Day 52: Cinderella's

Warning: there is some griping contained within, mostly in the second paragraph.

Typically I tout the fact that my apartment is located above Toscanini's, hands down my favorite place to get coffee and also to get ice cream in Cambridge.  However, this is a slight stretch of the truth -- in fact, my house is above an "Italian" restaurant just next to said coffee shop called Cinderella's.  Much less glamorous than Tosci, yet at certain points in one's life (or one's night), Cinderella's makes a lot of sense.

Yesterday after work, the original plan had been to run errands with Z., make an appearance at Gallery 263 for a bluegrass/folk concert there, and then go to the typical Thursday night LBK at Asgard.  Z. needed to pick up some computer stuff that was big/heavy from Microcenter and we thought we might go shopping at the Trader Joe's next door, as well. So I jauntily left work at 7p, thinking I had plenty of time to make it to the concert by its start time of 8 or just after.  Of course I forgot my phone at work -- and of course I couldn't just leave it there, as my office was going to be moved at approximately the crack of 7am the next morning.  So after I picked up Z. at home, I asked him if he wouldn't mind a) letting me run to work before I brought him back home and b) skipping the grocery-stopping step of our endeavors.  Of course he was acquiescent.  We got in line at Microcenter where he had ordered some stuff online, and when he whipped out his wallet... he realized he left the credit card he needed at home.  Thank God I'm not the only one who does these things.  Anyhow, phone was retrieved, Z. got to see BBN, card was retrieved from home, monitor and processor were purchased, and then I dropped off Z. at the front door so that I could go park.  Except after I circled, having seen someone move their car, a police-mobile pulled up immediately in front of the place where my car needed to go to turn left onto the street with the parking spot. And stayed there.  And stayed there.  Eventually I backed up the entire street to where the preceding cross-street had been.

But that was the last crappy part of the day. Because, as I have foreshadowed, the day was going to end with Cinderella's, meaning that good times would be had first. Said good times were had both at the gallery and then at the Asgard, where a bunch of folks from Calliope as well as some MIT-ers and the gallery crew met up for some soulful tune-ing.

After, there was still a bit more chatting at Asgard, then we proceeded onward to Cinderella's for some tasty grub, which we enjoyed outside in the park in front of my house, obviously also enjoying the company of many other Central Square-ers as happens when out on pretty much any night in Central Square.  Please tell me where I can find such things in San Diego...

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.