An Exciting Night

The farm team for the Red Sox is the Pawtucket Red Sox, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, about an hour from Boston. A bunch of us from work went to a game last night. I borrowed Greg's car (he was out of town), and hit the road. Check out this street sign: Right Lane for U-Turn. Does that make sense?
I knew it would be short-lived, but I went through a pretty heavy thunderstorm.
I made it to the game, and the ground in Pawtucket wasn't even wet. It was a great game. Clay Buchholz was pitching (he's apparently a great pitcher for the Red Sox), I had a hot dog and some popcorn. Bottom of the ninth, tied game, bases loaded, we get a hit and win the game. It was really fun. Driving out of the parking lot, there wasn't even much traffic getting onto the highway. I wasn't very far along when I got a flat tire. Alone on a busy highway at night is not the ideal place to get a flat tire. I called for a tow truck, who removed me from the highway so I could safely change the tire.

Ha ha, he actually did the changing, thankfully. Then I got horribly lost getting back into the city. It started when I couldn't take a left where I thought I could, and instead I got spit onto the highway. I kept taking wrong turn after wrong turn. In my defense, everyone says how difficult Boston is to navigate. I finally ended up calling my brother at midnight (9pm in CA) to Google-map me home. Thanks, Bubba Luke; you were a wonderful life line. The one-hour drive from Pawtucket took me three and a half hours. Gawd, was I glad to get home, scoop up Billy and squeeze him close.

Sweet Relief

I've never been happier to see blue skies. It seemed like it was gray for weeks. In San Diego, I always joked that if the June Gloom got you down, you could drive east for 20 minutes and be out from under it. The cloud cover we've had here was more pervasive, and I'm so glad it's over. The ten day forecast has a chance of thunderstorms and partly cloudy every day, but I can handle that. I love thunderstorms (I'd gotten fed up with the impotent drizzle, though). And partly cloudy is just fine with me, as long as I get a little blue skies from time to time, to keep my own blues at bay. Below, Billy seemed confused by the sun shining into the apartment this morning. Perhaps he'd forgotten what sunlight is, poor fella.

Drizzly and Blue

Everyone thought the "long, harsh" winter would get me down, but I loved winter in Boston. I've loved the weather the whole year I've been here. But it's been drizzly and cloudy for weeks, and the June Gloom, which I thought was a San Diego phenomenon, is what's finally done me in. After work for the last couple of days, I've been so down, and I know it's the oppressive gray skies. Fortunately, I've started running again, and that seems to do a lot to wipe the blues away. There's a great park near my apartment, and each loop is 1.7 miles, or I can head for the Charles River, which has been three or four miles so far, but can be as long as I want. Billy, with his affection and amusing playfulness, also helps immeasurably.

Drizzly June

It's been raining again. A lot of places have flowers planted to bloom in succession. The blue iris photo from my Urban Fowl post was taken in the same place as these orange flowers.

Even in the drizzle, Sox fans head to the game. Here, you can also see a guy waving cars in to his parking lot.

The gas stations near Fenway Park turn into parking lots when there's a Red Sox game on. They just make way more money that way.

A friend of mine has a sailboat, and a new Genoa sail.

At the harbor

A Cat in a Home

From Nevada Barr's book Flashback:

[Anna'd] wondered whether it was a kindness to drag [her cat] to [her National Park Service assignment on an island in] the middle of the ocean but, once the trauma of cat travel was over, she'd congratulated herself every day on the wisdom of her decision. With a cat in it, a home was never empty. Echoes, like mice, were frightened from the corners, and loneliness, though still possible, had blunter teeth.

Summer Solstice

Today, the first day of summer, Boston's sunrise was at 5:07am; sunset will be at 8:24pm. Civil twilight is from 4:32am to 8:59pm.

The sun rose over San Diego today at 5:41am and the sunset will be at 8pm. Civil twilight: 5:12am to 8:28pm.

We get 71 more minutes of light than San Diego. However, while it's 71 degrees and clear in San Diego, it's been around 60 and drizzly in Boston. Well, yesterday was nice.

One Year in Boston!

Today, June 16, 2009, marks my one year anniversary of moving to Boston. What a wonderful year I've had. I love Boston, and I'm so glad I moved here. It's certainly the biggest decision I've made in my life, and one of the best. I am so happy here, and I see that, while San Diego and my family and friends are so dear to me, I've grown so much from having moved away.

Last year, when I told my friend Sara I was moving to Boston, she introduced me to the theme song from the Mary Tyler Moore show. (Be sure to watch all of it -don't miss the end! The video continues beyond the sound.) The subsequent seasons had different versions, so if you do your own search, make sure to watch the theme song from the first season. Mary Tyler Moore First Season Theme Song

The lyrics to Sonny Curtis's "Love is All Around," from the Mary Tyler Moore Show:
How will you make it on your own? This world is awfully big, girl this time you're all alone. But it's time you started living. It's time you let someone else do some giving. Love is all around, no need to waste it. You can have a town, why don't you take it? You might just make it after all. You might just make it after all.

The Freedom Trail with Out-of-Towners

My friends Barry and Kori came out from Denver and stayed with me a couple nights. We walked the Freedom Trail and had a terrific visit. Here's a picture of Kori taking a picture of Barry taking a picture of the Union Oyster House, the oldest restaurant in the country.
Flowering onion
The Public Garden

Hilarious bulldog out for a walk

People playing soccer under the Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge

The Bunker Hill Monument, 300 stairs to the top, whew!

On the Sunday preceding June 17 (Bunker Hill Day), they have the Bunker Hill parade. Here's the Bunker Hill parade from the top of the Bunker Hill Monument.

Can you read the inscription at this graveyard? It reads that this hill in Boston is "well-protected from the three great annoyances, of Woolves, Rattle-snakes, and Musketos."

Urban Fowl

The turkeys, now numbering three, have been spotted all up and down Avenue Louis Pasteur.I haven't seen them spread their tail feathers (they're not mating), but they're rather pretty and iridescent when you look closely.

This guy's checking out his reflection in the window.

And back to the geese.

The grass had gotten very high. (That's what we dramatic types call "foreshadowing.")

An older group of goslings, being led by their parents, crossed the greenway. The younger goslings are in the foreground.

And then the older kids were off, crossing the street.
It rained a bit last week.

This kid was great. He was feeding the birds and had an audience of ducks, pigeons, starlings, and a squirrel.

You may be tired of seeing goslings; here's a duckling.

I've never seen pigeons sitting down, let alone lounging in the grass.

The pigeons aren't the only ones enjoying laying on the grass in the sun.

The Public Garden

The little nook neighborhood park on my street.

I walked to work the other day and found two people mowing the lawn of my little swath of greenway.
I guess it really did need to be mowed. And although the geese were absent that afternoon, by the next day, they had returned and were munching freshly cut grass. Boy, all they do is eat and poop.

Spring in the City

Below, the Victory Gardens with the Boston skyline in the background. Everything in the garden is in bloom, and the birds are chirping. It's so lovely...
Unless you have problems with this:

Can you see the wispy webby stuff in my fingers? It's pollen, and it floats through the air everywhere. It's like it's snowing again. Below are fireworks. New Hampshire's motto is Live Free or Die. They're big on personal freedom. Seat belts are only required for minors, and you can buy fireworks here, which other states outlaw because they're dangerous.

I've taken lots of pictures of Boston apartment buildings, but since I don't come across houses in my daily life, I have fewer photos of them. As I'm out in the suburbs more, I'll try to capture the look.

The rhododendrons are in bloom.

The other day, it was sprinkling just the slightest bit. It wasn't very cool, but the goslings were huddled up anyway.

Then one of the goslings gets the bright idea that mom might be warmer.
Everyone goes over to mom and starts tucking in under her wings.

Mom needs to readjust, so she stands up and walks a few feet away.

One by one, the goslings tuck under again, this time from the tail, as dad looks on and keeps us at bay.

I was having drinks with some friends after work last week, and someone asked what I liked about Boston. My stock answer is seasons and architecture. And I looked up at the building facade above the restaurant's patio, and saw a perfect example of the latter. Everywhere you look in Boston, the buildings have so many more architectural details than what you typically see in younger parts of the country, like San Diego. I love San Diego, don't get me wrong. I'm going for a visit in just over a month, and I'm really looking forward to it. San Diego is a great place to be from. But for now, I'm enjoying Boston, largely because it's different from what I grew up with.

Something else you don't see in San Diego is wild turkeys. Let alone wild turkeys crossing the street in the city!

In the upper center of the picture, below, you may recognize the pillars of Gordon Hall, the building at Harvard Medical School that I photograph so frequently. These guys were crossing the street as I walked to work.

Sometimes they stop traffic, but this time, they crossed the street and walked up the sidewalk, out of the way of cars.
Too many gosling pictures? Greg is so patient as I whip out my camera whenever I see their fuzzy little butts.

Katy, Billy still loves his cat cave/bed. Thanks for the hand-me-down! He also loves the new toy I got for him. It lost its feathers very quickly, and the elastic string has gotten shorter as Billy has chewed the ends of it, but the toy remains.