So it looks like my original intent to publish twice a week on this blog has fallen by the wayside. However, once a month is still more often than most of my friends update their blogs (*cough*hint*).
When last I left you, Yuval and I were about to head down to NYC to see Wicked. We did, and it was awesome. I loved the show, and (more surprisingly) he loved the show. It's always kind of a strange experience for me when I know the recorded version of a musical so well that seeing it live and performed by a different cast makes it seem like a totally different show. Does that happen to anyone else? I'm sure it does. The hotel we stayed at was fabulous (The Marcel at Gramercy) even if the room was a little cozy--but it normally costs $200 a night to stay there and I got it for considerably less thanks to Hotels.com and their spring sale. We also found a delicious French/Vietnamese fusion restaurant on a walk down 3rd Avenue, on the corner of East 13th Street. I'm not sure what the name was because it was a Vietnamese character, but they had the most amazing seared beef I've ever tasted. I did not know that mostly raw meat could taste that delicious. The bus rides to and from NYC were long, as always, but it was a wonderful way to spend the weekend, and even more wonderful to have that Monday (4/20--Patriots Day here in Massachusetts) off from work to recoup. Another fabulous birthday gift from Yuval! :o)
I was priveleged enough (thanks to Adrienne) to see the dress rehearsal for Opera Boston's production of The Bartered Bride the last week of April and thorougly enjoyed myself. Although, it was the second opera dress rehearsal I've seen that has had to be stopped during the performance because of some technical snafu (the first was a decorative mounted deer head that nearly fell on the male lead, this time because something went wrong with the violins and the speakers in the pit). However, I like it more when there are interruptions because it reminds me that these are collaborative pieces of theater, which I love.
Other highlights of that week included the Bruins' strong showing in Game 1 of Round 2 Playoff hockey against the Carolina Hurricanes, a Saturday morning kickball practice in beautiful weather, and babysitting Dylan. Book 5 (the final volume) of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series came out May 4 (also my mom's birthday), and thanks to Amazon pre-order I had it in my hands and finished by the end of that same day. A very entertaining series, and I highly recommend it to anyone who's at all familiar with Greek mythology. I also attended a surprise party for one of Yuval's best friends who is now also one of my friends. She is now 25 and can rent a car without underage fees. Hurray for Meaghan!
Sadly, some things didn't go so well after that. The Bruins played a humilatingly bad next 3 games, giving the Canes a 3-1 lead in the series (which is best of 7). They managed to rally back and force a game 7, which was exciting and breathtaking, but then played a rather half-hearted game and lost in overtime on home ice here in Boston. It was heartbraking, and Yuval and I didn't talk for about 20 minutes after the end of the game because we were both so distraught and distracted. Oh, well. Maybe next year? (Cross your fingers)
However, great things happened to make up for that bad piece of news. Yuval and I found an apartment for September 1st, and have signed the lease and handed over the deposit. It's a 1+ bedroom (that has an extra room that will be a guest room/study) that includes heat and parking in the rent. The unit has air conditioning, a full kitchen, a huge living room, and lots of storage. It's on Highland Avenue, less than a 10 minute walk from Porter Square, and 1 block away from the house Yuval lived in when I first met him. We're so excited! And I'm so relieved that the apartment hunt is over--I hate them!
Other good things that happened last week include Yuval's sister graduating from Carnegie Mellon with highest honors (congrats, Tamar!), getting to see a free production of Much Ado About Nothing that was pretty hilarious (if not a bit miscast), and the beginning of my committment to bike to and from work. I discovered that I actually really enjoy biking, and now bike most everywhere I can even outside of work. Great workout, and faster than the T! I also discovered something called Groupon, which is a website that emails you a new super deal every day for some fabulously discounted thing in Boston. Yesterday I got 4 spa treatments (facial, eye treamtent, hand treatment, and eyebrow waxing) for $59 (normally $144) at Total Skin Care II spa. I highly recommend both Groupon and the spa to everyone in Boston! And through my membership with Zipcar, I got 15% off a 45-minute deep tissue massage at Moore Massage in Brookline. It was a painful process, but my back feels much less tense now.
And now you're caught up on all my adventures from the past month. One last piece of really super exciting news: I have been invited to join Yuval's family on their upcoming vacation to Istanbul (not Constantinople) and Tel Aviv! It's the kind of trip I've always wanted to go on, and it will be even better because I will be with people I care about who know the local language and culture (at least in Israel). So incredibly psyched!
Anyone know of any great things to do in Istanbul?
Read
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan [Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 5]
Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve
Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd
Scalped: The Gravel in Your Guts (Volume 4) by Jason Aaron
The Foreigner by Larry Shue
Seen
Knockaround Guys
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Right Round
Just in case anyone out there in Internetland was breathless with anticipation, the mice were given names. They are Trixie and Alma, after two of my favorite characters on Deadwood. Trixie Mouse is inquisitive, brave, and likes to run around (a lot)--she is the feisty one. Alma Mouse is much more reserved, spends a lot of time preening, and hides in their house whenever I open the cage--she is the delicate one. I've officially had them for a month, and they seem to be doing very well (and pooping like mad).
Much has been going in my life since March. I got to see my hip hop teacher in a show with his dance company, Rainbow Tribe. The performances were amazing! Made me wish I had started dancing earlier. That same weekend, Yuval and I hustled over to the ART in Harvard Square to see one of the last performances of "Endgame" by Samuel Beckett. And wow. Everything about the performance was excellent, and the acting was so good I almost understood what was going on when the show ended (which is quite a feat for a Beckett play).
The same day as "Endgame", we also saw the finals of the Hockey East championship: BU vs. UMass Lowell. Lowell started off the much stronger team, but a dispute about a goal in the 2nd period really shook them up and they lost their focus. BU pretty much dominated the game after that. Yuval has successfully turned me into a full-fledged hockey fan. Boston Bruins play their first game of the Playoffs tonight!
I've also attended a surprise birthday party, gone home to visit my parents for a weekend thanks to a Delta sale, and seen pictures of my two newborn twin cousins, Samantha and Madison (born at the end of March). And, as always, there's been a lot of reading and movie watching going on. This weekend we will be heading down to NYC by MegaBus to see Wicked, a show whose music I memorized the year it came out but have still never seen. The tickets were my birthday present from Yuval. :o)
Perhaps the biggest news, though, is that I will be looking for a new apartment this fall that's big enough for two people! Yuval and I haven't been successful in finding the right place yet, but there's still time before the deluge of undergrads snaps up all the good apartments during the summer. Does anyone here in Boston know of a 1 bedroom in Cambridge that will be available this fall? Apartment hunting sucks like whoa, and it never gets any easier.
Read
The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud
A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve
Magazines: The Week, Wired, Good, Foreign Policy, Defenders
Seen
I Love You, Man
Adventureland
Dr. Strangelove
Coyote Ugly
Alien
Armageddon
Gone in 60 Seconds
Jurassic Park III
The Big Bang Theory (Season 2, up to current episodes)
Much has been going in my life since March. I got to see my hip hop teacher in a show with his dance company, Rainbow Tribe. The performances were amazing! Made me wish I had started dancing earlier. That same weekend, Yuval and I hustled over to the ART in Harvard Square to see one of the last performances of "Endgame" by Samuel Beckett. And wow. Everything about the performance was excellent, and the acting was so good I almost understood what was going on when the show ended (which is quite a feat for a Beckett play).
The same day as "Endgame", we also saw the finals of the Hockey East championship: BU vs. UMass Lowell. Lowell started off the much stronger team, but a dispute about a goal in the 2nd period really shook them up and they lost their focus. BU pretty much dominated the game after that. Yuval has successfully turned me into a full-fledged hockey fan. Boston Bruins play their first game of the Playoffs tonight!
I've also attended a surprise birthday party, gone home to visit my parents for a weekend thanks to a Delta sale, and seen pictures of my two newborn twin cousins, Samantha and Madison (born at the end of March). And, as always, there's been a lot of reading and movie watching going on. This weekend we will be heading down to NYC by MegaBus to see Wicked, a show whose music I memorized the year it came out but have still never seen. The tickets were my birthday present from Yuval. :o)
Perhaps the biggest news, though, is that I will be looking for a new apartment this fall that's big enough for two people! Yuval and I haven't been successful in finding the right place yet, but there's still time before the deluge of undergrads snaps up all the good apartments during the summer. Does anyone here in Boston know of a 1 bedroom in Cambridge that will be available this fall? Apartment hunting sucks like whoa, and it never gets any easier.
Read
The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes
Heroes of the Valley by Jonathan Stroud
A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve
Magazines: The Week, Wired, Good, Foreign Policy, Defenders
Seen
I Love You, Man
Adventureland
Dr. Strangelove
Coyote Ugly
Alien
Armageddon
Gone in 60 Seconds
Jurassic Park III
The Big Bang Theory (Season 2, up to current episodes)
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Just Feel Better
Hola, amigos! Man, have I been busy since my last post. But before I get into that, there is a matter of no small importance for which I need your assistance.
Help me name my two (female) pet mice! I got them on the 15th, and they still don't have names. As you can see from the picture, they are adorable and tiny. I've narrowed the choices down to following three sets, so please cast your vote!
Possible Names
1) Boomer & Starbuck (taken from Battlestar Galactica)
2) Joanie & Trixie (taken from Deadwood)
3) Mrs. Crummles & Mrs. Nickelby (taken from Nicholas Nickelby by Chuck Dickens)
Since my last post, I've done the following: taken Yuval with me to Cincinnati for a weekend, driven 15 hours from Cincy to Boston with Yuval in my sister's car (which is mine until she comes back from Oz), seen Boston Opera Underground's production of The Seven Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill as directed by Adrienne, seen Watchmen on a double date, gone to Dave & Buster's in Providence, RI to celebrate a birthday (and helped accumulate over 10,000 tickets for the birthday boy), had a delicious brunch with the Shavit's, and checked out or returned a cumulative 15 books from the library. And, of course, there was getting the mices (pronounced mees-iz). So, yeah. Life's been very busy, but very fun. And exhausting.
I've also been canvassing animal hospitals and private veterinary practices to see if I can volunteer with them. Normally, of course, I'd first apply to help out places like the MSPCA or ARL of Boston or even the New England Aquarium. But, contrary to what you might think, all of those places have all the volunteers they can handle and are not taking on anymore. Does anyone in Boston have an "in" to some sort of animal-related organization that takes volunteers? It's frustrating, because I want to help so badly, but no one wants me!
So, the other day, the Pope--who is visiting select cities in Africa right now--declared that condoms "increase the problem" of AIDS. And now the Pope and the Vatican are getting lambasted from all sides for those comments, which could prove counterproductive and even detrimental to AIDS relief efforts in Africa. I'm not going to spend time detailing how the exact opposite of the Pope's comments is true, nor how there have been countless scientific studies that have found no correlation between distributing condoms and increased sexual activity.
Rather, I wanted to point out that it's exactly because of comments/beliefs/ideologies like this that Catholics (and to a larger extent, Christians) are generally thought of as repressive, backwards, and malignant. For all the good that Catholic charities do, stances like this overshadow all the positive instantly. As one of the youngest major organized religions in the world, you'd think that Catholicism would still be felxible enough to learn from its mistakes and adapt to a changing global society. But instead, the Vatican insists on upholding dogma that has been scientifically disproven countless times both in theory and in practice. In college, telling people I was a Christian elicited an immediate reaction, and it certainly wasn't positive: I was seen as ignorant for believing in something so backwards and out-of-touch with the real world. And when I would try to defend it, something like the Pope's words in Africa would happen and invalidate all my efforts.
I left organized religion for private reasons, but I still feel an empathy with its believers. Not all Catholics or Christians are as conservative and resistant to change as the Vatican would have you think. But you wouldn't know it from the news, would you?
Seen
Watchmen
Cruel Intentions
Die Hard 2
Read
Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth
The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival, and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming by Shreve Stockton
Help me name my two (female) pet mice! I got them on the 15th, and they still don't have names. As you can see from the picture, they are adorable and tiny. I've narrowed the choices down to following three sets, so please cast your vote!
Possible Names
1) Boomer & Starbuck (taken from Battlestar Galactica)
2) Joanie & Trixie (taken from Deadwood)
3) Mrs. Crummles & Mrs. Nickelby (taken from Nicholas Nickelby by Chuck Dickens)
Since my last post, I've done the following: taken Yuval with me to Cincinnati for a weekend, driven 15 hours from Cincy to Boston with Yuval in my sister's car (which is mine until she comes back from Oz), seen Boston Opera Underground's production of The Seven Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill as directed by Adrienne, seen Watchmen on a double date, gone to Dave & Buster's in Providence, RI to celebrate a birthday (and helped accumulate over 10,000 tickets for the birthday boy), had a delicious brunch with the Shavit's, and checked out or returned a cumulative 15 books from the library. And, of course, there was getting the mices (pronounced mees-iz). So, yeah. Life's been very busy, but very fun. And exhausting.
I've also been canvassing animal hospitals and private veterinary practices to see if I can volunteer with them. Normally, of course, I'd first apply to help out places like the MSPCA or ARL of Boston or even the New England Aquarium. But, contrary to what you might think, all of those places have all the volunteers they can handle and are not taking on anymore. Does anyone in Boston have an "in" to some sort of animal-related organization that takes volunteers? It's frustrating, because I want to help so badly, but no one wants me!
So, the other day, the Pope--who is visiting select cities in Africa right now--declared that condoms "increase the problem" of AIDS. And now the Pope and the Vatican are getting lambasted from all sides for those comments, which could prove counterproductive and even detrimental to AIDS relief efforts in Africa. I'm not going to spend time detailing how the exact opposite of the Pope's comments is true, nor how there have been countless scientific studies that have found no correlation between distributing condoms and increased sexual activity.
Rather, I wanted to point out that it's exactly because of comments/beliefs/ideologies like this that Catholics (and to a larger extent, Christians) are generally thought of as repressive, backwards, and malignant. For all the good that Catholic charities do, stances like this overshadow all the positive instantly. As one of the youngest major organized religions in the world, you'd think that Catholicism would still be felxible enough to learn from its mistakes and adapt to a changing global society. But instead, the Vatican insists on upholding dogma that has been scientifically disproven countless times both in theory and in practice. In college, telling people I was a Christian elicited an immediate reaction, and it certainly wasn't positive: I was seen as ignorant for believing in something so backwards and out-of-touch with the real world. And when I would try to defend it, something like the Pope's words in Africa would happen and invalidate all my efforts.
I left organized religion for private reasons, but I still feel an empathy with its believers. Not all Catholics or Christians are as conservative and resistant to change as the Vatican would have you think. But you wouldn't know it from the news, would you?
Seen
Watchmen
Cruel Intentions
Die Hard 2
Read
Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth
The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival, and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming by Shreve Stockton
Monday, March 2, 2009
I Don't Care 'Bout That
For your viewing delight. Try not to spew milk out your nose.
For those who've been paying attention to the news at all today, we're buried under snow here in Boston. It started snowing yesterday morning, and hasn't really stopped since. We're in a lull right now, before another snow cell dumps all over us.
To my utter shock and amazement, though, the T didn't break down once this morning! That's the first time heavy snow has not slowed my morning commute by, oh, 30 minutes. Way to go, MBTA. You're like the little train that could.
Yuval and I are headed to Cincinnati this Thursday evening. We'll be spending the weekend with my parents, seeing the touring Broadway version of Frost/Nixon and driving back to Boston in my sister's car on Sunday. Getting her car is the only tangible benefit I receive from her going off to Australia to have super amazing adventures while "studying." Yeah, right. Like she'll be able to study with the beach just a 5 minute walk from her dorm.
Oh, and I think I may have found something I'd like to go to school for, and then spend the next 5 to 7 years working at: being a Veterinary Technician. I don't have the prerequisites to go to Veterinary School (I would need to have taken a lot more bio, chem, and physics classes in college). But the program is only 2 years, and a Vet Tech is like a nurse to a physician, so I'd still get to work with animals--I just wouldn't be doing the surgeries or the euthanasia.
And this wouldn't replace my ultimate goal of going to grad school. It would just help me earn more money for it and serve as a very worthy job in the meantime.
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