Warning: this post has some bad language.
I got a text message very early this morning. It's from a phone number I don't recognize, and the reverse phone lookup just says that it's a cell in Hammond, IN (although, I guess the cell itself could be anywhere). Actually, this person texted me before -- twice on New Year's Day with 'happy new year.' Today's message:
"im drunk ! how r u - my nipples are hard as fuck!"
I assume they think I'm someone else.
A few other mysteries (aside from, who is this person?): Is this a booty-text? Did I just accidentally cock-block someone by having a similar phone number? What does that last bit of the text mean? Is that supposed to be a sexual come-on?
Sunday, March 07, 2010
That Was Random
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
I Live in Boston, But I Don't Take the T
One of the nice things about Boston is the subway system, the "T." It means that Boston is one of the few places in the U.S. where one can get along without a car. In fact, Sean and I do not have a car. But since we moved to the South End, I've been on the T less than once a month. Partly this is because we live near the commuter rail station and I take commuter rail to get to work. The other thing is that we live in the most convenient location in Boston. I live in the neighborhood with the fancy restaurants. A 15 minute walk north puts me in the neighborhood with the fancy shopping. A few blocks up my street is Chinatown (with the giant Chinese grocery store). Keep on going and I'll pass downtown and hit the river (not a bad run on a nice day). I guess that helps make up for the 3 hour per day commute.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Boston Is Not a Hot Dog Kind of Town
When I lived in Germany, I never once ate or even thought about eating hot dogs -- even though I actually knew a place where I could get them. It just didn't seem right when I ate sausages (mm, bockwurst, so yummy, so hard to order correctly*) all the time. In the few months I've been back in the U.S., I've found that I've been thinking more and more about the meals I had at Sammy's when I was finishing up my thesis: hot dog, fries, milkshake (~$7). But, apparently, Boston is not a hot dog kind of town. Not a milkshake kind of town either. Admittedly I don't live in a greasy spoon kind of neighborhood, but there's a (at least) pizza joint on every corner (often burgers, but no milkshakes, no hot dogs). So I don't know where to get a hot dog -- let alone a Chicago dog. I don't even know where to find a good diner. Thinking about hot dogs and Sammy's makes me think about going to Salonica's and having breakfast. I miss that too.
* Bockwurst digression: Words like 'bockwurst' and 'Bonn' are not easy for an American to say correctly in German. Yes, that's right, I lived there for three years and never pronounced the name of the city I lived in correctly. When I tried to say 'Bonn' (more correctly, it should come out more like 'bun' than 'bon'), the person I was speaking to would say 'Bern? In Switzerland?' Ordering bockwurst was nearly impossible. For all but a handful of times, I was served a bratwurst. And I'd sigh. And then I'd eat the bratwurst because -- hello! -- it's bratwurst.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Train Hijinks
In college, I lived on campus. In grad school, I lived 6 blocks from my office. In Germany, I lived a 10 minute bike ride from work. Today, I live in Boston, MA and work in Providence, RI. I take an hour train ride each way and spend 3 hours per day commuting. The good news is that I do the reverse commute and the trains are never more than 1/2 full. The bad news is that they run fairly infrequently. And here something to ponder: The train starts at South Station. In Boston. It's the end of the line. I get on at Back Bay. It's the next stop, still in Boston, and not that hard to get to on the subway. Yet, the train arrives full at Back Bay, and most everyone on the train gets off. Can someone explain this to me?
Anyway, usually, the train is pretty reliable. Going home, I walk in the door at 7:08PM. But the past two weeks have been full of odd timings. Last Monday, there was an Amtrak train disabled on the tracks, and I got home one hour late. And the train has been noticebly late (more than 10 minutes) twice more since then. And suddenly, I've been synchronized with the neighbor across the hall. Leaving for work, I walk out the door at 8:18AM. In the past two weeks, I've opened the door to see my neighbor opening his door three times. The doors are exactly aligned, maybe 6 feet apart. It's pretty weird, especially since we're going to the same place (the train station), but aren't really inclined to talk to each other.
Speaking of being synchronized: Back during the many years that Sean and I were dating, we'd occasionally goes clothes shopping together. And Sean would say, 'Should I get this sweater in color X or color Y?' And I would say, 'I like color X.' And everything would be hunky-dory. But I should have been more forward-thinking. Now we live together and our schedules are such that a lot of the time Sean is heading out the door as I'm jumping in the shower. And every few weeks, I get home and I look at him and I look down at me, and he looks at me and looks down at himself, and, yes, we're matching. Not quite as embarrassing and getting to work and discovering that you're matching with your thesis advisor (yes, I've done that too) and now you need to go hide in your office all day. But pretty mortifying nonetheless.
Future blog posts: I'm thinking I should write a few about Boston. Are people interested in Boston?
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Thursday, January 07, 2010
The Executive Suite
I am at the AAS meeting in DC right now but I'm leaving for Boston in a few hours. Sean and I just checked out of our hotel room. Since we had arrived Monday (and not Sunday), the hotel ran out of rooms, and they gave us an Executive Suite. It had the square footage of our apartment. 
There were two couches, an armchair, and a dining room table in the living room. And the bedroom was just slightly smaller than a regular hotel room.
It had a double door at the entrance.
And a little balcony from which you could see the Washington Monument. 
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Random Germany Thought #2
Back the in the day, when I lived in Germany, I had the same stunning realization every time I visited the U.S. after several consecutive months of hearing nothing but various forms of European accented English: Americans talk funny. They have a twang, a cadenced whine. Not just Southerners or Texans. People I at one point would have said spoke normal, unaccented English sound like this. I probably sound like this. I'm sorry to report, it's not a pretty sound. Of course, about two minutes after I moved back to the U.S., I totally forgot about it.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Random Germany Thought
I took this picture at an outlet mall in New Hampshire and then forgot about it. But this vest (is it a fishing vest? what is it?) illustrates one of those little quirky differences between living in Bonn and living in Boston. This is the de rigeur fashion accessory for German retirees. Every white-haired man in Bonn sports one. I can't explain it. My neighborhood in Boston doesn't even have any retirees. Just yuppies. 
DC in January?
Both Sean and my boss are out of town, so I'm commuting 90 minutes each way between an empty apartment and an empty office. Ridiculous. I'd work from home, but right now I don't trust myself to not sit on the couch all day.
Anyway, I'm thinking about going to DC during the AAS meeting, January 3-7. I'd stay Monday through Thursday. Anyone else going to be around then? I haven't committed to actually attending the meeting if I go (or going at all), so I might have a lot of time to hang out with people.
Monday, November 30, 2009
The Mountain Goats @ The Wilbur Theatre
Sean and I went to see the Mountain Goats last night at the Wilbur Theatre. 
The Wilbur Theatre is a 10 minute walk from our apartment. It seats about 1200 with a general admission main floor and seating in the mezzanine and balcony. It's a nice place for a show. We sat the first row mezzanine, which are excellent seats. Living so close to the place also meant that I walked to the box office to buy tickets (I cannot stand all those online "convenience" charges).
Opening the show was Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is essentially a solo project of Owen Pallett (although occasionally including a drummer). From skimming his wikipedia page, you'll find out that he's done the strings arrangement for such groups as Beruit and the Arcade Fire. Also, his second album has the awesome title, He Poos Clouds. I'm not sure how to describe the songs: intense baroque/geek pop? In live performances, what he does is play a few lines on the violin, then loop and sample those lines, and play another melody to the accompaniment of his original lines, then loop and sample those lines -- mixing and matching his samples, his playing, and singing. There's a little bit of stage magic too, controlling all the loops with (I couldn't really see) at least 4 foot pedals so you couldn't really tell at what point you're listening to him playing live and when you're listening to the sample. Pretty neat.
At this point, any reading the blog must know of my deep and abiding love for the Mountain Goats (that last link's to Tim's blog post which got me started back in the day). There's not a lot more I can say about that. But this was the first time I've seen them live, and so far I've got a few complaints about seeing them live:
Short shows. They played maybe for little over an hour. Sean saw them last year and it was the same. There was the opening act, and I don't feel like I got ripped off or anything, but it seems short to me.
The balance was off and the bass (both the instrument and the audio from the guy playing it) was too high.
The final thing is maybe a little uncharitable. At times, they sounded really good. And the middle section with just John Darnielle and his guitar was great. But with the full band and especially when playing their most popular songs, they really kick it up and play it loud. But the band isn't what makes the Mountain Goats the Mountain Goats. And the arrangements make them sound like a generic rock band (maybe a cover band comprised of suburban dads). On the other hand, I can understand that playing their most popular songs must be really boring for them.
Random point #1. The Mountain Goats are hilariously dorky-looking (and I've seen They Might Be Giants). I'd say they look like the band formed as a collaboration between the IT and accounting departments of a small medical supply company. When Sean went to their show last time, he took some friends who weren't very familiar with the band. One, they didn't recognize them when they came out to set up their equipment. Two, when they came back out to play and Sean's friend realizes that this is the band, he says "Is that Dwight Schrute?"
Random point #2. Even though I'd heard recordings of John Darnielle speaking before, it's rather startlingly in person to hear how different his singing voice is from his speaking voice. He sings in a distinctive, nasal staccato. Speaking, he's pitched much deeper and drawls (drawls!).
Here's the setlist as stolen from the Mountain Goats website forums.
1 Samuel 15:23
Old College Try
Cotton
Psalms 40:2
Isaiah 45:23
Deuteronomy 2:10
Enoch 18:14
Genesis 30:3
From TG&Y (solo)
Blueberry Frost (solo)
Mole (solo)
Dance Music (solo)
(Owen comes out)
Going to Bristol
(everyone else comes back)
Hebrews 11:14
Quito
(Owen leaves)
Song for Dennis Brown (& hilarious Dennis Brown anecdote)
Genesis 3:23
This Year
Ezekiel 7 And The Permanent Efficacy Of Grace
Romans 10:9
No Children (w/ Owen on piano)
Mostly songs from the newest album. Enoch 18:14 is a bonus track. 3 songs from The Sunset Tree, 3 from We Shall All Be Healed, 2 from Tallahassee, 1 each from two other albums, 1 unreleased.
A studio version of the unreleased song "From TG&Y" is on the internet and linked above. Enjoy. I'd say that the live version was better.
Turns out John Darnielle appeared on The Colbert Report last month. I missed it but here it is.
Thanksgiving
turkey legs, Brussels sprouts, two kinds of mashes potatoes, pumpkin pie, and fresh-made whipped cream.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Best Books of the Decade
The AV Club has been running a series of "Best of the 00's" listicles. Given how slow my rate of book reading has been since I became an adult, I was rather pleased to see that I'd read 5 of the 20 books on the fiction list for "The best books of the ’00s." And since even better than a listicle is a ranked listicle, I thought I'd better order that subset of books:
1.) Never Let Me Go
I try to review the books I read at goodreads.com. Each book can be rated on a five star scale. None of the I've rated so far have reached 5 stars. Never Let Me Go is the fabled 5 star worthy book. It's incredibly difficult to talk about this book without giving away the plot; I'm not going to even try. It's very short. It's easy to read. But it's impossible to put away. I think that the works of art I appreciate the most are those that strive to be the simplest. It's why Spirited Away is my favorite Miyazaki film.
I read this book in one sitting from 8pm to 4 am or so. Then I crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about it.
2.) Middlesex & 3.) The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay
I really love The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier & Clay, but Middlesex may be a little better. Kavalier & Clay is a fantastic story set about the "Golden Age" of comic books -- before, during, and after World War II. It's the kind of book you wish you were talented enough to write, the kind of book the grown-up version of any book-obsessed kid would have to love. I was in the Canary Islands when I read it (the Canary Islands!), and I'd steal some time after lunch to go back to my hotel room to finish reading it. With its pulp influences, it's a great story.
Middlesex is a great story too: like Kavalier & Clay it's about family, adventure, and the making of Americans with a historical setting. But it's one that that seems so real and yet so unique that I could never have conceived of it as a kid. I had to read the book first.
4.) Gilead
I read this book while severely jet-lagged and I remember thinking it was very good, but I'm not sure I found it particularly original or unmissable.
5.) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Of the 2000s Harry Potter books, I'm not sure I'd pick this one as the best. Way better than The Order of the Phoenix, probably a little better than The Deathly Hallows. But I seem to have very fond memories of The Goblet of Fire. What do you guys think?
By the way, most of these I reviewed on goodreads and Eugene wrote a whole bunch on Never Let Me Go at his blog.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
This Morning
grad student though. I guess grad students don't merit name plates.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Still Alive
Just a note to say that I'm still here and the blog is still alive (I had to get this one in, so September wasn't totally blogless). Lots of planned posts, but as it turns out it's much more difficult to blog when I don't have work to avoid doing. ;) But I'll be back and running soon, I promise.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Goodbye Germany
So if you've missed all the references in the last few posts, I'm leaving Germany. I'm going to Boston, where I'll be living for at least a few years. I began this blog to document my adventures 'abroad', so there will be a few posts in September wrapping up my time here (pros & cons of Germany, travel summary, ... other ideas?). And what will happen to the blog once I'm ensonced in the USA? I'm not sure yet. For now, I'm going to keep going and see what's there to blog about life in the States. But I may end up pulling the plug. Don't worry, though, I won't just leave you hanging; if it looks like there's not enough to sustain the blog, I'll do a 'goodbye blog' post.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Back in the Office
After 3 weeks and 1 day, I've finally gotten back into my office -- 4 days before I leave the country for good. But, finally, new windows:
Unfortunately (after 3 weeks and 1 days), there aren't any blinds yet. And my office gets sunlight all day long. So, it'll probably be hot (not so bad today) and impossible to see my computer screen. You can compare them to the old windows here (notice the lack of a dirt line in the new windows -- I tried to illustrate the old dirt line here). Looking out and through the new windows!
Sunday, August 16, 2009
I Did It!
I live in Poppelsdorf, a neighborhood in the city of Bonn. Just south of Poppelsdorf is Venusberg, and, then, south of that is the Kottenforst, a forest. It's not too far from Poppelsdorf, maybe a little more than 3 miles. To get to the Kottenforst, there are three options: go through the woods to the east of Venusberg, go through Venusberg, and go through the woods to the west of Venusberg.
View Kottenforst Bonn in a larger map
Going to the west of Venusberg is my usual route: run up the steep hill to the hospital, down the street with some pretty nice looking houses, through the wooded area to pastures with cows and horses, past the old brick bridge over a ravine with a very small stream, through the path that goes the back way to people's gardens, past the swimming pool, and home. You can run along the stream too -- very cute, winding along and over the stream. The furthest I've gotten is the green marker on the map.
On the other side, I usually get as far as the blue marker, running up the hill to the hospital, then winding back and forth and up and down through a forest path. This past weekend, I finally had the bright idea to go all the way to the top -- to Venusberg itself. There are running/walking/biking paths all over Bonn, along streets, through wooded areas, behind people's houses. That's the cool part. The bad part is that there are not really marked and you have to be careful that you don't get lost. I ran the path that went around Venusberg -- stopped to take in the view of the Siebengebirge and the Bad Godesberg castle. Then turned left to run through the forest. I hadn't decided how far to go, but I could see ahead that the forest was thinning -- blue sky ahead -- and then I was at Annaberger Hof.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Munich Again
After Salzburg, I spent a couple days hanging around Munich. Unlike my first visit, it was sightseeing-light, beer-drinking heavy: two beer halls, two beer gardens. The best Bavarian beer, in my opinion, is Schneider and you can get it at the Weisses Bräuhaus, where we had weißwurst. Weißwurst is supposed to be a morning thing, so we had to be there and drinking by noon. I feel like the Weisses Bräuhaus isn't as touristy as some bräuhaus-es and our (in typical fashion) gruff waitress totally warmed up to us -- even in our American ineptitude. The Hofbräuhaus, on the other hand, is a ginormous tourist trap and the waitress there (in a first for me in Germany) actually grubbed for a tip -- but it's probably still mandatory to visit.
In a typical Bavarian beer garden, they have stands for beer and food but it's acceptable to bring a picnic and only pay for drinks. We went to one out of the city center (near a very expensive looking neighborhood). Here's me and my friend Amy at one of the biergartens (thanks to Amy for the pictures in this post).
We also went to the beer garden by the Chinesischer Turm (Chinese Tower) in the Englischer Garten (English Garden, duh), a large public park in the center of town. It has 7000 seats and is the second largest in Munich. Germans are very committed to the outdoors; it hailed on us (we were partially protected by trees) and the people around kept on sitting and socializing.
There's a river in the garden with a standing wave that attracts surfers. Here's a picture of them:
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Salzburg
Before I got booted from my office, I took a few days off and met up with a college friend in Munich. We took the train to Salzburg for a day. For all my obsession with visiting Salzburg, it was disappointing. Cute, but the weather was way too hot, and just not very exciting.
Above is the Mirabell Gardens with Festung Hohensalzburg (the city's fortress) rising above it. Behind me is the horse fountain that where the children and Maria sing 'Do Re Mi' in The Sound of Music. In addition to locations for the movie, Salzburg is known as the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. There's at least two museums devoted to him. This is the Mozart Geburtshaus -- the house he was born in. There's a museum, but it's expensive (7 euros), small, confusing, and not very enlightening. You do get to see some of his hair (yeah, really) and the little violin he played as a child. 
After a couple not so successful attempts, we found the path up the hill to the fortress. We didn't go inside, but walked along the hill top from the fortress to Mönchsberg. It was cooler up there. Here you see the fortress, where we started, and some of the hilltop we walked along. 
The other side of the Salzbach river and Kapuzinerberg (the hill sticking up from the city). 
In addition to Festung Hohensalzburg, there was a lot of small, old, ruin-y fortresses up there. 
Two views from the hilltop looking away from the city (i.e., the other side of the hill). 
We stayed the night, and the next day, before heading back to Munich, we went to Untersberg. Untersberg is a mountain 16km south of Salzburg (we took the bus there) and over 1900m high. There's a cable car to take you to the summit. It's pretty expensive (21 euros, I think), but actually pretty cool. There's a little peak halfway up the mountain and I think it must be pretty scary to get there and see the ground drop away from you again as you continue up. I was crammed in the middle of the car and didn't see anything, but I heard a few gasps. Going up. 
At the top, there's a path to a couple high points, and a sign that indicates that you can walk (90 minutes) all the way to an ice cave. We just sat and had a drink and took pictures. 
Vaguely west-ish.
North-ish, you can see Salzburg in this one. 
East-ish.
South-ish. 
Going down.
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