Ah, Another Christmas

The more they occur, the less exciting they seem.
Another holiday is over. We are in Columbus, Ohio and getting ready to return to Cambridge. It has been fun but I am ready to leave the land of the endless malls.
Happy holidays all around. Lets all start planning New Years!

Time Waster/Text Analyzer

So I came across this site thanks to this blog. What is does is use the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator and lets you find out your blog's type.
My results are not too surprising:

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

Goodbye B-Side Lounge

So last night was it for the B-Side Lounge. It is all over. Doors are locked and we no longer have a place to hang out and bitch and moan and commiserate. It was really sad. We found out via text on Friday night and proceeded to spend a few hours on Saturday and Sunday hanging with the old crowd and remembering the good times. I am actually getting a little choked up just writing these words.
It is amazing that we all found our own little bit of Heaven in Ward 4. The B was where we all became friends. It is where we took family members to either show off or frighten off! It was a place where you could walk in and not have to deal with attitude from the bartenders. The music was cool and they often played stuff we wanted to hear. It was the site of our Sunday night funniest home video ritual. No more will we sit around laughing at fat people falling down (As Dave often refered to the show). Or the night that they would put the Simpson's on just so we'd stay a little bit longer. Then there was the night we made the mistake of staying too late on a Saturday and the crown was so deep and crazy that they let us out through the kitchen. Then there was the night that Clinton hung out with Ben Afleck and Jennifer Lopez.
There are so many people that we have become friends with over the years of hanging out there. Last night most of them showed and we all tried to think of a place that we could turn to. And none of us could. The B-Side is irreplacable.
I'll be posting some photos from last night later. Good times indeed.

Palate Cleanser

I feel like I have to put some things up here that will distract from my horror story detailed below. So I'm going to put up some pics. We traveled a bit this past summer and fall and I took quite a few pics so I think I'll bring there over here and show them to you all.

Providence, October 4th.
I spent a Saturday down in Providence to check out the new wing of the RISD museum.
I took some pics. Here ya go.


This is a new condo tower being put up on the riverfront thingy in downtown. This used to be a giant wasteland. I believe this is where they held the first X games way back in the early nineties. They built a ton of skate ramps here.


This is the new RISD wing on North Main Street. Kinda bleh. It looks like a cheaper version of the New Museum in NYC. which is pictured below.

Sorry it is kinda dark. It was nighttime don't ya know.





These are photos of some of Dale Chihuly's glass pieces. There was a little show of his work up in the new galleries at RISD.

Ugh

This week has been brutal. The GREs sucked ass. The test itself wasn't that hard. I breezed through the Math cause I just didn't care. The writing went well. I think I did an okay job there. And well, I could have done better on the verbal. I was very disappointed with my score. Granted I got 80th percentile which I guess is pretty good. I just would have like to have done better. It's annoying. Especially when one of the grad programs actually makes a point of saying that they'd like at least a 700on the verbal section. I did not make that. What was even more aggravating is that I was getting really obsure terms. So naturally I thought I was doing pretty well.
Anyway...whatever. I contemplated another go at them but decided it would be a waste of my time and energy with no guarantee that I'd even get a better score. My energy needs to go towards the applications and screw them and their damn test.
Speaking of tests, that testing center is a freakin racket! The amount of money they must make just by setting up some ghetto ass computers running testing software that hasn't been rewritten since DOS is astounding. They jokers are making a mint with very little effort.

Otherwise I guess things are going well. Class is cruising along. Work is boring and dull as usual. It is Halloween and we are locking ourselves in for the evening. C is a bit paranoid as we were broken into last year on this evening.
I'm trying to decide what to cook for dinner.
hmmmmm food.

Family Tales.

I'm going to avoid lamenting on the whys and wherefores of not consistently blogging. It seems that every time I return to this blog it is simply to spend time apologising for not writing and then never write again. Wait...I'm doing that right now. D'oh!

Anyway, I am here to regale you all with a tale about a recent family visit that should serve as a warning to all those inclined to invite family members to stay with them.
Last week C's (significantly) older brother and his new wife came to Boston. They stayed in a hotel for three days and then moved in with us. This is the couple whose wedding we attended last fall in Sonoma which is where they live. The first few days were fine. We lost a Sunday as they immediately called us and wanted to hang out. We spent the day giving them a tour of MIT and Harvard. A tour that they seemed awfully disinterested in. I don't think I have ever seen someone who visits a place and then doesn't really care to see anything. C's brother had the nerve to call MIT "the Stanford of the east coast." Seriously? Are you kidding me?
Anyway, we proceeded to spend the day bar hopping as the only thing they did seem interested in was drinking tequila. Ended up at the B-Side where our tab was a startling $150. They paid for it which was nice cause I certainly didn't drink my share of that in beer. I would have been comatose!
Monday, Tuesday and Wed were fairly uneventful. Both C and I worked so we didn't have much interaction. Sis-in-law made enchilladas on Tuesday that were pretty jammin despite being made from overly processed ingredients. I think my stomach is still digesting most of them. It has been many, many years since Rice-A-Roni passed through my lips or touched one of my pans. Sure, maybe it is the San Francisco treat, but I'm not sure it was a treat to consume.
So Thursday comes along and we all meet at the B-Side after I finish class.
Tequila gets consumed. Lots of it. Although not as much as Sunday as the bill was only $105 this time. Which I paid. There is some tiff between the brother and the wife apparently due to his smoking. She has a bit of a hissy because he smells like cigarettes.
We get back to our apartment and order pizza. They proceed to go into the library where they are sleeping and begin yelling and screaming at each other. Loudly. Very, very loudly...to the point where C has to barge in and pull them apart. He throws his brother out of the house and the wife goes tearing off after him. She comes back a few minutes later and is on the phone with the airline trying to change her flight. All the while throwing her crap into her bag. I roll my eyes after offering up some token sympathy then go back to watching TV.
Then the brother returns and they begin fighting again. This time louder and apparently physically. C has to barge in again and pull them apart. She is screaming and crying. At this point I head to the bedroom with my book and leave poor C to mediate. I have no idea what time he gets to bed. I crash as I have to work in the AM. C is fortunate to have taken the day off. Although by this point he'd rather be at work than spend time with his crazy brother and the wife.

Friday comes along. C feigns a migraine, hands the crazies a map and sends them out into the city. We all meet up that evening for dinner at Legal Sea Foods in Kendall.
Over the course of dinner I start to notice some unusual behaviour from the in-laws. I realise as the appetisers arrive that they are playing a bit of pocket pool with each other. They have cleverly disguised their doings with napkins. I try to look away and pretend that I have no idea what is going on. I look above their heads and out the window. I strain to make sense of the reflected images of the televisions. Anything to take my mind off of the shenanigans taking place on the other side of the table. Now bear in mind these people are almost fifty years of age. And this is their behaviour in a restaurant. Granted, Legal's is not the Four Seasons but surely some decorum is in order? C is oblivious. Which is probably for the best. Who wants to see their siblings acting this way! Honestly, I don't want to see anyone acting like this! Unfortunately, I can no longer say this.

I kept my mouth shut about this. They got in a cab on Saturday morning. I went to the gym for a couple of hours and C proceeded to play Batman Lego. A friend of ours came over that night for drinks and I spilled the beans. C was horrified and has banned them from ever visiting us again.

There is a lesson here. My family never visits. They might voice some desire to but they never do. I can count on one hand the number of visits I have had. And two of those involved an academic graduation.

oy!

OMG. Back at work. totally sucks. It took me most of the morning to get through the emails I had waiting. Lame-ness abounds.
I'm struggling to keep my head up here. I forgot to change my alarm clock back to the appropriate time and so woke up with very little time to make it to work.
So annoying. Thankfully the morning meeting was taking place today so most people didn't even notice that I was a little late.
So tired and sleepy here.