Tuesday, August 24, 2004

The Sunday before last Sunday: Didn't do much, except study, cook beef stir fry, and watch classic rock videos while making vocab flashcards.

Monday: Went to work with Kate, caught a ride home with Jeff, and had my Andrew reunion -- he looked defferent! It felt like we hadn't seen each other in FOREVER. Lots to catch up on -- the Phish festival sounded CRAZY... stuck in traffic, only moving 3 miles in over 24 hours, catching a ride with locals to the festival site finally, the mud that sucked off sandals and shoes, the farewell concerts... Sooo glad I didn't attempt that one!

Tuesday: In the evening D. Becky & Louis visited and we had yummy sushi from the food court at Porter exchange. We ate at home -- it was so fun! And we even had little dipping dishes which we borrowed from Kory. Watched "Things I Hate About You" (GREAT show) and 10 Things I Hate About You (gotta love modern Shakespeare adaptations featuring Julia Stiles).

Weds: Watched 6 Feet Under, bought excessive amounts of candy at the dollar store, etc.

Thursday: We took a trip to Jon & Jen's in the evening for dinner and Andrew's continued moving out process. Watched some of the women's gymnastics (so exciting to watch, but I feel like a bum watching them flip around in the air while I sit on my ass eating) and make, you guessed it, more flashcards. Got home rather late...

Friday: Something was up with the weather. Rumors of a tornado (what?) on Route 2, traveling hurricanes... yeah. Got out of work early so I could sit and do flashcards while waiting for Andrew. On a trip to the ATM while waiting, I saw a very large bird in the shallow rivulet by Clocktower Place... It was at least 2 feet tall, skinny, gray, with blue accents around the face. Thin, long beak and long skinny legs. Curious bird. It was hailing for awhile after we got home that night. Reverberating thunder and lightning flashes. After it all calmed down we went on our first papasan adventure. Andrew's butterfly chair was less than satisfactory so he opted to join me in the papasan hunts. He got the comfiest chair EVER ... broken in corduroy papasan chair with footstool. We searched all over the mall for tools and twine. Ended up getting rope at Target instead. We tied the thing to the roof of the car. Got a few strange looks.

Saturday: Second papasan adventure. Got my purple papasan used for $50. Have since gotten a footstool for $5. Must cover the stained cushion. We went on an insane shopping trip in the rain -- Home Depot for tools, all over creation for my dorm rug at Building 19, and all this in flash floods from the insane dumping of rain we were getting. ARGH! Stop already!! It's not freaking January anymore!! Anyways, I got a 4 foot by 6 foot green rug for like, $14, and a pack of two gel pens for only 78 cents. Yes, Building 19 is the place to go. In the evening we watched Kill Bill 2. Not as many great fight scenes, but thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless.

Sunday: Errands and then we were on our way up to Rockport. Had a horrible stressful time finding a place to park, but had an instant euphoria upon hitting the beach. Really gorgeous -- all blue skies and nice sand. Much nicer crowd than the "free" beaches... this one was only accessible by pay parking lots and hotels (ie, no anger management problem fathers with little boys that spit on the beach among crowds of people). Swam around in the ocean, but the waves were soon overpowering... back in Oregon people don't often go swimming in the beach (or at least not in places where I've been at the beach!! Windy, cool temperatures, and strong waves). After swallowing a mouthful of the supersaturated salt water and getting swept up with the waves, I had had enough. I like the ocean and the waves and all, but when it turns into mother nature doing some extreme splashing you in the face manuevers, it's time to call it quits. I enjoyed it for awhile, but soon my shivering and fear of big waves forced me out of the water. Couldn't stop shivering till we left! Watched Andrew "floundering" about in the water. It was pretty funny... got some great action shots of him being dragged into the waves and flopping about. Wandered around in Rockport afterwards, and after much restaurant hunting Andrew found "Fresh Ketch." At first I was a little skeptical of the homemade signs and tiny restaurant-front, but after we went in I was sold. A small intimate setting, made out of an old house. We had a corner nook with two windows looking out to sea. By some trick of directions we were actually facing west -- the sun setting behind hills and reflecting on the water. Creative menu and well prepared -- the most romantic thing ever. Also bought some taffy after watching it being pulled and cut into chunks by the candy machines.

We managed to get home at a decent hour -- weird going back to work after such fun.


Saturday, August 14, 2004

Friday: Kate saved me and gave me a ride to work. We took a lovely back route as we were early -- went through Sudbury and all the lush back roads. Work went trudging by... took a long lunch break with everyone, talking about sex ed. and other pertinent WARM subjects... Zach randomly handed out those sour warhead things, and mine was so sour I had to spit it out into my water cup. Yucky.

After work Cheryl brought me home, with a tricky manuever at the Alewife exit to get onto Mass. Ave. without hitting lots of traffic. I was able to give her directions from there, proving that I AM learning SOMETHING about this area!! I pretty much immediately went out to visit the ATM and the supermarket and return 9.5 Weeks. I'm the thriftiest shopper every -- for $3.25 I bought poptart like things, yogurt, & over a pound of grapes (which I discovered I picked out the seeded variety, but I'm dealing, they're such a lovely rosy color, "Christmas grapes" I think they were called, they look like the plastic kinds you buy to put in a bowl and gather dust. Added benefit of being kinda in between the tastes of green and purple grapes. Yes I know people usually call them red grapes, but I prefer purple).

Had a quick dinner involving spinach and rice, and got a little GRE studying squeezed in. Oh! And I saw the opening of the Olympics. Kinda cool, I loved the history floats. Cube man was funny. Enjoyed the dismantling of the Greek statues. The whole future symbolism was a little overkill though -- a pregnant woman (complete with glowing bulbous stomach) and DNL strands swirling about.

I slept waaaaay in this morning. I hate that groggy sick feeling I get from sleeping in. Not going to do it tomorrow! Oh no, I'm over that! The like two or three times I've slept past 10 this summer have killed me...

Anyways, after taking awhile to "pounce" on the day, I eventually got myself out and on a walk to enjoy the sunny portion of the partly cloudy day. (Sunny till about 4 pm when the clouds rolled in.) Had a repeat of the amazingly cheap shopping trip -- I'm going to Pemberton Farms these days for fresh produce. Makes you feel happy to be shopping because it's in a garden/nursery place, with lots of organic stuff and speciality items. About half a pound of string beans, a pound of italian plums, and a head of organic green leaf lettuce = $2.71. Amazing! Well at home it would all be free from neighbors and trees around where we live, but whatever. It's all the stuff that reminds me of home during the summer. (Frank's string beans, Uncle Scott's plum tree, Mum's lettuce.)

At some point while fooling around on the internet, I came across Russian Tortoise info. Must tell Andrew. Buster is supposed to like the color red, green peppers, and cherries. I think his light shell color is due to the fact that Andrew only feeds him lettuce. I took Buster out to scoot around on the floor. How does one clip a tortoise's toenails, by the way? Advice, anyone? Very perplexing. He slides all over the wooden floors. Must fix that, too.

Made dinner without any mishaps -- and my fried rice was not at ALL mushy like when we made it last time. I think it's because I used left over rice that had time to dry out and "unstick."

So many GRE words =( Verbal score hasn't increased according to Kaplan's diagnostic tests. Sh*t. Prolixity means wordiness, by the way.


Thursday, August 12, 2004

Sunday: After some shopping and yard saling (yay one dollar lamp!!) we were off to Walden Pond. Luckily there was still parking when we got there. We hiked around half the lake looking for a good spot to sit down. This became a real dilemma...but we eventually found a fairly secluded spot that was getting direct sunlight. Read in the sun for awhile -- it wasn't too hot, a bit cloudy. The water was so warm though that at times it was better to be in the water than on land! I didn't think I'd go swimming at first, but after I started going in I thought I may as well keep going and lure Andrew out, too. Had lots of fun paddling about with Andrew -- I frog swam a lot, accidentally swallowed some lake water, the usual.

We had brought some snacks with us, and when we started eating, the forest creatures started emerging. OK, not exactly the Bambi cast, but a couple of squeaky chipmunks had the guts to steal some apple from us. I kept biting off chunks to feed them, and finally I just put the whole apple core down by us. Sure enough, one of the chipmunks came and dragged it off. Not quite sure how little animals do this -- if I tried to pick something up that weighed nearly as much as I do, with my TEETH no less, I think I'd really ruin the old ortho work (and end up wearing dentures). Hmmm...

On the way home we stopped in Watertown or something like that (which Cheryl and I passed on the detour home from work today) for Andrew's DVD player. Luckily we obtained one that had not been thrown down onto the floor (at least not while we were looking). So that along with Andrew's new chair and the TV he brought over awhile ago has made the room pretty spiffy.

Monday... Finished watching 9 and a Half Weeks. Yeah I didn't really get that movie. Except that the guy was a total nut case and the woman needed to make up her freaking mind.

Tuesday: Got a ride home with Cheryl and took the T alone for the first time, as Andrew was at a Phish concert. Made pizza for dinner and didn't burn the house down.

Weds: Straight from work to the Phish concert. Saved time cutting off traffic to the Fleet Center, lost it when we didn't park in a private yard/ driveway. I will write the expose on this one later, perhaps not on the blog though, not sure yet. Slept on the way home, so I wasn't too tired today. We had ice cream when we got home.

Today: Said good-bye to Andrew over lunch time. Got a ride with Cheryl after work and we couldn't stand the traffic so we got off around Waltham, asked some woman for directions, and luckily ended up on Route 20. We went basically the same way me and Andrew went on Sunday. We squeezed in front of a car at the same intersection where Andrew went into the wrong lane, too. This time we avoided the through-the-parking-lot-with-a-probably-illegal U-turn-at-the-end manuever.

Once again fixed dinner without burning the house down, and even got lunch ready for tomorrow.

Missing Andrew scale: Sad, break in routine, but OK -- so much to do all the time! Karuna's advice: "You are woman! Hear you roar!" Me: "But now I'm going to have to make dinner myself!"

Saturday, August 07, 2004

Like every other work week, this last one wasn't so exciting. Go to work, write, research, fool around on the internet a little, feel dazed and sleepy staring at the computer screen, etc., etc. Dave, the half-crazed high school intern, has left for the summer. John, the reticent intern that we rarely (if ever) heard speak, is gone. That means that the computer shortage crisis is over (or so I hope). Ummm... what did we do after work this week... one night we watched this PBS thing on last year's big Phish show up in Maine. And Friday we got a whole bunch of Ben & Jerry's at the supermarket, as it's on sale for about half price. Also ended up watching Miracle (good movie). One evening, Thursday, we went on a walk to Davis Square for a truly monstrous brownie sundae. Got over the sugar high eventually and went to bed. Weds. Andrew made the best batch of pad thai so far. OK so that was kind of in reverse chronological order, but that's how we remembered it!

Now, Saturday! This morning we slept in a bit and postponed the pond trip again. Went walking all over looking at tag sales. Found cheap hot rollers for my hair. Also "discovered" the food market / plant nursery that we live near. Bought string beans to make up for the fact that I'm not home to eat Mum's garden fresh produce. Later in the afternoon we ate at Fire & Ice again. Exceedingly slow and mediocre service again, although the food was good. We had to wait like half an hour for silverware and water (luckily most of that time we were out getting our food!)

In the evening we headed into Boston for the Modest Mouse concert. One of the opening bands was playing when we arrived. They weren't anything too appealing, except for an anti-Bush tirade and song. Then another band came out -- we assumed it was Modest Mouse. Soon realized (along with the people next to us) that it was not, in fact, MM. Good music though. Some band from Montreal, Quebec -- Parade of Wolves or something like that. So after that band we waited awhile, and then MM came out. We knew it was them as people were clapping and the lead singer matched up with our image of him after watching his MTV interview and the music video for "Float On." The first song they jumped right into was Paper Thin Walls. Then Float On. Also heard: the "Why would you wanna be such an asshole" song that Andrew likes, Pack of Family Dogs, "Are you dead or are you sleeping," the second song on the new CD, the "done done done with all the f f f-ing around" song... mostly stuff from the new CD. Some "jam out" songs, too -- something an old fan called a "cowboy" jam or song (which was lots of songs strung together with a different beat), and an extended version of the Cockroach song. Sorry this is all so incoherent, I'm feeling too lazy to look up exact song titles. Just remember them by lyrics, since we're constantly listening to their CDs in the car...

So yeah, the first concert experience was awesome. =) It was only like 9 pm when they stopped playing, so everyone clapped to get them out again. Around this time we started noticing the smell of pot smoke, and the lead singer came back out with butterfly wings on. Yes, you read right -- butterfly wings. Apparently he found them with some props behind stage somewhere. Looked pretty cool. Wish I had had my camera. Luckily Andrew got pictures with his cell phone camera. The joke before they started playing again: "When I was a larva I thought I knew f-ing everything."

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Friday: The J Crew bottom came!! We got home a bit late, but did end up finishing Hamlet finally. And taking a late night supermarket run…

Saturday: We had hoped to get up really early and get to the beach before the rush, but we didn't get out of the house quite as early as we had hoped. The traffic was disastrous -- I was starting to get worried as to whether or not we'd even find a patch of sand to sit on with all the people headed toward beaches!! It was a pretty hot and humid, and we somehow always managed to be in the slowest lanes of traffic! I kept telling Andrew to switch lanes and he'd say "They're ALL going slow, if we switch it'll just start going slow, too." I kept pestering though, and once we switched lanes he had to admit we had been in the slowest of them all!

Anyway, we finally reached York Beach, and it was swamped with people. The outbound lane was slow moving and bumper to bumper with people looking for the parallel parking spots on that side of the street. We were feeling pretty disheartened -- no places to park, a crowded beach, and lines of traffic. We turned around into the slow lane of traffic looking for parking spots, and miraculously got one when some girl climbed into her car and drove away! It was a great spot by the sandy part of the beach, too.

It was a great day to just relax on the beach. We lazed in the sun, read, and went swimming. It was the first time I really got all the way in ocean water and paddled around. It was funny because we kept getting more and more wet as each wave crashed on us and splashed us. The water was clear and not so cold once you'd gotten all the way in. Lots of fun!! Must obtain floaties for next time we go. I like traveling on the waves best.

Things we saw: a horrible father and little boy who spit on Andrew's chair (Andrew handled it well, in a WARM way, you might say), boys on surf-board-like-things picking up girls, packed beaches, a wandering golden retriever/dachsund mix, etc.

We had lunch on the beach, and I dozed awhile. Toward evening we decided to drive to Rockport for dinner. Saw York Harbor and got the scenic tour as we twisted our way down the backroads to the north shore. We got there pretty late, and didn't make the best choice for dinner... It was nice, with a view out onto the water, but for about the same price we realized that we could have gone to this fancy schmancy sort of place right out near the beach with outside seating and lots of twinkly lights and tablecloths. Next time though! And we had fun wandering around the streets -- violin players, great danes, candy shops...

The ride home was fun, listening to music and keeping Andrew awake. And we had time to watch a little of the rerun of SNL with Al Sharpton (which was not originally aired in Boston).

Sunday: Not the best weather, but we made the best use of the day! While it was overcast and cloudy, we slept in and then headed to the New England Aquarium. We saw EVERYTHING -- the sea lion show (roaring, dancing, waving, saluting, kissing, etc), seals, puffer fish, huge turtles (Myrtle the old turtle), feeding time at the big tank and for the penguins (some of which were molting), the northwest tank, lots of jellies, dragon fish things and sea horses (like at the Oregon aquarium)... We tried to see everything before we left.

We carried dinner over to Boston Common from Fanueil Hall -- found something akin to what Jeanne called "yaki noodles." Yum. We got to the park just in time to get a good spot for the last performance of Much Ado About Nothing. It was soooo lovely ... the weather cleared up marvelously and we had blue skies and sunshine. Gorgeous costumes, plenty of physical comedy to bring out the vulgar parts and the "groundling" humor," and well-practiced actors. Being so close some parts seemed over-acted, but I enjoyed it. And it's so amazing to see Shakespeare's plays acted out, while you're in an outdoors setting, surrounded by other people enjoying the show. Feels more authentic somehow.

Got home not too late, and had time to watch TV a little and eat dessert.

Monday: Busy busy day! Andrew's dentist appointment set everything back a bit, but we ended up watching Six Feet Under with Kory, which was cool.