#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:)