Category: Boston

Friday night seems like an appropriate time to kick off the weekend on the blog. Moxie has been hosting a “booze blogging” post for the last few Friday nights—maybe I can get a photo by the time she posts this week’s post. The Changs are heading to the Russian River region for a Barrel Tasting weekend (we’re very jealous, guys). And Lisa and I are heading tomorrow to St. Patrick’s Day at Harpoon Brewery.

Tonight will be a little more mellow; as soon as Lisa finishes up, we’re heading to John Harvard’s.

I busted my butt for a few hours yesterday, between shoveling our walks and blowing our driveway clear (and then reshoveling the walks with the rest of the snow that fell). This morning there was a fresh half-inch everywhere. The snow really never stopped falling yesterday; fortunately it was far enough above freezing in the middle of the day that we didn’t get new accumulation until after nightfall.

Uncle. I’ve had enough. And we’re all starting to go a bit crazy here. For example, see the Liberal Avenger’s inspired riff on Michelle Malkin’s bizarro claim that Boston is in imminent threat from anarchists: “Hopefully the storm will slow down the terrorists, gang-members and anarchists and buy us enough time to put our children on trains headed to red-states and to clean and lubricate our weapons for the coming siege.”

…a time to shovel, a time to blow, a time to fix snowblowers and a time to rest one’s aching back.

We have about nine inches here—when I shoveled out the sidewalks this morning, the snow on the ground was almost exactly the height of our bottom front step—and it’s still coming down, though not as fast as it did last night. I’ve replaced the broken shear bolts on our snowblower, and when I’m done with this post I need to go outside and blow the driveway.

If this is what they mean by March coming in like a lion, I’ll pass.

(Nice pan-Boston-blog snow coverage at Universal Hub.

Universal Hub: FleetCenter renamed to Boston Garden!. For a day. Drew Curtis’s Fark.com, which bought naming rights for the center for a day during a charity auction, ended up renaming the center “Boston Garden” after several less funny but more sophomoric in-joke names (the “Fark.com Duke Sucks Center,” “the Fark.com UFIA Center,” “the Fark.com Abe Vigoda Memorial Center”) were rejected.

This is much classier and cooler. Thanks, Drew!

(Incidentally, don’t look up UFIA unless you have a strong stomach.)

Boston Online: Wicked Good Guide to Boston English. This is a compendium put together by Adam Gaffin, who maintains the Universal Hub site—and who, on the strength of this guide, will be a judge today in the Wicked Boston Accent Contest.

The guide, in the spirit of HL Mencken’s The American Language, captures information about pronunciation, odd vocabulary, and usage. Where else would you learn, for instance, about the Massachusetts Negative Positive? Or, for that matter, what the title of this post means?

A few good discussions last night in Harvard Square. At the night’s two gatherings, I renewed acquaintances with Doc Weinberger, Betsy Devine, and Sooz, met Zephyr Teachout (aka Zonkette), Henrik Schneider, Shimon Rura of Frassle, Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems and Tinderbox, Gregor Rothfuss, Bill Ives, and Peter Caputa. Good pix here from one of the gatherings.

I was intrigued to hear about Bill Ives’ book project on practical tips for corporate blogs.

Joho the Blog: Web of Ideas: Netty Friends. Nothing like free gatherings of Net thinkers at Harvard to really get the ideas flowing. Also see the (perhaps over-dramatically named) Genius Workshop, which on Wednesday debuts exactly as Doc Weinberger’s Web of Ideas session ends.

Boston.com: Zeta-Jones acts up at Harvard. I was around Harvard Square on Thursday. It would have been fun to see this Hasty Pudding gig in person; too bad the parade got cancelled.

We have so little good light these days that it’s taken a few different photo exhibitions to get a good gallery full of post-snow photos. Call it the “thaw” batch—more because the weather has been mostly above freezing than because the snow has gone anywhere.

The latest gallery spans a chronology from the 25th of January, right after the storm, through today when we walked around the Public Garden a bit. Along the way the Patriots won another Superbowl and we visited the National Heritage Museum, which gives a uniquely Masonic view of local history in Lexington but also has some good exhibits of general interest including a fantastic Paul Revere exhibit. (Look in the gallery for an original Peanuts strip with a Paul Revere connection, as well as an empty Moxie bottle from the turn of the last century).

Wi-Fi Networking News: Boston Puts Wi-Fi in Subways. This would have been useful two weeks ago when I got stuck on the Red Line for forty minutes thanks to problems with the switching system after the blizzard.

Well, that tears it. This plus the Sox winning the World Series definitely lays down the law. New England is the place to be for sports faithful for … well, almost` every major sport.

And then there’s the little matter of a certain Vermont ex-governor’s political future. It’s all connected, I swear.

Ground Hog Day 2005: 6 More Weeks of Winter. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today, which “means” six more weeks of winter. Could we wait until the blizzard, and its associated ice dams over our gutters, have finished slowly melting away before you hit us with the news next time, please?

Big ups to the Ground Hog Day 2005 blog for sharing the experience with us, 6:30 am fireworks and all.

Another day, another shovelful. Having grown up in a nominally warmer climate where it only ever really snowed once every couple of years, I never really learned how to deal with snow. It turns out that it’s all about maintenance. Every morning after the snow falls, you go out and shovel the walk and snowblow the driveway. Shoveling doesn’t have to get to the pavement, just close. Every morning thereafter, you keep scraping at the path to get ice, drifted snow, packed snow, etc. clear and give the sun a chance to do its work. Snow shoveling is like living, it’s a journey rather than a destination.

It must be January. On top of the foot-plus remaining from Sunday’s storm, we’re getting more of the white stuff today. A couple of inches so far, and I can easily believe the reports of up to seven inches by nightfall. I’ve already been out to shovel once and will have to do so several more times today so the dogs don’t freeze.

As Charlie said to me over IM, “thank goodness—we didn’t have enough already.”

On reading my tongue-in-cheek take on the “most depressing day of the year” yesterday, George thought I was snowbound and losing my mind. I wasn’t, at least not the former—after a good hour-long session with shovel and snowblower, I excavated both our cars and went out for groceries yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, I learned a few things about driving in Massachusetts with this much snow.

First, your fellow drivers really don’t know how to drive in snow. They cut people off aggressively in slushy lanes, or else they drive 5 mph down perfectly dry pavement. Second, not every street is well plowed—at least not after two feet in 24 hours. The roads around Fresh Pond, never a joy at the best of times, were narrowed and slushy; Massachusetts Avenue from Harvard Square down to the river was essentially totally impassable, and I’ll need new shocks after jouncing my way down it. (Arlington, on the other hand, did a better job of plowing, apparently because they had wider streets on which to pile the snow.)

This morning I had a taste of the real joy of snow. Lisa had gone downstairs at 5:45 am to drive to Hartford for a client meeting, and came back up a few minutes later to ask me to get the snowblower out. Apparently the snowplows came by during the night and left another two foot by two foot drift at the mouth of our driveway. So I was out at 6 am violating noise ordinances so my wife could get to work. This is of course the flip side of Arlington’s superior plow capability.

It all starts to be a bit reminiscent of the Massachusetts Snow Diary (for the link to which I thank the comments section at Dr. David Weinberger’s blog. Apparently he has a slightly more sour take on the Massachusetts winter experience).