Boston Marathon (with pictures)

Greg and his friend Logan engineered a device that would track Greg as he ran the Boston Marathon in real time on a Google map. It would have been really cool - if it had worked. Logan and I drove out to the 10k mark (6.2 miles) so Greg could get rid of the device if it wasn't working. A marathon is 26.2 miles, so Greg didn't want to have the thing strapped to his arm if it wasn't necessary. The thing didn't work, so we did the hand off. That's my main excuse for not having running pictures of Greg. (Development on the device continues...)

Greg's family and a bunch of our coworkers came out to watch Greg run past the 25-mile mark, which is just a mile from our office.


The trees weren't very leafy yet, but many of them were flowering.

Greg was pretty wiped out after the race. Yay Greg!

There are blooming tulips everywhere.

I love how much this tree (below) leans. I'm sure when the leaves fill out, it will lean even more. One leaf isn't very heavy, but hundreds of leaves must be heavy enough, because I've seen branches hanging lower than they had been.

Flowers and Such

This plant was hanging onto the rain water.
See the big, fat drops in there?The community gardens by my apartment are coming back to life and look amazing.
Hyacinth flowers in bloom


Pink trees!?!
The robins are back.


There’s masonry work being done on the exterior wall of my apartment building. Men walk along the fire escape outside my 4th floor windows and there’s a lot of banging around. But the men laugh and sing, and the lilt of their accents makes it much more tolerable.

Boston Marathon

The 114th Boston Marathon is tomorrow. It's Patriots' Day, which commemorates the anniversaries of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which kicked off the Revolutionary War. Patriots' Day is a Massachusetts holiday that now coincides with the marathon and a Red Sox home game. Not all businesses close, but many of those who don't get the day off end up working from home if they can. The marathon is almost a straight line, 26.2 miles outside the city into downtown Boston. If you normally cross the marathon route to get to work, you're pretty much out of luck on Marathon Monday.

Greg is running for the second year in a row, so I'm taking the day off to watch. Greg's parents are coming up from Connecticut, and his brother, sister-in-law, and aunt are also going to be there. You can only run the Boston Marathon (officially) under one of three circumstances: You can run for charity, you can be given one of the two spots each local running club is given, or you can qualify. For the men's 18-34 age group, you have to run a marathon in 3 hours 10 minutes. Greg qualified last January at the Disney Marathon in Orlando, which qualified him for two consecutive years.

It should be a very exciting day!

Loving the Gradual Spring

There are flowers everywhere these days.

I took my second knitting class and made a snowflake hat - just in time for spring.

Below you can see it was rainy as I walked to work. This March was the rainiest on record for Boston. You can also see the leaves are just starting to pop open.
The apartment buildings in my neighborhood are run by management companies that hire groundskeepers to plant flowers for spring.
The flowering trees haven't started blooming yet - these are the regular trees' blossoms.

Spring in the City

Okay, I'm still a little bummed this past winter wasn't very snowy, but as expected, and just like last year, spring warms even my winter-loving heart. The crocuses are blooming, the birds are singing, and the warmer weather is bringing everyone out of doors.

The field near my apartment was so full of activity last evening as I walked home. People were playing frisbee, soccer, football, basketball, and field hockey, while others were running laps, or just sitting enjoying the pleasant air. It's funny how 5 o'clock can seem like night during the winter and like the afternoon in the summer. Greg described it perfectly: it's like a scene from a movie, set in a busy park, and the director just yelled, "Action!"

Boston Latin School is the first public school and the oldest existing school in the United States. Here it is reflected in the New Research Building (the NRB). The NRB is fairly new (2003), but how long do they think they can use that name? The NRB is the largest building ever built by Harvard University and it's the largest expansion of Harvard Medical School in the past 100 years. Harvard Medical School was founded in 1782.

Here's the Harvard Medical School Quad yesterday at lunch. It was a beautiful day for eating outside. I ate outside in San Diego all the time, but I really do appreciate it more after the winter. Goodbye leg warmers, hello flip flops.

I've gotten a little cocky-is-too-strong-a-word about my GustBuster umbrella. It busts the heck out of gusts. I'll have to take some photos of it...but seriously, look at this awful umbrella!

I brought Greg a sprig of a succulent from my parents' house when I was home for Christmas. He stuck it in regular soil in a Fluff container, and somehow, it's happy. It's grown a lot, and last week it bloomed! The native flowers here are much showier than desert flowers, so I was the only one in our office to notice the blooms, but weren't they great?!

Catching Up - February and March

Greg and I walked around a frozen lake. No one else was out, and it had been pretty warm, so we didn't attempt to walk out onto it.

Check this out! This twig melted into the ice it was on. I pulled it out of its little nook to show you. The twig must have warmed up slightly more than the ice one day.

And check out this maple leaf - it melted through the ice and is on the ground below - and left a maple leaf-shaped hole!

There was the tiniest brook leading to the lake. Due to all of the melting that had been going on, there were small ice shelves; perfect for stomping on.



I can't figure out this sign. You can't turn right unless you plan to park right next to another car?
I had jury duty. I sat in a room with other potential jurors and knitted. I was released at 2pm. Not too exciting.
It rained the other day and there was a long line of folks waiting for the T.
REI was having a sale, so I used the gift certificate my aunt and uncle gave me for this snazzy new coat. Thanks! (The hat is complements of Sunshine.)
Geese prints in the snow.

Proof that it did snow this winter - it just didn't accumulate much.

Notes on Winter

It makes sense that Boston's cold tap water would be very cold in the winter, but man does it get cold! I mean, numbing cold. It hurts. So then I try to only turn on the hot water, which usually works for hand washing and other quick steps, but when washing dishes, it can get scalding. So I find myself alternating: rinse these dishes with hot water, turn the water off to soap up more dishes. Rinse those dishes with cold water, turn the water off. A mix is sometimes called for, though that takes two hands and/or more effort.

Many restaurants hang heavy curtains in their doorways to keep the cold winter air out. Other establishments have revolving doors or double doors. If there are double doors, I try to make sure we're all through the first door before opening the second door. No one enjoys that cold gust of wind as they eat their dinner.

Speaking of wind, Greg bought me a super duper umbrella for Christmas. Back in San Diego, one has little need for a sturdy umbrella. For those few times when you might need an umbrella, any type should work. If a breeze inverts the umbrella, you can usually right it and be on your way. But I hope I've previously demonstrated that things are a little different here in Boston. This is another case in point. Boston can really rain. I mean pour buckets. My first summer here was filled with many thunderstorms and torrential downpours (which I relished). Additionally, the wind here can get pretty gusty. There's a street on my walk to and from work that acts as a wind tunnel. Not only will it invert the common umbrella, it will break its little bones and eat it for breakfast. Enter The Gustbuster. This puppy is a real umbrella. It has half a dozen patents and is the umbrella you buy once. No more of these $12 CVS umbrellas that last a year or less. The Gustbuster is here for the long haul. It's not very rainy in winter here, so I've only been able to test The Gustbuster a few times, but the other evening was a perfect opportunity. There was a wet snow and lots of wind. It's no fun having wet snow blow in your face, so I pulled out The Gustbuster and, though I had to hang on tight, my umbrella never even thought of inverting. I think I even heard it yawn. "Piece of cake," it sighed. I'm hoping it will be a very rainy spring.

When the snow plows plow the snow, they pretty much just shove it to the sides of the streets, where cars park. This is why people have to dig their cars out of the snow. But the snow stays in the general vicinity, so as you maneuver in and out of parallel parking spots, the car goes up and down over the snow bank. We're not talking about mountains of snow here, just a few inches. As a car moves over the snow, there's often a sickening crunch, as if the car were scraping against the curb or the adjacent cars. But it's just the crunching of snow. Greg was parking the other day, and I was glad he was confident of where his car was in relation to the things around it. I think I would have been too hesitant in my movements; nervous that every sound was car-on-car.