Big Achievements

Saori's big achievement today was running her first 5K in the St.Louis color run. I am really proud of her for the work she has put into running, which is a lot less enjoyable for her than it is for me. She had a great time and was excited to run another one.


My big achievement of the day has been holding down a few gulps of Gatorade and four Ritz crackers, hung over, and sick as a dog. Yesterday's drinking started at noon...

My last day the office, a few people came out for lunch with me at Papagayo, a decent tex-mex place. They made fresh guac at the table, and they served a mean margarita. I got fish tacos while sipping down my drink (1). Food was not bad- the fish tacos were grilled, which was new to me, but the chips were really hard, thick things. Sitting with me were a bunch of coworkers from the NE and one girl from New Mexico, and the two of us were lamenting the lack of good Mexican food. One of the guys at my table had only recently heard of guacamole.

Anyway, after I got back to the office, well warmed from the huge margarita, I started working again, around four, my supervisor came over with a beer for me and we talked about the final stuff he wanted me to do with the model I was working on, so I drank that beer (2).

I ended up working until around six, and went around the office to say goodbye to the few people that were left. It sounds like I will have very strong prospects there when I graduate. Leaving the office, I walked across the street to the new convenience store there and picked up a pint bottle of an IPA brewed in Somerville nearby.

At home, I opened the large bottle (3, 4) and started working on it while doing some preliminary sorting and packing- clean clothes to wear for the next few days, dirty clothes to wash, stuff to take on the plane, and stuff to box to be shipped home.

Noel came home and had a beer and I joined him in the kitchen as we both made ramen noodles for dinner. We talked about this and that, and he offered me a bottle of Rogue Ale (5) which I drank while we ate and chat. Drank another of his beers (6) and then he mentioned going out to meet a friend at a bar, and invited me along. I said, sure!

At this point I was pretty drunk. Noel hailed a cab and we took it to The Sevens, a bar at 77 St.James street, and I bought a round (7) while we waited for his friend to arrive. The bar was pretty standard small bar, we were able to sit at a table, and the vibe was definitely more pub. Noel's friend joined us and we talked for a bit before he bought us all another round (8). At last call, the rest of my brain thoroughly pickled, the deepest, most ancient reptilian part of my brain called for a dose of sanity and a glass of water.

When I got up to use the bathroom before we left, I realized, belatedly, how bad off I was. Seriously staggering, using the wall as a guide. I'm happy I didn't walk into any tables. When I got to the bathroom, I realized I was going to be sick and barely made it to the toilet.

We left the pub shortly thereafter, hailed another cab for the south city diner, which is the go-to place for drunks in the downtown after hours. I've always wanted to go, but with my head spinning and my stomach churning, I was in no mood for a plate of their famous pancakes. I bid the two farewell and started walking home. Noel didn't have keys so he told me to get the door for him to let him in when he got back to the apartment. Even now I can't remember if I did or not. I remember getting home and being more sick in the toilet here a few times, and crashing in bed, sweeping my carefully sorted piles onto the floor.

Waking up this morning was an unpleasant experience. I was so bad, I couldn't hold down water. And this lasted until about noon. After one burst, when I was on my knees in front of the toilet, the sweat bursting of my back, my head about to explode, my eyes tearing and the last bit dribbling from my lips, my sweat-drenched forehead resting on my arms which grasped the communal toilet, when I thought, why am I doing this again?

It is kind of strange when you think about it- when one gets so drunk that one's memory of the event, the fun part, is fuzzy or simply loses it altogether, and then the consequence- prolonged hours of misery experienced fully with a sober head and a pounding headache- why we repeat it? It's like we're failing Pavlov's test. Fortunately, I don't do this often- I think I've only been this drunk/sick a few times in my life. By now I know my own limits, but I guess at the threshold of the limit, there was something last night that made me want to step over it. I guess its the slippery slope where I was too drunk to consider the repercussions of my drinking. I would have thought though that the body would associate drinking a certain amount with being miserably sick and form a kind of psychological barrier. Why weren't my alarm bells going off? Were they, and I just ignored them? Or it is too subtle of an alarm bell to hear when I'm at my limit.

Anyway, I started feeling better around 3, and this day is going to be totally wasted cleaning up myself and the messes I've made.

A Toothy Problem

Problems tend to be problems when minor, but detrimentally related, circumstances collide with an unexpected incident.

As bad as my teeth are, it is stupid of me to not carry dental insurance.

As I don't have dental insurance coverage, it is stupid of me to not be scrupulously rigorous with my dental hygiene.

The unexpected incident was the apparent dislodging of a filling in one of my teeth, resulting in me pretty much spitting it out in pieces. This happened during the weekend. Having a gaping hole in my teeth is not a great thing to have, so I wanted to get it checked out.

I called around and got a few quotes from dental offices for a consultation. Got an appointment immediately this morning and came down their office. The place looked clean, and reputable, and they were willing to look at me for $70 and sixteen pages of paperwork.

Actually, I liked the dentist, Alexandra. She was straightforward, didn't try to sell me anythings, and was sympathetic to my concern about cost. She looked at my teeth and told me that she thought that the filling had come out, that would need a second filling on the side of the tooth, and asked me if I had sore cheeks in the morning, or if I knew that I was grinding my teeth at night. Apparently, my teeth show signs that I'm a grinder, which she thought, contributed to the filling coming out.

She said that I could either re-fill the fillings (probably costing me about $400 out of pocket) which would have a unknown time frame of use- (I think these lasted about five years) or she suggested I get a crown for the tooth, which could be as much as $1500, but would be a lot more permanent. And she also recommended I get a hard plastic night guard to keep me from grinding, like a plastic retainer.

Two final summer dinners

While we waited the hour it took to seat us (the table by the window was well worth it), we went over the permutations of what to order given the objectives of minimizing the amount of money we wanted to spend, maximizing the quantity of food, and making sure we hit the culinary highlights which piqued our interest.

We hit a snag however, in lacking information on portion sizes- would the plate feed two people or one person? What if the plate were to be split and the splitters also got cups or bowls of clam chowder? When we finally got around to ordering, we had only one question for the server- how big was the plate of food? When she mentioned that she'd bring some bread back, I about fell of the chair laughing, paralyzed with the added difficulty and ridiculousness of factoring bread to the food equation. Would the bread supplement the dish enough? How much bread are we talking, precisely? Is it limitless bread or one dish at a time? How much comes out at once?

Tay and I ended up splitting a dish with scallops, clams, mussels, and shrimp in a spicy pasta sauce. Fantastic. The clams were the star perfomers, hands down. Should have ordered just a ton of steamed clams. Tay got a bowl of clam chowder, and I tried the lobster bisque. They were both superb. After spending the summer searching for the best clam chowder in Boston, I announced my search at an end. It was just that good.

We dined and talked and at the end of the night, we realized that we had about two and a half hours before the metro stopped running, thereby stranding us in a bad part of town on an island. So we walked through the carnival night atmosphere of Ptown for a short bit, and then jumped back in the car and made a beeline back to the mainland.

I drove most of the way there, switching off with Saori when I started getting droopy eyed. We got the rental back within the metro hours and they had a shuttle which compliantly dropped us off at the Blue Line station after visiting all the terminals. Caught the last train of the night in, made it back after 1 am. I shot a note to my boss at Mikasa letting him know I'd be out monday, and then crashed hard.

Monday, Tay and Saoris' last day, we all slept in until noon, and then Saori and I went out walking. The ICA was closed, so we jumped on a ferry to Spectacle Island, one of the Harbor Islands of Boston. Not too expensive, and nice to get out on a boat. Obnoxious guide on the boat, but the breeze was wonderful. We only had about forty minutes on the island due the last boat leaving so we hustled up the hill/drumlin to the viewing area up on the hilltop.

Spectacle island was actually the Boston dump for many years- waves would carry trash to wash up on the shoreline, making the harbor one of the most filthy in America. After the trash had accumulated on the island to a depth of about ten feet, they covered it all in rock and dirt and planted it with native vegitation. Now, it's lovely, unbuilt, natural, and covered with a few trails, picnic tables, flowers. A ranger golf cart picked us up on the trail and dropped us off at the top, giving us time to walk around and see boston from the distance and to make our way down the rocky trail back to the pier.

Once again, Boston shines its allure- just as I begin to get worn down with the hardscape of the city, the trash in the streets, the closeness and the citiness and grunginess, theres a bunch of relatively pristine natural islands, covered with plants and hiking trails, within a 20 minute ferry ride from downtown.

After we landed, we met Tay for a last dinner at Giovanni's? Guiseppes? Giottos? something like that, in the north end. Line outside of people waiting at 6 on a monday evening. Cash only. Highly, highly commended place. We got there before tay, but the line moved so fast we had to jump back a few places to keep from being seated. Definitely worth it. I got a kind of homemade pasta with grilled sausage in a kind of arabita sauce, and we all split a bottle of wine. It was really great.

We walked the rest of the way back to the apartment, in the twilight of the day through the downtown and gardens and parks. Back home, we played bananagrams until everyone had to go pack.

Saori and Tay left yesterday morning, both made it back to their homes.

Getting to The Lobster Pot

Seven AM came far to early sunday morning as we'd gone to bed only four hours prior. I hauled Tay and Saori out of bed and we made preparations to strike out for the car rental facility for our journey to the Cape.

There are several ways to get to Cape Cod, and renting a car is by far the most flexible and least expensive. We walked to the T, stopping for a Starbucks run for my two night owls, as I was hoping that they would be awake enough to help me figure out the rental, if not up to driving capacity.

Instead of taking the T to the airport stop and taking the airport shuttle to the airport and then the courtsey shuttle to Enterprise, I decided to save some time by simply walking there from the nearest T stop, Maverick. About a fifteen minute walk through an area that would be uncomfortable late at night. Tay was concerned about the distance however, since he commented that when I say "a twenty minute walk" I mean 45, and if I say "a long walk", to bring a sleeping bag and a tent.

We made it to enterprise fine, although we ran into difficulty with payment. Saori and I, who didn't have our credit cards, couldn't pay with debit. Tay, who did, could pay, but the price jumped $30 because he was under $25. However, you can pay with a debit card if you have an outbound flight booked. So we called up Saori's flight reservation and used that. They agent was really nice and sympathetic and got us all the discounts he good and upgraded our rental, so we drove out of the lot in a new Nissan Altima.

Not horribly confusing getting out of the airport, although the weather was misty and rainy on our drive. Rolling hills, forest, grass, gray skies. We drove for about an hour before hitting the beginnings of Cape Cod. I forget how small these East Coast states are- an hour of driving from the airport in Phoenix gets you to another part of...Phoenix.

It was kind of gray and nasty weather still when we got to the upper cape near Hyannis, and we were getting hungry so Tay found us a place to eat- Fran and Nan's kitchen, a country diner kind of place with old ladies bussing tables, where the specials are up on the chalkboard and the coffee comes served in mugs which are more fortresses than tablewear- massive walls scarred with age and scratches. We got an epic breakfast of french toast, sausages, eggs, bacon, and because Tay was worried he might still be able to walk afterwards- a side order of country fried potatoes. Good stuff. It was much better idea than waiting around to get into the Keltic Kitchen down the street, which apparently serves Irish food and had the longest wait to get in for sunday breakfast at 10 am than any restaurant I've seen in Boston.

Looking at our map, we realized that Edward Gorey's house was in the same town, which had been converted to a small museum after his death. Saori was encouraged to go by her coworker who kept a small summer house out here, and with the weather as it was still slightly drizzling, we decided to check it out. Saori and I are both fans of his illustration work, so it was cool to see where he lived and see his original artwork. $3 for students. Lots of really interesting artwork, collections of jewellery. He wore huge rings and giant pendants, mostly from India, Mexico, and Tibet, and one can see the influence on his work. The house did play up the cheese factor a bit (as can be expected) with various dolls through the house suggesting the ends of the various children of his work The Gashleycrumb Tinies. We probably spent an hour and a half going through the house.

By the time we left, the sun was beginning to come out and so we decided to try one of the beaches. We drove up to Marconi beach, scrapped together all of our hard currency and barely squeaked by the national park entry, paying the last of the $15 with two dimes and a nickel.

We drove in less than a mile, and parked in a large parking lot surrounded by the low scrubby vegitation and sand dunes with the small trees in the distance. A short walk led to a changing room building, then a boardwalk to the edge of a cliff formed by the dunes. From the height of the top of the boardwalk stairs down to the beach, we commanded an amazing view of the shoreline and surrounding area. The National Seashore is like no other beach I've seen. No surrounding development, just the mountainous sand dunes, and the wide beach stretching to the horizon in either direction. It feels like an incredible edge, and the guarded section of the beach is just a marked segment. It felt like another planet.

The water was cold, 60 degrees, but the sun was coming out and the weather warmed up in the high 70s, so it was lovely to be out there. Unfortunately, the water was choked with red seaweed, but the surf was incredible, massive, pounding waves coming in from the north Atlantic. We spread a towel and dropped our stuff, and ran out into the waves. The water was bracing and reviving.

We spent a few hours out there, tanning, lounging, bodysurfing, and floating, before heading in. We wanted to see Provincetown, and the beaches nearby. P-town was was the first place the Pilgrims touched the new world when they landed. Ironically, as Purityrannical as the pilgrims were (they hung a quaker woman in Boston), P-town gained a huge gay population. We stopped for an hour at a beach which faced inward into the bay, and the water was much more tranquil, vividly clear, and much warmer. It was past six o clock, so the lifeguards weren't on duty, so we had the beach to ourselves and Saori and I mostly waded, waist-deep, while Tay worked on his sunburn.

Driving in Ptown is about the least fun thing I did all day, besides considering canceling the whole thing from being too expensive and difficult to rent the car. We found ourselves totally in the middle of the major pedestrian street, commercial street, which ran through the town. We were finally able to find parking and happened to spot our intended restaurant as I was muttering and cursing and trying to thread my way through the crowds of tourists and locals beneath the strung rainbow banners everwhere.

We finally did find parking, and walked over. Ptown is really a charming small seaside town, with a huge fish pier filled with boats, and the small streets filled with bars, clubs, bed and breakfasts, tourist shops, two dueling tee shirt stores across the street from each other fighting for advertising over the cheapest tee, New Age stores, leather fetish boutiques, etc.

Our goal was The Lobster Pot, which was one of the most highly ranked restaurants on the cape. When I saw the front, I first mistook it for a diner. Incredibly narrow at the point it meets Commerce St, it had neon lights, a visible kitchen through the open door, white wood siding. One passes through the narrow corridr beside the open kitchen filled with cooks and either up the stairs or downstairs. Upstairs, the stair opens to reveal an upscale bar/dining area with three open sides of glass, looking out over the harbor and the fisherman's piers. The dining area is much nicer, representing the true upscale restaurant it actually is.

Cupcakes and Corilanus

Wednesday night, Saori and I went to see the free concert put on by the orchestra in conjunction with the Lyric Opera company of Boston. "Around the World in 80 Minutes" showcased a dozen opera pieces by Puccini, Wagner, Sullivan, and others set in locales around the world, and demonstrating a few pieces from the season's line up of operas. Nessun Dorma was great, and I also really enjoyed the Flower Duet from Lakme.

Thursday night, we went drinking with some people from my office to celebrate Chuck's final week. We started off at a totally overpriced but interestingly decorated restaurant/bar/themed experience called Empire, where the waitresses served bustiers and the interior decoration was kind of a neuvo-opium den. Seriously overpriced drinks. $35 and two drinks later, we met Saori and headed out to an Irish pub in Harvard square. The bar was actually the original home of the House of Blues before it got really big. I got a big burger, the Redneck Burger, with BBQ and bacon and cheese, and more beer. For the next 24 hours I felt absolutely great.

That night, Tay came back to Boston, and we met him at the apartment.

The following day, Chuck and I had a surprise going away party at the office. I don't get email, so I was only by chance over at his desk checking email that I saw the message about cupcakes and beer, about a minute before they made an announcement over the speakers. It was really sweet that they'd gone to get boutique cupcakes for us and hauled out a bunch of beers. Chuck downed one and then without prompting, got everyones' attention and made a short speech before turning the floor over to me. I thanked everyone for their kindness in hosting me, and lauded the design and expertise of the firm, and I sincerely wished that I would be back to continue working with them. They also gave me a $50 Amazon gift card which is really cool.

That afternoon, it rained hard all evening, so I went home and met Tay back at the apartment and hung out with him and Elise and we played some bananagrams. Saori also got a going away party, although her's was a bigger affair. They didn't get her an Amazon card, but a photoshopped poster with everyone's face grafted onto a fantastic body like giant gorillas, centaurs, Jedi knights, Hello Kitty, etc with Saori fighting with a laser-breathing kitten over a photo of the model she had been working on. It was a fantastic thing with everyone's participation to add a new layer.

I met her and her coworker Steve for more pho after work, and we headed back to the apartment. All of us then sat down with some beers and watched Mission Impossible: Time to Retire Tom on Tay's laptop.

Today we all slept in and got up around 11 or so. One of our roommates, Cahill, made blueberry pancakes, so we got to whet our breakfast appetites before we headed out. We went to a local cafe, the Berkeley Perk, where we got coffee and played banagarams and durak for a few hours. Finally, we went shopping over in Porter Square over in Cambridge before heading back to get ready for the Shakespeare in the Commons play of Coriolanus.

Elise, our flatmate, is in the ensemble, and through her, we were able to secure a spot right up in front of the stage where we all met up after returning from our various tasks. Tay met Elise to save the spot, I went to the apartment to get blankets, and Saori hit CVS to get drinks and snacks. Go team!

We made it and we had a fantastic view, right up in front of the stage, and eventually, everyone from our apartment made it for the show. It's very intense and very active, so we were right up in the action. It was a great show, and if I had difficulty following exactly what was going on and what was being said, it was not for the fault of the actors, who were frankly outstanding. It was one of those moments where I thought, wow, what a weird/cool/unlikely place to be, how did I end up with front row seats to a shakespeaerean drama Boston with seven other roommates?

Going to work

It occurs to me that Boston is actually a very tiny city. It's very dense, and there's a lot of distinct neighborhoods and districts, but really, my circle of work, shopping, dining, entertainment, and living occurs within a mile radius of Chinatown. I could probably live contentedly for years within a five mile radius of the Boston commons. It is the smallest big city I've ever seen, made more apparent by the fact that the closeness of the distance means that everything is pedestrian scaled and walkable.

I wake up in the coolness of the morning in a very small room, pull on my clothes, and eat a quick bite of something, say a Greek yogurt or bowl of cereal in the communal kitchen of the apartment. I walk down two flights of creaking stairs covered in thick blue carpeting, which is wearing through to show the wooden risers and treads beneath. Pushing through the two wooden doors, I emerge onto the street with an unhindered view of the freeway in front of me and below. I follow the brownstones in the same age and style of my apartment building to the major street, and crossing, enter another much more upscale, old brownstone residential neighborhood, this one lit by gas lamps, and covered with a canopy of trees.

Emerging, I cross the street, dodging the modulated flow of morning traffic, to walk up a quiet street past the massive Tufts Medical center complex and the associated buildings, hotels, and offices. Crossing Stuart, I'm in Chinatown, where the streets are lively and full of people, trash is everywhere, and there is a smorgasbord of pungent odors- rotting trash, diapers, old fried food, new fried food, spicy curries, baking bread, dried spices, incense. Its easier to walk on the streets here anyway.  Past the bakeries, the general stores selling everything, all made in China and so cheap as to disintigrate immediately. There was one such store which blew me away with it's breadth of wares:

The first layer is the convenience store- one enters to find refrigerators of coke products, stacks of beauty and health supplies, candy bars. Then comes the video store in the next two aisles- first, Asian film from Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan. Then an aisle of pornography- for all tastes. Beyond, inexplicably is a huge area selling women's clothing from lingerie to standard street clothes to traditional Chinese garments to cheap Boston souvenir tee shirts. This, so far, is about half the store. The other half has luggage and cheap Chinese souvenirs- fans, resin Buddhas, soapstone beads, hanging lanterns, paper cuts, the like.  Further back, toys, hardware, tools, cleaning supplies, an aisle of cooking utensils and pans, small tables and stools, footwear including knockoff Crocs. Office supplies. It is the American dollar store, the corner kiosk, the flea market, and the gift shop rolled into one.

Beyond the Chinese gate, more major arterials, then the hub of the financial district- South Station. The storefronts drop away to spartan marble and concrete walls. Here is asphalt and concrete and brick and sky framed by industrial office towers and crags of ventilation towers for the buried freeway below the surface. Here, the car is lord, and suited pedestrians dart furtively as mice in the periods of logjam. South station is a nexus- a terminus of inner and inter-city busses, subway lines, commuter rail, and interstate rail. It serves the power of the city- the Big Four financial firms, the medicals, the architects and lawyers and media corporate empires which occupy the financial district and the seaport. If it wears a suit, if it carries a briefcase, if its salaried with benefits, and if it eats salad sold by the pound and $7 sandwiches five days a week, it comes here. They mass and flow, mostly out in the morning.

Fittingly, the terminus is lorded over by a juggernaut- the Fed. Financially as well as the architecturally, the massive tower shoots up over the city with its cold steel and glass walls and tight perimeter security. One cannot avoid its gaze skirting its hardened base, moats, guards, and fences as one heads towards the Seaport.

The anteater Arthur sits on top of the Children's museum across the bridge, once one passes the barrage of Irritating fife-and-drum music eminating from the not-yet-open Tea Party Museum and Simulated Rebellion Experience™. It's all brick warehouses here, converted into a "design center" within the past five years. Architects, office furniture, robots, design professionals. Dunkin' Donuts counts off the pace, repeating itself every fifty yards. In Chinatown, they spelled the name in plastic orange-and-pink Mandarin characters. In the Seaport district, its gold on black. More construction. A sea breeze. Water and canals and bridges.

Heat

Two items of interest: me bitching about the new apartment, and also a road trip with Kevin from my office.

The new apartments is mostly better than the other apartment, but at the other apartment I was at least able to sleep.

This apartment feels hotter, and because Saori and I are sharing a room the approximate size of the mattress we're sleeping on, it's a slow, simmering, smothering of heat, like I'm being slowly suffocated.

It actually makes me perfer the mosquito attacks to the security of the sheets.

Honestly, I've not slept well at all since I ever came to Boston. It's partly because I just dont sleep well away from home, but also partly because of the extreme heat, humidity, the discomfort of our beds and pillows, noise, and most recently, mosquitos. I cannot honestly say I've had a good night's sleep in about two months.

The other thing is that with communal living, things just go missing. Someone drank the lemonade I specially bought for Saori, and then today, inexplicably, my towel is missing. The issue is compounded by the fact that my roommates are, like me, only subletters and temporary ones at that. Furthermore, everyone has been bringing friends and family back to the apartment.

Tonight for example, we brought Chuck (China) back to the apartment and we soon saw Michaela (Ireland) and Cahil (Ireland), the couple who live here. Then Noel (UK) came back with two of his friends (UK, UK) and the entire group of us were in the kitchen talking and drinking while the Brits attempted to iron a shirt for a wedding reception they were planning on crashing later tonight.

I'm just beat. The heat takes it out of me.

Today, we went for a drive to Salem and Marblehead with one of my coworkers, Kevin. Kevin is the coach for the company softball team, and looks very much the part. He kindly offered to take us around and we took him up on the offer. We drove out to Salem first, and hit the Peabody Essex museum, which had some really interesting exhibits of Asian artwork collected in the early 20th century and earlier, all from the traders and whalers coming into and out of Boston.

We then drove up to Marblehead and drove around the town, which is really amazingly cute, picturesque, the kind of nearly cliche vision of small old town in New England. Wood slat houses, small restaurants and stores, the harbor filled with boats, the small bars and restaurants, the harborside seafood cafe with the lobster traps outside. We drove out to one of the promontory points with the lighthouse and an amazing view of the Atlantic and the harbor and the rocky islands dotting the craggy coastline. We agreed we could stay there for hours, but we needed to get back, so we drove back to Boston, passing by the multimillion dollar seaside mansions that we'll be living in once we make it in architecture (right).

Otanjiobi omedetto Saori

Today was Saori's birthday and I celebrated by making her fried eggs for breakfast. My brother and mom both sent quite thoughtful gifts for which she was very thankful and enjoyed receiving immensely. I don't have any good excuses other than that Boston is just an expensive city and I'm barely breaking even as far as pay/rent goes.

I did take her out to see Blue Man Group tonight though after work. We got student rush tickets ($30, in cash, at the box office, an hour before the show). This is less than half the price for equal or worse seats. I've seen the show before in Orlando, in a much larger venue- it was interesting to see the show in a more intimate scaled theater. The one here in boston is slightly larger than a black box theater.

I enjoyed the show again, and Saori, for whom it was the first time to see it, also enjoyed it, although its never what you're expecting. The whole lets-turn-the-show-into-a-dance-club finale is kind of strange as well.

We went to a late night sushi restaurant in Chinatown for some rolls and beer afterwards. A good day.

At work, they fired the secretary after giving her a day's notice. They also hired on two new people, as far as I can tell, two people with master's degrees in architecture. One of them is going to be a combination of 'executive secretary' to the head of the firm, Mr. Mikasa (not his real name) and other various office tasks. She'll probably use her architecture background to pull up CAD files, print enlarged plans for Mr. Mikasa to sketch on, etc.

The office also recently hired another recent graduate with an architecture masters- he's a temporary aide to the IT guy. On the whole, while individual people may be nice enough, the firm seems to have a disturbing tendency to separate out the service work from the design work. I've heard from Chuck that they were feeling him out as to whether he thought I would want to come back and make more models for them, and I'll definately present myself as a candidate (who knows what the future might bring, having an ace in Boston is not a bad position), but I don't really see the model making thing leading towards design, unless I'm particularly clever about introducing design into the work I do. (granted, there is a lot of freedom in making something real and 3D from 2D drawings, but its not the same freedom to lay out floorplans, etc.)