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Some Pre-St. Patty's Day Irish    Feb 28, 2010
I've been getting in touch with my Irish heritage a bit more as of late. A few weeks ago I tried my hand at set dancing and last night I went to see The Wolf Tones.

Set dancing, as I explain it, is traditional Irish square dancing. Now you may be assuming I decided to do it just to get in back in touch but you would be WRONG. In fact the surprising answer is that I did it for a woman. In my defense, Jen and I are well past the 'I'll do this and pretend I like it because I want to date you' phase. It's something she does with some regularity and I wanted to see what it was all about. So I headed out to The Burren on Monday night to see for myself.

What it's all about is my second freaking calling! I was apparently pretty good. Nay, I was fantastic. Though there were a few differences from the video in the earlier link. First, our music was being played off a computer. No live band for my beginners lessons. Second, that tapping your feet in unison stuff you see? Yeah, we kind of skipped that part. Apparently my first night at these lessons was a night they chose to work on an advanced set so they didn't worry about my footwork as much as they were concerned with my upper body getting from point A to point B appropriately and my arms reaching out to hold hands when appropriate. But luckily I'm naturally fleet-footed so I can't imagine the next lesson being any worse. (It may be hard for you to detect the sarcasm in my writing, I absolutely blow at moving my feet in a rhythmic manner.)

Anyhow, I enjoyed myself much more than I expected (PLEASE don't tell Jen) and will probably be back in the near future. While I have no idea if my ancestors ever partook of the traditional dance I liked to think I was performing a dance they had done, if just a lot more crappily.

Last night I went to see The Wolf Tones, a traditional Irish folk band that formed in the 1960's. It's strange because I have found an equal number of people who really love their music as those who have never heard of them.

I'm still kind of processing a lot of what I saw. The band was great though I got the sense that they had performed this exact show more than a few times in the last 40 years. I suppose some of that came from the slide show they had that was synchronized to the show. Though a funny moment was in the middle of the show when Windows Vista decided to install new software and forced a reboot. I had seen it coming, a message popped up and was counting down from 15 minutes, giving a user time to reboot but they just hid the window and then...bam. The presentation was over.

The processing comes from seeing so many people drink in excess, using an Irish gathering as the reason. I'm not going to go into it any further than that, I tend to have a rant around the middle of every March so I will save myself for then. But yes, there was a great deal of alcohol consumed and I am open to the possibility that I was just overly sensitive to it and that in reality there was nothing to be bothered by.

One such overly-imbibed woman happened to be at the table in front of us. I guess I should mention this was held in the largest union hall (IBEW, electricians) I had ever seen and we were all seated around circular card-type tables. It was BYOS (bring your own snacks) but they had a full bar. The blond woman was 5 or so years older than I and shapely but was not blessed with nice facial features. So by the last 4-5 songs she was pretty drunk and had decided dancing with the people at her table was not sufficient and had taken to me with chatting and the like. Mind you, I wasn't dancing (see part 1 of this post regarding the movement of feet) but I was standing up when the band 'suggested' it and holding hands as directed, all that stuff. So there was one song where we were supposed to hold our hands up and she grabbed mine and rather than make it awkward I just went along with it. Fine, no problem, I'm happily dating so I'll selflessly help this woman have fun. Then during the next song she put this ridiculous tall Irish hat with a fake red beard on my buddy Mike and snapped his picture. Then she put the hat on me and instead of taking my picture sat on my lap and had our picture taken. The next song came along and she wanted a picture with me, her friend, and her. The next song I had moved so a chair was between her and I. She turned around and danced with me (chair betwixt us) and then pulled me away from the chair so we could properly dance. Awesome. The next song was called "A Nation Once Again". At one point she leaned over and asked "why are they singing about being Haitian?". Needless to say we all had a good laugh at her expense later in the evening.

Somewhere in the midst of the show there was a more serious conversation between Mike and I. Namely, why are The Wolf Tones still out here doing this? It could have been for money or to feed their egos but we agreed it was to promote the history of Ireland and not let people forget those stories. A lot of the slides mentioned the brave men and women who gave their life for Ireland and the trials of the nation, and obviously the music followed suit.

My Quick Physical    Feb 10, 2010
I went in for my yearly-ish physical yesterday. It was pretty uneventful, which obviously isn't a bad thing. I had two questions going into it, one of which was "how tall am I?". It's an odd question but since I kind of feel like I have been getting shorter I figured the easiest way to be certain was to be remeasured at the only place I had been measured in 10 years.

At the beginning of the visit a nurse took me to a room to get weighed and measured. The result is that I was 6'3/4". This seemed odd to me because on my last visit I was 5'11 1/4". Not only had I not shrunk but I had grown 1.5 inches in 15 months. I was skeptical to say the least.

Near the end of the appointment the doc asked if I had any questions and I told him I felt as though I may have shrunk some recently. He looked at my chart and said "You're 6 and 3/4 feet." Yes, I said, but I was 1.5 inches shorter last year and I KNOW I have not grown that much in one year. He didn't disagree but nor did he agree, he just kind of looked at me. "Did you have your feet against the wall when they measured you?" he asked. I said yes while suppressing my real answer "You mean 15 months ago, when I was last here, do I recall the placement of my feet when I was measured? No, I don't recall". He glanced towards the scale/height measuring thing no more than 3 feet from me and 5 from him and then just looked back at me. I kind of looked in the same direction with a thought that I hope was very similar to his. "We could measure me again now just to see if it clears things up." However, since I'm not the most straightforward person and don't like to impose (seriously, that is how it felt) I said nothing. He handed me a couple of papers, I offered a handshake and received a limp one in return, and I was off.

I understand my medical needs are relatively minor right now and he has patients who require more immediate and intensive care than I so he may want to focus his time with them. However, it's pretty sad when a physician can't, or won't, take the time for something as simple as a measurement.

Oh, and if you are wondering, I have a theory on why I may have shrunk. I think my core has become incredibly weak and I'm just generally not standing as straight as I once did. The easy and obvious remedy is to work some ab/back exercises back into my workout routines. At one time I did them pretty religiously but they've definitely fallen by the wayside. Now that I'm back to working out 3-4 times a week I need to try and make sure the workouts are more rounded, rather than focusing on my amazing guns.

Playing Tourist    Dec 15, 2009
Jen left for London on Friday evening, leaving me in Boston but kind of feeling like I am on vacation as well. That could read as if I am looking for a break, which is not what I mean at all. It's just that a large part of my routine in Boston will thrown off for 10 days.

I awoke to go to the bathroom at 6:40 Sunday but before returning to bed as planned I checked my phone and saw Jen had written in the very early hours of the morning. I groggily read of her plans to tour some castles on Sunday and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to do something touristy for myself and visit East Boston.

East Boston isn't exactly a tourist trap. It's generally a working class part of the city. In my 8+ years in Boston I had never spent any time there but what drove me there Sunday morning was the presence of The Madonna Shrine perched atop a large hill. I had been told it was a peaceful place with a great vantage point of the city.

It was a chilly (25F) morning with crisp blue skies that were expected to cloud over by around noon and start pouring a cold rain by around 4 so I decided to not crawl back in bed until a more reasonable hour and instead layered a winter jacket over a hooded sweatshirt and long sleeved tee and hopped on the train. After a quick stop at Dunkin I was up to the shrine by 8:30. I noticed that Pope John Paul II dedicated the plaza some 20 years ago. They were celebrating Christmas with a nativity scene and I learned something new...top hats were all the rage at the time of Jesus' birth. I saw a new view of the skyline and the harbor (I like the colors in the foreground). There are some cool mosaics of the Stations of the Cross and just beyond some row homes which caught my eye. The actual shrine is quite weathered. On the way down the hill I noticed an etching in the stairs and wondered how bored someone must be to write just that.

On the walk back down the hill and my subsequent 5 miles I noticed two things. First, there must be more statues of the Virgin Mary per capita in this area of town than any other. They also seemed to be leaders in those inflatable Christmas lawn thingy's, of course they were all lifeless lumps at 9 AM.

I was walking down a little street towards the harbor and looked up and was shocked to see a 757 staring me in the eyes. It was a couple football fields away but it took me by surprise. I turned the corner and walked along the harbor until I was directly behind flights taking off (this one was just about to make his final turn). I couldn't capture it well but there was noticeable change in the water behind the larger planes as they take off.

I then headed out onto the peninsula of Winthrop where there was a beaten down shack on land the government has since claimed because it is directly below the descent of southerly approaching flights. Just beyond the shack was a cop directing traffic at a Dunkin Donuts...it struck me on a few levels. A few more miles down I found stairs to access a small beach and stood at water level and looked back at Logan and the city. At this point my stomach was angry that I had walked so far on an empty stomach so I turned around. On the way back I tried to take a shot of a driveway between two homes that opens upon the harbor. It wasn't quite the shot I was hoping for but you can only do so much with a point and shoot.

Anyhow, that is me being a tourist in the city I have lived in for almost 9 years. I think this retelling was a bit dry, bear with me as I regain my ability to write here.

The Switch    Dec 13, 2009
This is my first post...no, not in two months, though I guess that is true. This is my first post from my Mac. Huzzah.

I made the switch after much contemplation on Black Friday. Apple had a deal and my hope was to parlay their special with my corporate discount. It didn't work as such but I made the switch regardless.

It wasn't an easy decision for two primary reasons. Most notably, the price. Macs are still more expensive than their Windows-running counterparts. It really left me conflicted, I am kind of a cheap-ass. A second and lesser reason was the comfort I had with the freeware/old software I had for my PC. I could swiftly install all the software I was used to, with the exception of Office, for which I lost the install disk some time ago.

As my circa-2005 laptop slowly ground to a halt I knew I had to find a replacement. The comfort choice would be a faster PC laptop (than my existing) running Windows 7 and moving/installing my existing software over. However, the ones I looked at left me wanting something more. That something was UNIX.

I wanted integrated UNIX support for one primary reason, to develop this site and other applications locally. When developing on my PC I was forced to write, save, and upload the file, then refresh in a web browser. It wasn't the worst scenario in the world but it was cumbersome, especially when my 'office' at the back of the house gets a pretty lousy internet connection. Sure, I could have installed apache, php, and mysql on a PC but it wasn't running natively as it does on a UNIX box. I also heavily considered an OS-free machine which would allow me to install the Linux version of my liking and the server software mentioned previously. However, I frankly didn't want the responsibility of having no support staff to fall back on should I need it.

Finally, I have been using my Mac at work much more than I had been and I just really like the OS. The trackpad has some fun new features (drag 3 fingers to the left and it takes you back a page while browsing the web, 3 right take you forward), Expose is brilliant for clearing or organizing the desktop, and searching for files and applications is so easy.

I'm not an Apple fanboy, I openly admit their shortcomings (Hello iPhone, welcome to the 21st century with cut and paste in 2009!) and have seen them on this machine (you can't turn off the startup sound without installing a 3rd party app) but all in all, it's slick. So after about 6 weeks of hemming and hawing I took the plunge and am very happy I did.

Anyhow, Merry Christmas. My gift to you is writing again!

And...Action!    Sep 20, 2009
I was able to take part in a video shoot this morning. A co-worker was shooting a 7 minute film for a film production class and when she needed to cast the role of a bad date she thought of me...how kind. The plot was that Veronica's father makes her go out on some dates rather than follow her dream (helping pandas with developmental disabilities). She goes through a series of bad dates and then meets the right guy only to for an unexpected circumstance to ruin that date and send her father back to provide her the money from her trust so she can pursue her dream.

I've been through the process of video shoots but never in front of the camera. My job has provided the opportunity to be a bona fide video producer...of math videos. It was great to see the behind-the-scenes stuff again--the audio and lighting tests, the long delay of the first take as small details are fixed, how gaffers tape can fix nearly any problem that arises, and the struggle to keep it cool through blazing hot lights and the inability to run the AC (noise).

When I arrived at the nutrition store which would serve as our set the crew was putting the finishing touches on blacking out the street-facing windows. If you've ever seen Zack and Miri you will know what I mean, it was the first thing I thought of. I actually almost mentioned that to the assembled group but in a rare moment of self-filtering I decided that comparing our shoot of three men and a woman to a movie in which they make a porno was less than favorable greeting.

After some introductions to the crew and rest of the cast I changed into my khakis and a polo, the dress of a "young kid" which I will be credited as. I guess it's my boyishly good looks that sealed the deal. I emerged and after some debate they had me deep-six the khaki's in favor of the (khaki) shorts I biked over in.

"The stoner" date was shot before my scene. The basic plot was that the man had the munchies and was cramming spaghetti down his throat as fast as he could, to Veronica's disgust. I mentioned to the crew a story of watching a certain former college quarterback roommate hold a fork laden with a fist-sized mound of spaghetti over his head as he ate at it from the bottom. How I wish I could say he was doing it as a parody of himself. They loved the idea and incorporated it.

When it was my turn they made a game-time decision that I should be texting (in addition to just being young). I will save the details for when I get a copy of the finished video and hopefully get permission to post it to YouTube. It was shot a few different times from different angles, the final of which proved to be most difficult for me. It was shot from over my shoulder so the camera was catching the screen of the phone. It no longer looked realistic when I just moved my thumbs around aimlessly, I had to hit some real letters, add spaces, etc. By no means difficult but if you've ever text messaged while driving...admit it, you have...you know one suffers (texting, I hope). Since it was important to keep a flow to the texting my lines took a turn downward. The final scene took four takes, though one was screwed up both by me and the fire truck that came racing by outside.

I'm not going to say I have a career in acting but I would love to do this again. We had a great cast and crew and had a ton of fun between takes. I offered my services for future films and really hope I was decent enough to get a call-back.

Omaha Flight    Sep 16, 2009
I'm going to try something new here. Instead of recapping an entire trip (to IA, for a wedding), which can be taxing to me and (I think) the reader, I am going to write about one aspect of it. It's a shame in some ways as there were a lot of great points on this trip. However, I think it is hard to capture all (or even most) of it without it transforming from prose to a series of declarative sentences beginning with 'nex' or 'then'.

Nick saw me off at the security gate in Omaha. It should be noted that Eppley Airfield is the cleanest airport in the world, or at least it says so on the little plastic mats that prevent larger objects from being flushed down the urinal. You know I was tempted to snap a picture but there was just no way in hell I could do so. After grabbing some pizza I sat near the gate and saw a man doing push-ups. Only in Omaha. Or perhaps only in people flying to Jersey...I just don't know.

I was walking down the aisle towards my seat on the Continental flight from Omaha to Newark and noticed a tall blond woman from the terminal sitting in the vicinity of where I would be. I was sure she was a row ahead of me but for the brief moment I had that prospective uplifting that comes with being seated next to an attractive woman on a long flight. Don't get me wrong, I am 100% in a relationship and very contentedly so. There's no desire to stray but maybe it's bred into the Y chromosome...whenever I take my seat I offer a little hope it will be an attractive and funny woman to make conversation with.

As I got closer I realized the woman wasn't near my seat, she was in fact directly next to me. Shazam! (Who says that any more...or ever did?) I was about 4 rows away and saw a man tap her shoulder and they switched seats. There were three rows of seats, two to my left and one to the right of the aisle. I had the seat on the far left and she was just to the left of the aisle. However, a guy one row behind us and on the right didn't have room for his carry-on below his seat so they switched. So not only did I not get to sit next to the blond but I was stuck with a guy with over-sized luggage under the seat. I sent Toby an IM alerting him to my extreme dismay in the whole situation.

Once we reached cruising altitude I started to put on my headphones and the guy next to me leaned over slightly and barely turned his head to say "Sorry about the blonde." "I'm not going to lie," I said with a smile, "I traded down." He replied something to the effect of 'Somewhere there is a man happy to see her go and have some time to himself'. True enough.

Robin and I talked at length about a broad spectrum of topics including health care, the Middle East, and music. I guess the last was an easy topic as he is the tour manager for the rock band that brought us Hot Blooded and Juke Box Hero, among other songs. He and the lead singer were on their way back to NY from a series of shows in the west, ending in a smaller NE town. At one point he got up and I checked my iPod to confirm that of my 11000+ songs not a one was from the band he managed. He also nodded to his left and indicated that the lead singer was on board as well (there was no first class on this relatively small aircraft) and when they were leaving I saw he the singer was wearing a leather shirt, jeans, and some lace-free low-top shoes that, with his gray-ish and spiky hair would fit the mold for an older rock star.

So I had my second semi-celebrity sighting in under a week. Not too shabby.

Birthday Dinner    Sep 04, 2009
Jen took me out for a fancy dinner in advance of my 32nd. Neither of us would be in Boston that evening so we went to Upstairs On The Square on Wednesday.

I have a love-hate relationship with fancier restaurants. To me, fancier is when the average price of an entree (not including sandwiches) creeps close to $20. I just have a block in paying $20 for an entree (which is not to say anything under $20 requires little or no deliberation).

Anyhow, Upstairs on the Square fits into my qualification of a fancy restaurant. We sat down without reservations around 6:30 and were served our (tap) water. But shortly thereafter our waiter disappeared. It is worth mentioning that around the same time Skip Gates and three friends sat down at a table not far from us.

For those unaware, Skip Gates is a professor at Harvard and was recently at the center of what he believed to be a racial profiling case. He was coming back to his home, didn;t have the key, and cops were called. It was big news around here and became national news when Obama weighed in and eventually invited the cop and Mr. Gates to the White House for a discussion over beer.

Jen was simply entranced with their party. I was intrigued but also felt ambivalent. He was infamous, I would say, not necessarily a celebrity prior to the event. So I was interested in the conversation but not enough that I wanted to sit silently and truly eavesdrop.

To say the Gates party ruled the night is an understatement, nary a minute went by where Jen didn't glance in that direction and I admit, I did get up at one point to use the restroom primarily to catch a glimpse, as they were behind me.

Beyond that I was in a lovefest with my love-hate relationship with fancy restaurants. Not only was it not my bill to pay but also we had a gift certificate. I know, I am a nerd. But it made me feel good that we had $50 knocked off our bill before we began. Jen got some Jackie O martini (which a member of Gates' party also had) and I had a beer with our heirloom tomato and melon salad appetizer. (Note: Their menu is at this point not current as the menu changed on Tuesday.)

My entree was the skirt steak. I was looking forward to the strip steak on their online menu and was genuinely disappointed that the option was skirt steak. However, it had this amazing buttery flavor that really set it off. I always thought of skirt steak as a bit of a leftover. Great on the grill for fajitas but never the show stopper of a real loin. This meal proved me wrong. Jen had the scallops, which were garnished with some sort of funky lentil I had never heard of. It was very good as well but I was preferential to my beef.

We opted for dessert, Jen for some sweet-ish pastry I can't recall but found to be quite good. I went for the sorbet sampling and gave her one of the three selections. She chose the malted chocolate, which was incredibly rich. I had a bite but was more than content to let her enjoy the bulk of it. I thoroughly enjoyed my choices, however. One was blackberry and thyme...I was really intrigued by incorporating a spice with the fruit. The other was pluot and honey. I had never heard of a pluot until Jen introduced me to them at the grocery store this summer, though I guess she didn't actually realize she knew what a pluot was. She pointed to it in the store as a mix of a PLUm and apricOT (PLUOT). But when I ordered it she swore she had never heard of it which led to an interesting conversation where I explained that it came from the beginning of plum and end of apricot and she realized she had, in fact, told me of it. By the way, both sorbets were amazing!

Anyhow, the point of this all is that I loved that they were using fresh and local ingredients based on the season in ways I would not imagine. I've been hitting the farmers market with more regularity and focusing on eating as close to the source as possible. However, I tend towards hearty but unoriginal salads for dinner and ripping apart fresh fruit with my teeth for breakfast. It's not often you can keep that up at a restaurant but I suppose if you are willing to pay a bit more you can do so. It inspired me to tell Jen that we should visit such 'fancy' restaurants every four to six weeks. We otherwise just cook together and aren't overly extravagant so it seems to be a workable arrangement.

Speaking of cooking at home, Jen's gift to me is a visit to make our own cheese. There is a woman in western Mass who has workshops and we are going to one in November. Yes, again, I am a big nerd, I thought it was the coolest thing.