beowabbit: (Me: on Ferris wheel 2012-09-09)
Boston skyline against sunset (wide 2)Propeller aircraft coming in for a landing at LoganBoston skyline against sunset (detail 1)Spectacle IslandMy beloved looking over the waterBoston skyline against sunset (wide 1)
Boston skyline against sunset (detail 4)A buoy in front of Spectacle Island (1)Wind vs. oil 1Wind vs. oil 2

Via Flickr:In August 2013, my darling [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom took me on a harbor cruise and sea-chantey singalong put on by the Revels (http://www.revels.org/). We had a blast! These are some of the pictures I took from the harbor.

beowabbit: (Me: shadow against sand under ripples)
Just heard (thanks to a phone call from [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom, who’s also safe and sound) about the explosions at the Boston Marathon. I wanted to let everybody know I’ve been spending this holiday resting and catching up at home and I’m safe; I haven’t been anywhere near the Marathon.

I’m terribly sad for the injured, of course, and hope nobody dies.
beowabbit: (Local: Quincy house pre-purchase)
Power: on
Water: flowing and potable
Trees: standing
House: warm
Basement: dry
Cat: sleeping

My work is closed today, and the Boston subway shut down at 2:00pm, but all is well so far in Quincy. I hope things are going as well for everybody reading this.
beowabbit: (Boston: Davis Square sign)
[livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and I were on this train (Globe article on Boston.com) that got stuck between Porter and Harvard squares. (Some of the details in that article are a bit off; for instance, the train got stuck around 9:00am. I’m guessing the time quoted in the article is when the T decided it had to be taken out of service.) According to some of the T personnel on the train, the initial problem was that the brakes locked, but at some point that somehow turned into a power problem. They sent a rescue train to try to push us into Harvard; when that didn’t work they tried to pull us back to Porter, and we got most of the way there, but had to walk the last thousand feet or so along the tracks. This was delayed for quite a while, because (I gather) there was a section of track where they were having trouble getting the third rail turned off. All in all, we were underground for a little over 2.5 hours, and then we got shuttlebusses from Porter to Harvard, and got back on the train. (Shuttle busses had been replacing service between Porter and Harvard since shortly after our train initially got stuck.)

All the T personnel we interacted with were extremely professional and impressively competent. Along the tunnel,they had a sort of bucket-brigade of people along the route warning us of every tripping hazard or wet spot and shining flashlights for us. They clearly know how to handle stuff like this, and I think if there’s ever a zombie apocalypse, I hope [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and I end up with a bunch of MBTA employees.

The passengers, with one slightly grumpy exception in our car, were quite understanding and pleasant during our shared ordeal.

We were so drenched by the time we got out. The A/C was on on our train until they decided to evacuate (and turned off the third rail), and it wasn’t too bad after that, but the tunnel was pretty hot and muggy. [EDIT: I suspect they never actually turned off the A/C, just turned it down to conserve power. Not sure. It was pretty warm walking in the tunnel, though.]

I haven’t looked at it yet, but [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom says we made it onto the TV news, at about 3/4 of the way through this video.

PS — Meant to post this yesterday, but with catching up at work, dress rehearsal, and the limitations of my phone keyboard I never managed.
beowabbit: (Scenery: wildflower blossom)
Another delightful weekend. On Friday, I met [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom at her house (on the late side, because she had a surprise wedding to perform). Neither of us had had dinner, so we grabbed an exceptionally yummy dinner at Sound Bites. At her place we had a great time hanging out on the porch with [livejournal.com profile] vanguardcdk, who is excellent company.

Yesterday, we went to the annual Earth Day festival on the Charles River Esplanade, which included a concert by OK Go. As we arrived, OK Go were performing a really lovely song on handbells. We wandered a bit, and [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom went swagging, said swag this year mostly consisting of food. It looked nommy. I took a little time out and just sat by the river, enjoying the first sunny day after a week of grey rainy skies, while [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom braved one of the muddier parts of the festival.

When we’d wandered through the whole thing, we still had a fair amount of time before we’d want dinner, so we decided to see a movie. We were choosing between Pirates of the Caribbean and Thor, and the schedule favoured Thor, which was what we saw. It was fluffy fun. After all the walking (and free samples) we weren’t all that hungry, so we went to the South Station concourse and got grilled cheese sandwiches from Cheeseboy, a relatively new grilled-cheese stand there, on our way home.

Today, which turned out again to be gorgeous and sunny, we spent a big chunk of the afternoon outside working in the yard. [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom weeded and tended the flowerbeds, and made a new one along the driveway; we sprayed for bugs (since some of the plants are showing signs of depradations), I mowed, and we planted new cosmos seeds. We’ve already got very vigorous lupines from last year. The potted grape and blackberry plants I got a few weeks ago are doing well (although the blackberry is a bit chewed up); the blueberry plant is so chewed up that I worry it might not make it. Then we did a little shopping (during which I got some pachysandra for a particular patch on the front lawn where currently nothing grows but the occasional sparse weed), and I drove [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom home.

Oh, mixed in there was a bit of concern about being able to get the car to start, but we eventually did.

When I got back home, I planted the pachysandra and discovered, perhaps, why that particular spot has trouble growing anything. Well, one problem is that it’s in shade almost all the time, but also, the soil is spectacularly rocky. It’s about half gravel by volume. But even if the pachysandra don’t do very well, they’ll be an improvement.

Oh, and I got enough sleep! That never happens.

So it was a delightful weekend!
beowabbit: (People: me with plumtreeblossom May 2007)
Had a wonderful weekend with [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom.

Saturday early evening we went to see The Town, a Ben Affleck movie set in the Charlestown section of Boston. We both really really enjoyed it. (I enjoyed it as a movie, but I also really enjoyed seeing so many places that are part of the backdrop of my daily life in a movie.)

Then we came home to Quincy and made quiche for dinner. [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom was really tired, so she took a nap while I made quiche and then woke up for what turned out to be a very late dinner. It felt good to be eating a home-cooked meal; we don’t do as much of that as we’d like to.

Today we were both really tired, and we slept very late. More quiche for breakfast (it’s the perfect food that way), and we ended up snuggled up in bed watching another episode of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos miniseries.

(We’ve been working our way through that on Netflix over the last few months, and it’s very nice and slightly weird to re-watch as and adult this series that I first saw as a child on my family’s little black-and-white TV when it was first broadcast. Seeing with [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom as an adult this show I watched with my family as a child gives me a wonderful sense that my family is knit together, a sense of connection and continuity across decades and states — or as Carl might say, through space and time. I get a little bit of that feeling, too, when we’re driving and a Prairie Home Companion monologue comes on the radio, reminding me of happy times listening to the news from Lake Wobegone with [livejournal.com profile] bcat1, [livejournal.com profile] silverlibre, and [livejournal.com profile] ka9sqb.)

Anyway, as I said, we were both inexplicably sleepy, so we had a very lazy afternoon puttering around the house, and ended up grabbing dinner at IHOP on my way to walk [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom to the T station (we were aiming for Outback Steakhouse, but their Quincy location has closed). And since seeing [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom off, I’ve had a very sleepy but pleasant evening at home.

Yesterday it was uncomfortably hot and humid. Today the temperature, the breezy energy in the air, and the piles of dry yellow leaves all say autumn. (And the temperature, in fact, says late autumn.) But the whole weekend has been beautiful.
beowabbit: (Geek: Mac 64)
I’ve been meaning to post this for ages.

So, as I have mentioned, I will be moving to MIT towards the end of this month.

That means my group has an open Unix/Linux sysadmin position. Want one?

More information. )

If this sounds interesting to you (or to someone you know), ping me, and I’ll put you in touch with my boss.
beowabbit: (Animals: parrot at 2005 Boston Pride)
So [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and I (and [livejournal.com profile] docorion and many other people we know) were quoted extensively in a great story on polyamory in today’s Boston Globe magazine. The print edition has photos of me and [livejournal.com profile] docorion as well as the photo of Alan and Michelle that’s on the online edition. The online version (linked above) has a video that [livejournal.com profile] docorion and Alan (W.) and Michelle were interviewed for which is, if possible, even better than the article — at any rate, I think it does a great job of presenting polyamory effectively to non-poly people in a way that lets the warmth of the relationships and lives described shine through. I am really pleased about how it all turned out.

PS: Alan M. discusses the article at his blog Poly in the Media, and Kamela reviews it favorably in her Boston Open Relationships Examiner column.
beowabbit: (People: me with plumtreeblossom May 2007)
Last night [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and I joined [livejournal.com profile] quem98 and a bunch of her friends for a really delightful dinner that involved meeting a bunch of interesting people for the first time. I wish I knew all their LJ names. It was a wonderful group of people. (Dinner was at Namaskar, and I had the Lamb Kashmir which I highly recommend.)

Then today, [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and I went to the circus. The nonprofit Big Apple Circus, in particular, which was set up outside Boston City Hall, with all their tents in a big concrete courtyard. (It’s weird to feel completely like you’re indoors in the concession “building” and to notice a street light poking up through a hole in the floor.) There were a couple of impressive aerial acts, a pair of impressive jugglers, a guy who did implausible things balancing urns on his head (ending with one that must have been about sixty pounds if it was actually ceramic, and it probably needed to be ceramic and that heavy in order to have the kind of momentum it did), lots of silly and entertaining clown acts, acrobats on horseback, trained dogs (all shelter rescues), and lots and lots of fun. I got lots of photos. Let’s see if I get organized enough to post them.

After that, I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to my sweetie, so I asked if she wanted to sit somewhere for some coffee. We ended up at Faneuil Hall having an early (and tasty) dinner, instead. (And on the train on the way home, I realized we’d forgotten the coffee we were originally searching for, despite passing some yummy coffee-roasting smells.)

So, a wonderful weekend.
beowabbit: (People: kissing plumtreeblossom)
This is going to be short because I'm very sleepy, but I had another really lovely day with [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom today. We woke up and puttered around the house for a while, then went out on a couple of errands, including brunch at the little diner near my house, and then spent all afternoon doing yardwork. My sweetie weeded my flower-patches! And machete'd down all the foliage that had overgrown the brick path to my porch, which was a very time-consuming job! And I mowed the lawn, and then weeded a bit as well. (I tried siphoning out the gas in my gas mower and going out and getting fresh gas, in case that was the problem, but it wasn't. So I mowed the lawn with my reel mower, which worked better this time than it had last time. Entirely adequate.)

Then we took the T to the North End (Boston's Italian neighbourhood) and had a very yummy meal and some wine out on the patio at a restaurant called Mother Anna's. I rarely make it to the North End, and I allowed to [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom as how the next time my parents [livejournal.com profile] silverlibre and [livejournal.com profile] ka9sqb come to Boston I should take them there. And then it occurred to me that I was having such a delightful time (I mentioned that it sort of felt like being on vacation) that I should share it with them. So I called them, and [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and I got to have lovely little chats with them both.

Then we took the T here to her place. Between sun, physical labour, a yummy rich heavy meal, and wine, we are both very very sleepy, and I think (this is utterly unheard of for me) I might be asleep by 10 or 11. It's a very happy tired.

[EDIT: PS -- I'm going to be giving myself half as much testosterone twice as often now, and today I gave myself my first shot at the lower dose. I had been doing 200mlmg every two weeks, and I was kind of manic for the first couple of days and really dragging towards the end. This should even things out a bit.]
beowabbit: (Default)
[livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom’s mom has been visiting her this weekend, and I spent a bunch of the last couple days with them. After work on Friday I met them at the Kendall Square Legal Sea Foods for dinner. I forget what the fish I had was (it was a special, so I can’t just check the online menu), but it was deliciously prepared in an elegant sauce that involved lemon, butter, and mustard, and it was “breaded” with shredded potato, which worked very well. [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom had filet mignon, and her mom had lobster.

Then this morning I brought over corned beef and some veggies, which we put in [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom’s crockpot for the day while (after bacon and eggs which [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom) we went to the Aquarium for the afternoon. It was unusually crowded (neither [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom nor I had seen it quite that crowded before, and we got a wheelchair for [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom’s mom, who broke her foot a couple months ago and isn’t up to lots of walking yet, and it was quite a challenge getting through the crowds to see the exhibits with the wheelchair. We’d see a gap we could squeeze into and start for it, but within three or four seconds it was full. So there was a lot of waiting, but it was still quite a lot of fun for all three of us. The sea lions and penguins were utterly adorable as always. ([livejournal.com profile] sionnagh, I told them how you used to feed the penguins. They were all rockhoppers then, right? Now they’re all or mostly African penguins.)

Then we came back to [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom’s place (where her wildflower garden is doing quite nicely, thank you) for corned beef, which we got to share with her housemate [livejournal.com profile] vanguardcdk who arrived just as we did. After dinner there was cake with ice cream, and then we sat on the balcony and chatted for a while.

Now I am home, and I think I’m going to go to bed early (maybe after reading a little more of Harry Potter). It makes sense that I’m sleepy, since I woke up out of a prosaic-but-inexplicably-creepy dream at 6:30 this morning (which would count as sleeping in for [livejournal.com profile] ka9sqb, I’m sure, but is unthinkably early for me) and couldn’t get back to sleep.

In other news, I have a doctor’s appointment (with another doctor in my PCP’s office since he said it had to be a morning appointment and he didn’t have any available until the very end of August) to gauge the results of my hormone treatment. I presume it will involve bloodwork and that’s why the time of day matters. (The short subjective version is that I’m doing much better since I started treatment, but don’t feel like I’m quite there yet, so I think my thyroid dosage needs some tweaking. I think my testosterone dosage is probably fine.)
beowabbit: (Boston: Citgo sign in Kenmore Square)
Left work very late. Due to construction the T was running shuttle busses between Broadway and JFK/UMass. The one I got on was insanely crowded. It also had some trouble with its engine, such that it was extremely jerky. Some of the riders were drunk.

This is a poor combination.

Fortunately I was not splattered, nor did I slip and fall. Not everyone was so fortunate.

The bus drove around the block with us all holding our noses (those of us who could reach them in the crowd), which took a long time due to whatever was wrong with the engine. Then we got off and waited for another shuttle bus to take us to JFK/UMass, where I finally got on the train that's taking me to Quincy Center.

Most of the time I love public transit.

[EDIT: And when I got home I was reminded that I had been virtuous and set the cleanable bits of my CPAP machine to soak this morning. So I have to rinse them thoroughly and let them at least semi-dry before I can go to sleep. Good thing I can sleep late tomorrow.]
beowabbit: (Local: Quincy house pre-purchase)
I love my house. It has a deck. Nice people come and eat on the deck with me. Some of them cook for me, and some of them bring me food. I love my friends, too, and my sweet chef [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom.

Got to see the fireworks tonight, although in the rain and wind we weren’t sure we were going to last that long for a while. [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom, [livejournal.com profile] cathijosephine, [livejournal.com profile] darxus and I set off for the fireworks over the Charles tonight (after a yummy dinner at Kagawa in Quincy), but due partly to mobility constraints and partly to scheduling constraints [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and I couldn’t stay with [livejournal.com profile] cathijosephine and [livejournal.com profile] darxus, so we ended up watching the fireworks from the Longfellow Bridge, from which we couldn’t hear the concert, but had a great view of the fireworks.
beowabbit: (Animals: parrot at 2005 Boston Pride)
Just a reminder of tomorrow’s Poly Boston dinner tomorrow at 7 at the Alewife Bertucci’s. Details are on the calendar. If you’re planning on going, it would be nice if you could RSVP by email or comment here, although that’s not required.

[Cross-posted to [livejournal.com profile] polyboston.]
beowabbit: (Boston: Davis Square sign)
+: I got to bed unusually early last night, and got an unusually large amount of sleep.
-: Despite that, when my alarm went off I was incredibly tired, and hit snooze umpty-zillion times, and was late using my light box for the first time since I started using it.
(-: And I actually think the light box is more trouble than it’s worth, although I should probably give it a couple more weeks.)
+: Despite getting a late and slow start, I felt like I had a reasonably productive day at work.
++: And afterwards I got to hang out with [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and [livejournal.com profile] docorion and [livejournal.com profile] mud_puppy at Namaskar and have yummy Indian food.
-: My yummy Indian food was somewhat less yummy than it might have been, because I forgot to ask for no cilantro and no tomatoes.
+: [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom’s yummy Indian food was highly yummy, as was the bread.
+: I got to hear some more of [livejournal.com profile] docorion’s fun stories.
+: [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom gave me an awesome May Day present, an interactive book (not quite a pop-up book, but along those lines, with flaps to open and things to unfold) about pirates! It even has a compass and some jewels embedded in the front cover! Between the compass and the maps I’m sure to find some booty!
+: I got to unburden myself to [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom a bit about my medical concerns (well, vent, really; she’s heard it all before).
++: And tomorrow I have an ENT appointment which I am really hopeful about.
+: And after dinner we hung out and chatted over tea at Diesel.
+: I drank a lot of tea at Diesel. And a lot of water and lassi at Namaskar. This is called “foreshadowing”.
-: This fire sure delayed my ride home. Instead of a train straight through from Davis to Quincy Center, it was a Red Line train from Davis to Kendall (where I could faintly smell smoke on the air), a shuttle bus from Kendall to Lechmere, the Green Line from Lechmere to Park Street, and the Red Line from Park Street to Quincy Center.
-: Boy howdy did I have to pee by the time I finally got home.
-: And I’m too tired to deal with the fridge, which I seem to have been attempting to create life from primordial ooze in.
-: And I think I’m too tired to do laundry.
++: But I’m about to go to sleep!
+++: And by this time tomorrow I might know more about my breathing problems and might even have a plan for what to do about them!
beowabbit: (Hawaii: palm tree in Honolulu)
It’s January 6. I live in Quincy, Massachusetts, slightly south of Boston and right in the heart of New England. I just went outside onto my porch in jeans, no shoes, and a T-shirt, and I was entirely comfortable. If I go for a long walk outside today, I think I might put long sleeves on, but a sweater would be overkill.

I’m glad my house is quite a bit above sea level.
beowabbit: (Misc: brain side view on black)
What a full and fine weekend! Saturday morning I had dim sum with [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and a bunch of her friends and mine (and in the process discovered that we have some friends in common I didn’t know about!). Dim sum was yummy as always, and I was ravenous when I got there, so I stuffed myself.

(I’d been running just a little bit late, so decided to take the car to the Quincy Center T station rather than walking. What I didn’t realize was that Quincy’s Veteran’s Day parade was about to start — I had no fewer than three intersections close just as I was about to go through them, had similar trouble getting back home (since some of the streets I’d come through were now blocked off), and ended up dropping my car off in a parking lot I could get to and walking. So I was sadly more than half an hour late, but fortunately that just meant there was lots of yummy stuff already on the table when I got there.)

Then the lovely (x3) [livejournal.com profile] minerva42, [livejournal.com profile] underwatercolor, [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom, and I went to the Museum of Science, intending to see the Body Worlds 2 exhibit. Unfortunately when we got there we found out that the earliest entrance time that still had tickets available was 5:30 (6:00 by the time we’d finished talking about it), and [livejournal.com profile] minerva42 and [livejournal.com profile] underwatercolor had evening plans and hadn’t planned on spending that much time in the museum. So we all got exhibit hall tickets, and [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and I got tickets to a movie and to Body Worlds 2 as well.

The regular exhibits were fun, but not particularly new to any of us. (The electricity show, with the huge Van de Graaff generator, suffered from a presenter who could give Mumbles a run for his money.) Definitely fun, though, and we got to see tamarins! Yay monkeys!

Then we said goodbye to [livejournal.com profile] minerva42 and [livejournal.com profile] underwatercolor, and [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and I saw the 3D Mars movie ).

And finally, we got to go to the Body Worlds exhibit, which was amazing and somewhat awe-inspiring. Body Worlds 2 exhibit )

I could go on and on for ages about this exhibit (feel free to ask questions, or browse through the exhibit catalogue if you’re over at my house), but I’m running out of LJ-posting steam, so I’ll stop babbling now. (I definitely want to go back while it’s still in Boston, more than once if possible.)

[livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom and I then took the T to Quincy, where we both slept very well. I dropped her off at home, since she had a busy Sunday planned. [EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention introducing [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom to Sarsfield’s, an Irish pub in Quincy. We had a couple of yummy pints, but I like going there on weeknights better — it was extremely crowded.]

I had a busy Sunday planned, too, but so far I don’t seem to have actually gotten to any of it. :-)
beowabbit: (Pol: Gettysburg address)
Election returns are making me happy. Deval Patrick’s victory for Massachusetts governor was no surprise at all, but I’m sure excited about it. Similarly, Democratic control of the House was no surprise, but I’m happy about the apparent margin. And things are looking hopeful in the two Senate races that haven’t been called yet (Virginia and Montana); if the Democratic lead holds in those two races (and Joementum doesn’t bolt), Democrats take the Senate. It felt really good clicking reload and seeing candidates I’d given money to win. (Although a couple — Ford in Tennessee and Carter in Nevada — did lose. [EDIT: Oh, and Lamont, of course.])

Wow, Patrick’s victory speech was great. I envy my friends who were in the room for it. He seemed genuinely humble. I guess it’s easier to be magnanimous and inclusive when you’ve won by 20 points. :-)

On the bad side, my back has been hurting for a few days, and I woke up around 6:00am groaning in pain. Breathing hurt. After some naproxen sodium and a hot shower I’m feeling a lot better.
beowabbit: (Pol: Gettysburg address)
One of the side benefits of dating [livejournal.com profile] plumtreeblossom is that she lives so close to Somerville’s Powderhouse Park, site of the only known surviving Civil-War era ballistic missile, a remnant of President Lincoln’s Strategick Defence Initiative, or SDI.

A photo, and an historical essay. )
beowabbit: (Pol: Gettysburg address)
Earlier, in my post supporting Deval Patrick, I suggested that you needed to be registered as a Democrat in order to vote in the Democratic primary. I read something recently that says that’s not the case; you can also be registered as “unenrolled” — you just can’t actually be registered in a different party.

[livejournal.com profile] lilbjorn has recommendations for Tuesday’s Democratic primary (namely: Patrick, Silbert, Bonifaz) which I intend to follow — I confess I had only been following the governor’s race. Also, cos agrees with lilbjorn’s support of Bonifaz for Secretary of the Commonwealth. It sounds like Bonifaz is not likely to win, but it also sounds like a vote for Bonifaz is a vote against vote-rigging, and this is a race where a vote of conscience does no harm, so I’ll vote against vote-rigging.
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