About a month ago, my Mom, Aunt Kathy, and Cousin Jill came for a visit. This was smack dab in the middle of the extra rainy June, but it was still a good time, and we made some spectacularly lucky weather choices. Here’s a map of what we did.
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Archive for the ‘Visits’ Category
June 2009 Visit
Saturday, July 18th, 2009EC in Boston
Sunday, March 15th, 2009
Wow, am I behind. EC was in Boston a week ago, to volunteer for the Boston FIRST regional and hang out with all her Boston friends. Instead of detailing the whole thing I’m gonna start allowing myself to write in a more short form. In hopes that I can keep the blog more in sync with my life.
- I had to skip out on EC friday because I had a date. We went to a comedy show, which was funny, would go again, but there won’t be another date :-/
- Saturday I met up with EC. I got to be a tour guide without a plan; using my geography and local culture knowledge to great effect. I’ve been spending a lot of time boning up on local culture, news, and ‘things to do’ knowledge; it felt good to use it. It validated all the time I’ve been spending. We went to Sunset in Allston and later Miracle of Science for the record.
- We hung out at MIT for maybe two hours, being cool, failing to provide directions, and snooping around in classrooms. One of the classrooms had some thermodynamics/aeronautical stuff on the board. EC was thrilled.
- I met two former classmates of hers, they were both cool.
- All of us went to party in East Cambridge. Tim Hwang was there, I’m the biggest fan of the show he does with Diana. I met them at ROFLCon last year. He remembered my name! He invited me to come to some talks hes organizing! So awesome.
- At the party there was an RIP 2am card for everyone to sign. Good call, otherwise I’d have forgotten about the time change. Which is bad when your friend is flying out in the morning.
- After 2 hours of sleep I drove her to the providence airport. We made it in perfect time. It was a great weekend. Then I came back and did some spring cleaning that really needed to be done.
Josh & Sarah’s Visit
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008A friend of mine from college, Josh, and his more interesting that I imagined sister were here last week. Unfortunetly for them we were still at about 50% unpacked during their short stay. She was here to look at a graduate school and he was here cause it was essentially a free trip. We had a lengthy debate about the definition of self evident truths, as in the deceleration of independence, and how that relates to middle eastern societies who clearly do not hold that women are created equal. Essentially the truths must either not be self evident, as it is commonly defined, or someone must be in denial. Of course, we got nowhere, but it has been quite a while, since college really, that I’ve had as much fun with pointless debate.
He also brought me 3 christmas tree shaped pina-colada air fresheners. You know, the kind traditionally used in a car and traditionally in some sort of pine fresh scent. You see, when I was moving to Boston in August of 2006, I stayed with Josh in New Jersey as a layover. Before I went we had this conversation (spelling and grammar have been improved to protect the innocent) :
Josh: oh – well I am not killing you I might as well not upset your stomach – any foods you don’t like – or inversely any food you’re particularly fond of?
Me: I’ll eat anything. I am particularly fond of rice and pasta
Josh: nice – I like easy. Lets see, not kill, not disgust … I think that covers the basics of hospitality the world over
Me: yeah, I can’t think of anything else; not kill covers a lot of ground
Josh: hell, I’ll even throw in not intentionally injure … permanently injure I mean
Me: That’s quite an offer, can I get a free car air freshener thrown in?
Josh: I don’t know about that – we are staring to cross the line of things I can give to you with no financial penalty to me whatsoever to things that actually cost money … eh what the hay sure
Me: rofl. good. I think we have a deal: non permanent injury + air freshener, for the low, low cost of an air freshener
Josh: pinefresh okay? or do you want some weird flavor – like pina-colada?
Me: oh man pina-colada sounds good now that you mention it
Josh: damn, I so only offered that with the almost complete conviction that you wouldn’t choose it. Okay since I live next to a gas station that can probably be arranged
Me: wow thats a fancy gas station.
Me: oh, did you know, that EC and Sandeep are now officially dating
Josh didn’t have them when I arrived on the trip, but let no one say that he didn’t come through in the end. I even got two air freshers worth of interest.
Entertaining Tourists: October ’07
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007My parents and my best friend Paul’s parents came to Boston for a long weekend, and what a long weekend it was, what with the world series and all. We managed to do a whole lot (Map now with pictures), much more than when my parents came up last spring. Its taken me a few days to recover and find time to make up the map. It was fun, and good to have people to go out to dinner with, more than just on Wednesday night. And of course, it was great to see my parents, whom I love (they are the principle readers of this thing anyways it seems).
xkcd Meetup – Dream Girl 2007
Monday, September 24th, 2007This Sunday was Spetember 23, 2007, so naturally I was here:
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And so were hundred of other loyal xkcd fans from all over the world. There was a guy from Russia, and from The United Kingdom. My friend and board gaming buddy, Post, hosted a group of his friends from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and even my college and robotics buddy Josh drove up from Jersey to attend. Oh, and collect on one of his two free meals because the Red Sox came up short against the Yankees. At least the Sox have locked a playoff spot. Ok back on topic.
Post, and his crew arrived shortly after Josh and I did. They planned a head and brought stuff, including two of the best costumes there. They also brought a conversation topics list, and a poster for people to sign. They eventually
gave the poster to Randall (that’s the poster back there to the left getting signed.), who promised to scan it in in high res.
Other Impressions
There is just so much to talk about, I’ll be telling stories from this weekend for a while, but I want to hit on some big things I can think of now:
- There were a lot of hot girls[1, 2] [3, 4, 5] [6] there, hot nerdy, possibly lesbian girls. Well the last part is wishful, but I did read on the comment white boards that “The Dream Girl went home with a Wellesley Woman.” I mean, maybe not a lot compared to the general population, but compared to the expected audience, wow. Also of interest is how little photographic evidence of this there is, its like there was something more exciting that hot girls there ;-).
- I didn’t get anything signed, I didn’t bring anything to get signed, and random bits of signed paper, well those seem lame, but I did stand in mob (thats kind of like line) to get Cory Doctorow’s blog signed.
- Afterwards Josh, Post, his friends, me, and some random other people, including the guy from the UK went and had dinner downtown at Quincy Market. This was my first time eating there. I got some New England Clam Chowder, which was not as good as it should have been in the touristy part of town. The guy from the UK, Alex, was interviewed, and had his musings included in this article on the event. I was also interviewed, the reporter girl was riding in the subway car with us down to dinner, at least as far as Harvard Square. My contribution was a musing on “where are we going to do this next year!”
I guess that is it for now, nothing is sparking any stories. I did take some video’s while I was there, which went a long way towards filling up my 1GB SD card. The best of them are up on you tube now, and embedded below:
Randall Munroe Enters and the Dream Girl Countdown
Sorry, this one is a bit sloppy with the camera work.
Xkcd Meetup Conversation Game
Randall Munroe on being a Roboticist
This one follows the previous one by maybe 10 seconds.
Randall Munroe on Early Advertising for Xkcd
Later on, the crowd has gone down a lot so now you can hear him talk about interesting stuff
Dinner in the North End
Sunday, July 1st, 2007
Chris, of liquidorange founding member fame, and Elsa, also of liquidorange fame are now in Boston. We went out for dinner in the North End to Antico Forno tonight. It was good to see them, and well to go explore a new restaurant. We split two pizzas which, while yummy, were strangely not filling.
I was also formally introduced to Mike’s Pastries and cannolies. I had a yellow cream one, it was really good, although I sadly was unable to consume all the scrumptious cream before it got all over the wax paper and there was no more shell remaining. It was good, but I can’t recall if that is the place Erik recommended or if thats the place everyone else recommends and he recommend some other place. All I remember is that he recommended a place other than the one everyone recommends. It was a really excellent ~65 deg. F. night in the city, its July, my birth month, and possibly the best weather I’ve ever experienced during it so it was great to have something to do to take advantage.