Yesterday in list form:
+: cathijosephine locked herself out of the house. This is a plus because she came over to get the spare key I have, woke me up early, and took me out to IHOP for breakfast to thank me, which means I got to see her unexpectedly, I got a free eggs-and-bacon-and-pancakes brunch, and I got to work on time.
+: Met devoken for dinner. Was great to catch up with her. I got to tell her all about plumtreeblossom’s and my New York trip.
+: In conjunction with the preceding, I discovered how easy it is to walk from work to Coolidge Corner. This will be useful.
±: Because I got in to work at an unexpectedly reasonable time, and devoken works till 9, I had a very long day at work. That would have made me happy if I’d been more focussed for it.
-: I have a cold. Over the course of yesterday it became clear that it's a real cold rather than just allergies or dry air. This morning it included a bad sore throat, but that got better when I was up and around. Oh, well. Maybe I caught it on the bus.

Wow! I just saw Eddie Izzard! With my two favourite people in the world! And he was right there and everything, just thirty-two million billion yards away on the stage, and if I squinted I could see his facial expressions! And it was awesome and wonderful!

I also just opened a kitchen cabinet door and had a shot glass fall out into the sink and hit a mug there and smash into lots of little pieces, but if a flying splinter had nicked my jugular and I were lying on my kitchen floor slowly bleeding to death, I’d still be happy, because I just saw Eddie Izzard.

(Eddie, baby, if you don’t remember where to send the check, my address is linked from my userinfo.)

Another lovely weekend with plumtreeblossom. On Saturday we went to a sheepshearing festival¹ in Waltham with teratomarty and trouble4hire (big thanks to them for posting about it!) and had a lovely time. It was great hanging out with them, and great doing country-fair things within easy reach of Boston. (I drove, but the festival venue is bus-accessible.) While there, we bumped into mrpet and, lady_anemone. Anyway, after the festival, which was huge amounts of fun, the six of us wandered Moody Street and then had yummy tapas for dinner before plumtreeblossom and I went back to my house, where we watched the first two-thirds of Lust, Caution.

On Sunday, we went to a Poly Boston dim sum organized by a wonderful person whose LJ name, if he has one, I don't know. We had a wonderful, wonderful time. Thanks so much to the organizer!

Last night was the monthly Poly Boston dinner at Bertucci's (the first one in a while plumtreeblossom's been able to make it to, because of theater commitments), and tonight plumtreeblossom, cathijosephine, and I get to go see Eddie Izzard perform! Life is incredibly full and fun.

And this coming weekend plumtreeblossom and I are finally making a trip to New York City.

Whee!

---

¹ Sadly, the venue has already taken down the web page about it. If you are luckier than usual, I will eventually get around to posting some pictures, though. Because, you know, you all appreciated the Topsfield Fair pictures and the pictures of our trip to DC to meet bcat1 and spacechicken so much.²
² That I haven’t posted yet. Those pictures.

On Wednesday there was another in the nifty new series of monthly davis_square gatherings that anomie666 has been organizing. I got to see surrealestate, which is always delightful, and meet some nice new people, but plumtreeblossom couldn’t make it due to rehearsal. But I did get to see her afterwards, so we had a nice little mini-date in the middle of the week.

I think it was Thursday that cathijosephine and I went out for Mexican food and margaritas in Quincy, and we had a great time and got to do some catching up.

Friday I (and cathijosephine) went to see plumtreeblossom and lots and lots of our other friends in Theatre@First’s performance of Much Ado About Nothing. It was great! I later heard somebody who’s been watching Theatre@First’s performances since they started say that this was their best performance, and I can believe it. It was done more-or-less in the round, with no stage (so the actors or at or just below the level of the audience), and with a very very minimal set and costuming. When plumtreeblossom described it to me before I saw it I confess I was a bit dubious, but wow, it really worked. All the performances were fine, most of them were good, and some of them were really good. The play flowed well, the comedic timing was good, the blocking was great (and funny), the lines were clear and delivered in a way that made the Elizabethan language very easy to follow, and I just had a great time, and so did the rest of the audience. I’m looking forward to going back on [EDIT:] closing night on Saturday, and if you get a chance (those of you who are local) and you like Shakespeare’s comedies, you should try to see one of their remaining performances.

After the show I had another lovely date with my favourite character actor. (plumtreeblossom played one of the watchmen, in drag, and did a great job! She didn’t have many lines, but she had some pretty awesome body language. I also have to mention that I had a hard time believing the person playing one of the bad guys was actually dietrich, and I kept looking at the program and trying to figure out what other character that could be!) We had a great time and stayed up far, far too late.

Sunday morning we went out for yummy brunch at Johnny D’s with a bunch of the cast and crew — yummy but slow; they were very crowded — and had a delightful time. I walked back to the church where plumtreeblossom had her call for the Sunday matinée, and as a delightful bonus bumped into docorion and mud_puppy, whom I hadn’t seen in far too long.

I had a not as productive as planned but still pretty good Sunday evening (got some laundry done, at least).

Today after work I went over to see cathijosephine and bring her some snacks, because she wasn’t feeling well. Got to overhear half of a phone call with the delightful and dearly missed ragingamazon, and got lots of kitty snuggles with Chickenfinger, who has turned into the sweetest little mellow kitty. (Poor dear used to live with two huge and playful dogs, and it’s taken her a while to recover.)

And now I’m at home and I get to go to sleep. Yay!

So I just watched Dil Se (warning: spoilers in link) with darxus and cathijosephine. It has to be the weirdest and most disturbing Bollywood movie I’ve seen so far. I liked the latter part, when all the brutality was the focus of the film and no longer just background for a typical fluffy Bollywood romance, better than the former part.

Basically, it was half Bollywood musical and half Shakespearean tragedy. I’m glad I saw it, but I wouldn’t exactly say I enjoyed it.

The company (two humans and a cute cute kitty!) and food (kind of a cross between pancakes with a side of ham and an omelette) were excellent, though.

(Sorry no Rabbit Hole Day post this year; I don’t have enough brain cells to be creative right now. You get the following by virtue of the fact that most of it was written yesterday on the T.)

So last long weekend was Arisia, and I haven’t stopped having fun since. On Tuesday, I ended up at dinner at the Cambridge location of Addis Red Sea with cathijosephine, ragingamazon, and a bunch of other people in what was sort of an impromptu farewell dinner for ragingamazon. I had never tried their new location, and I hadn’t had Ethiopian food since Meskerem in DC with plumtreeblossom, bcat1, and spacechicken. It was the yum, and the company was lots of fun.

On Wednesday, plumtreeblossom and I went to a gathering at The Burren for members of the davis_square community. The bar gave us free food, and they certainly recouped their investment; there were about 30 or 35 of us there. There were lots of Theatre@First people there, among them the wonderful surrealestate (f/k/a pheromone) and joyeous, but there were also a lot of people we hadn’t met in person, and a lot of people we (especially I) didn’t know at all. It was a great time.

( A few more days, cut for length. )

As I was telling jadia over dinner yesterday, as a child I was an introvert, more or less out of necessity since I was sick a lot (and therefore out of school a lot, and often unable to run and play with other kids). Clearly I am no longer an introvert, but it’s only been in the past few years that my mental image of myself has caught up to reality. I used to think, “Hah, hah! I’ve got everybody fooled; they think I’m an extrovert, just because I get energized by spending lots and lots of time with other people!” and it was only fairly recently that I realized that everybody who thought I was an extrovert was actually right. (I am, though, an extrovert who needs a lot of quiet alone time.) Anyway, if I had lingering doubts, this past week should lay them to rest.

The good: plumtreeblossom and I got to go see The Golden Compass last night. I found it really really compressed compared to the rather thoughtfully-paced book it’s based on, but I loved it. Lyra’s Oxford was much as I had imagined it, and Iorik and Lee were plucked right out of my head. The world was a bit more steampunky than in the book, but I didn’t mind that. The acting was good. I’m so glad I saw it. And I’m very glad that plumtreeblossom enjoyed it, too, not having read the book. (She’s excited to read the series now.) And, barring production problems, there are two more movies to look forward to!

We had an unplanned intermission when there was a fire alarm and the building was evacuated, but when we started to see people streaming back into the building as we were walking towards the T we decided to go back in and see what was up, and since it had only been 10min or so since the alarm, they resumed all the movies. We saw some smoke or steam coming from a nearby building; I presume that’s what the alarm was about, but I’m not sure. The Religious Right is up in arms about this movie — as well they should be; the books are delightfully subversive —, so plumtreeblossom’s first thought was a bomb threat.

More recent good stuff include dinner with plumtreeblossom at The Cheesecake Factory near my work on Wednesday, pasta and interesting liqueurs with cathijosephine on Thursday, and brunch at Johnny D’s this morning (with live jazz guitar).

The bad: I have a bad cold. I had hoped it would just be a mild day-or-so, but I feel really crummy today. I am probably going to go to bed soon. (I really hope plumtreeblossom doesn’t come down with this, but that seems pretty implausible.) On the other hand, I have the weekend to rest. On the other other hand, I had planned on doing a lot of work on the house this weekend, and instead I’m mostly going to be resting and trying to get better.

Net balance is quite good, though.

I’ve had a wonderfully social last few days.

On Wednesday a bunch of us hung out with surrealestate to celebrate her birthday. It was a delightful gathering in honour of a delightful person! plumtreeblossom and I had a great time.

plumtreeblossom and I went back to her place afterwards, so I got to wake up next to my sweetie and have coffee with her. On my way in to work Thursday I got Grigori Yefimovich¹ inspected.

Thursday after work I met cathijosephine, and drove with her to xmelancholia’s, where we caught up for a while, cathijosephine gave xmelancholia some excellent socks, and I got to play with big huge wonderful friendly dogs (a mastiff and a German shepherd). Yay for doggie time! And yay for seeing xmelancholia; it had been too long.

Friday docorion had arranged to get group-rate tickets to see Handel’s Messiah performed by the Handel and Haydn Society at Symphony Hall (very near where I work). My typical inability to get anywhere on time was in evidence, but in a somewhat unusual fashion: I somehow managed to get there an hour early. Anyway, I crashed docorion’s dinner nearby and at the correct time, we were all back at Symphony and plumtreeblossom and the rest of the group congregated successfully. The concert was delightful, although I felt a little odd at something so liturgical. I had never been inside Symphony Hall before, and I loved checking out the décor. I’d have loved to see what the original paint job looked like (there was very elaborate moulding and detail work, but it had all been repainted in a neutral colour). I think we all had a great time. Thanks, docorion!

Saturday plumtreeblossom and I got together with dan4th and dabunny at their place and ordered in Thai food and had a lovely time. Along the way, I learned probably three or four little facts about hockey, which at least doubles what I know about the game.

This morning (Sunday morning, although I guess technically I mean “yesterday morning” at this point), plumtreeblossom and I had a yummy and relaxed brunch at The Burren, and then I came home and resumed work on my plumbing.

My life is good!

---

¹ My car.

cathijosephine is looking for a new home for her sweet cat Chickenfinger. Here’s her own post about it.

Really, can you resist this cute little fuzzy face?

plumtreeblossom with wildflowers, from September. Two beauties of nature captured in one shot! More flower pics (and one more plumtreeblossom pic are here.

It’s now the beginning of November in Massachusetts, and the flowers show no signs of slowing down. They’re still covered with new blossoms and lots and lots of buds. And they’re a lot taller than they were when this picture were taken; a few plants are taller than I am, standing. (Unfortunately a few of the taller ones were knocked over wind storms last month, or there would be a lot taller than me.)

I also need to organize and post pictures from our DC trip last month.

Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately; I’ve been too busy living life to write about it. I will mention last Thursday, though — darxus and cathijosephine and devoken came over to watch Dil To Pagal Hai (The Heart is Crazy, I think), which is pretty much the quintessential Bollywood movie and was (as my delightful plumtreeblossom, who sadly couldn’t make it, would say) made of awesome. The costumes and dance numbers were particularly impressive even for Bollywood. And today plumtreeblossom and I are driving out to Western Mass to go to the housewarming of a couple friends and former housemates of mine. And basically life is going well, except I need to get more sleep and not decide two hours after I should have been in bed that it’s really time to organize some pictures. :-)