January, in quick review

Perhaps this quick rundown will help you to forgive me for the lack of recent posts. You'll notice that the last week of this calendar is still blank. I'll update it as we go through those days. :)

1: Matt flies in from Prague at a late hour, New Year's Party hosted by friends
2: work
3: work
4: work, Indian food for dinner with friends
5: drop Matt at airport for trip to CA, work, game night with friends
6: sleep
7: run errands

8: work, Sheila returns from Holiday Break, bringing her large marshmallowy cat, Lucky, with her. A minor War of the Cats is waged in the apartment as Lucky and Tabi debate who is Top Cat.

9: work
10: work
11: work

12: work, pick Matt up from airport (get majorly lost in Winthrop, MA after a wrong turn at the airport. GPS wants me to drive through the harbor to get back from airport, evening is saved by my brilliant navigational skills and cursing at the GPS like a sailor)

13: My office holiday party, at F1 Boston, in which we learn that I am quite terrible at driving race cars, Matt takes second place in our heat, one of my office friends places 3rd overall in the company, and we have an enjoyable dinner with coworkers.

14: sleep
15: MLK Day - everyone I know has this off except for me, so I go to work.

16: First day of classes for Sheila and I, Matt starts his new job in Boston. We all go out to Margarita's to celebrate making it through the day. Classes to be elaborated on shortly. After class on Tuesdays, I go to work. My new computer is delivered!

17: work, met Matt and Jon for ice cream to celebrate that Lizzy's is now open again.

18: work, Matt and I go with some friends to hear Howard Zinn talk about his new book and the state of the country. This is both depressing and empowering at the same time. I resolve to donate a sum of money to the Democracy for America campaign founded by Howard Dean in order to put some support behind my talk.

19: Classes - four of them. Sheila has her first round of qualifying exams, and aces them. Followed by picking mom up from the airport. She and I have a nice drive back to my apartment, where we talked to the cats, had a cheese and crackers dinner, knit on some socks, and were eventually joined by a handful of friends for desserts and chatting. Mom and Matt and I sit up long into the night making plans for Saturday. A lot of things in New England inconveniently close for the winter.

20: Mom, Matt and I tour local museums. First, Larz Anderson Auto Museum. Next, Museum of Bad Art and greek food for lunch in Dedham. Finally, the DeCordova Museum (modern art and sculpture garden, but it was too cold for the sculpture garden this time). All museums were fantastic, but I've decided that the DeCordova Museum is one of my favorites, particularly among art museums. Can't wait for it to get a little warmer so we can go back and see the sculptures. After this, Matt and I made dinner at his house (spicy black bean cakes; Matt was in charge, I was just there to chop things), we ate leisurely and chatted, I was introduced to port (which I liked once the raisiny flavor was pointed out so I could place the strange taste), we introduced mom to mochi ice cream, and we watched several episodes of Scrubs.

21: Mom and I went to Trader Joe's in the morning, for the experience. Bought way too much good food. After that, we drove to Alewife, parked next to Matt's car in the parking garage because it's so easily recognisable, headed into Harvard Square where we did some shopping, mild sight seeing, had coffee at Peet's, did some more shopping, had a light dinner, met Matt for dessert at Finale (Matt and I selected the Hot Chocolate Flight, mom had an Armadillo, and we split a creme brulee, a "seasonal sampler" and another dessert I don't remember), and then stopped off at his place to watch the end of the Patriot's game (they lost).

22: Dropped mom off at the airport, got slightly lost (the GPS redeemed itself by getting me to work in one piece), work. Lucky and Tabi seem to have resolved their differences (and you don't get much different than Tabi and Lucky without being different species!). I resolve to restructure my life so that I have more time for people and things that I like, rather than wasting time as much as I usually do. Begin slow transition to the "Getting Things Done" lifestyle, and commit myself to working with more focus when I work so that when I'm not working, I can completely take my mind off work.

23: Third day of class. This semester I'm taking Computer Mediated Group Work, a small self-guided class I'm putting together with a professor based on classical readings in computer science (we started with Alan Turing's Computing Machinery and Intelligence), and independent study based loosely on continuing my thesis research, and a Machine Learning class. Followed by work.

24: work; in the evening, Sheila and I get the brilliant idea to make cookie dough just to eat. Make a large batch, leave out the eggs since we're not baking it anyway, and have a lovely evening of watching Law and Order and eating cookie dough.

25: Leftover cookie dough for breakfast because, hey, I can. Wouldn't want it every morning, but once in awhile it's good to live on the edge.

26: classes, catching an evening train to New York. Train was running a little late, so we got into Long Island at a pretty late hour. The train was fun, though. I managed to read a paper for class and knit a bunch on my sock.

27: Went to the New York Aquarium in Coney Island with Matt and parents. The aquarium was pretty fun; lots of cute fish and several enormous walruses (walrai?), plus an intelligent octopus and a game in which you try to guide your jellyfish colony to greatness (it turns out that I'm really bad at being a jellyfish). After the aquarium, we stopped off for pizza at Totonnos, since it had ranked in the New York Time's Time Out New York's top 10 pizza places in NY (according to their website, "Only God Makes Better Pizza"). I highly recommend the garlic pizza. Tried beer from the Brooklyn Brewery because it seemed the thing to do. Turns out that it's pretty good as well. In the evening, we went to see Matt's brother as Geronte in Scapino, (formerly known as "Les Fourberies de Scapin"). The show was great, and we all enjoyed watching Matt's brother being stuffed in a sack and beaten with a sausage. Later in the evening, Matt and I had a brief video conference with Dad, in which we mainly made faces at each other and tried to figure out how to make the TX based wireless connection not die.

28: Be forewarned: I am probably going to murder the following account of our foray into The City with touristy observations and language. I'm not apologetic. Met several friends for brunch in what I was told was the Hell's Kitchen area of NY (I'm really at a loss when it comes to this socio-geographic stuff). Ate at HK (they don't seem to have a website, so the best I can do is this review that happens to have a photo). I had french toast made with french bread and what we believe to be cardamom and cloves, which turned out to be pretty tasty if a little strange, alongside a vanilla honey latte. If I did it again, I would stir said latte well...I wondered the whole time why it wasn't tasting like honey and then found all the honey in the bottom of the glass. After we finished, we stopped by Burgers & Cupcakes, mostly because we couldn't resist walking into a place with that name. Ended up taking a box of 1/2 dozen cupcakes home with us because we really couldn't decide (2 marble cake w/chocolate frosting, 1 chocolate w/buttercream frosting, 1 vanilla w/buttercream frosting, 1 chocolate w/peanut butter frosting, 1 vanilla with pink/white swirled frosting and a heart candy on the top). Caught the train home, where I finished my sock, showed Matt how to wind a ball of yarn from a skein (I'm not sure why this was so interesting), started sock #2, read Real Simple's February issue cover-to-cover, and sampled the (very tasty) cupcakes.

29: work, made pesto with a side of cubed drunken goat cheese and cherry tomatoes for dinner. (Pesto with peppermint and cayenne pepper added is actually pretty good). Read a paper for class, cleaned the kitchen, and talked to several friends I've been too busy to speak with all month.

30: Six months ago today, I met "that guy Matt, from my cosi class" in Cambridge to check out the MIT museum 'cause it was summer, and we were bored. :) The museum turned into walking around Cambridge, turned into looking for somewhere to have dinner, turned into grabbing ice cream, turned into watching a movie, turned into "What are you doing this weekend?"...and there you have it.

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