All posts in: boston

adventures
01 Nov 2012

this is what happened during Sandy

1. I sat around for most of the day thinking “Why in the world is this my SECOND hurricane in just barely over 3 years in Boston?” Not to mention the earthquake, the tornado, the blizzard… did I accidentally move into Life As We Knew It?

2. The Boy and I were both granted days off of work. I would say it’s sometimes nice to be a civil servant, but this city pretty much shut the heck down.

3. I read a book:

It wasn’t great, but I need to review it, so it felt nice to get things done.

4. …because most of the day, I played The Sims. Urgh.

5. I also did the dishes and vacuumed and put away my laundry, so that is worth something.

6. I checked the weather report, the news, and the view outside my window often. It was windy and somewhat rainy and my house creaked a lot.

7. Mass amounts of kitty cuddles

8. I roasted a chicken.

9. I watched Call the Midwife

9. I worried for my friends and folks in NJ and NY.

10. I got terribly indignant when The Boy earned a second day at home, and thus left him the dinner dishes, and also thus won Future Wife of the Year.

11. In the morning, we discovered that a branch broke our car’s windshield… a car that we were about to take to the shop to determine if it was driveable, and even without a broken windshield, we can’t afford to fix it/it’s more than the car is worth. Le sigh. C’est la vie. Something else French.

adventures
22 Oct 2012

2012: week forty-two

October 14 – October 20

Social Butterfly Jessica outdid herself this week.

Sunday afternoon: Bowling

Did I mention that  The Boy and I have joined a bowling league? Oh yes, we are that cool. For what it’s worth, we joined with some of our friends, and we had a Groupon. The league is six weeks long, though, so you get 90 minutes of bowling for 6 weeks, no additional fees, free shoe rentals, etc, for 45 dollars a person: a good deal. I was skeptical, but yeah… it’s fun. I like that it doesn’t take that much time, I get to see my friends, and I feel like I’m actually improving my game. Against my better antisocial instincts, I’ve been looking forward to Sundays.

Wednesday after work: Drinks and bar food to celebrate finishing Whole30

We met up with one of our friends after work to mingle with his new law school buddies and indulge ourselves for finishing 30 days of health and happiness. I managed to keep myself to a Blue Moon, a moderate amount of nachos, a cheese stick, and a few pieces of boneless chicken wings, and went home feeling fine.

The rest of the week, not so successful. See: Chipotle, a Reeses peanut butter cup pumpkin, and a Greek salad at lunch. I’ve not been feeling so hot…

Thursday after work: Free movie screening

The boy met me at work at 5 and we headed over to the movie theater at Fenway to meet up with our friends who scored free movie screening passes to Paranormal Activity 4. We were early, so we killed time getting Starbucks, Chipotle (terrible idea), pretending like we were rich at West Elm, and buying craft items at Blicks.

We walked into the theater and called our friend… and while we waved our hands in the air so he could spot us in the line, we realized that we were in the wrong theater.

So we took the T back into town to the Boston Common theater and ate our burrito bowl while having our first taste of the Paranormal Activity franchise.

Friday night: Cabin in the Woods and dinner w/friends

Some friends (our bowling friends, actually), were very excited to watch their new Blu-ray of Cabin in the Woods with some people who hadn’t yet seen it. I was very excited to watch Cabin in the Woods, so we trucked it out to East Boston with our dinner (Roasted Pear & Goat Cheese salad) and added it to spaghetti, garlic bread, wine, and a cheese plate.

The movie: good. The food: better. The stomachache: legendary. Granted, I hadn’t quite recovered from the Chipotle the night before. This is quickly becoming a recap of my digestive health, though, so I will stop talking about food.

Saturday night: Halloween Party

Friend in Law School invited all his law school buddies over for an early Halloween party. I did not have a costume idea until about 4 p.m. and constructed my costume entirely out of clothing I owned and other craft supplies I had around…. and our costumes were sweet and we won the costume contest. Pics to come.

And on the seventh day, we rested.

Just kidding, we did laundry and bowled.

 

Reading:

Watching:

  • Shameless, Shameless, Shameless.
  • I made it through 50 minutes of the Presidential debates before becoming too irate to exist.
  • Aaaand on Friday? My hold on Mad Men Season Five came in. Sorry, Shameless, Don Draper’s in town.
  • I may have accidentally watched an episode of Top Chef… and liked it.

Listening To:

  • So, Spotify and iTunes are really excellent repositories for such hard-to-find musical gems as a cappella CDs. We’ve come a long way since the same 100 tracks available on Napster, all attributed to Rockapella. This is all to say: I listened to a lot of random a cappella this week. Blame Pitch Perfect.
  • Got back into listening to Gary D. Schmidt’s Okay for Now again, and I’m really digging it.

 

1
book awards
02 Oct 2012

BG-HB Awards

At the Boston Globe Horn Book Awards Ceremony, esteemed authors and illustrators give speeches to a full-house of children’s lit aficionados, scholars, publishers, and general supporters. We all marvel over their cleverness and their ability to write delicious teen and children’s books.

The highlights:

The creators of Chuck Close: Face Book knew nothing of children’s literature, but were adorable about it.

Julie Fogliano was seeing a dream come true with And Then It’s Spring; her speech was touching and inspiring.

Mal Peet insulted all Americans but that’s okay because he is a genius and I cannot stop loving Life: An Exploded Diagram.

And Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen were so very young and charming that everybody in the audience died. I am dead right now, actually.

The best part? I showed up alone and there, waiting for me were all the folks that I know and like – former classmates, professors, new coworkers, and some of my dearest friends. My people. Love it.

adventures
18 Sep 2012

the best of summer 2012

Despite what I might have portrayed here, this summer wasn’t all jobs & stress & retail. I did have a few moments of summer fun. I even put on my swimsuit once! Here are some of the highlights:

My close and semi-extended family descending upon Boston for my graduation.

My Favorite Darling Roommate coming to visit.

(Please guess which two ladies in this picture went to an open bar wedding the previous night!)

That day I went to a job interview, then laid on the beach and ate Cheet-os.

Lantern festival picnic in the Forest Hills Cemetery.

Fancy rooftop risotto & scallops & sangria at Daedalus.

Watching my sisters get married while we shopped for wedding venues.

All-terrain backyard urban croquet.

And last but not least…

A multitude of summer sunsets in Boston.

Lucky for me, the fall sunsets are pretty great, too.

adventures
13 Sep 2012

doing fun things (in new england)

I am finding it a bit hard to believe that I have been a New England resident for three years now. As my longtime friends know, I am here because of school, not because I have a penchant for colonial history, skiing, or foliage. I’ve been working, studying, and being poor. I haven’t spent my weekends crisscrossing state lines, haven’t stayed a single night in a bed and breakfast.

It all seems like a bit of a shame, now. I don’t have to love New England to at least drive around a little. An old friend of The Boy’s moved to Boston a year after we did, along with his lovely girlfriend. They seem to rent a Zipcar every two days or so to take a trip out of town. We invited them over to our apartment a few weeks back and they decline; they’d already planned a trip to Vermont.

The Boy is even more skeptical of New England than I am. “What, exactly, is so great about Vermont?” he asked.

Our friend was livid. “Breweries! And vineyards! And the Ben & Jerry’s factory! And covered bridges!”

Now that I have weekends and a little bit of gas money, I’d like to see me some covered bridges.

Here is a short list of fun things I’d like to do in New England in the near future:

  • Go to the beach on Cape Cod. I should probably get started on this one being that it’s already September.
  • Take a hike on a pretty mountain
  • Live out my lifelong, Summer Sisters inspired dream of visiting Martha’s Vineyard.
  • Pick some seasonal fruit. Okay, I did this once, but it was fun!! And so many delicious apples!
  • The Eric Carle Museum of Picturebook Art. This was, surprisingly, The Boy’s idea. I am just a bit ashamed I haven’t been yet… maybe swing by Northampton while we are in the area?
  • Something fun in Salem. We did the Salem Witch “museum” on a rainy  vacation once but didn’t really have a chance to take in the town at all, and now we have some friends who live there who we can visit!
  • Eat a Lobster Roll in Maine.
  • Take a trip to Providence. After reading The Marriage Plot, I’d like to at least take a look at Brown’s campus…
  • Look at some freaking foliage already.

me and this tree

boston
03 Sep 2012

2012: week thirty-five

August 26 – September 1

I have landed.

Not feeling quite as shell-shocked, but still surprised about how terrible terrible TERRIBLE moving in is. There’s the exhaustion of packing, the guilt that you even own all of this shit, the disruption of your schedules and habits, followed by social awkwardness of having to convince friends to help you move and/or the endless small and large expenditures associated with moving, and then, if you are young and dumb, a day of hell when you move all your furniture and boxes down 3 flights of stairs and then up 3 flights of stairs. The next day, you wake up in a pile of garbage, every muscle in your body is screaming at you, and you must call Comcast 6 or 8 times in one day.

This is depression-causing mayhem. I hate everything about this place, other than the increased square footage. It is crazy old, not well kept up, lacking in simple comforts such as Machines That Wash Things and everyone I talk who has lived in the neighborhood their whole lives say things like “You guys are living WHERE? Text me when you get home, let me know if you made it,” even though we live .3 miles from our old apartment.

So I hate it, but really I just hate all that stuff in the first paragraph and I am taking it out on my poor, crappy apartment. And I will live here for at least a year, after which I will either have grown accustomed to my apartment’s quirks and become comfortable with the neighborhood, or I will leave for greener pastures.

After that point, I will either start the cycle again or hire someone to conduct said moving.

I think I will start saving my pennies either way, just in case.

Reading:

Listening To:

  • Podcast intake is spiraling completely out of control… I won’t even try to chronicle what I have been listening to, because both content and quantity might shock your system.
  • Whilst packing, I inflicted a number of Broadway musicals upon Lance, including Fiddler on the Roof!
  • Whilst assembling some sanity at my new favorite coffee shop (because it is so close by), I listened to the soothing tones of Honeyhoney and Skrillex.
boston
29 Aug 2012

here’s something

I am moving.

So, my apartment is full of so much crap and boxes I keep running into things and getting bruised.

So, I have to bring half of my library books back without being read.

So, I am crying and angry most of the time because moving sucks.

I have moved eight times. The first time, I was a small, small baby. My parents moved from a one bed to a two bed in the same apartment complex. The last time I moved, I was comatose for a week or so, but I recovered and have so many lovely memories of this place. Many, many hours playing Super Smash Brothers. Lots of nights with friends playing games. Futon sleepovers, making Mexican food, birthdays, hangovers, scrambled eggs, TV marathons, laying on the floor and listening to the neighbors fight.

I would stay, but they built a Whole Foods two blocks away, which both improved my daily life and raised my rent by 200 dollars a month.

If I’m a bad blogger in the near future, I am either packing, unpacking, or weeping.

boston
05 Aug 2012

alma mater

Out of all the unbelievable things that have happened over the past few weeks, one change stands out as particularly unfathomable:

I am leaving Simmons.

This goes beyond “Oh, I am graduating, boo hoo, let me get sentimental about this place where I learned and changed SO MUCH, omgg.” No, I am not feeling sobby – I am feeling perplexed, disbelieving, like moving away from your childhood home – you really never thought that you would leave, but here you are with your bags packed.

I’m not sure I have expressed how much time I spent at school. So much. So much time. It was my school, but also my place of employment. I worked anywhere between 20-40 hours a week for three years, plus 6 to 12 hours of class, plus other various school related activities, talking with people in the hallway, sending mail, buying index cards, eating meals, attending conferences, etc, etc, etc. I know how to book a room for an event, who to call if you get locked out of your office, which bathrooms have free tampons, which printers will print color for free, which baristas will give you 2 ice cubes in your iced coffee unless you specify.

Now, when I visit, it will truly be my alma mater and not The Place I Practically Live In.

How. Weird.

I should probably go into my office and, oh, you know, gather all of my earthly belongings and finish up some last things and give back my keys sometime, eh?

boston
26 Jul 2012

the true bostonians

This year, I have found myself feeling strangely sentimental about this city where I live. It’s been three years since I arrived, three years to adjust to city living, and although I am not sure I would call myself a fully converted urbanite, the idea of moving away felt sudden, felt not right. We decided fairly quickly in the year that staying in Boston would be one of a few good choices for us, and the one we felt most passionate about. Why leave our friends? Why leave our neighborhood? Why leave our luxury grocery stores and abundant takeout and our little bit of a life that we have forged here?

Since January, I have dreamed up a number of sappy little missives about leaving Boston. An ode to my walking commute, one to my running paths, my library branch, my school. I’ve penciled it into my blog schedule a number of times, but never found the time to do the writing and the photographing it would require.

But now I don’t have to. Friends and readers, I’ve been keeping secrets, and one of them is that after a semester of planning for worst-case scenarios, my best case scenario is coming true: I am staying in Boston. It feels like a big change, to stay, to wrap my mind around my immediate future, but in the end, I will get to keep my friends, my places, and my city.

More details to come, but for now, I must devote myself to hitting “refresh” on Craigslist. Apartment hunting in this city should be avoided at all costs. Everything in my price range and in my neighborhood is… oh wait, there aren’t any apartments in my price range in my neighborhood. Tough, quick decisions are waiting to be made, but come September 1 at least I know I will still be a T ride away from the place and faces I have come to adore.

2
boston
12 Jul 2012

one last push

I have been visited by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and their names are:

1. Apartment Hunting

A painful dance, balancing what luxuries you’ve grown accustomed to, where you can live to accommodate your commute, what kind of lifestyle you believe you deserve, and oh, what you can afford.

Apartment hunting makes me want to live in a shoebox on the side of the road.

2. Moving

… and then there’s the whole “moving’ aspect of finding a new place. I hate moving. I consider myself to be a resilient person, not afraid to do a little manual labor. But I still shudder to remember how my last move sucked the life out of me. Many exhaustingly minute details, followed by weeks of putting your belongings in boxes and fretting over your consumerism, culminating with a few days of hard labor and then an apartment that is new, but also filled with garbage, reliably dirty, and devoid of food and other life comforts.

3. Taking a Vacation

I am one of those annoying Type A folks who have trouble enjoying time off because the logistics put me on edge. We are going to Michigan for a week and a few days. Going HOME. This should be easy, right? No, no, no. Never. Who will go where and who will we see and who will see who and who will drive where and as;lkejr;oij234arsdaklsf.

I just want to play Mario Party and drink Diet Coke and sleep until noon, okay?

4. Planning a Wedding

May I please be married in a shoebox on the side of the road?

So bear with me as I try to figure out my life from now until September 1st, after which I will have finished 1, 2, 3 and made progress on 4.

Life after grad school? Not particularly glamorous.

P.S. I pretty much wrote this post already, 2 years ago. I even tried to give it the same subject. My life.