favorite routines in Boston

Obviously, the day-by-day approach is not working out for me. Honestly I think it's mostly because when I sit down to write about what happened on any given day I realize that the only interesting things that happened are probably only interesting to me and not a wider audience, and are therefore not worth writing about, really. So I'm going to take a different approach and just write about loosely categorized things that I think might moderately interesting to people who care about me.

I am the type of person who likes structure and routine. To me, there's something comforting about knowing what to expect each day and being able to separate things out into little sections of time for various tasks. So here are the routines I've fell into since I've moved to Boston.

I have a skylight directly above my bed, and I've always been one to rise with the sunlight, so for my first two weeks here I woke up at promptly 5:06AM each morning, struggled to get back to sleep for a long time, and then finally got out of bed at 6 or so. That got old real quick, so last Monday I walked over to the Family Dollar, bought a roll of aluminum foil, and taped sheets of it over my windowshade. I've been sleeping until 7 or so since then, and taking some awesome naps in the middle of the day as well.

I get up and eat breakfast (breakfast of choice lately has been bagels, although I bought some frosted mini wheats this week that I'm pretty excited about), put in my contacts, and brush my teeth. I put on gym clothes and pack work clothes in a bag. Then I pack lunch. I bring my lunch every day because it's a whole lot cheaper than going out anywhere. CRA caters in lunch for meetings a lot, so usually once a week or more I get a break.

When it's nice out, I walk to the bus stop at a local park, walking through residential areas and passing by a community garden, an elementary school, and a really neat park composed of all this netting where kids can go climbing up and down it. When it's not nice out, I have to make one of the scariest street crossings ever and get to the subway station, which then takes me to another subway station where I catch the bus to work.

I work out first thing in the morning, usually only for a half-hour or so because I wasted too much time laying around in bed in the morning, haha. The gym at work has a few treadmills and an elliptical. When the weather is nice sometimes I run around Fresh Pond, which is very pretty and has nice, paved, shaded trails and some water fountains along the way.

After showering and getting dressed, I usually get to work around 9, and then I work until 5:30.

Every day we meet up in the kitchen for lunch. My lunch always looks much tastier than whatever everyone else buys at the grocery store :) Usually after lunch I make a cup of coffee using the Flavia machine. I have figured out the technique for the perfect cup of coffee: cover the bottom of the cup in a thin layer of sugar, pour in two half and half cups, then brew a cup of French Roast over top of it. Mmm. So far I only like the French and Espresso roasts...all the other blends I've tried have been too weak.

After work there really is no routine. Some days I go straight home and make dinner. On nice days I tend to go walking and wander around my neighborhood finding out what's nearby. The evenings and weekends are the times I tend to get most homesick because there's little structure to them. In the evenings I'm kind of afraid to go wandering out alone and I haven't made good enough friends to go hang out with them. On the weekends it's just hard to find enough things to fill up the time. But, I've got a couple little weekly traditions I look forward to.

My favorite thing to do on the weekends is go to the Haymarket. People buy up the produce that the groceries store don't buy and then sell it for really cheap on Friday and Saturday. Here is what I got this week:

That is: a pound of snow peas, the biggest yellow pepper you've ever seen, a bag of spinach, a box of blackberries, a bunch of asparagus, about 3 lbs of green beans, a little over a pound of grapes, and a pound of some interesting fruit (front middle of the table) that I wish I could remember the name of. I paid a total of $9 for all that. Last week I think I got a pound of green beans, seven oranges, ten apricots, three bell peppers, and two pounds of grapes for $8. At those rates I think I'm eating cheaper here than I typically do at Clemson!

The Haymarket area also has a shop that sells Arabic food, and sells goat meat. I want to visit there someday soon because I bet I could find some really interesting things there. Maybe I'll venture there next weekend.

My other weekly routine that I look forward to is swing dancing on Wednesday nights. MIT puts on a free lesson and dance every week. I've been two weeks so far and have had a great time both nights! The crowd is friendly, and the gender ratio is about even so I rarely have to sit out a dance...unless they're dancing something I don't know. There's a lot of "blues" dancing at this dance, and most people are Lindy Hoppers, which I can kind of adapt to, but not very well! Everyone's been really nice, though, and  some people have even been patient enough to teach me a few things.  The first time I went swing dancing I ended up meeting a guy who had lived in Clemson for several years! What a small world! We danced together and reminisced about Super Taco for a long time.

I'm trying to find other ways to fill my time. I read Icy Sparks last week to take up a couple evenings, which I would recommend as a decent read. I'm trying to decide how to get involved in a church group, although honestly I'm having a hard time getting into the work routine and it's near impossible for me to get anywhere by 6 or 7 at night when I've worked until 5:30 and have to figure out dinner and public transit. We'll see if I can work it in sometime this week.

Next post: writing about some fun things I've done in the city so far!

boston day three: first day at work

My first day at work went well! Here are some things that are particularly nice about working at CRA:

- this is the first workplace I've ever had that is consistently a comfortable temperature!
- they have a free Flavia machine (makes any kind of coffee/tea/frothy drink you'd like)
- there's a kitchen with hot water for dishwashing
- there are free snacks! poptarts, snickers, granola bars, chips, etc. (I think they're trying to fatten me up)
- they have every kind of office supply you could ever want
- there's a free gym for employees downstairs in the building
- everyone's nice so far

I did orientation in the morning and then met with Peter, one of my coworkers who is the PI of our project. We went out to lunch at Summer Shack, which was delicious. After that we talked a bit about our project and then he sent me to go figure out the math for the physics-based modeling of tissue that we want to do. I spent about four hours in the afternoon trying to get through the math. Unfortunately it is far beyond my expertise, so I spent a lot of time looking up terms and trying to figure out what the equations mean.

I don't remember what I did that evening. Probably mostly went to sleep. There is a skylight directly over my bed and it gets light at 5AM so I wake up with the sun in the mornings, making early bedtimes necessary!

favorite moment: the flounder I had at lunch was one of the tastiest things I've ever had. The plate was first covered in creamed peas, and then a mound of mashed parsnips. on top of that was a broiled fillet of flounder with duxelle on top. awesome.

least favorite moment: probably being overwhelmed by the math

boston day two: fire and water

Memorial Day had the potential to be a really terrible day. I was disoriented and knew barely anyone. My roommates weren't in so the apartment was empty. However, thanks to good friends, it ended up being awesome.

In the morning, I met a roommate's boyfriend to get into my apartment. My room is on the third floor of a house that's split into two apartments (we have the top two floors). There are these really narrow, twisted staircases that are easy to trip over going up and down the stairs. My room is kind of bare but I have everything I need!

After unpacking I ventured out on the bus route to Target to buy some things I needed. I was proud of myself for not getting lost.

Alex and Emily invited me over for an afternoon cookout, where I met several of my coworkers: Brad, Joseph, and James. James is on the same project as I am. Joseph is his brother, and is an intern as well. Both of them are from Easley so they're practically next door neighbors to me! Bethany invited me over for an evening cookout, where I met several of her labmates and housemates, who were all very nice. Most of them are studying in the medical field but I did talk to one guy who had interest in medical applications in virtual reality, so that was neat.

I met some of my roommates when I got in that night, but pretty much went straight to bed so I could be ready for my first day at work. I was delighted to find out that we had central air conditioning (a luxury around here) considering it was in the high 80s and my bedroom is on the 3rd floor!

Favorite moment(s) of the day: fire and water. At Alex's cookout, he was grilling on a tabletop grill set up on a table on the lawn when the automated sprinklers turned on! Friends helped him move the grill and table out of the stream of water. At Bethany's cookout, the chicken breasts had skin on them so the grease drippings caught on fire, leading to massive flames and charred chicken being scooped off the grill with a shovel!

Least favorite moment of the day: being nervous before meeting my coworkers at Alex's cookout. It all turned out okay though!

boston day one: (thankfully temporary) homelessness

So I had wanted to do a picture a day or something for every day of my stay in the Boston area this summer, but mostly I've been too busy actually doing things to sit down and write about them. I'm going to attempt to catch up and then start writing a bit about each day. Knowing me, this will probably last about two weeks and then I'll give up. Oh well. I'll give it a shot anyhow.

It was weird waking up on Sunday morning and not going to church. Patrick and I had stayed up super late watching this movie, The Illusionist, not to be confused with The Illusionist, which is what we thought we were getting from the redbox, and would have probably been a much cheerier movie. Anyhow. I spent the morning packing. We all had spaghetti for lunch and then I left for my flight. I was nervous and crying.

Patrick helped me get my luggage in the airport. My bag was overweight. Turns out that's an additional $95--a total of $120 for the one bag to be checked! I only paid $180 for the entire trip! We shuffled between the two bags to make them both in the acceptable weight range and in a moment of panic checked the second, carry on sized bag as well, costing a total of $60. Still, half the price I would have paid for the one bag. Strange pricing.

Anyhow, we said our teary goodbyes and I went through security. My flight got delayed by about an hour. On the plane a kid behind me kicked my seat and loudly smacked his gum the entire time. Instead of doing anything useful, I sipped ginger ale and played Angry Birds.

Now, on Saturday, I got an e-mail from my subletee (is that a real word?) copied to a couple of my roommates asking them to put the key outside the apartment for me on Monday. Trouble is, I was arriving Sunday. I e-mailed the whole group asking them to please have it ready on Sunday, but there was no reply on Saturday. There was still no reply when I landed in the Boston airport.

I called my subletee and she said she'd text me the number of another roommate, but it turns out she didn't have that roommate's number. I decided to stay with Bethany (my college roommate from Winthrop) for the night--she had met me at the airport to help me with my bags and we just decided that will be easier. Several hours later, no phone call and no key still, and I am panicking. Finally, after much searching and worrying, I got in touch with one of my roommates, and her boyfriend was in town and had a key so I made arrangements to meet him Monday morning.

Other than that chaos, it was quite a pleasant evening. Bethany's house is nice. We ate frozen pizza and sorbet outside. It was almost like old times in college.

Favorite moment of the day: eating lemon sorbet outside
Least favorite moment of the day: saying goodbye to my family