07 July 2007

Cat vs. Squirrel

I won't tell you who won. I'll let you decide.




06 July 2007

A Day in the Life

You have to run errands and driving is a pain in the butt and uber expensive, what do you do? You take the T!!! Public transportation is cool, I'm really digging it, but I must say it can be a little daunting to the uninitiated when there are multiple locations involved. Take today for example:

Walk down to the corner of Southbourne and Hyde Park Ave to catch the bus.
Take the #32 bus to Forest Hills Station.
Take the Orange line to the Ruggles Station.
Take the #47 bus the Beth Israel for doctors appointment.
Take the CT3 bus back to Ruggles.
Take Orange line to NE Medical Center Station.
- drop off paper work and get work schedule for next week
Get back on Orange line (outbound now) and go back to Forest Hills.
Take the #39 bus to Centre St. and go to the bank.
Take #39 bus back to Forest Hills.
Take #32 bus back to Southbourne.
Walk back home.

Ta Da! That was my day today. And I didn't even elaborate on all the waiting for the bus/train time that comes in between if you're unfortunate enough not to catch it as it's pulling away. Maybe someday if I'm bored enough I'll actually time those steps. Of course that would mean I'd have to buy a watch....

05 July 2007

Fourth of July Ex-tra-va-gan-za!!

So, after much debating over whether or not it was going to rain, if Jessica could handle the 500,000 people, and if we could even get close enough to make it worth the effort in the first place we decided to hoof it down to the Esplanade to *try* to see the Boston Pops annual free 4th of July concert and fireworks show. This is as close as we got:


Not very close. I used to watch this concert every year when I was a kid growing up so it was still pretty cool to actually be there in person. Even if I did get a little tired and fed up with the people and the rain and leave early to go home and watch the rest on TV.

The reason for the tired-ness had a bit to do with our pre-concert activities. Namely the mini bar hop we did on the way down the the waterfront. We got off the T at the Chinatown stop and walked down Boylston St. Our first stop was here:


It's not nearly as badass as it sounds. In fact it was quite tame. We had some mediocre bbq chicken fingers which I had read on 'Yelp' were supposed to be really good. Don't always believe what you read, or we needed to drink more first.

Being the incredible non-drinkers and lightweights that we are we had a nice little buzz going on and took off down Boylston for our next venue, whatever that may be since we were totally winging it.

Recognizing our next stop from my internet researchings wasn't hard. We decided at once that no bar crawl, mini or not, was complete without stopping at an Irish Pub.

Solas is actually part of the swanky Lenox Hotel on Boylston but not so upscale that it wasn't still worthy of being called a bar.



And it was here that we had a couple more beers, and the most delicious concoction on the face of the earth. Melted smoked gouda cheese with little bits of bacon floating in it with crispy toasted pieces of bread to soak it all up and eat it with. I don't know if that's necessarily an Irish thing or not and I don't really care because it was absolutely the most yummy thing I've had in a long time. And I know it wasn't the beer talking either. It was so damn good I took a picture of it for christ sake.


We were getting further down Boylston and further away from the Esplanade when we decided to cut across Comm Ave. and head toward the water. In doing so we came across Newbury St. which I hadn't been on in eons so we decided to walk down that a ways and see what there was to see. We still hadn't had a proper dinner yet and neither of us had lunch so the plan was to eventually stop for a burger or something a little more substantial than chicken fingers and melted cheese.

On our way down Newbury we spotted a Joe's American Bar & Grill, hey, it was July 4th right? There were people hanging out all over waiting to be seated but I went in to see how long it would take. 15-20 minutes if we wanted to be inside or immediately if we wanted to sit outside, but if it started to rain they couldn't take us in. Well shit ya! That's right up our alley. So off we went to the courtyard to play roulette with the New England weather and our dinner. I know, you can never win with the weather here but it sure was fun to try. We made it almost all the way through before it started to rain and even then it wasn't really a very heavy rain, nothing that was going to make my roast beef soggy or anything. We had fun, and so did everyone else who decided to brave it.

Notice all the umbrellas?



We had them too.


I can't believe I'm posting this.


And here ends the backwards tale of our 4th of July Boston adventure. I'm going to bed now.