#46 Boston - Shorts and Tank Tops April 22 07

Yes, spring has officially arrived yesterday – we have had nice weather for two days in a row, and everyone in Boston is delirious with pleasure. Oscar has started a chirp fest with the birds on the other side of the window, and I am not sure yet as to who will win. Let’s just say that Banana Boy here seems to be enjoying himself nevertheless. Today, for the first time in 2007 I jogged in shorts and a tank top, exposing those pasty legs of mine to some sunshine and to some lusty-eyed old men on the corner of Beacon and Cambridge Street, most of who would certainly benefit from a little jog or at least a walk around the block once in a while.

Should we trust the first signs of spring? After all, this is New England, and considering our recent weather history, anything could happen. Snow, rain, sleet, cataclysms, avalanches – I certainly will not put the basement pump in its summer resting spot until there has been a spell of about 10 days of decent weather.
I learned the hard way. We have gone in less than two days from wearing sandals in 70 degree weather to 40 degrees and snow. New England weather - Never a dull moment.

But you know what? The dreariest weather in Boston is so much better than the nicest day in Los Angeles. I know, last week’s write-up was a bit on the enthusiastic side, but as mentioned I was way too giddy from seeing sunshine, after having lived in the dark for three months straight. Admittedly there are nice corners in the LA area, Santa Monica and Venice for example – beautiful and sunny, just as you imagine California should be. If you live there and never have to venture into any other part of Los Angles, you are fine. Downtown is a mixed bag – on my first day I was in the new and shiny financial district, clean, bright, even a few trees here and there. Move three blocks to the right, toward “historic downtown LA” and your first thought is “Oh my God, I am going to die!” Seriously. It is smelly, stinky, grimy, skuzzy and dangerous. My friend Valeria from Barcelona, who was my conference and jogging companion, started to get quite worried, and kept asking if we could head back to the nice part of town. Historic my foot! Run-down buildings, disheveled and tattered, boarded up and forgotten. What a shame.

And this is not even the worst part of town – on the way back from a business meeting in Beverly Hills our cabbie delighted us with stories from famed South Central LA and Watts, two sections of town that are so beaten down and dangerous that apparently even cop cars only go there in twos. Both areas are impoverished, ruled by gang violence and have literally no infrastructure aside from fast food places, 99 cent and liquor stores. Wikipedia reports that in the 7 years between 1998 and 2005, 200 homicides alone happened in Watts. The city of Los Angeles at some point changed the name South Central Los Angeles to South Los Angeles, hoping that the image of the area as a crime-ridden, newsworthy-for-the-wrong-reasons part of town would be a little less prominent. Again, a darn shame, since this is one of the oldest neighborhoods this Southern California urban sprawl has to offer, with some wonderful old Victorians in West Adams for example. USC, the University of Southern California is down there – scary place for a campus.

Stark contrast – Beverly Hills, where my colleagues Geoff and Tracy and I had ourselves a little business meeting – people watching included. While we were waiting to get into a decrepit old cab, Bentleys, Lexuses, Mercedeses, Beamers kept pulling up, and we stared at pretty much everyone to see if we could recognize them from TV. I swear that I saw Fred Dalton Thomson who plays a DA on Law and Order, but I could just be imagining things. Conference delirium, who knows, he could have just been some nice older man, who was taken out to dinner there by his wife.

The conference was exhausting, and I pretty much plopped into my hotel bed every night, dead tired. Running around these conference centers all day is toilsome; tons of meetings; moving around on concrete floors made my shins hurt so much that I had trouble running on the treadmill in the hotel gym. Trying to get a decent meal is another thing in LA – probably as a result of 17,000 hungry oncologists all swarming around downtown, this proved challenging – thanks to my friends at Smeraldi’s (located in the Biltmore Hotel) not only for its California Mediterranean cuisine, but for a free desert on a night when I really needed one; and a second thank you to the fabulous Seoul Jung with its very very fine Korean fare. (http://www.wilshiregrand.com/restaurants&bars/seoul_jung.htm)

Back to Boston, and straight to a day of hosting a company for a pipeline presentation – a very good and successful, but fatiguing day, and when Thursday night came around I was so happy to put my feet up for once, watch a movie and veg out on my horrendously neglected couch. (Did I mention that I had a meeting Wednesday night about an hour after I came home? Of course! Why wouldn’t I? Actually Hilary and I were planning running routes for a “fun run” I am hosting in May – more on that later).

Friday evening brought a little culture for this tired traveler, ushering duty at my cherished Faneuil Hall, the Boston Classical Orchestra celebrated strings with its Viva Vivaldi program – there was a little J.S. Bach thrown in there as well, and our good friend Francois Couperin, which rounded out the evening nicely. We learned a little more about Vivaldi that night. His nickname was “The Red Priest” because he was a priest and he had flaming red hair, duh. Legend has it, he was not a very good priest, and only read mass once – apparently he had such terrible stage fright, that his first performance in the pulpit did not go over that well at all, so he focused on his music, and one can safely say – “Good Choice.” His life was quite interesting, from his early start as a maestro in a children’s orphanage to his life at European royal courts, and his death in poverty in Vienna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi). Highlight of the evening were Ronald Crutcher (who aside from being a famous cellist is also the dean of Wheaton College) and Owen Young, two African-American cellists, who absolutely barocked the house and made the audience rise to a standing ovation (http://www.bostonclassicalorchestra.org/).

The weekend was started with a quiet morning today, a quick jog and some volunteer work at a track meet at MIT – Community Running helps out once or twice a year at such an event, and my task was to lug hurdles around, change their height and then lug some more. The weather played along nicely, even a bit too much at times, and a late afternoon breeze was welcome by all. I just returned from my dinner group at Paula and Waleed’s new Frank Lloyd Writish-looking house in Lexington – a lovely evening with spirited conversations, plans for an all-night “movies-that-are-so-bad-they-are good” slumber party are being hashed out, but first the group has promised to come to Petra’s Haus for some German deliciacies in June. Ja, ja.

So, must go to bed now, it is late and there is some hiking in the stars for tomorrow. Enjoy the sunshine!

Pet :)

#45 Boston - Married to a Tree - April 15 2007

Greetings from Los Angeles my friends - and yes, it is sunny here - a fact that made me quite giddy bordering on delirious yesterday, and I realized that I have not seen the sun in weeks in Boston. It has been consistently cold and dreary since early February, it is mid-April, winter has shown no inclination to let up any time soon. It either rains or snows, and rare are the sunny days in between. Boston is possibly expecting snow for the Marathon on Monday, I think for the first time in its 111-year history.

Easter was no different, it was cold outside, and what a good time to host a few friends, and have a warm and spirited get-together inside. Mostly due to the presence of my wonderfully charming and funny friends Mona and Rohini, we learned all about Bollywood movies and their intricate plots. For those of you who don't know, Bollywood is a genre of Hindustani films from India, most of them with elaborate dance numbers, music to tap your feet to, and of course a hefty romance between two beautiful looking people.

In the context of this positively animated discussion, we learned about "mangliks" , who (I certainly hope I am explaining this right) are folks who are born during certain astrological period. Once this happens, you are doomed my friend, it is supposed to be a bad omen for all sorts of things, in particular relationships, marriages and other living group arrangements - it could lead to divorce even, or worse, the over-early death of your significant other. Now here is the deal: if two mangliks marry each other, the bad vibes cancel each other out. That would be Plan A. Plan B, which comes into effect if you cannot find another manglik you like to the degree that you want to marry them, would be to ward off the evil spirits by having a ceremony of sorts, where the manglik bride or groom gets married to an inanimate object, such as a banana tree or a Vishnu icon or sorts. Another version of Plan B would be to marry an urn, which then gets destroyed immediately after the vows have been spoken, and the manglik is then considered a widow/er and free from the curse. You see, this whole manglik curse business only applies to your first marriage, after that you can pretty much do what you want. Check out Lago Raho Munna Bhai, if you feel so inclined, a Bollywood feature that features a Manglik subplot. Rohini has offered to host a Bollywood party at some point in the near future, where we will be introduced to the finer intricacies of this genre of cinema. I for one am looking forward to it.

The rest of Easter was pretty much spent on the couch with movies, the weather did not improve as the day went on or any day thereafter. Monday's track workout at Community Running could only be tolerated because I was promised some excellent Mexican food at the MIT burrito shop, which I have to admit has the best freakin' quesadillas I have ever had.

Alright, Los Angeles - I barely got here yesterday after an extremely bumpy flight from the East Coast. Storms were raging all over the country, Denver got dumped with snow again, Texas is being wiped clean by tornados and Los Angeles has been experiencing severe wind speeds to the point where some flights the day before could not land at LAX at all. After two failed attempts one plane had to retreat to Long Beach, some corn field nearby or God knows where. Apparently the flight was a Northwest flight, and there is no NW crew at Long Beach, so all the passengers were carted by bus to LA, whereas the plane stayed in Long Beach, and when the winds died down, flew the luggage to LAX. Not only was our flight bumpy and unpleasant, the English language channel for the in-flight movie ("Freedom Writers") never worked, only the Spanish one, and that means that after "Yo se Hillary Swank" they pretty much lost me.

I am staying in the Millennium Biltmore hotel, one the classic hotels built in the 1920s - it has a sort of "faded elegance" look, and a history to boot: in the 1930s and early 1940s it hosted the Academy Awards, and still is a frequent location for movies (Cruel Intentions, Chinatown, Beverly Hills Cop....) or even a Britney Spears video (now that's classy!). In the Biltmore's Crystal Ballroom the Oscar statuette was first introduced to the world. I was immediately captured by its beauty, and I stood there with my mouth open, staring at the ceiling, and looked fixedly at its Italian-Renaissance columns and colorful and elaborate ceiling frescos.
(http://www.millenniumhotels.com/MCIL.nsf/lu_hoteldoc/115$$hotelDescription?opendocument)

Maybe it was the nice weather yesterday, but I did not have the immediate sense of repulsion I expected to experience upon visiting Los Angeles. While it may be the West Coast poster child for urban sprawl, the city has put a lot of effort into making the "urban metropolis style of architecture" look good. In between glistening high-rises that seem to disappear in the sky, modern art sculptures, inviting spots to sit and watch water displays, and small parks give LA's working masses much-needed repose and are easy on the eyes. As far as its modern downtown financial district goes, I was pleasantly surprised.






I did get some running in yesterday, and armed with a little map provided by the hotel, headed out for a 5-mile run in search of Echo Pond - which did prove to be a little gem in a neighborhood where I would least expected it and provides a nice view of the skyline of Los Angeles in the background. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_Park%2C_Los_Angeles%2C_California

I then headed onto a bus, yes my friends, I took public transportation in Los Angeles, which was actually not so bad and always beats a 60$ cab ride - I squeezed in with six million commuters on the 720 express bus and hightailed it out to Santa Monica. It always amazes me just how vast the LA area is, it took me 1 h 15 minutes to get to Santa Monica, and that was on the express bus!! After a quick stroll along Santa Monica Pier and a quickie glance at the Pacific Ocean (I did miss it a bit), I zipped over to Venice to see my childhood friend Hans, who recently sold his two restaurants to open up a new cafe and bakery. Three Squares on the corner of Abbot Kinney Boulevard and San Juan is a delightful place, with bright, simple and cheerful lines, and fantastic food based on Hans' and his business partner's Wolfgang's German and Austrian ancestry. The Spaetzle with morel mushrooms and white asparagus was phenomenal, the mac and cheese soufflé worth flying to LA for, and Wolfgang's Austrian flagship dish, the Kaiserschmarrn so good I could have eaten two risking a rupture of my already pleasantly extended stomach. We drank yummy yummy Austrian wine, and I was sent home with pretzel rolls from Hans and Wolfgang's bakery. http://www.dailycandy.com/article.jsp?ArticleId=29122&city=2 Of course, aside from the food, it was nice to catch up, I had not seen Hans in 25 years I guess, and we did compare our paths in life that both led us to live in the United States. A memorable evening for me, indeed. (And just in case if you were worried, I did take a cab back to the hotel.)

A couple other observations about LA to round out the report - it is definitely greener than I thought or remembered, and folks are friendly, very friendly. The homeless are more aggressive; this morning I had some pregnant lady not only ask me fairly energetically for some money, but I think she was planning to follow me into the Starbucks into the hope that I would buy her a muffin... tss tss!

The conference started today and as usual on the first day is always a lot of meet and greet activity and setting up meetings. Tomorrow the exhibit hall opens and the academic posters are on view, I better hope I don't get CRAFT Disease ("Can't Remember a Fucking Thing"), which always seems to befall me at some point.
Off to work I go!!

pet:)

#44 Boston - The Return of Winter - April 7 07

New England seems to be stuck in some kind of weather/time warp. If you recall, December and January had brought us the warmest winter on record, and February, March and now April have been cold as can be. There is no end in sight, weather.com tells me that it is NOT going to warm up any time soon in the next 10 days, which is just so wrong. In some regions of our little Commonwealth and its sister states, kids will have to dig out their Easter eggs from underneath snow. Temperatures have been in the 30s mostly, we had snow last week, and I went skiing today. Yes, skiing!!

I think the ski resorts are also baffled by all this, and some of them had closed down already, but my friend Jo and I had ourselves a nice little daytrip to Waterville Valley today (http://www.waterville.com/winter/index.asp) - and it was a perfect day for playing around in the white stuff. The sun came out in the afternoon and it was Winter Wonderland at its best, snow covered pine trees and azure-blue sky accompanied us on our adventures down the slopes. I of course had gone to Waterville with a purpose – redemption. I needed to get over the skiing debacle in the Alps in Switzerland and end the season on a high note. If you remember correctly I stumbled down a mountain from 9000 feet not in the most nimble of ways, altitude sick in the middle of a whiteout. Not the best conditions to show off your newfound skills as a novice skier.

Hah!! I showed them today!! My friends, I am happy to announce that for the first time in my life I skied down blue trails!! I am so proud of myself. After a little warm-up on the bunny slopes followed by ’Valley Run”, one of the main green trails, I thought “now or never” and headed to a blue trail called “Stillness” and aced it. I was so stoked and excited, I ran it several times. Since this is pretty much the end of the season and Waterville is closing down tomorrow, it was much less crowded, which made every run tremendously enjoyable. After lunch and a quick little warm-up, Jo and I headed up the quad and then the Sunny Side chairlift to the top of the mountain to attack “Oblivion”, another blue trail, a bit steeper in its upper sections, but else pretty doable as well. And aside from a fairly ungraceful dismount from the chairlift, which at least provided some amusement for the other skiers up top, I did really well and arrived at the base of the mountain with the biggest smile on my face.

As mentioned, the weather has been cold and crappy - not the best conditions for running – but as you know by now, not a good enough excuse not to go. Monday and Wednesday of this week Community Running had its track workout, and despite arctic temperatures on Monday and pouring rain on Wednesday, we did zip along the track and put up our best efforts. Did I mention that we now do all our workouts outside?? April 1st is usually the start date for the outdoor running season, when we no longer have access to the MIT indoor facilities, and our group runs, come rain, or shine, or snow, or sleet, or a tornado.

Good thing there were cultural things to do this week – Thursday night, ushering duty at the Lyric Stage Company (http://www.lyricstage.com/) for Christopher Durang’s play “Miss Witherspoon”. Interesting story, the just mentioned Miss Witherspoon, who committed suicide at some point in the 1990s, is stuck in the netherworld. Apparently the afterlife ain’t all that it’s cracked up to be, there is no rest for the weary even there, and she just refuses to be re-incarnated. Her goal is to be left alone and be put into a state of general anesthesia, but her heavenly advisors had other plans in mind. A quite spirited and funny play with maybe a few silly moments that could have been left out - but overall very entertaining.

We had to chase this one down on Friday with a musical theater play by Jason Robert Brown – “The Last Five Years” performed at the Bruce Spruce Theatre at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown. The Bruce Spruce is a so-called black box theater, a trend that became popular in the Sixties and Seventies I believe, basically a pretty square space, sparse and unadorned, flat floor, everything pretty simple and thus flexible. My colleague Stanley (who kindly enough got two comp tickets for Denise and myself) exquisitely played the violin in this piece, which describes the end of a marriage. Both Jeffrey Prescott and Alyson van de Giesen, who played the unlucky couple, described the story of their relationship – Jeffrey aka Jamie starts his recollections at the time they first met, whereas Alyson aka Cathy starts at the present time and works backwards. The performance is all song and was quite well performed by both actors, except for one scene, after which Denise and I quickly came to the unanimous decision that young Mr. Prescott should have definitely kept his shirt on.

The Arsenal Center for the Arts is a fairly new community theater on the grounds of the old Watertown arsenal, has several theaters, including a children’s theater and the New Repertory Theater, and is housed in one of the buildings of the former Army Materials Technology Lab. (http://www.arsenalarts.org/) It is a nicely converted space, there is a Panera Bread next door (yummm!), parking is free, what’s not to like? This was all new territory to me, I had never been to this part of town or the nearby Arsenal mall either, but eventually recognized the area from last year’s marathon training, where some of my long weekend runs took me all the way to this exotic destination.

Tomorrow is Easter, happy egg hunting and such!! Most of my friends have skipped town to see their folks, but I have organized a little brunch for those left behind, and a small group will gather at Petra and Oscar’s abode tomorrow late morning. Oscar has been chirping away excitedly, this is after all his favorite holiday, as you may imagine. The brunch will be followed by some serious couch time in order to get ready for the week.

This next Friday I will head to Los Angeles to join 13,000 of my closest friends at the Annual Meeting of AACR (American Association for Cancer Research) for six fun-filled days. Actually I hope that at least one of them will be - I have re-initiated contact with a German friend of mine that I have not seen in more than 25 years, he is a celebrity chef in LA and I certainly look forward to meeting him and his family, and a scrumptious meal at his restaurant.

Until then my friends, pray for spring and stay warm and dry!

Pet:)

#43 Boston - Appliance Honeymoon - April 1 07

It was a week of improvements, or pending improvements that is, at 10 6th Street in Cambridge. The biggest news of them all, I got a new washing machine!! The old one, for those of you who have memories like elephants, broke after doing two measly loads when I moved in last March. I’ll replace it soon, I figured, and use the Laundromat on the corner instead, just for a short while. Hmmmh, yeah right, that happened. Last week (and don’t ask me what was different the other 52 weeks before) I just marched into Sears and got myself one. Didn’t hurt a bit. Getting it down my extremely narrow staircase did though, and despite the delivery guys’ best efforts, it did get some dings in its shiny new armor. A $30 discount later and some touch up paint, I am a happy customer (Go Sears!), and have to prevent myself from running around the house, looking at things I could possibly wash in my brand spankin’ new appliance. It’s like appliance honeymoon in here, and if I don’t pull myself together, I might just go down to the basement right now and look at the new toy. Make sure it’s still there, just checking…. Thanks to all of my friends at whose residences I have visited this past year under the pretense of spending time with you, just to show up with a pile of dirty laundry. Pathetic, isn’t it? If your washing machines ever brake, come on over, I have enormous debts to repay.

Further on the home improvement front, Camille, who owns the upstairs part of the house, and I headed to the local carpet emporium and did us some shopping. The staircase in the common hallway has a carpet that is literally beyond description, and even Stanley Steamer would cry Uncle upon that unsightly floor cover. This coming Friday the carpet men will show and fix it all up nicely and then comes my job of making the wood floor all nice and sparkly. Pretty soon this will look like a decent house, I say. This summer it will be painted from the outside, and we’ll be the snazziest place in the hood.

The week has been a pleasant one, for once work did not overwhelm, and my friend Michelle stopped by one more night on her way back to California. I had to of course, introduce her to the fine Cambridge cuisine of the S&S Restaurant - as you know a true Cambridge institution (http://www.sandsrestaurant.com/ ). Their matzo ball soup is just too good not to go back for. Aside from that dinner outing all yours truly did this week was running, running and running.

The “Week of Athleticism” started out on Monday at Community Running with “Track Bingo”, a most vicious game concocted by our coaches Brian and Amy. Every runner in the group gets a sheet filled with thirty squares, each square containing a running time for a 200-meter lap on the indoor track. We were not allowed to consult our own watches, but had to run on our own assessment on how fast we were. Every time we crossed the finish line, the coach-certified running time was checked off in one of the squares. If your running time for a particular loop was not on there, tough shit. Try again. Winners were determined by whoever scored first “five-in-a-row”, a cross and whoever completed the whole sheet. Needless to say I did not win any of the contests, and at the end, when I had five squares to check off, but always fell a second or two short of my desired running time, started give my coach Amy the evil eye. Not that it helped. All in all we ran about 30 loops (after the warm-up) and it was time to go straight home, shower and start the post-practice couch session immediately.

Wednesday night I headed out for a run with my friend Jennifer (who also works at the MGH Cancer Center) – she just signed up for her first marathon (Chicago in October) and I will accompany her on some of the shorter runs. Jennifer is a remarkable person, who had her first kidney transplant when she was 13, her second kidney transplant and a bone marrow transplant in 2000 and is now ready to run her first marathon!! Thursday night my colleague Jeannine and I were the only brave souls of the Running Partners contingent to go out along the Charles River for a 3-mile jaunt. Saturday 8:30 AM – next running activity – Community Running had scheduled one of their fun runs to get to know Jamaica Plain, also known as JP, one of Boston’s most colorful and historic neighborhoods, Boston’s own little melting pot so to speak. For us runners, JP means good running trails, lots of green there, part of the Emerald Necklace, a string of green zones meandering its way through the Boston area. In the 19th century it was actually referred to as the “Eden of America”, Wikipedia says. The Emerald Necklace park system was designed by our old friend Frederic Olmsted, who was also responsible for the Arnold Arboretum, a wonderful botanical garden I have told you about previously. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Necklace

The jewels on the necklace include the Boston Common, Boston Public Garden, Comm Ave Mall, Back Bay Fens, The Riverway, Olmsted Park, Jamaica Pond Park, the Jamaicaway, the Arnold Arboretum, The Arborway and Franklin Park, which is where we started our little outing on Saturday. There were different routes for every runner’s taste, and Maureen and I chose the 5K option as we both wanted to take it easy and also be first in line for the chair massages and pastries that were promised post run. It was a glorious day to run and chat, and the pastries were not too shabby either.

The running endeavors concluded today with a road race, of course, what else did you expect? I was not quite sure how I would fare in the Michael Dunleavy 5 K in Winchester, my legs felt a little tired, but you know what, I had signed up, so off I went. Let me tell you, this was a tough 5K mostly because the last mile or more was seriously uphill, my head resembled a tomato, my lungs wanted to jump out of my body and I thought there is no way I can do this. I actually walked two of the hills, and you know what, I still ran a PR (personal record for the non-runners among my friends)!! 26:55 overall running time with a pace of 8:39 min/mile (5:23 min/kilometer). I was so excited!! I am inching my way toward the 8:30 barrier that I wanted to break this year, let’s see what we can do on a flat surface, eh? Thanks to my friend Elaine who “proteined” me up with some nice roast beef after the competition and for Jennifer who ran the race with me and provided a serious incentive to keep up the pace. Michael Dunleavy, who gives the race its name, was a charming 8-year old boy who suffered from a rare brain cancer, and passed away in October of 2002. The Michael Dunleavy Foundation now raises funds for research on childhood and brain cancers. http://www.michaeldunleavy.com/index.htm

Hah, almost forgot the most important thing this week – SNOW PATROL CONCERT!! ( http://www.snowpatrol.com/ ) My boys were in town, and I was super excited. 6300 people squeezed into Boston University’s Agganis Arena to see their band of choice. Actually, it was quite some time until we saw the Patrol, as they had two opening acts (see Renee, I can do it….) – the Silversun Pickups (apparently they are known as “sspu”) – sort of a punkish Indie rock band, not my style, and OK Go – definitely more my style, a Chicago-bred band, which dazzled with their geeky outfits, fun and spunky music and according to lead singer Damian Kulash, the “best f…..ing videos ever”. http://www.okgo.net/news.aspx - check out “Do What you Want” or “Get Over it” - cool tunes. The Eskimos came on at about 9:30 PM, kinda late I must say, but they did play a decent 1 hr 45 minute set, with the most awesome light show ever! Just excellent! The sound, as one expects in an arena setting, left something to desired, and I did not leave the concert with the same over the top feeling as I did during the previous two concerts at the Avalon and the Pavilion. Lead singer Gary Lightbody (yes, that is his name) is still easy on the eyes, I remain a huge fan, love their music more and more, bought a nicely tight fitting Snow Patrol tee for an indecent amount of money, and look forward to “Signal Fire”, a single they wrote for the next Spiderman movie.

My friends, listen to some music, shut your eyes and sing to me!!!

Love,

Pet:)

#42 Boston - Petraisms - March 24 07

Most of you who have spent some time with me know them, the Petraisms – statements such as “the ball is in your courtyard” or singing the song “Secret “Asian” Man” – I think some of you are secretly keeping a list, and are ready to pull it out at an opportune moment to embarrass me, preferably in front of a large group of people. I am on to you, my friends!!! I am not complaining at all, since I have been playing my part and coming up with new ones just like today when Stephanie, Michelle and I were wandering around the very lovely town of Salem, Massachusetts and I kept looking for the House of Anne of the Green Gables. What I meant and should have said was “The House of Seven Gables (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_the_Seven_Gables), as in 19th century American writer and Salem’s favorite son Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1851 novel, which starts with the words: “Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.”

How I threw “Anne of Green Gables in there, a book written in 1908 by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, even experts may not be able to explain, just yet another Petraism that found its way into the world. I was not even in the right century, for crying out loud and Canada?? The book is based on Montgomery’s childhood on Prince Edward Island up in Newfoundland – oh well, I was just a bit off-base, wasn’t I?

That aside we had a wonderful day in Salem, it is just such a peachy place to visit – http://www.salemweb.com/ . The Salem witch trials for one, which took place here in the mid-17th century, provide tourists such as yours truly with tons of entertainment – the Salem Witch Museum explains a little the story behind what happened to the 19 folks who got hanged and the one poor guy who got stoned to death. It is a miracle that in the hysteria that ensued during those days only 19 “witches” were killed, as many many more were accused – the reasons behind the erratic behavior of the afflicted, who were said to be possessed by the devil, have been grounds for speculation - the two most reasonable explanations being either the “Ergot of Rye”, a plant disease caused by a fungus, who seems to contain a substance that apparently has some similarity with LSD - convulsions, states of trance and hallucinations were the result, so there you have it! Another cause may have been some sort of encephalitis possibly spread by birds. Whatever the reason, this was pretty bad, and everyone went off the deep end a bit here. Actually, looping back to our friend Nathaniel here, he actually changed his name as one of his relatives was on the witch trial judges and our gifted author did not want to be associated with such humbug!!
We visited the Witch House, the only building in Salem that can be still tied to the witch trials (one of the judges, Jonathan Corwin, lived there…..), walked by the controversial statue of Elizabeth Montgomery from the TV series “Bewitched” (some of Salem’s residents did not take too kindly to having that non-historic eyesore in their town), saw “The Friendship”, a replica of a 1797 East Indiaman (a ship) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Friendship_of_Salem_-_Salem%2C_Massachusetts.JPG in Salem Harbor, and had a most wonderful Irish brunch at “The Old Spot” with scones and clotted cream, killer omlettes and a type of Boxti, Irish potato pancakes, which were very well received indeed.



My friend Michelle Sixta had come to town, so it was time to put on the tourist guide hat and show the West Coast girl my residence of choice. We had a fabulous time, starting off Friday night at the East Side Bar and Grille a few steps away from my house, a local place, which has deservedly been doing well. Saturday saw the two of us hitting the streets of Boston, wandering along the Freedom Trail (http://www.thefreedomtrail.org/), and on this historic stroll visting some of my Boston favorites such as the Granary Burying Ground, where Paul Revere, John Hancock, Ben Franklin’s parents, and a slew of other historical celebs were laid to rest. The weather played along, we ended up at Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, where I discovered a new culinary gem – Dale and Thomas Popcorn – apparently the Today Show called them “The Rolls Royce of Popcorn” and after downing a whole bag of their Peanutbutter and White Cholocate popcorn I wholeheartedly agree. Here is why they are good – I don’t usually even like popcorn!!! http://www.daleandthomaspopcorn.com/ . Boston Friends, you must try this!!! I have a little bit left in my bag, which will accompany me tonight through a home showing of “The Aviator” – this is really awesome stuff!


Another little Boston discovery is Beacon Hill Chocolates on the corner of Pinkney and Charles Streets – what a gem of a store, chockful of chocolate, the cutest little keepsake gift boxes (currently with Easter motives) – just fabulous. Fortunately within a very accommodating walking distance to my office… (http://www.beaconhillchocolates.com/)

Saturday night was dinner group at Amy and Dana’s in Malden, and boy did we have fun!! The dinner spread was phenomenal (pulled pork with the most bestest sauce ever, chicken enchiladas, spicy tofu and green beens, barley and vegetable casserole, for dessert chocolate fondue and cheesecake) and once Dana got out the $130 whiskey bottle, the mood reached its high point. Michelle was delighted about the llittle snow episode we had organized in her honor late last night, which made the drive home a little adventurous, but just a bit.

I needed this most pleasant weekend so much, the last two weeks aside from a couple of nice interludes (such as running the road race, the Ras na hEireann in Somerville at a decent net time of 27:27 - 8:50 min/mile pace), were a stinker of substantial proportions. I seemed to have been emitting some kind of pheromone that said “beat me up, kick me while I am down”, everything that could go wrong did, and some of these incidents were just too cruel to believe. I don’t know even where I should start to begin telling you, and you know what, I won’t. It is all done and over with, and I want to follow the wonderful advice of my literary friend Ralph Waldo Emerson –

“Finish every day and be done with it. For manners and for wise living it is a vice to remember. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”

On that note, have a great week, start it with fresh eyes and an open mind.

Pet:)