Category: Boston

I’ve been struggling to take a good picture with my digital SLR of the view we get from our park; fortunately, the good folks at the Friends of Robbins Farm Park website got a good shot for me. I think we need to join that organization, given how much joy we’re getting out of the park.

In other local news, looks like I have a Googlegänger in Sudbury: “The offensive highlight for the game came in the first half on a 70-yard drive, featuring two clutch, long third-down passes from quarterback Tim Jarrett to end John Kelley and running back Derek Lowe.” Just for the record, folks, if you ever see the word “quarterback” next to “Tim Jarrett,” it ain’t about me.

Boston Globe: Barrier Comes Down on Hanover: After five decades, a section reopens. The change “marked the first time since the 1950s that pedestrians and drivers could pass directly from the cafes of Hanover Street to Haymarket’s fruit and vegetable stalls.”

I’ll definitely have to go and check out the new street configuration. For one thing, it’s the start of the end of the North End’s isolation, as I predicted three years ago.

In addition to the pumpkin patch yesterday, the weekend was pretty good. On Friday afternoon I got a chance to catch up in person with Chris Reeder and his lovely fiancée Barb at Mr. Dooley’s. We talked for quite a while and discovered it is indeed a small town: she used to work at Robertson Stephens, where my friend and Sloan classmate Charlie worked before business school. Chris and I got into a discussion about business school programs that culminated in an invitation to sit in on a case discussion of Linux and the software industry at Boston College, where Chris is doing an MBA. Hopefully I can make it.

On Saturday it rained like crazy, but we got out and did a few errands. Among other treats, I picked up a set of photos at Costco that I had transferred to CD. Sometime in 1999 I started getting all our photos on PhotoCD, but prior to that we had several photogenic trips that missed being digitized, including our honeymoon to Italy. Since that was the first time I had been out of the country, I took acres of photographs, including the teaser to the right. (I will be publishing more of those photos online soon once I figure out a technical challenge—more details shortly.) Bonus points to readers who can identify the location of the teaser photo. It is of course in Italy, but where? Leave your answer in the comments.

Today Lisa’s parents and I will be catching up on some work around the house while Lisa’s out of town on business—and we’ll be trying to keep the dogs from destroying the house too. Wish me luck…

Lisa’s parents are in town, and today we partook of a unique MIT tradition that I never experienced before: the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch. The glassblowing labs at MIT sell the pumpkins every year to raise money for their facilities. We got there at the right time: any earlier and we would have been waiting in line with the crowd, which stretched from the Kresge Oval into the Infinite Corridor; any later and the pumpkins would all be gone. As it was, we got a very nice six-inch glass pumpkin and I got some decent photos around campus. (I noticed while putting some of my photos in order this weekend that I had never taken any of the MIT campus. Shame, shame.)

One of the best things about our neighborhood is the park just on the other side of the street. Part of it is that it gives the dogs a place to romp. Part of it is that we meet other dog owners, neighbors, and friends. Part is that we can look straight down the hill into Boston—on a clear day, you can catch the glint of the sunlight on the gilded dome of the State House.

And part of it is the activities that happen there. There’s a baseball diamond abutted by a soccer field—right now, the boys’ and girls’ leagues are alternating timeslots on the field. Further down the hill is a playground that brings all the neighborhood toddlers and their parents during the day.

And the other day, there was something else entirely:

Yes, Virginia, that’s a parasail. There’s a gentle slope from that hill down to the sports fields, and there was enough wind that the sail operator got about ten to twenty feet of glide at a time.

As I brought our dogs around that afternoon, I took them to the benches that overlooked the city, sat there, and watched the late summer sky deepen its blue.

Boston.com: A guide to local brewpubs. What’s exciting about this list is, of its ten establishments, I had only visited three and don’t know anything about four of them. My Irish friend Niall can’t come back into the country soon enough; I feel a powerful thirst coming on.

Almost forgot: Adam pointed me to ArlingtonList, a community mailing list for residents of Arlington, MA. The site has instructions on joining the list, member bios, password-protected archives, and a wiki (which has since been turned off as it was underused and getting defaced). The site also features a reprint of a 2002 Boston Globe article about the list. It’s interesting. I may have to rethink some assumptions about the role of geography in building online communities.

And the Globe this morning had an article about CraigsList and Boston. I didn’t realize that this was the first place CraigsList went after its original San Francisco location.

I finally connected with Adam Medros (of JennyAndAdam.com) this morning. He is, it turns out, in our neighborhood, just over the top of the hill. We caught up about work and the neighborhood and traded home improvement notes. It’s good to know someone so close by.

Now I’m taking advantage of the free wi-fi in Panera to get a little work done before I go back to the dogs. It’s kind of nice to have a little breathing room in a place where there are other people around.

A few quick photos from last week, including my walk with Esta around the North End and our trip with the dogs to Cape Cod.

(Apologies. I think I promised no more gratuitous dog photos. I was clearly not thinking when I made that promise.)

Lisa and I took the dogs, hopped in the car, and drove to Cape Cod today. It took a while to get going, and ended up taking about three hours from the time we left the house until we got to the Cape Cod National Seashore. We had a good time romping with the dogs—Joy ended up getting closet to the surf of any of us, getting soaked with a sudden wave, but everyone had a great time. We’re looking forward to just soaking in the relaxation this weekend. I think.

Some pix from the MFA yesterday. I think that camphone photos of the permanent exhibition qualify as “personal, non-commercial photography without flash or tripod.” I experimented a little with camera placement, and did some post-processing on the last two shots. I took a series of increasingly closer shots of a couple of works, and composited them together into a single frame. I’m not entirely satisfied with the results but I think I’m going to try it again another time.

We definitely need to go up to Vermont in ski season and meet Chris Doyle at Okemo, but there’s now a reason to visit sooner—even before fall foliage: the Andy Warhol: Intimate and Unseen collection opening September 18 at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. Interesting article in the Globe about the donor of the private collection, Andy’s last live-in boyfriend.

…so after our dogs narrowly escaped getting sprayed by a skunk on our front steps last night, I don’t want to know what the other two things to come are going to be.

I opened our front door and our storm door at 10:30 last night, and the dogs bounded out the door and down the steps, where in a second I saw them start barking at something that looked like a big black raised tail. I saw the white in the fur a second before I desperately hauled the dogs back in, but it was too late for the front stoop. Lisa has hit it with a Clorox solution but there’s still a residual stink. And we washed the dogs, just in case. Twice.

Speaking to our neighbors, we learned that skunks are not uncommon in this neighborhood, and there may even be an albino skunk wandering around. So I guess that’s my cue to keep a sharper eye out.

I am, finally, legally recognized as a resident of Massachusetts. As I wrote on Friday, I’ve had some adventures with the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Lisa and I went together on Monday with the objective of changing our Washington State drivers’ licenses, and getting our cars registered in the state. That’s four transactions (two drivers, two cars). On the first date, we managed exactly one transaction: Lisa’s driver’s license. We had a cable bill in her name, but at that point, no proof that I resided in Massachusetts; and our insurance agent hadn’t signed our proof-of-insurance papers.

The next day I took care of some preliminary insurance stuff, and then returned to the RMV. I got my car registered, but not Lisa’s (we didn’t realize she had to sign her form). And I couldn’t get my drivers’ license, because I had an as-yet-un-notarized copy of our mortgage papers but no other proof of our identity. So far: two trips to the RMV, each time waiting at least two hours; two transactions in total completed. I was scoring one-for-one.

A smart man would have concluded that I had two more trips to the RMV coming and planned accordingly. I optimistically returned with different proof of residence and Lisa’s signed paperwork on Wednesday. Result: Lisa’s car was now registered, but my drivers’ license was not yet issued, as my other proof of residence was not accepted either.

Today I returned with our checkbook, which had my name and address in it, and got my driver’s license issued.

Four RMV visits, four successful transactions. But we’re finally legal.

On Anita’s suggestion, I got out of our house last night and down to the Trident Cafe on Newbury Street for the Boston Blog Meetup. In attendance:

• Sooz
• Wendy Koslow from the Berkman Center
• Jared Dunn
• Sun
• Jessica
• Ejovi
• David Stephenson (currently experiencing technical difficulties)
• And a few others whose names I didn’t get

Had a good time, even though the free wifi was a little low-powered. No complaints, though, especially since the provider, Michael Oh of Tech Superpowers, popped up on my Rendezvous list in iChat!