Getting into Baltimore around midnight. Me need day off. We are totally playing hooky Monday.
Oh, me sooo tired.
Too much walking, if there is such a thing. I was doing a good job of not spending money on dumb stuff. Not like there is much to buy in libraries. Hell, we have to hit another one before our train tomorrow. It could be worse.
Me go Walden.
Went to Walden Pond today. Very very last minute — had to stop for breakfast at South Station to get a schedule. Then to North Station for train after more library. Walden was pretty empty from the rain and fog yesterday, last night and this morning. Took too many photos. Don’t have Photoshop on this computer, so I can’t post any. Can’t shrink them. Me tired. Had too much coffee and tea.
More library tomorrow. Johnny is very sick of libraries right now. Very sick.
Not sick like that, though. Cold is getting much better.
Wm. L. Garrison might kill me.
The Mrs. gave me her cold. There I was, helping with research and reading some William Lloyd Garrison letters. Something wet fell out of the nosey and onto my hairy mit. Missed the letter, but I had to call it quits and just fill out copy forms after that. And Mr. Garrison had beautiful handwriting. Very small and tight, yet flowing. And he used brown ink. Either that, or it aged…not well.
Gay Science on the road.
I was reading Nietzsche’s The Gay Science in February 2000 when I was at the airport, waiting to come up here to Boston to visit the Mrs. when we were dating. It came up here then. Then again when I lived here. Again this week. I finished it at Caffe’ Paradiso (with two Fs) tonight. I always wanted to work in there, but I never did for some reason. I think I was too self-conscious or something stupid like that. Today, I had tea and three coffees there. I was tired.
There are a ton of things I wish I had done when I lived here for two years. Visiting the Boston Public Library tomorrow, like I always wanted to. What kind of lazy sissy was I back in 2001-2003?
Don’t answer that.
Quin Zee.
Blogging from North Quincy, across the river from Boston. In Greater Boston. Boston Metro.
The weirdest thing is how not weird everything is. It’s like I live here again. Which is certainly not to say I want to move back. Being around the people I care about is a nice change for me, and I’m not exactly seeking to leave it. But getting on the Red Line and navigating Downtown Crossing and getting above ground and to Quincy Market is still second nature.
The T is more expensive now. And I’m not digging the whole digital ticket thing for the subway. They are like the ones in New York, but the machines are less intuitive. Or maybe I just miss those cool tokens. Got me a weekly pass anyway. And right before we moved away, I kept two tokens: a very old pre-MBTA one and newly-minted one.
We had dinner at the same place where we last ate dinner. One of the same waitresses even still works there. I remembered what color the soap in the bathroom is, too. Blue. Dark blue.
Off to Boston.
With that Augustana song in my head, we’re off to Boston in the morning. We have not been back since we moved away in July 2003. We knew that going back while living far far away from the coast would just be depressing. And there are a million things we loved about our life and lives there that just went away for three years until we got back to Baltimore. City things. East Coast things. Etc. Too weird to list them. Mostly vibes and ideas and lifestyle things. Like walking/mass transitting everywhere (like now, only we have bikes in Charm City). Coffee all the time. Tea. People watching. Looking at people’s bags.
We are staying at The Adams Inn — the hotel in North Quincy that we stayed at in May 2001, just before I graduated from college. We were apartment shopping, and it was a nice flirt with our new home for two years. We moved from Quincy Center to North Quincy after two months (long story), so we are actually staying right near where we used to live. I get to take the walks I used to take along the shore and through nice little residential neighborhoods. Visit my old favorite grocery store and the first Panera Bread I ever went to. Hancock Street. I will take too many photos, I’m sure, especially with a hard-drive in the hotel for almost limitless storage. I did not have a digital camera or a blog when we lived in Boston, and I have very few photos of where I lived and none of Boston College, which has a beautiful campus.
Of course, we are in town to work. I think I can take the long ride on the B Train of the Green Line out to work in the same library where I was researching and working on PhD applications four years ago. It has a great view. I broke in my first Moleskine there.
Through the awesomeness of my youngest brother, I will be online all week. Unless the hotel’s wireless is crappy, which I doubt. So the next broadcast will be from Quincy. Pronounced with a Z.
Chasing cars.
My own wedding was very…simple. We got married barefoot (literally) on a lake and had our party-dealie in a stone venue that was very rustic and pretty. We had veggie food, pumpkin spice coffee, very little booze. So I have always had trouble imagining how someone would want the pomp of a big wedding, with mutated drama and such. More of all the things that make weddings crazy.
But even with the event that we planned back in 2003, there was drama. Fighting. Close call for an elopement. And with the “fancy” wedding I went to last night, I assume there was similar drama. But boy did we all have a good time. I wonder if my antipathy against conventions that seem like more trouble than they are worth might be wrong. Or if my estimating powers of cost are just faulty.
The first dance was to Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars,” which is a very nice song. You should obtain it. Or email me, and I’ll send it to you.
Wedding photos to follow soon. And I’m off to Boston in the morning.
Wedding #1.
The wedding season is starting in my extended family. There are several engaged couples, and the first wedding is today. I bought a nice new suit and pleather shoes, etc. I was even going to shave my beard. However, the Mrs. professes to like it, and it does make me seem jolly. I have not shaved that thing since July. Yeah. So hopefully I will embarrass people with photos on here and Flickr, so long as I am not in them doing a stupid dance. Open bar and all that.
Photo Friday: Light.
I couldn’t sleep one night when we were in New York last week, so I played with my camera. We had a nice view on the 28th floor, and it was a clear night. So I put my camera on top of a cup and let it fire some slow shots out of the window. My hands kept shaking, so I had to use the timer and let it shoot in three-shot bursts.
I think I got over my fear of heights and elevators a little that night, gazing out the window and enjoying the cold air blowing over me.
For Photo Friday: Light.
The Uberfork.
I was cooking yesterday and felt a little sick. So I was not paying attention very well. I dropped a small piece of uncooked potatoe into the small space between my oven and the cabinet/counter doohicky. All the way back by the wall. There was no way my stubby/hairy mits were going back there.
I save the purple rubberbands from asparagus and broccoli all the time. They came in handy for moving and for biking recycling bundles in Carbondale. Of course, the real reason I save them is for shooting at people, especially my lovely wife. But yesterday they came in handy.
I pulled out some kitchen MacGyver and attached a small dessert fork to the end of a wooden dowel in our kitchen and made a Nietzschean Uberfork (excuse the lack of umlaut). Asked the Mrs. nicely to hold a Maglite, and wahlah! No stinky potatoe rotting in our kitchen.
I was worried because that happened when I was little. A few potatoes fell under our basement steps and rotted and stunk up the basement for a long long time. Luckily, we didn’t use it for anything but storage. But still.
Pink flamingos.
Wow, a born and bred Hampdenite like me is saddened at the twilight of the pink flamingos, even if they are ugly and plasticy. They are going bye-bye. I suspect that there are hoards of them stashed in basements, garages and closets in Hampden, though. And that plastic probably lasts forever (not that it’s a good thing). So I think we’ll always see them on the lawns of genuine Hampdenites and hipsters from Perry Hall (I said it). My parents have some stone-ish ones with metal legs, but they keep them in the back of the house.
My peeps in Hampden teases me about living in Roland Park (it’s cheaper than Hampden these days, though). But I wonder if I can get them to hook me up with some pink for the lawn up here. Some of my neighbors build chairs and sit out side at night around a fire — which can’t be legal, judging from the police car I saw watching them last night. Maybe some pink will match the wood and flames. Then again, this being Roland Park, I wonder how fast it would take for someone to come and tell me to replace those pink birds with some of my ubiquitous gnomes. As if any of mine are getting kidnapped by some Hopkins frat boys wandering too far up University Parkway.