This is going to be short because I'm very sleepy, but I had another really lovely day with plumtreeblossom today. We woke up and puttered around the house for a while, then went out on a couple of errands, including brunch at the little diner near my house, and then spent all afternoon doing yardwork. My sweetie weeded my flower-patches! And machete'd down all the foliage that had overgrown the brick path to my porch, which was a very time-consuming job! And I mowed the lawn, and then weeded a bit as well. (I tried siphoning out the gas in my gas mower and going out and getting fresh gas, in case that was the problem, but it wasn't. So I mowed the lawn with my reel mower, which worked better this time than it had last time. Entirely adequate.)

Then we took the T to the North End (Boston's Italian neighbourhood) and had a very yummy meal and some wine out on the patio at a restaurant called Mother Anna's. I rarely make it to the North End, and I allowed to plumtreeblossom as how the next time my parents silverlibre and ka9sqb come to Boston I should take them there. And then it occurred to me that I was having such a delightful time (I mentioned that it sort of felt like being on vacation) that I should share it with them. So I called them, and plumtreeblossom and I got to have lovely little chats with them both.

Then we took the T here to her place. Between sun, physical labour, a yummy rich heavy meal, and wine, we are both very very sleepy, and I think (this is utterly unheard of for me) I might be asleep by 10 or 11. It's a very happy tired.

[EDIT: PS -- I'm going to be giving myself half as much testosterone twice as often now, and today I gave myself my first shot at the lower dose. I had been doing 200mlmg every two weeks, and I was kind of manic for the first couple of days and really dragging towards the end. This should even things out a bit.]

plumtreeblossom’s mom has been visiting her this weekend, and I spent a bunch of the last couple days with them. After work on Friday I met them at the Kendall Square Legal Sea Foods for dinner. I forget what the fish I had was (it was a special, so I can’t just check the online menu), but it was deliciously prepared in an elegant sauce that involved lemon, butter, and mustard, and it was “breaded” with shredded potato, which worked very well. plumtreeblossom had filet mignon, and her mom had lobster.

Then this morning I brought over corned beef and some veggies, which we put in plumtreeblossom’s crockpot for the day while (after bacon and eggs which plumtreeblossom) we went to the Aquarium for the afternoon. It was unusually crowded (neither plumtreeblossom nor I had seen it quite that crowded before, and we got a wheelchair for plumtreeblossom’s mom, who broke her foot a couple months ago and isn’t up to lots of walking yet, and it was quite a challenge getting through the crowds to see the exhibits with the wheelchair. We’d see a gap we could squeeze into and start for it, but within three or four seconds it was full. So there was a lot of waiting, but it was still quite a lot of fun for all three of us. The sea lions and penguins were utterly adorable as always. (sionnagh, I told them how you used to feed the penguins. They were all rockhoppers then, right? Now they’re all or mostly African penguins.)

Then we came back to plumtreeblossom’s place (where her wildflower garden is doing quite nicely, thank you) for corned beef, which we got to share with her housemate vanguardcdk who arrived just as we did. After dinner there was cake with ice cream, and then we sat on the balcony and chatted for a while.

Now I am home, and I think I’m going to go to bed early (maybe after reading a little more of Harry Potter). It makes sense that I’m sleepy, since I woke up out of a prosaic-but-inexplicably-creepy dream at 6:30 this morning (which would count as sleeping in for ka9sqb, I’m sure, but is unthinkably early for me) and couldn’t get back to sleep.

In other news, I have a doctor’s appointment (with another doctor in my PCP’s office since he said it had to be a morning appointment and he didn’t have any available until the very end of August) to gauge the results of my hormone treatment. I presume it will involve bloodwork and that’s why the time of day matters. (The short subjective version is that I’m doing much better since I started treatment, but don’t feel like I’m quite there yet, so I think my thyroid dosage needs some tweaking. I think my testosterone dosage is probably fine.)

Left work very late. Due to construction the T was running shuttle busses between Broadway and JFK/UMass. The one I got on was insanely crowded. It also had some trouble with its engine, such that it was extremely jerky. Some of the riders were drunk.

This is a poor combination.

Fortunately I was not splattered, nor did I slip and fall. Not everyone was so fortunate.

The bus drove around the block with us all holding our noses (those of us who could reach them in the crowd), which took a long time due to whatever was wrong with the engine. Then we got off and waited for another shuttle bus to take us to JFK/UMass, where I finally got on the train that's taking me to Quincy Center.

Most of the time I love public transit.

[EDIT: And when I got home I was reminded that I had been virtuous and set the cleanable bits of my CPAP machine to soak this morning. So I have to rinse them thoroughly and let them at least semi-dry before I can go to sleep. Good thing I can sleep late tomorrow.]

I love my house. It has a deck. Nice people come and eat on the deck with me. Some of them cook for me, and some of them bring me food. I love my friends, too, and my sweet chef plumtreeblossom.

Got to see the fireworks tonight, although in the rain and wind we weren’t sure we were going to last that long for a while. plumtreeblossom, cathijosephine, darxus and I set off for the fireworks over the Charles tonight (after a yummy dinner at Kagawa in Quincy), but due partly to mobility constraints and partly to scheduling constraints plumtreeblossom and I couldn’t stay with cathijosephine and darxus, so we ended up watching the fireworks from the Longfellow Bridge, from which we couldn’t hear the concert, but had a great view of the fireworks.

Just a reminder of tomorrow’s Poly Boston dinner tomorrow at 7 at the Alewife Bertucci’s. Details are on the calendar. If you’re planning on going, it would be nice if you could RSVP by email or comment here, although that’s not required.

[Cross-posted to polyboston.]

+: I got to bed unusually early last night, and got an unusually large amount of sleep.
-: Despite that, when my alarm went off I was incredibly tired, and hit snooze umpty-zillion times, and was late using my light box for the first time since I started using it.
(-: And I actually think the light box is more trouble than it’s worth, although I should probably give it a couple more weeks.)
+: Despite getting a late and slow start, I felt like I had a reasonably productive day at work.
++: And afterwards I got to hang out with plumtreeblossom and docorion and mud_puppy at Namaskar and have yummy Indian food.
-: My yummy Indian food was somewhat less yummy than it might have been, because I forgot to ask for no cilantro and no tomatoes.
+: plumtreeblossom’s yummy Indian food was highly yummy, as was the bread.
+: I got to hear some more of docorion’s fun stories.
+: plumtreeblossom gave me an awesome May Day present, an interactive book (not quite a pop-up book, but along those lines, with flaps to open and things to unfold) about pirates! It even has a compass and some jewels embedded in the front cover! Between the compass and the maps I’m sure to find some booty!
+: I got to unburden myself to plumtreeblossom a bit about my medical concerns (well, vent, really; she’s heard it all before).
++: And tomorrow I have an ENT appointment which I am really hopeful about.
+: And after dinner we hung out and chatted over tea at Diesel.
+: I drank a lot of tea at Diesel. And a lot of water and lassi at Namaskar. This is called “foreshadowing”.
-: This fire sure delayed my ride home. Instead of a train straight through from Davis to Quincy Center, it was a Red Line train from Davis to Kendall (where I could faintly smell smoke on the air), a shuttle bus from Kendall to Lechmere, the Green Line from Lechmere to Park Street, and the Red Line from Park Street to Quincy Center.
-: Boy howdy did I have to pee by the time I finally got home.
-: And I’m too tired to deal with the fridge, which I seem to have been attempting to create life from primordial ooze in.
-: And I think I’m too tired to do laundry.
++: But I’m about to go to sleep!
+++: And by this time tomorrow I might know more about my breathing problems and might even have a plan for what to do about them!

It’s January 6. I live in Quincy, Massachusetts, slightly south of Boston and right in the heart of New England. I just went outside onto my porch in jeans, no shoes, and a T-shirt, and I was entirely comfortable. If I go for a long walk outside today, I think I might put long sleeves on, but a sweater would be overkill.

I’m glad my house is quite a bit above sea level.

What a full and fine weekend! Saturday morning I had dim sum with plumtreeblossom and a bunch of her friends and mine (and in the process discovered that we have some friends in common I didn’t know about!). Dim sum was yummy as always, and I was ravenous when I got there, so I stuffed myself.

(I’d been running just a little bit late, so decided to take the car to the Quincy Center T station rather than walking. What I didn’t realize was that Quincy’s Veteran’s Day parade was about to start — I had no fewer than three intersections close just as I was about to go through them, had similar trouble getting back home (since some of the streets I’d come through were now blocked off), and ended up dropping my car off in a parking lot I could get to and walking. So I was sadly more than half an hour late, but fortunately that just meant there was lots of yummy stuff already on the table when I got there.)

Then the lovely (x3) minerva42, underwatercolor, plumtreeblossom, and I went to the Museum of Science, intending to see the Body Worlds 2 exhibit. Unfortunately when we got there we found out that the earliest entrance time that still had tickets available was 5:30 (6:00 by the time we’d finished talking about it), and minerva42 and underwatercolor had evening plans and hadn’t planned on spending that much time in the museum. So we all got exhibit hall tickets, and plumtreeblossom and I got tickets to a movie and to Body Worlds 2 as well.

The regular exhibits were fun, but not particularly new to any of us. (The electricity show, with the huge Van de Graaff generator, suffered from a presenter who could give Mumbles a run for his money.) Definitely fun, though, and we got to see tamarins! Yay monkeys!

Then we said goodbye to minerva42 and underwatercolor, and plumtreeblossom and I saw the ( 3D Mars movie ).

And finally, we got to go to the Body Worlds exhibit, which was amazing and somewhat awe-inspiring. ( Body Worlds 2 exhibit )

I could go on and on for ages about this exhibit (feel free to ask questions, or browse through the exhibit catalogue if you’re over at my house), but I’m running out of LJ-posting steam, so I’ll stop babbling now. (I definitely want to go back while it’s still in Boston, more than once if possible.)

plumtreeblossom and I then took the T to Quincy, where we both slept very well. I dropped her off at home, since she had a busy Sunday planned. [EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention introducing plumtreeblossom to Sarsfield’s, an Irish pub in Quincy. We had a couple of yummy pints, but I like going there on weeknights better — it was extremely crowded.]

I had a busy Sunday planned, too, but so far I don’t seem to have actually gotten to any of it. :-)

Election returns are making me happy. Deval Patrick’s victory for Massachusetts governor was no surprise at all, but I’m sure excited about it. Similarly, Democratic control of the House was no surprise, but I’m happy about the apparent margin. And things are looking hopeful in the two Senate races that haven’t been called yet (Virginia and Montana); if the Democratic lead holds in those two races (and Joementum doesn’t bolt), Democrats take the Senate. It felt really good clicking reload and seeing candidates I’d given money to win. (Although a couple — Ford in Tennessee and Carter in Nevada — did lose. [EDIT: Oh, and Lamont, of course.])

Wow, Patrick’s victory speech was great. I envy my friends who were in the room for it. He seemed genuinely humble. I guess it’s easier to be magnanimous and inclusive when you’ve won by 20 points. :-)

On the bad side, my back has been hurting for a few days, and I woke up around 6:00am groaning in pain. Breathing hurt. After some naproxen sodium and a hot shower I’m feeling a lot better.

One of the side benefits of dating plumtreeblossom is that she lives so close to Somerville’s Powderhouse Park, site of the only known surviving Civil-War era ballistic missile, a remnant of President Lincoln’s Strategick Defence Initiative, or SDI.

( A photo, and an historical essay. )