Day 121: Zu x 2

 Something I have often viewed as a double-edged sword is the 2a.m. curfew Cambridge has imposed on its drinking establishments.  It seems crazy early, except that in the end one is very happy one has gone home by at least 2:30 and gotten some sleep.  Except for those nights where you manage to work around the curfew somehow... like tonight.

Long days have recently become the norm, and after work, I picked up my usual duo of E. and D., and also grabbed BNap as an addition to our car-ful to Georgetown.  Tonight was our first time not only off-book but also off-prompter, meaning that we were to wing it if we flubbed on lines.  Honestly, it wasn't half-bad.  We ran through the whole play, which is also rare, and so were quite late getting back into Cambridge. D-Money still being in town, we made sure that he and a small contingency were prepped for our weekly stint at the Asgard, and I managed to sneak one song in - "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" -- my first attempt at Stevie, and it went over well.

Most were too tired to carry on at all, but somehow it was decided that for D-Money and me, the party would go on.  A few moments with Chicken Slacks and the 'Tab was about to close, but ZuZu saved the day and we bonded over a quick beer there.  The night went on to included attempts at throwing old bicycles into the garbage can in front of my house (see above) and jamming with the pre-set midi files on my old-school Casio keyboard.  Just another night in Central Square.

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!

Day 53: Building 19

Today was The Moving Day.  All of the annotators from the Speech and Language department at BBN were moved to Building 19.  I was later told that apparently "Building 19" has cultural significance, and a quick google search confirmed that there is a chain of stores called Building 19 with the slogan "Good Stuff Cheap."  It's kind of funny and a fairly accurate description of the annotators.  They say that any change in the workplace is good for productivity (no matter what the change is) -- but I'm not totally sure about that.

Let me describe the BBN version of Building 19.  First of all, it's a warehouse--it's where shipping and delivery at BBN resides, and trucks come in to the room next door to drop things off throughout the day.  (At some point, when the fumes were bothering someone, I checked it out with a co-worker, and we were told by a guy in that department that "I sneeze once in the morning but then you get used to the fumes" and that "sometimes we turn a fan on if it gets too bad".)

Anyhow.  Our particular corner of the world in Building 19 is kind of cool.  It actually looks like the room would make an amazing bar (kind of reminds me of the pizza place in Davis that is converted from a warehouse).  There are huge, brightly-painted pipes and scaffolding above us (the ceiling is probably about 16-20 feet -- I'm not great at such estimations!), and rows of medium-sized "cubicles" -- really just desks with dividers between them.  Above the desks are fairly low-hanging rows of fluorescent lights, but the room is so big that the lighting is not actually very depressing.  The girls formerly living in 3/123 (ah, that beautiful building, with offices right next to the library and cafeteria...) snagged the first row, right by the door, with frosted glass panes letting in light (but no peeking!).

They also say that groups of people, even strangers, become closer when they have to go through a hardship -- and probably this almost counts.  So we spent part of the day trying to make the space look nicer by hanging up posters that M. (our supervisor) had scavenged and hanging up some hooks that she'd nagged us for coats/bags/hats/etc.  It's a pretty sweet work environment, if you ask me -- even came with fancy bathrooms (close by, just for us, *and* they have a decent-looking shower and lockers) and a mini-kitchen (full fridge, hot/cold water device of some sort, coffee maker, sink, microwave).

After work, I had a good-but-not-so-cheap dinner with Z. at the Druid, where a friend from my class at MIT met up with us.  We headed down the street to Courtside -- which was the deadest I have EVER seen it -- and then sprinted back to Central to catch a song or two to dance to.  Back to Building 19 tomorrow!

Day 33: Yesterday Happened

A few weeks ago, I was with B. for dinner at Moksa and as we walked to our next destination, we passed a sign similar to the above advert for a play at the Central Square Theatre.  B. mentioned she and another friend of ours really wanted to go -- and although B. wasn't able to make it tonight, a serious contingency was.  The play was about the life of H.M., probably the most famous patient in the field of neuropsychology, and probably the reason we know half as much as we do about how memory works in the brain -- and in general.  It was told in a series of snippets, much like the snippets of consciousness the man who could no longer form short-term memories might have experienced, mostly snippets happening in a hospital setting with doctors and researchers but also some flashbacks to events or stages of his life he might have had access to in long-term memory. Overall I was blown away by the performance (nearly all the actors were stellar) and the production, but I was left feeling that had I not spent a serious portion of my life studying the psychology of memory, I would have been left unfulfilled and wanting to know much more--as E. put it, it was a "great teaser trailer."

After the performance, which ended early, some of us wound up dancing down the street at Middlesex for a friend's birthday, and by the end of the night I had convinced a smaller contingency to meet up at Zuzu down the road (for some *real* dancing, if you ask me).  The night ended with Hi-Fi (as all great Central Square nights tend to) and random mingling with people met while dancing.  Why am I leaving this place, again?  Oh right.  See first paragraph.