little.children

I read this book while in europe, and thought it was pretty bad. I finished it purely due to the amount of time spent on trains paired with the increased difficulty of finding an english bookstore. I just saw that it was made into a movie which is being released soon. How tom perrotta got so lucky to have actual actors like kate winslet and jennifer connelly portray his book, I'll never know. Maybe they changed the plot line so much that the movie could actually be good. I think I'll see it just in case.

going.to.the.chapel

My good pal and europe companion, *tm* got engaged a couple of days ago! She's not a blog reader, but I figured I'd post a congratulatory entry on her behalf. I also stuck in one of the pictures she sent with the e-mail because she thought it was okay to put actual pictures in my blog without editing them- thus my new picture and link to flickr account. I'm really happy for her especially because she's so happy. That's really what's important when you think about it. Plus, I'll get to live vicariously through her without actually having to pay for a wedding myself!

sel.de.la.terre

For some reason, I always thought that the above restaurant was a seafood place. Yes, I took french for seven years. Yes, I know what all those words mean. No, I never really thought about it enough to put it all together. I guess the fact that the place is very close to the harbour and the aquarium made me assume (which my 11th grade french teacher told me never to do) it was a seafood-ers paradise. So, back to the point. On monday, *kn* called to tell me she and several of our other friends were going there for their "wine wednesday" where they have one menu with wine pairings for a set price. She asked if I wanted to come. I said I'd let her know the next day. I first went to their website to figure out what kind of food they were serving. I'm not a big seafood fan, but I can manage to put away some of the less fishy or rubbery stuff, and I needed to make sure that this "seafood restaurant" was serving something I could eat without making faces. Low and behold, there was no seafood on the menu, and what was on it looked delicious! The seven of us had a great time eating, drinking and talking for over three hours. I actually realized part way through that this meal was like a lower class french laundry meal. If you care, you can check out our menu here. If you decide to go to any of the other wine wednesday's, let me know. I'll come too.

freaky.eyeballs

I do not like when anything weird goes on with eyeballs. Not in real life- if someone had an eye problem I don't think it would bother me- but in movies or print. Like, no iris or pupil, black sockets, rolling eyeballs, etc. It pretty much freaks me out more than any horror movie could hope to do. I was watching one of my favorite tv shows, house, and the medical problem this week happened with an autistic boy. It turned out that he had eaten sand in his sandbox that had some worm in it which screwed with his body. The worms entered, among other things, his eyeball. So at one point, only one of his eyes rolled all the way back, and then started making little seizure like movements. I almost threw up.

i.need.new.friends

I decided that I need to expand my group of friends. Don't jump to conclusions...my friends are great, but I've had the same ones for years. This is a good thing (I'm apparently a good friend since I haven't chased many of them off), but it also means that I've become too comfortable (and this applies to my entire life- not just my friends.) As an attempt to start getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, I decided to do some volunteering. I wanted to get something regular going with habitat for humanity- I figured this would be perfect since I'd get to build stuff and be outside and everything, but their boston volunteering sessions are full until 2007. Next, I did a web search for volunteering options in boston, and got tons of info. A lot of it was stuff I wouldn't be interested in (things where I wouldn't really meet people) but there were several organizations which put together options in a lot of different areas. I liked this since I'd be working with a lot of the same people, but wouldn't get bored only doing one thing all the time. The first event I'm doing isn't until mid-october, so until then I'll keep up the search.

the.cheese.house

I took four kids to "one stop fun" (aka- the ball place) today. It's basically an indoor playground on steroids. Three stories with tubes, ball pits (thus the name "the ball place"), slides, balance beams, a zippy thing you hang onto as you fly thirty feet down a track, etc. Pretty much the ideal place to take kids on a rainy day. As I hung out- keeping my eye on the almost 3 year old as she cruised through tunnels and tubes- I was reminded of a similar experience I had when I was about six. It was at leila's birthday party in first grade. We went to chucky cheese's- the hippest place for parties in those days. After our pizza and cake, we took a group trip through the cheesehouse- something they sadly no longer have. In my six year old mind, this thing was HUGE with several rooms, tunnels, bridges, etc. Realistically, it was actually inside chucky cheese's, so it couldn't be so big. After having some fun, we decided to go get more tokens for games, and started to head out. Unfortunately, the cheesehouse had other ideas. Yup. We were lost. After wandering around in circles for quite some time (with adrienne crying at the end of the line) we found a window and tried to flag down the group of four mothers who had stayed to chaperone the party. They took a minute to look up, smile and wave at us before returning to their chit chat. We banged on the window, now with frantic looks on our face, to no avail. I distinctly remember feeling the panic rise inside me, yet trying to appear calm and in control. I took my turn heading the group, hoping to be the one to lead everyone to safety. It would have been a good end to the story, but liz was the one to eventually rescue us all.

ballet.prodigy

Eight year old *m* has been taking ballet lessons at the boston ballet school for a couple years. This school year, she moved up to the age group where they are required to take lessons twice a week. Since she has a crap load of homework, she was given the choice of staying at the boston ballet school and stopping her gymnastics lessons, or sticking with gymnastics and switching to another ballet school where she could stick to her once a week saturday morning lesson. She decided to stay with boston ballet, and why? Because this is the first year she could audition to be part of the nutcracker, silly! I found all of this a little amusing. How likely is it that an eight year old third grader, who appears to be a perfectly average dancer, would actually make it into a ballet that people pay lots of money to see each christmas? I guess I've always assumed those kid parts were performed by freakish prodigy types whose parents had started them in ballet as soon as they could walk. None-the-less, she dropped gymnastics, and we added another afternoon at the ballet studio to our already threadbare schedule. When the time came around for auditions, the teacher talked to them about the "luck" factor- ie- even if you do a great job with the actual ballet, you may be too short, too tall, or have the wrong color hair for the part. Instead of reassuring her, or just giving her an excuse if she didn't make it, this little talk seemed to scare the living daylights out of her. She decided she didn't want to audition, apparently because she became aware of the fact that she might not make it. In the end, she did audition. She also got a pink call-back slip, and today, she received a letter congratulating her for being accepted as the part of a doll. I guess I'll be out $125 for front row nutcracker seats this year.

anxious.very.anxious

My newest class starts tonight; multivariable calculus. I managed to claw my way through the first two calc courses, but I'm not so sure about this new one. First off, it's at harvard which is going to be harder to begin with. Secondly, the professor made a point of mentioning in the syllabus that this course would likely be harder than other courses, and it's virtually impossible to pass without a significant amount of time and effort put into keeping up to speed. Gulp. I'll let you know how it goes.

flickr.link

After more then two weeks, I've finally set all my pictures up so anyone who's interested can view them. They're on flickr, and I organized them into sets. So when you get to my main page, click on a set (they're in order- frankfurt, paris, porto, lisbon, madrid, barcelona, nice, chamonix, cinque terre, venice, munich, prague, berlin, amsterdam, delft, brussels, and london) and then you can go through them as fast or slow as you want. I titled all of them and commented on what they were, but you can't see that in slide show mode. So if you want to know what something is, just click on it separately. Cool. Here's the link http://www.flickr.com/photos/heretohere/. Go check it out!

liberty.

I spent a few days in liberty indiana (where my dad lived from age one to eight) last week for my grandfather's funeral. He'd had heart problems for a while, so his death wasn't a surprise, but was still sad. It was nice- everyone participated in the funeral (I was recruited to play the piano and do a reading), and while our reason for being there was sad, it was nice to catch up with not only my immediate family (which is spread from austin to villanova to boson) but also with many extended relatives I'd either never met, or had last seen when I was five or so. I'll admit that I was a bit nervous to be in liberty. I'd gone to dodgeville, wisconsin (home to land's end) a few years ago, and as we returned to milwaukee, I realized how anxious I'd been being so removed from a city. I anticipated a similar anxiety for liberty- a 2,100 people, one square mile town surrounded by farms. This wasn't the case though, and I found something oddly comforting in the easily walkable town and it's friendly, content people. I was able to put pictures to the stories my dad told us of his earlier mischievousness- we were even invited in to tour the house he lived in as a child. The current owners offered the eight of us rides on their segways as well. (That's my youngest brother riding one over there.) If this was to occur in boston, the poor people would probably end up being robbed!