Day 86: The Importance of Being A Local

Nothing makes you feel more like a local than coming back and feeling more comfortable in your own skin in the city you live in than in the place you came from.  This happens to me whether I'm coming back from my home town in Indiana, my family's stomping grounds in West Virginia, or (in this case), a mountain in New Hampshire.  Was so tired after the trip yesterday that I managed to spend the entire afternoon in bed finishing the second season of Downton Abbey followed by crashing pre-midnight through to the next morning.

Today was simple: work, rehearse for play with E. at S's place (director-on-two-of-us so that we could do scene focus), at then meet up with my roommate and a friend of ours who had also been up for the weekend in NH at a bar/restaurant near my place (Miracle of Science).  This now makes the 4th or 5th time in a row that I did not get carded at MoS.  For some reason, I have an irrational hatred of being carded.  At worst, it means that if you forgot your ID (which I don't), you have to go get it or talk someone into just letting you in -- and at best, it's a compliment that you look young.  But I hate it.  Typically if I'm there with older folks (than me), not getting carded is the norm, but recently it's been because I _am_ the older folk -- and I like it.  Was there a few days ago w/ J. and M. and arrived early, ordered beer, no carding.  Then when J. and M. arrive and order food in addition to beer -- they get carded.  Tonight, I arrived to meet V. and G-Dog after they were eating.  V's passport was out on the table -- but still no carding for me.  And that, friends, is the importance of being local.

All of this is still a diversion to say that I am going to miss this place a ton.

Day 83: Fireworks on the Charles

Happy Fourth.  To celebrate, I skimmed about three hours off my work day, attended a Neil-Simon-themed bbq (which involved quite a bit more rehearsing than I had anticipated), and then moved on to the night's entertainment -- watching fireworks drunk.

First stop was All-Asia -- on the way to this fine drinking establishment, I happened to run into a woman I hadn't spoken to since freshman year of college, when she lived across the hall from me in my honors-college-floor freshman dorm.  Nuts.  She's apparently doing a music PhD in NYC and is in town for the summer to accompany the Boston Ballet School.  Pretty sweet, eh?  More on that later.

Upon arrival at AA (ironic), there was no live music of yet (always a plus for All Asia), but by the time T. arrived to join Bnap and me, they had arrived in full ska-terrible form.  Such terrible form that it caused a) Bnap and I to become rather drunk and b) T. to leave.  No matter!  B and I headed to a friend's house (she's a graduate student RA for the MIT undergrad dorms, lives right on the river), played with a really cute baby, and then eventually rejoined with T. in time to watch the lightning-storm-esque fireworks from Mem Drive.  Brilliant.

After, I was coerced (my words, not theirs) by both Bnap and M. to walk down to the hotel down the street to sit outside and chat about life.  Which ended up being mostly chatting about abortion and psychiatric disorders.  Go figure.  Yay America, Yay Boston, Yay fireworks. EOM.

Day 62: Johnny Foodmasters

After all of this weekend's festivities, today was primarily spent in Building 19 (i.e., at my desk at work).  But as the end of the evening drew nearer, I got very excited, for the season finale of Mad Men was approaching!  And what's more, one of the hosts had just received a deep fryer as a birthday gift (because whose dream birthday gift is *not* a deep fryer?) along with about 2 gallons of peanut oil and accompany potatoes, so we were to have Mad Men french fries.

I typically come from work when I watch tv at this location on Sunday evenings, and I'm right by Trader Joe's here in Fresh Pond, so I typically ask what can I bring?  The answer today was that more gravy was imperative.  After work I traipsed over to TJ's, and searched in vain for the item of the day.  Finally, I succumbed to asking a sales associate, and was looked at incredulously and told, "Gravy is a seasonal item."

.

?!

Yeah, right.  Maybe in, like, Canada.  Anyway, the next step was obviously Johnny Foodmaster's, the neighborhood-feeling Somervillain grocery store near the Mad Men / potato-ey fiesta, where there were plenty of terrible-for-you packets of the stuff.  Of course by the time we got there, the french fry maker herself had already eaten too many gravy fries for anymore, but there's always next time.

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 42: Miracle of Science.

Being back at work today was a little bit of a shock to the system, I must admit.  This weekend's activities were well worth it. After working for almost 10 (maybe 11?) hours, I headed back, homeward bound, and learned that lots of my roommates' classmates (and one of my roommates) were in the coffee shop downstairs, studying for their final exam (given, incidentally, by my former adviser).  I stopped by to say hello, but I wanted no ice cream or coffee -- I needed some real food.  Luckily for us, the Miracle of Science is typically quiet on early week-nights (especially Mondays), and so I managed to wrangle two of them into joining me for a snack. They worked, and I caught up on some for-fun writing :).  The M.O.S. is a place I discovered early on -- even before moving here. My mom and I got burgers there when we were visiting the summer before I moved out. It was also a place a bunch of us went as first-years... with the tempting periodic-table-of-meat-and-awesome-things board and the cozy tables (yet industrial feel) it's definitely a Central Square classic.  And so nice to study/work there on quiet evenings! Two thumbs up.

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 21: Olde Magoun Saloon

For some reason, I opted to stay at work for over ten hours today, meaning that (because I only got in after 11am) I stayed until after 10pm.  Original plan was come home and clean the kitchen; but honestly, who wants to work until 10pm and come home and clean their kitchen?  So, since I had nearly no human contact with anyone other than my colleagues (who, I must admit, are lovely), I asked a friend if he'd be up for something.  After he suggested we play one of our favorite games, Battleline, it seemed like a great idea (after all, I am going home in a week and my mom and I will surely engage in such battles nightly!).

Since I had my car with me at work, we decided to go to a place near his house - though he lives in Medford, he's right on top of Magoun Square, at which is located the illustrious Olde Magoun Saloon, which is technically in Somerville.

We ended up mostly chatting for the first hour or so (which is probably orders of magnitude more fulfilling than playing a silly two-player card game, in the end), but then we engaged in battle at the saloon.  It was a lovely night.