Day 108: The yoga scene

Back in the day when I was a graduate student at MIT and therefore had access to all sorts of delightful perks, I would often go to the weekly group classes at the gym across the street from my building (in the Stata center, which you can see in the background image for this blog).  This mostly involved power yoga, pilates, and something called "PiYo" (an attempt at a pilates/yoga fusion).  Vinyasa yoga was incorporated in most of these (even in the pilates to some extent), but somehow most of the courses managed to avoid the true "hold-this-pose-until-your-muscles-are-burning" part of vinyasa that gives it its punch. [Also probably the case that you don't get the most advanced / difficult classes in the world at the Stata Center.]


When my friend Az asked if I wanted to go with him to a vinyasa class, I was excited -- in fact another friend had just thrown a free class pass my way a few days before.  So A. and I went to O2 yoga in Somerville this afternoon after work, and I must say the 75-minute class really took it out of me.  My body used to feel like a nice happy sack of goo after pilates at MIT, but after this class left me feeling more like a sad sack.  Well, not too sad -- muscles felt used, but in the right way (not the over-stretching way, which is why I used to stick to pilates over yoga), body felt completely mellow, and my brain really felt quieted.  I will have to re-visit.

Even with the very zen feeling, I managed to make the most of the rest of the evening and got to see a bunch of great folks at two of my favorite just-north-of-Central-Square establishments -- the Cellar and Cantab.  [One of my friends brought a girl who looked absolutely terrorized at the prospect of entering the Cantab as we approached the bouncer who was checking IDs and seeing the folks who were entering; we had to pay her cover and coax her in gently.  We all had a great time dancing, though!]

Day 45: The best grilled cheese

Recently I haven't been cooking very much.  Once in a while I'll do a cooking night with a friend, and we make an attempt to try something new each time.  So far we have only had great results, leading me to believe that cooking is nowhere near as hard as I think it is -- but somehow I always find that come dinner time, hunger has found me all of a sudden, long after I should have in theory started to prepare a meal.

All of this goes to say -- sometimes when you want a grilled cheese sandwich (even though it is perhaps one of the easiest hot meals to prepare, ever), you gotta go find one in the urban jungle, and not in your own kitchen.  And by sometimes, I mean an embarrassingly high proportion of the time, in my case.

I try to keep this blog thing upbeat, but the story of today is that after having purchased and eaten a perfectly delicious grilled cheese at Charlie's, our crew relocated briefly to the Cellar, and this gal was faced with a sad fact: the best grilled cheese in Cambridge had evaded me for the evening.  I find the Cellar to be one of the most charming pubs in Cambridge -- nice restaurant on top, basement (but not dungy) bar on the bottom.  But hands-down, the best thing about the place is their perfect combo of tomato soup and the best-grilled, cheesiest sandwich in the 'hood.  But never fret, for there were wiser souls alongside who avoided the trap, and even offered up some of the soup to share.

Goal: perfect a home-made version of this meal before next winter.