Day 77: Cambridge Common

For a place called the Cambridge Common, it's certainly rather uncommon enough for me to go there.  It's located just in the wrong spot -- were it on the other side of Harvard Square, I'm sure I'd make a visit much more frequently.  I typically rely on my Harvard-loving friends to suggest it before I go there, and today was one of those days.

The whole Harvard psychology crew that I love dearly had a friend visiting recently -- someone who left Cambridge for California just as I started hanging out with them, so I was really happy to meet her this past week.  Tonight was her going away party, and we made plans to reunite in Southern California (she's living in L.A. currently).

Things that I love about Cambridge Common: the greasy food (they have something called fried macaroni and cheese), the size (never a problem getting a table), the fact that they serve really delicious brunch on the weekends, their outdoor seating, the fact that they have UMBRELLAS covering tables in their outdoor seating (came in handy during the n-teenth crazy summer storm to happen this week, while we were there), and tonight, for the first time, tasting their beer flights (they have picks, but you can choose anything you like from their fairly extensive list).

Things that I do not love about Cambridge Common: the fact that I eat greasy food when I am there, the fact that it does not have as much character as nearly any bar in Central (though I do have a feeling it would be more fun at the bar), its only pseudo-coziness, and the fact really, even though I love certain things about it, I can just never bring myself to love it.

For some reason writing this made me remember how much I miss Razzy's, a bar with diner-style food in Somerville that closed within the last couple years.  Great vibe there, and one of the most "normal" dive bars I've seen host karaoke.  Plus -- it's name was Razzy's, for crying out loud.  What's not to love about that?

Day 30: Mariposa is a cozy coffee shop

Rarely do I go to Mariposa, one of the three coffee shops/cafes within a 20 foot (or so) radius of my house, but boy was I glad I did today.  I never thought of myself as very granola-loving, but I think I've just eaten too many greasy breakfast sandwiches recently because boy, was I craving fruit and health this morning.  Pricey though it may be, the granola and yogurt and fruit (with a whole banana!) concoction with a coffee while I studied for my final before work today really hit the spot.. and inspired me a bit.  Maybe I can go to granola-loving California and be happy after all.

The day sort of flew by, probably because I was just tired, but I was just so, so happy the moment I had finished the final that I brushed the tiredness off.  The evening was going to be a treat, I knew -- a *new* karaoke experience, and a new Jamaica Plain experience, all in one go!  E. and I went with mostly new friends to a place near our friend's house in JP, and it was quite the unique experience.  It was really one of those bars where it feels like everyone is hanging out together -- something I had only experienced via watching Cheers re-runs as a kid.  Costello's live-band karaoke on Wednesdays was way louder, rowdier, and sloppier than anything I have seen in Cambridge.  Thinking back to the previous post, I think this might be due in part to the fact that the "academics" of the area were mostly weeded out, the collar-poppers of Boston don't typically venture that far south, and the result was some awesome menagerie including a dude who brought his own fedora, fireman hat, and stuffed animals which he placed in inappropriate configurations that varied throughout the night.

Glory be to this weird, wonderful world we find ourselves in.  Another highlight of the evening was introducing E. to my favorite e.e. cummings poem:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Day 29: Academia

As you can infer from the above picture, being in academia means you need some ducks.  And in theory they should be in a row.  Of course, some of them get sidetracked sometimes, or even appear to change shape or color, in which case they can appear more like this:

Today I gave my talk at Harvard, something that has been hanging above me as somewhat exciting and also anxiety-inducing for the last several months.  It was in an informal setting -- and in fact, 4/6 of the people in the room listening to the talk (other than me) were close friends -- but still something for which I prepared.  A whole lot.  And in the end, I was glad I did it.

So, today essentially involved talk prep, work, and even more talk prep, giving the talk, de-briefing with friends after the talk, and deciding that after all that thinking and talking about talking I was ready to shut up for awhile, not study, and hang with friends at the Asgard.  And they were up for it too -- because one serious perk of academia is that often you can set your own schedule, and so if you wanna go out on a Tuesday night to play some pub trivia, well, hell, you can.

Day 24: The Wrong Campus Pub

Today, a friend of mine dissertated (!) and now has a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard.  Pretty sweet.

I couldn't make it to the actual defense because I had to work, but of course there were festivities afterward.  So after work, I headed over to Harvard's Campus to the Queen's Head, Harvard's answer to some combination of the Muddy Charlies and the Thirsty Ear (the "other" on-campus pub at MIT).  It turns out my memory had just re-written itself, overwriting "Cambridge Common" with Queen's Head. For so many reasons, Queen's Head was the Wrong Campus Pub.

I figured my mistake out pretty quickly thanks to my helpful friends who were already at the right location, and much fete-ing was done for the dissertee.  In fact, JR and I managed to persuade a big group of folks out for live-band karaoke later in the evening.  But while I was still at the Wrong Campus Pub, so many Wrong things happened. It's located in the basement of Memorial Hall (pictured above), and as you can see even with my crap-camera-phone shot, it's a lovely old building (albeit a shortened version of a lovely old building, according to the story whereby the Cambridge fire station located across the street sees a part of Harvard burning and lets it burn, an answer to a many-years-old standing feud between Cambridge at-large and Harvard at-small).  In the basement, there are some pretty narrow halls that contain several extra tables where one can drink beer purchased in the pub, but there is not much room between the walls of the pub and the exterior walls of the building.  For some reason, some Harvard folks decided it would be a great idea not only to throw some sort of rather-obnoxious-and-flamboyant-Oscar-Wilde-style-dramatic-music-ky thing inside the pub, but also to have its cast members darting back and forth wildly amongst beer drinkers in the hall.

So thing number 24 that is right with Cambridge is how deliciously *wrong* Harvard can be.  (But then again, it is, more often, right. :))

Day 9: Harvard Coop

This morning on my way to work I very responsibly stopped by the Harvard Coop to pick up some lab goggles (which I had neglected to purchase before the heart dissection lab a few weeks ago, woops) for my biology class. Today we examined and stained some zebrafish embryos / larvae (see, for example, Mr. Z above -- I swear, the one we stained was identical to that image, which blew me away). I was pretty sure I was going to find this horribly dull, but it turns out that I find embryo development (at least of zebrafish) to be rather fascinating. And they do it all in like *two days* (well, almost).

Anyhow, the venture this morning into the Coop reminded me of how much I like it. I entered through the Brattle St. side entrance today, but entering the main drag off of Mass Ave is like entering into the library from the Disney animated version of Beauty and the Beast. It's seriously old-school, floor-to-ceiling books around the entire store, and if you're standing behind the cash register on the second floor looking out the front entrance, it's a pretty damn good view too.

I was also reminded of how Harvard includes MIT in its Coop in a special section: "Harvard graduate schools and MIT apparel". MIT doesn't do that for Harvard :)