerged as a rival to Russell House Tavern down the road, home of the illustrious fried poached egg.  The left side is actually a different bar/restaurant, hosting leather couches, bookshelves, and the feeling that pipes should be obligatory.  The rest has a cozy yet stylish restaurant feel, with so many nooks and crannies that you never feel you've seen the whole place.

By the time I got there (late, of course, because I was coming from desperately trying to catch up on work), we were both hungry, so he got the meat pie of the day (slow-roasted beef in mushroom/wine sauce) and I got the clam chowder.  We had a leisurely meal, complete with drinks (of course -- I tried the Fireside Poet) and a lovely chat.  Afterward, I ended up heading to meet E. at his friend's house -- a roommate was having a goodbye party as she is leaving to go back to Germany, back home -- and since our karaoke hookup in Boston said the place was sketch, we ended up hanging around in Cambridgeport for a bit before venturing back toward Central (read: my home) and ending up with our very favorite live karaoke band, B-11.  Though we didn't get to sing (showed up too late), it was still a good time.  Another beautiful, random Cambridge summer evening.

Day 19: The Best Fries in Boston

Sometimes Boston magazine writes about crap. But other times, it writes about the best French fries in Boston. And apparently it's spot-on. After a cue from a friend, many of us followed to the Publick House in Washington Square in Brighton for a delightful afternoon filled with moules frites (or in my and my roommate's case, seafood stew and multiple sides of fries). For us, the trip also involved a misguided foray into Boylston St. to Citizen Public House and Oyster Bar -- to be fair, it looked great, but it involved neither my friends nor Boston's best fries.

However amazing the moules and fries were, however, there were even better highlights of the day in the form of playing the game Risk at home and venturing to the art gallery in Cambridgeport where a friend was helping to host a silent auction and after the Risk adventure, the art gallery after-party involving so, so much singing. It was quite festive, I must admit.  Like... until 5am festive (note the clever back-dating of this post). And I have left with a renewed appreciation and better understanding of the Goldman variations -- and a renewed desire to own a good piano.

Day 5: Cambridge Winter Farmer's Market

At the request of a friend of mine who does urban foraging, and who had a booth at the market this morning, I attended the Cambridge Winter Farmers' Market for the first time early this afternoon. I came away with a slightly heightened knowledge of the foraging prospects around the Charles river, a copy of an urban foraging book (gift for Dad for Father's Day), and some tasty aged cheese.

I started writing this post this afternoon, before I knew about the second wonderful treat Cambridge would bring me today. A friend of mine posted a message online that she had an extra ticket to a show at Berklee Performance Center just across the river to see Devotchka opening for the Magnetic Fields. I know Devotchka mostly from the soundtrack to Little Miss Sunshine and had only heard a few songs from Magnetic Fields (which I must admit at first I thought was "Magnetic Zeros", as in Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros, a band I've been listening to a lot recently). And boy was I pleasantly surprised at hearing both live! We had really good seats (although Berklee is a great venue and most any seat is good) which always makes it nicer. The night ended with a lovely walk over the bridge back to Cambridge, though a bit frigid. That sneak preview of spring we had a few weeks back would be welcome as a more stable fixture!

Day 3: Gooey, Gobby, Gummy

Today I went for the first time to Gallery 263, an art gallery in Cambridgeport that a friend of mine helped get going and is still affiliated with. The space was small, but really open and very lovely. Tonight was a show opening (complete with delicious cheese and wine -- not that the cheese was first in this list!) for three artists, the art of each having a distinctive personality and yet all relating to a common theme: gooey, gobby, gummy. I must say that I thought the art was much more appetizing than the theme made it out to be :). The 3-D pieces were quite interesting (the most appealing to me being an actual small tree stump with what looked like yarnlike moss growing out of it from all angles), and yet some of my other favorites were paintings which, while still technically three-dimensional, somehow looked even more so from the sprinklings of metal elements dusted about them. At any rate, this is a gallery I hope to come to more often.

After the opening, a few of us went back to a friend's place and I had the rare chance to play a (good) electric keyboard for a little while, accompanied by guitar and sing-along, with some trading off (there were also at least three other instruments in the mix on and off: a banjo, a mini-accordian, and perhaps a ukelele?). This was followed by the usual Thursday-night karaoke, which I'll describe some other week.