Category: Boston

I feel unfair posting this in my Boston category, since it’s equally applicable to Seattle residents, but I feel compelled, after my 30 minute commute stretched to an hour this morning, to introduce a new concept to my fellow Massholes Boston-area motorists:

al-ter-nate merge

(n.) A method of bringing two lanes of traffic together into one lane in which a motorist from one lane proceeds and the motorist behind him yields to a motorist in the other lane to allow them to merge into the flow of traffic.

You think this is funny? That the term doesn’t bear defining? Well, the number of motorists who speed up to cut off mergers from the other lane, or who attempt to merge two or more cars in front of a motorist from the other lane, or who don’t come over when it’s their turn to merge even when you open a space for them, tells me that it’s not a well understood concept.

In Seattle, the problem is typically that the lane being merged into is populated by people driving under the speed limit and not leaving enough space between their cars for a motorcycle, much less another vehicle, to merge into traffic. In Boston, it’s worse:

• People in lane 2 speed up when they see someone coming over from lane 1;
• Drivers in lane 1 try to beat their turn to merge by cutting over behind the front driver in line, and blocking his merge attempt;
• Drivers in lane 1 pull out and drive well past the merge point rather than wait their turn to merge, often cutting into lane 2 at the last possible second whether a space exists for them or not. (Especially common at the junction of Rt 2 westbound and 128 south in the mornings.)

I don’t know. Maybe I’m making up this whole concept. Am I alone in thinking that everyone should understand alternate merge?

I was scanning the beer cooler at my local liquor store (which, because Arlington does not allow retail liquor, or beer and wine, sales, is in Lexington), looking for locally produced Märzen-style—okay, Oktoberfest style—beers, when it hit me: pissy weather aside, I actually like October.

This is a heck of a realization for me as there isn’t a whole lot right now that makes me really smile. But October is on the list: the weather gets cooler, you get to break out long sleeves (and tweed!) again, leaves start turning, and yes, there is good beer.

There is also Hell Night at the East Coast Grill. Last year the night left me impressed with the inventiveness of the punishingly hot cuisine. This time, I’m starting to pre-medicate a week early. Should be fun.

(Oh. And for the record? Otter Creek’s version of an Oktoberfest beer is really really good, as is the one from Berkshire Brewing Company.)

Lisa and I paused from house stuff long enough on Sunday to head out to Crane Beach, and I’m really glad we did. Lisa had already visited a few times and liked it enough to become a member of the association that maintains the property. But I hadn’t been able to visit until this weekend. Compared to some of our other beach visits, this beach was an Intercontinental property: prime location, impeccable facility, and really expensive ($22 to enter without a membership).

The sand was smooth and fine, almost like talc. We set up our sun tent and basked for a little while in the 80° weather, then headed for the ocean. Which was about 58° F. I couldn’t bear to immerse my whole body, just stood knee deep with my teeth chattering, while Lisa pointed out the other amazing thing about this particular beach: the water was so clear that we could watch streams of minnows zipping past our knees in a continuous flow. It was absolutely amazing.

I didn’t get my camera out while the sun was really bright, but managed to get a few decent shots in spite of increasing cloud cover. My greatest disappointment was that I wasn’t able to capture the luminosity of the water against the cloudy sky in a photograph, though the first one in the set gives a hint of what I saw.

Just to clarify: a friend asked over IM after my tale of woe with my flat tire: “Can’t you change a tire yourself?” Answer: Yes, and I have always found the Volkswagen jack and tire iron to be exceptionally intuitive to use (having had to change at least one tire in the line of fire on my old Golf).

However, the timing on Monday was the key part that I didn’t spell out. I got the flat at 7:40 am, about 3/4 of a mile from my office building, and I was supposed to be climbing aboard a shared ride to our sales and marketing meeting here in Stowe at 8 am. I can change a tire, but not in 20 minutes. In this case, the tow truck was definitely the better part of valor.

Do I sound defensive? I suppose I feel a little bad that I wasn’t able to resolve more of the problem myself. But I guess there comes a point where doing it yourself is less important than resolving it so you can move on to truly important things.

I was on my way to the office to join a group of people heading to an offsite conference in Stowe, Vermont, and happily driving along when I took a left turn into a shopping center for some coffee and heard a pop. Oh no, I thought. I managed to get the car into a parking space. It was the tire that had been replaced two weeks ago, flat as a pancake.

Hopefully tonight I’ll be able to write the update of how the issue was resolved, but for now I have to catch a shuttle up to Stowe. More to come…

Exiting the Mass Pike onto Route 30 in Framingham this morning, I smelled smoke. It was a frustratingly slow rainy commute, so at first I thought I was just smelling cranial smoke. But no: There was a car ahead with a bad smoke problem. Really bad. Can’t see inside the car because of all the smoke in the passenger cabin bad.

I passed the car as the driver was getting out. He was running around to the front of the car, which, I noted with some alarm, now featured flames starting to lick out from around the edges of the hood. And he was trying to open the hood.

I called 911, of course, and went on my way. But it made me think: Darwin Award candidate. If you can actually see flames coming out of your engine compartment, do you:

1. Run like hell
2. Stay a safe distance away from the car and wait for the fire department
3. Risk burning your hands and a fireball in your face to open the hood

I know which one I wouldn’t choose.

—Incidentally, the title is the word that would inevitably be used in the radio traffic report back in Washington DC any time that a car fire occurred, and it always creeped me out. Because on the one hand, I could visualize people hurt and thousands of dollars worth of damage, and then at the same time … barbecue! So I just had to inflict that little piece of mental damage on my loving readers this morning. Happy Monday.

As in “kaboom.” A pretty good roundup of this week’s underground fires and manhole explosions at Universal Hub—three this week—turns up personal observations from Catherine, Marianne Mancusi, Jeremi Karnell, Kristen, and Ron Newman. The Boston Globe article suggests that a fault in a buried electrical cable is to blame.

From the locations mentioned in the article, Lisa and I would probably have been affected if we were still in our North Street apartment (our apartment was where the Google Maps pin is in the photo).

Incidentally, that there were five bloggers who were personally affected by this is still nothing short of amazing to me. I think that three years ago I was probably the only blogger in the neighborhood.

I finally got around to posting pictures from our trip three weeks ago to Cape Cod. For the record, while it was nice to be able to have the dogs with us, we have decided that closer beaches are better. Lisa and I tried out Marblehead two weeks ago and liked it, and she took her parents to Crane Island this past weekend and liked it even better. So we’ll see.

The other pictures in the album are of the flowers that we have finally succeeded in growing where the awful hedge used to be around our house. In particular, I took a bunch of photos of our gladioli, in honor of my mother and her birthday on Monday (the gladiolus happens to be her favorite flower, and I sent a bunch to her—alas, not from our beds!).

The photo album is also accessible from the Gallery.

I had time to kill before church today and walked to the Barnes and Noble in the Pru—primarily because it was air conditioned and open before 11, but also because I was looking for the summer music edition of the Oxford American. No luck on that front, but I found weird America right in the store.

I walked over to the poetry shelves, which abut some chairs outside the café, and started browsing. About a second later, the woman sitting in the chair closest to me, right in front of the first poetry shelf, called to the guy behind the counter in the café:

“Excuse me—where is security?”

He didn’t respond and she repeated, louder, “Where is security? Is there only the guard in the front this morning? —I don’t need them now, but I need to know where they are.”

I was starting to be a bit concerned and looked over my shoulder but couldn’t see anyone. She continued to speak, more to herself than to the counter worker: “It’s a good thing they have cameras. I know what you’re doing.”

I suddenly had a very uncomfortable feeling. I was standing maybe six feet from her, and there was no one else around. I asked her, “Excuse me, are you speaking to me?”

“You know I am. I know what you’re doing. You’re standing awfully close. I know what you’re doing.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re sitting right in front of the poetry. I’m just trying—”

“Don’t talk to me again. They have cameras. I know all of this is on tape.” And then she launched into a paranoid rant under her breath, most of which I cannot remember, to the effect that I was threatening her. I turned so that I wasn’t looking at her and kept scanning the shelves, shaken.

Folks, this wasn’t a street person—she was a perfectly normal looking woman, clean and well dressed.. And I was wearing slacks and a sport jacket, so I couldn’t have looked too threatening. But the encounter was definitely occurring on two different planets.

I finally found the book I was looking for and walked away. I paid for my purchase and walked out, wondering if I should have said something to the guy at the counter—or something else to the woman. But what would I have said? “I’m sorry, but I was verbally assaulted by a woman who’s clearly off her meds. You might want to get her out of your store.” Or, to the woman: “I’m not threatening you, I’m shopping. And I’ll pray for you, because Jesus loves you.” Yeah, that would have worked really well.

My inlaws are visiting this weekend, and we were debating whether another trip to Tanglewood was in order, since it rained for their previous visit. I checked the performance calendar. Friday will be Weber, Mahler, Carter, and Stravinsky—which would be perfect for me but would probably either terrify or irritate the rest of the family. Ah well. But Saturday?

All Mozart Program. Sir Neville Marriner conducting. Overture to The Marriage of Figaro; two Italian concert arias; Piano Concerto No.23 in A; and Symphony No. 39.

Aw yeah.

Plus it will be only 80° F and sunny in Lenox that day. Sounds like a plan.

Lisa and I went with Charlie and Carie to see the Wagner doubleheader yesterday at Tanglewood. It was a hell of a concert—certainly symphonic but just as certainly operatic.

We brought our customary picnic: homemade calzones with a cold tomato, basil and garlic salsa cruda, along with a few bottles of wine, some taralli, and cheese. We had the low table (to keep from blocking everyone’s view behind us) and Lisa’s Provençal tablecloth. Alas, no candles.

The music was spectacular—at least the first half, comprising Act I of Die Walküre. Deb Voight, who also performed with us in the Mahler 8th, sang a convincing Sieglinde and Clifton Forbis did a spectacular Siegmund. Stephen Milling as the jealous Hunding was even more impressive, both musically and dramatically. But the love aria between Sieglinde and Siegmund was the topper—at least, as long as you weren’t reading the supertitles, which made the incestuous nature of the lovers’ relationship entirely too clear. As Lisa said, repeatedly, “Ew.” Which brings a question: how, exactly, is one supposed to react to a work of high art that rates high on the squick scale? Judging from Voight’s facial expression just as she sang her final line, she struggled just a little bit with the issue as well.

Still, Wagner’s weird take on Germanic myth aside, it was a phenomenal performance, and we had a heck of a time. I kind of wish I were singing another concert this summer, preferably not in the rain.

The image annotation feature at Flickr is one of thoes things that might make me recant my previous position on it. For one thing, it shows me when I’ve missed making a connection with someone interesting.

I was at a networking event the other week, and Sooz, the organizer, has posted some of her photos from the event. Check out this one and move your cursor over the photo—for maximum effect, going from right, where I’m sitting, to left. Where do you end up?

Why, Aaron Swartz, of course. And I didn’t know he was there. The kicker is I saw his Mac OS X 10.0 T-shirt—geek cred that says “I was there before Jaguar”—and thought I should go over to chat. Next time I won’t ignore that voice.

Watching the televised Boston Pops concert tonight, it’s tempting to compare and contrast Keith Lockhart’s face and words as he winds up for the concert and conducts the first few numbers with his interview in the Sunday edition of the Boston Globef. In the paper, he sounded like a petulant boy trying to decide whether to fish or cut bait. On stage and in pre-concert interviews, he looks charming, refreshed and assured. Which is the real Pops director?

As I haven’t had the opportunity to sing under Mr. Lockhart, I can’t offer a first hand observation. I do find the difference in presentation curious, though. Why on earth would someone as apparently media-savvy as Keith Lockhart drop the shield for an interview that made him out to be such a whiner? You’d think he’d, I don’t know, go start a LiveJournal or something.

For the last few years I’ve been posting patriotica on this holiday, when we commemorate the passings of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, as well as the signing of our Declaration of Independence. I may yet post some tonight. Right now, though, I’m too darn tired.

The weekend has been a blur—lots of home improvement stuff. Tonight it took its toll, as we conked out on the brink of heading downtown to watch the fireworks from a friend’s Back Bay rooftop. Instead we’re cocooning; watching the Pops on TV and catching our breath before I head out tomorrow to Tanglewood for my residency with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.