Archive for the 'life in the big city' category
Devices in Boston Area Linked to Marketing Campaign
Attack of the Mooninites
Time for class. Commentary later. This is absurd.
Later.
This is a good one too: Boston devices a cartoon publicity ploy
It made Slashdot, too. This commenter sums things up pretty well. I spent the day on or near campus and heard nothing of it all until I saw a “heads up, something’s going down” message on Emerson’s internal main page around 3:30. It was warning students to check for delays on the subway (which made it painfully obvious that the MBTA’s website is in serious need of more bandwidth for occaisions like this). But apparently the Red Line, which goes over the river, was only delayed by 15 or 20 minutes. Can’t comment on other transportation. Apparently the media have enjoyed making an event of it all afternoon, though.
Categories: life in the big city
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Two Fridays ago I had an open afternoon between a morning in payroll and a late afternoon staff meeting for my new lab assistant job. To pass the time, I wandered into John Adams’ library.
I had passed the main branch of the Boston Public Library on several occaisions because it’s within easy walking distance of the college, but never gone in before. It is, in fact, two large buildings. The first door I opened led to a grand old space with stone lions and Classical figures painted on the walls. I briefly wandered around with my jaw open and a nagging sense that I wasn’t really supposed to be there, eventually figuring out that it holds only the non-circulating research and reference sections. Eventually I made my way into the Johnson building, which is built in the style we might call Mid-Twentieth Century Ugly (you could say Utilitarian if you think that’s harsh), and houses everything that normal people expect to find in a three-story library. But before I got there, I wandered into a temporary exhibit called John Adams Unbound.
The focus of the exhibit was a wall of books: Adams’ personal library. Fascinating to see the great variation in size — some books wouldn’t be out of place in a row of paperbacks, but his collected works of Locke would compare favorably with my parent’s largest atlas.
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Categories: books, life in the big city
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January 30, 2007 11:02 pm
As bees, geometry again. I’m going to stop linking and give this a category because this gives me the warm fuzzies every time it happens.
Two more incidents, bringing me up to a total of four:
#3. Last December, on the street, leaving school. A guy right behind me gets my attention — he’s probably from my college; he fits the profile — and asks about the bag. I start to babble, but he cuts me off. “Wait,” he says. “I don’t understand.” I am flustered and want to get home. “It’s about honeycombs,” I say.
#4. This afternoon in a Starbucks near school. A well-dressed middle-aged business man. I’m starting to have a spiel and I rattle it off as my friend stands by, bemused. Businessman seems honestly curious and interested and is very polite with an acute sense of how strange it is to stop me as I walk by, on my way out with my “wild orange herbal tea” (quite nice, by the way).
Categories: bag stories, life in the big city
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Yesterday morning I was awoken at 8:30 by the mailman ringing the door buzzer. That would have been okay, except that the fire alarm had gone off at 3:30.
For a moment, my brain hardly registered that it was in fact the alarm. It wasn’t the one in the apartment, but the one in the lobby-and-stairwell part of the building, which the construction workers manage to set off all the time. The effect was like hearing someone else’s car alarm go off–hardly worth paying attention to. Of course, then it did kick in that it was still the fire alarm and the workers had long since gone home.
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Categories: life in the big city
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Well, the calendar turns and here I am with a new schedule.
Clearly, last semester wasn’t nearly crazy enough, so I’ve upped the ante. I’m taking three classes instead of two, and I’ve just landed a second part-time job. Since the college mandates that I can only work a total of 20 hours/week for the college, this looks (in my haven’t-lived-it-yet eyes) not unlike fall term of my senior year at Furman. Especially since I’m taking a poetry workshop again!
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Categories: grad school, life in the big city
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December 17, 2006 9:46 pm
I almost wrote this as a rip-off of a MasterCard ad…but let’s be honest. Everyone’s done it and we’re all sick of them.
Last weekend, Courtney and I had a Christmas shopping day! Feeling festive, we decided that we needed a tree in the apartment. Even if it is almost worthy of Charlie Brown.
The ornaments are from the Dollar Tree, which is probably why the star broke when Courtney tried to bend it so it would stand up straight.
Fortunately, a little hot glue did the trick. Straight is so overrated.
Yay!
Categories: life in the big city
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December 15, 2006 12:26 am
I think I qualify as a fairly hardcore fan of Harry Potter. I read the first of the books before they became a phenomenon. I dressed up as Professor McGonagall for Halloween before the first movie came out. I have copies of the first book from the U.K. and from Germany. I’ve been to buy a book when it came out at midnight. I know the ins and outs of the plot and I can tell you what’s non-canon about the movies. I skim the headlines at some of the biggest HP sites and I try to solve the puzzles on J.K. Rowling’s website.
So when I tell you that I felt like a newbie at this wizard rock concert last Sunday, I want you to understand my full meaning. It was a little like DragonCon in that one’s fandom is suddenly dwarfed by people you simultaneously want to hail as comrades and mock as fanatics.
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Categories: Harry Potter, life in the big city
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December 14, 2006 10:26 pm
Having carried my “As bees, geometry” bag (second half of this post) around for three months, I had started to think that no one would ever question my motto of choice. I’ve gotten comments about the green ribbon that’s tied around the strap, but no on had pressed me about the Latin. (Wait, not true. My roommate asked once, but the conversation got sidetracked and she never got an answer. Oops.) So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to “toss off an obtuse explanation”…though, may I add, at the time, Jean was much better at coming up with said explanations off the top of her head.
All that is a long introduction to say that the question has finally been asked — and answered — twice in a week and a half.
The first time was in the elevator last week. Having a college in downtown Boston means that all our buildings are at least ten stories high, so elevators are a major commodity and there is a huge rush on them right before classes start. I was trying to get up to the lucky 13th floor for work as 2:00 classes were starting, but by the time we got up to the 9th floor or so, it had emptied out to me and a man who is probably a professor. “I can’t help noticing your bag,” he said. “Can I ask what it means?”
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Categories: bag stories, life in the big city
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December 9, 2006 12:11 am
December 8, 2006 12:58 am
Yes, those were the highlights of my night at the Boston Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker. There was a dancing teddy bear and Clara flew out in a hot air balloon!
I almost had tall-person-in-front-of-me problems, but the seat next to me was empty, so I helped myself and had a great view! There was one back corner I couldn’t see because I was so far to the side, but that’s what I paid for and my gamble was good.
From a technical standpoint, the highlight of the show was the hot air balloon that took Clara and Drosselmeier to and from the Land of Sweets — the Opera House is big, ornate, and gorgeous, so it was neat that they were able to use the verticality of the stage to fly in a balloon! (Well, not a real balloon, per se, but a big cut-out balloon shape with a basket beneath it.)
Having realio, trulio little boys in the party scene was nice. They didn’t have to wear caps! Mother Ginger’s “little boys” still had their hair tucked into their hats, though.
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Categories: life in the big city, theater
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