Day 131: The Real Alfalfa Farm of Topsfield, MA

Another beginning of the end -- Rumors closing performance, to great success!  To me, the whole thing felt odd because I was feeling rather tired and essentially chugged a coffee just beforehand, but that didn't stop me from giving it all that I could -- and man, so did everyone.  Some of my favorite bits happened tonight.  I had originally been plotting to try to steal some of "Claire"'s funny one-liners -- as she always beats me to some of mine (or rather, I forget them and she saves me!) -- but then I thought of something funnier, and replaced "...Cookie's walking around like a elephant" with "Cookie's walking around like a honey badger."  Really it was for our stage director, who apparently was too busy stage directing to catch it, but which made BNap ("Claire") nearly die of laughter on stage.  Having not quite recovered from this, I was caught unawares and she stole my next funny one-liner ("Cookie blew up the microwave, what else?"), so I decided she wasn't getting the last word and not only stole but rewrote her next "steal-able" line (also my cue): "You know what this night is beginning to remind me of?  -->Platoon. Weekend at Bernie's."  We had a blast at the performance and at the cast after-party at our producer's -- what a good crew.

BEFORE Rumors, which was a matinee showing today (not until 3p, though), my car-ful (the OG's: "Pudney", D., and E., plus the addition of my mom) decided we would finally go to find the holy grail of our route from Boston to Georgetown: the wine at Alfalfa Farm.  Pudney had discovered long ago that no, this landmark on the route was NOT a lowly dairy farm, but rather that they also produced wine.  So she called them up on one of our rides ("Hello? Is this Alfalfa Farm?"), and made sure we could come in for about 45 minutes prior to our performance.  The wine may not have been up to our expectations (which were VERY high, granted), but the experience was a great way to kick off the last performance of our tenure as amateur actors.

Technically Alfalfa Farm was not quite the kick-off to the day, which was brunch at Rosebud with E. and his parents and my mom -- which was lovely. Rosebud was also the coda to our day, after the cast party, where we had decided to check out the Sunday night karaoke scene.  Mostly we just chatted as we were so wiped, but D. got to sing some Gordon Lightfoot (one of the songs that will always remind me of this summer, "Sundown"), and I took a crack at the Supremes song I'd been wanting to do for a while -- really under-played in my opinion, the song "The Happening."

Day 129: Small-town bar take-over

I feel that my life recently has been thoroughly re-defined by this play.  I still do all of the other things I normally would do -- go to work, go to chorus practice, hang out with friends, eat meals, etc. -- but all of that has to be fit in around Rumors, and after this week, we're done.  [Not to mention the fact that after this week I will be driving around the country like a maniac / preparing to move across the country for a couple of weeks, but I can't even begin to process that yet.]  I also feel that this blog has perhaps suffered, as a large portion of my time is no longer being spent in Cambridge, but rather in Georgetown, and therefore I have fewer new, exciting details about Cambridge to divulge.  But we'll just assume that discussing our post-play take-over of a small-town bar is just as interesting.

First -- a note on night two of the play.  I hate to say that it suffered a bit from the "sophomore slump" -- but Act 1 did, at least.  Act 2 was worlds better tonight, however, once we had our energies going.  It's funny -- the crowd was over twice the size of the group last night, yet we couldn't get anything from them for a while.  Or maybe I'm just perceiving things in a skewed fashion because I was so exceedingly baffled at getting ANY kind of decent response yesterday.  A strange world.

After our stellar second act [from which S.B. took the above shot!], however, nearly the entire (perhaps it was the entire) cast and crew headed to a place nearby (the only place still open, at 10pm on a Friday night!) in Georgetown for a drink.  We ended up staying for quite a while, such that we lost some soldiers by the time it was time to meet some Calliope folks at the Charles Playhouse for karaoke to celebrate the birthday of one of our regulars.  Pudney and a friend of hers made it out, however, which was fantastic!

Day 128: Opening night

In my head for I don't even know how long today has been the song "Opening Night" from the Producers. "Will it flop, or will it go?!" An exciting day on so many fronts.  First, my mom came in this afternoon, and she decided she had it in her to come to our opening performance (thank goodness--I'm convinced it was her laughter that got the crowd going! her, and a few other key presences which really made it for us).  So thrilling -- I can't really describe another sensation quite like having no idea how something is going to go.  Sure, last night's dress rehearsal was our best yet -- but that didn't necessarily mean it was objectively _good_.

After Mom got in, I showed her my apartment, and then we left shortly after to do a drive-by near MGH (where both of tonight's cops work, in their day jobs :)) and picked up D. and S.  The drive to Georgetown was certainly interesting with our crew, and once we got to G'town there was a flurry of hair and makeup behind the stage, somehow much of which was caught on film by G., who brought a very nice camera in to document (above, you can see me as Chris Gorman through his lens).

And then it was time.  My character is the first to appear on stage [I'm now having flashbacks to an 8th-grade production of Peter Pan -- not the standard version, but an adaptation -- in which I played Wendy, also first on stage I believe, opening with a scream, perhaps?] -- and it was electric.  Such a cool feeling.  Dear world: if you ever have a chance to do community theater, do it, because it's a helluvalotta fun.  And SHOCKING.  If you'd have told me three months ago that a performance like tonight's would have been possible, I would have laughed at you.  At any rate, it was a great time, and hopefully we can continue the energy for three more nights!

The after-party tonight involved a mad dash back to Cambridge to try to meet up with some people for karaoke.  Most had already bailed, but a few of us enjoyed ourselves, and D. and I managed to sneak in for one song, "Walking On Sunshine" -- _almost_ as upbeat as I was feeling.

Day 123: Sanders Theater

There was so much to do this weekend that I did not really have any idea how it was all going to get done.  So instead of fretting I did the sensible thing and just tried to DO things.  Today that entailed waking up early enough to go grocery shopping, make cookie dough (tried it with vegan "butter" this time, and it seemed to go alright! tomorrow we'll see...), going costume shopping with our two "cops" for the play at Garment District, and then getting the pleasure of finally meeting the newest members of E's family -- two BEAUTIFUL twin girls born late at night on June second.  The bike ride out to meet them at their pad in Belmont with E.E. himself was quite pleasant.  Their names are Eva Penelope (EE the second) and Amalia Rose, and both are as sweet as can possibly be.  They look a little like my youngest sister did upon her arrival into the world -- mostly due to the shock of nearly-black (but not quite) hair gracing their little noggins!  Oh dear.  Must not because nauseatingly baby-oriented.

Anyhow, they had quite the visit, with I believe five extra adults around for the evening (all Espada brothers and some compatriots).  Upon our exit, it was time for me to go home and get ready for the upcoming performance at Sanders Theater with the Mercury Chorale, which I was pretty pumped for.  We all knew we could have done with more rehearsal time, but honestly we peaked tonight, which is a good sign for any performer.  (Such a waste to have ever done it better than the night you perform, right?)

E. and several of D's friends came to the show, and it was really a treat to perform in that theater space.  The rest of the evening was a big treat as well -- with B. still in town, we had a nice little crew for tearing it up at karaoke at Courtside (what I suspect will be my last venture out there for this stint in Cambridge -- even said my good-byes to Mark the Shark!), and paid a small social call to our director from Mercury.  Really nice experience singing with them in the past couple of weeks.

Day 115: Opera at the Parish

Today was quite the atypical day, making me feel like I was living in parallel universes at the start because I tried to work from MIT instead of heading out to BBN (I was tired, didn't feel like biking that far nor fighting the traffic in a car, and thought it might be fun to work around other people).  Was sort of bittersweet... story of my summer.  So very melodramatic these days!

The rest of the day was really fun, a happy contrast to the gloomy weather brought upon us by some mid-summer rain (apparently the center of the country is in a drought, but I can assure you that Boston is not).  Perhaps the most atypical bit was attending an operatic production. D. has had a boarder staying with him for a couple of weeks for an opera workshop (also atypical, I'd imagine -- someone affiliated with Calliope emailed out searching for such spots for boarders some time ago - but I digress).  The workshop (unsurprisingly) culminated in a performance put on by its participants, and we decided to go watch it.  For me, it involved a trek by T to the United Parish in Brookline, a place I strangely had been once before for a board meeting of the Boston Choral Consortium on behalf of Calliope.  Kind of cool way to feel a part of one's community, joining a community chorus.

Anyhow, the operatic vignettes we saw were really nice - D's boarder being the best, of course.  He did a bit from The Elixir of Love (I'm not so up on my opera so it didn't surprise me I hadn't heard of over half of operas on the list).  Post-opera, we headed to Zenna's (no, not my roommate but a delicious Thai place in Brookline) and then to post-dinner karaoke at good ol' Charles Playhouse with Calliope.  Good people, good times.

Day 99: 5 Horses + 45 more days

A week of rehearsals this has turned out to be - Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday (tomorrow) for Rumors, and Tuesday for Calliope.  Lines are to be learned for Rumors by the coming Sunday -- I counted and Chris (my character) has something like 200+ of them, so it's been quite the work week in that sense.  Ah, the real job is also going ok.


To reward a job well done, E. and D. and I headed out for one drink after practice tonight, and ended up at a place unknown to me until today -- Five Horses in Davis Square, which contains multitudes (of outdoor seating).  Strange that Harvard/Central/Inman/Porter just don't, really.  Shay's and Charlie's in Harvard -- oh, and Daedalus --, the Field and (I guess we'll count) the Tavern in Central, nothing that I know of elsewhere really. Davis somehow seems homier and cozier than the other areas.  Especially during the winter, when the lights are out... I remember how surreal the first Cambridge snow that I experienced was, in December of 2008, and I have a strong association of it with Davis Square.  The snow was blanketing it as I went with classmates to see something at the Somerville Theater (ok, that part wasn't so magical -- it was the Slutcracker).  I believe we did snow angels - but we also had driven to the show for whatever reason, so we had the joyous experience of navigating through thick flurries.  That was also the night before I drove home to Indiana for winter break, of course, which ended up taking 19 instead of 15 hours due to the 8-10 inches covering the ground.  Somehow worth it, I think.  See Blue Yoshi (i.e., my blue Toyota Corolla) above, covered in snow. Not in Davis Square, but in front of my old place on Columbia St. near Central.

How did this post end up being about snow?  Anyway, the 5 Horses pub was great because we got to sit outside, we invited our waitresses to sing karaoke with us (and now I'm remembering they suggested we go to the Rosebud, maybe on Mondays?, for karaoke), and I got a little more Davis under my belt.  Oh, and today was the last day in the double-digits. Ahoy last six weeks of Cantabrigia.

Day 74: Non-Rand Anthem

Tonight I had plans to hang out with a friend (K.) who worked at MIT while I was a student there.  One thing I love about hanging out with K. is that her version of Boston is so different from mine (which is super Cambridge-centric... fairly obviously).  She lives in Brookline but often hangs out near Newbury Street/Copley, near the seaport, at Drink, etc.  Adult places.  Tonight she asked if I might be up for meeting in Faneuil Hall, and I ended up joining her and a friend of hers at a place called Anthem.  I had to think about the word for a second when I heard it -- for some reason I find it to be a really striking word that is not used often.  Of course it calls to mind Ayn Rand [aside: I've somehow managed to get through the tomes that are Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead -- one of my favorite books of all time, but don't worry, it's for literary reasons -- but have never managed to read the much more reasonably-sized Anthem], but for me, it also brings to mind some sort of image.  Maybe it's from the cover, but I imagine a person, usually a very young person with a true heart, standing, looking up, shining with justice, and standing FOR SOMETHING.  Ok, sorry for the weird diversion.

Back to Anthem the bar.  This all goes to say that while I like the word, it also seems kind of a weird name for a bar, and it kind of bugged me, because although the bar was fine (and it's fun to be in that area once in a while), I didn't feel it lived up to its fairly patriotic name.  Unlike People's Republik, which most certainly does.

After Anthem, I parted ways to join my choir folk at a last-minute charity karaoke event.  The money raised was to go toward fighting cancer.  Really cool idea... did not win the raffle, but did enjoy a beer or two and belt out that awesome song by Megara from the movie Hercules.

Day 72: Solstice Acrobatics

The summer solstice certainly let us know when she came this year.  After weird weather all winter and beautiful, clear days randomly placed through early spring, summer finally hit hard on her arrival day, with Bostonians and Cantabrigians practically swimming through the humid, 97-degree air.  Tonight was night 1 of try-outs for Rumors (more than after tomorrow), and thankfully S. (director who was hosting at his place) had access to two window-unit ACs and a fan.  At least when it's that hot, even the non-sweaters amongst us are in no luck and we can all be gross together.

After try-outs, I joined up with a friend whose girlfriend is an acrobat -- more precisely, she is fantastic silks and trapeze artist.  Somehow she was supposed to be performing at the Plough and Stars -- a bar I go to occasionally, and which often has live bands, but in which I could not imagine a whole acrobatic troupe performing.  Particularly in 97-degree swampy heat.  But -- there was!  Including a bar-dancing clown (terrifying to me to dance on a slippery bar... but was fantastic to watch!).

At the end of the acrobatics, I had a text from B.Nap (who had been at the auditions earlier) to come join up for karaoke at Highland Kitchen.  I really like Highland Kitchen.  It has a great feel, adult spelling bees on Tuesdays, and apparently the light fixtures look like sex toys, according to E. (I have never even attempted to verify this myself, nor do I ever remember to check when I'm there, and I'm pretty happy with that state of things!).  However, it is located atop Winter Hill, and I am not typically located atop Winter Hill.  That said, I was already so icky at this point of the night, and since I had biked from home to the Plough, I decided a quick nip up a silly hill for karaoke would be worth it.  Which... I *think* it was.  Right?  Song of choice was "Walking on Sunshine" - which yes, have done many times, but seemed so very appropriate for the evening.

Day 60: Commencement

Lesson learned today: sleeping through alarms and phone calls due to karaoke-induced exhaustion and therefore arriving three hours late to your MIT graduation does not mean you cannot walk. It did, for me, mean that people were worried, but also that I got to stand in the shade with friends for 60 minutes rather than sit in the beating hot sun with people I barely knew for three hours and then slip into the line to walk across the stage to receive my diploma.


It was a beautiful day until about 3pm, well after graduation was finished.  Commencement at MIT is held in Killian Court, the lawn in front of the dome on Memorial Drive, on the Charles River.  Absolute perfection for a graduation ceremony in which everyone, undergrads included, gets to walk, so there is a lot of watching and waiting.

After graduation, I did a brief stroll around campus with the friends who came (E., T., and two of my roomies), which was lovely and resulted in many pictures.  Then to BCS, for a brief reception, and back home for some rest. Z. cooked one of my favorites, mac and cheese, for dinner, which was great, and then we all met up with some folks from my choir for the monthly karaoke sesh at Charles Playhouse.  Great end to a somewhat stressful day.

Cheers to MIT for being organized enough to remember to call the name of the girl who overslept by about three hours.

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 32: Oh, the people you'll meet!

One of the things I love most about living in this area is that it's big enough to feel somewhat anonymous when you want to, yet very much small enough that you run into people on the street that you know (for instance, in both heading out towards and back from the airport, I ran into the *same person* -- and yesterday alone, I ran into both my ex-boyfriend, walking toward the coffee shop located in the same building as my apartment, and my roommate, in Harvard Square).  It's also small enough that if you frequent a location for a short while, you'll run into the same people over and over and often become friendly.


Tonight, I first made a cake for a friend's birthday party located at her house in Somerville, and later in the evening took the T into Boston to go to karaoke with a bunch of friends from my choir, two members who were celebrating birthdays tonight as well.  Charles Playhouse was the locay, and of course there were regulars there whom I'd met at least on two separate occasions before.  I also got offered a job working there, for whatever reason (my hypothesis: it's because I helped bail out a girl who got roped into singing along to "Girls just wanna have fun" with some random drunk chick -- sweet, but drunk). At any rate, if you live here in Cambridge, you get to feel like you really, really *live* here.  And it's wonderful.

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 17: Genki Ya

 
Poem: Ode to Genki Ya in Eight Lines.

One word: Sushi.
Two words: Best sushi.
Three words: Best cheap sushi.
Four words: Best boat of sushi.
Five words: Best cheap boat of sushi.
Six words: Best boat of sushi in Cambridge.
Seven words: Best ten dollar takeout sushi in Cambridge.
Eight words: Best sushi across the street from my workplace.

Or, perhaps you like a Ryan-Gosling-style haiku better:

Hey, sushi, sushi
Yellowtail and salmon fish
Avocado, too

I mean honestly you can't describe the deliciosity of sushi in words, so why even bother?

*** Late-night edit (please excuse poor quality of photo, but it seemed so necessary).

The night turned more epic than expected.

As per usual, on a Thursday night when only normal events occur, I head over to Asgard for the LBK scene. Tonight, only one of the typical LBK-goers could make it (apart from me, obviously). As he noted, the band (namely the lead singer) seemed a little lackluster, though ever-enthusiastic when the two of us went on (my first song was great crack: "This Love", by Maroon 5, a karaoke first for me; my second was a standard and strangely enough, also a first for me, though it worked -- "Stand By Me").

Karaoke ended a touch early tonight, and since I had worked until after 10pm, I was ready to be out for a bit to offset the mind-numbingness of working 12 hours straight. With very little convincing, my fellow LBK compatriot and I set off down the road for the Cantab to see the Thursday-night glory which is the Chicken Slacks (to which a full post will be devoted I HOPE soon), and the epicness of the night had begun. It turned out that it was the last night with the 'Slacks for the last *original* remaining member of the band (a nothing-if-not-legendary fixture of the Cantab's) . The keyboardist, in fact. So it was quite bittersweet.... even though the Chicken Slacks as it currently stands is not what it used to be.

The best part of Central Square is that a random-walk home can be so serendipitous. Ours involved buying chocolate Cheerios (force-fed chocolate Cheerios, in my case), half participating in an offering of said cereal to stranger and having the entire box nipped, running into two men who were excited to celebrate the date and offered to share their enthusiasm with us (it had already become 4-20 at that point; no, the offer was not accepted), an encounter with a mayonnaise-eating musician at Hi-Fi, and a brief conversation about a potentially epic road trip to Nova Scotia / P.E.I. (a dream of mine since always). This night is just another reminder that I will be obnoxiously depressed to leave Cambridge.

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.

Day 10: Live-Band Karaoke

Picture compliments of an un-named source (who also supplied the nifty green-framed picture of my bike.)

Basically, the point of this post is to say: I am lucky enough to be living in a spot where there is live karaoke band action every Thursday night right across the street from me. And so, clearly, ever since I found out about this a couple of months ago, I have been going basically every Thursday night. So much so that the band (B11) knows me and my friends at least by face, and likely by name.

Tonight, I met a friend after work (and after her forever-long lab meeting) at a recently-opened restaurant (Japanese tapas -- who'd-a thunk?) and we had some food and drink pre-karaoke at Moksa, which is just down the street from both karaoke and my house. Then we made our way down to the Asgard where several others joined us for some merriment (because honestly, who doesn't love merriment?). I managed to get two songs in-- first I chose a Beatles song (mostly because "Oh! Darlin'" went down so well last week) and some Nancy Sinatra ("These Boots Are Made For Walkin'").

Tomorrow is this month's Calliope karaoke. Let's see if that rocks even harder!

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.

Day One: Futurity

I was waiting in the doctor's office this afternoon, my Kindle recently broken and my smart phone left in the car, and I pulled out my decrepit moleskine (which has doubled as a wallet in recent months) and a pen. I like to make lists, so I started calculating exactly how many days I have left in Cambridge, MA. First I totaled up the days I'll be gone in the coming months on various trips -- home for my sister's graduation, in WV for a family reunion, in NH for the July 4 weekend, etc. -- and then I added up the remaining days in the months from April to September where I'd be around.

Wouldn't you know, the number of days was a lovely one -- 144, or the square of my favorite number. As I'm always looking for reasons to keep track of things in an organized, fun way, I decided I'd make a blog that I'd try to stick to. It will also give me a way to organize pictures from the last few months in Cambridge (and a reason to take pictures!).

I suppose I guess I'll treat this as a count-up (to the end of the 144 days), rather than a countdown. Seems more climactic that way. So, today is day 1.

And tonight I am going with some friends to a show at the ART, a place near and dear to Cantabrigians who frequent Harvard Square. The show is called Futurity, and as a friend of mine put it, it's a "futuristic, humanistic, steam-punk musical." What's not to love? There will be 12 of us in attendance tonight. I'll try to post a picture later.