Happy birthday to eisa, whose friendship I cherish. I hope your day is full of joy and fuzzy dogs.

Lots of fun lately!

Friday after work, I met plumtreeblossom after work for fried chicken. The Popeye’s in Kenmore Square where we’d been planning on eating was insanely crowded due to a ball game, so plumtreeblossom suggested we turn it into an impromptu picnic. We walked a few blocks with our food to the Esplanade and had a lovely dinner by the Charles.

From there we walked to the Charles/MGH T stop, and on the way we saw a family of Canada geese with three cute little goslings! Pictures on Flickr (scroll down a bit).

After stopping at plumtreeblossom’s house to dump off our stuff and get cleaned up, we went to a combination birthday (yay!) and going-away (boo!) party for Theatre@First stalwart and all-round sweetheart big_jewfro. We were unfortunately too tired to stay very long but we had just a wonderful time. plumtreeblossom managed to drag me into the karaoke room, which I thought I wouldn’t enjoy, but I had a fabulous time. It was a truly delightful party. I hope the Boston area ends up getting big_jewfro and his sweetie back eventually, but wherever he settles will be a big bright spot visible from orbit.

When we got to plumtreeblossom’s house (fortunately only a few blocks from the party) we collapsed right away.

Saturday morning we had breakfast at local favourite The Burren and then went to Earthfest, an annual eco-themed music and marketing event on the Charles River Esplanade. I’d never been before, but plumtreeblossom’s been several times and said this year’s was the most crowded she’s seen. This is a free concert with an associated vast stretch of marketing tents, all with some connection ranging from direct to very tenuous with ecology. Oh, and food vendors, of course. We had a lovely time, but the crowd was very dense and it was a lot of walking and waiting. Lots and lots of cute dogs to look at! And the weather was spectacular. I’ve put a few photos on Flickr.

Saturday evening I helped eisa unload at her new apartment. Due to the large number of people and the relatively small amount of stuff it was very quick, and the traditional pizza was yummy. I’m delighted to have her (and her dogs) back in the area.

Now, I think, it’s time for bed.

PS — During the course of the weekend, plumtreeblossom and I discovered that the longest of the three escalator flights at the Porter Square T stop is exactly one hundred kisses long.

Sorry for my long absence here. I’ve been too busy enjoying life to post about it. In fact, I’ve started to post a couple times recently and not gotten very far. So, since I don’t seem to have the stamina for a long post, here are some bullet items:

• First, the bad news: As plumtreeblossom posted here, her lovely grey Siamese Rowley was diagnosed with kidney disease on Saturday. But evidently it hasn’t gotten too bad yet, and the vet says he’ll definitely get some weight back with a low-protein diet and subcutaneous fluids, and it might even cure him. So we’re very glad we took him in. (He’d been gradually but very steadily been losing weight over six months or so.)
• Everything else is good, starting with a lovely visit to see eisa in New York City a couple weekends ago, which involved good food (as always) and meeting a couple of her friends. It also involved getting introduced to a new TV show (on DVD), whereon more later.
• Mare and I saw Theatre@First’s production of The Winter’s Tale, excellently directed by dietrich. Loved the staging, loved the somewhat quirky play, loved the performance. Congratulations to all!
• The news from the vet was not good, but it was great to be there for plumtreeblossom and Rowley, and I’m really glad we got him to the vet. And that morning plumtreeblossom cooked me banana pancakes and bacon. She must love me!
• Besides The Winter’s Tale, I’ve been enjoying a lot of classic or retro movies and literature:
• On the bus on the way to New York, I finished the utterly bizarre Edison’s Conquest of Mars (Wikipedia; Gutenberg). ( Cut for length. )
• Preparatory to starting Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I read Pride and Prejudice, and enjoyed it quite a bit. The funnier bits reminded me a little of Saki.
• plumtreeblossom and I watched a DVD she bought of a 1964 adaptation of The First Men in the Moon, which we both enjoyed a lot. ( Cut for length. )
• The TV show eisa introduced me to was Mad Men, which is retro in a different sort of way. ( Cut for length: Mad Men vs. Star Trek. )
• And it’s not historical or retro, but I also watched a weird French movie called La Moustache. ( Cut for length. )

OK, that was fairly long after all. Now it’s time for me to go to bed. Good night, all!

Hi! I had a fabulous weekend, involving dinner, good conversation, and Reefer Madness: The Musical with eisa on Saturday, and then a date with plumtreeblossom that started with a three-course dinner on Sunday, and continued with a trip to the Topsfield Fair on the holiday Monday. We had a fabulous time eating fair food, riding the Ferris wheel, eating fair food, petting the bunnies, eating fair food, browsing the fair museum, eating fair food, checking out the cattle and newborn baby piglets and raptors, eating fair food, seeing the giant pumpkin (1400 pounds!), eating fair food, petting and feeding critters at the petting zoo, and eating fair food. And plumtreeblossom rode an elephant and I got pictures of her on it! And I got pictures of a kangaroo and a camel and the raptors and piglets and lots of other nifty things. And the food was good. I had a wonderful weekend. I love my darling and love doing simple outdoorsy stuff with her, and it was wonderful to see eisa and get caught up a bit, and I got some nice relaxing time with cathijosephine in there, too.

Oh, I also slept about twelve hours Saturday night! This means I did not get as much done on Sunday as I might have liked, but I seem to have needed the sleep; I felt great during that fraction of Sunday that I was awake for.

Also, I've gotten through selecting and commenting the first (and largest and best) batch of my Montréal photos: the animal photos I took at the Biodôme de Montréal. Some of them are pretty nifty, and this is the sort of thing my new camera is wonderful for (and why I wanted it). You can see them in this Flickr photoset. I will be posting a few more Montréal photos at some point, but I really went overboard in the Biodôme.

Of course, I also hope to post my Topsfield photos soon. Amusingly, both the Biodôme and the fair had ring-tailed lemurs, so I got two opportunities to photograph ring-tailed lemurs in one month. The ones at the Biodôme had been pretty sedentary, but at the fair I saw a pretty impressive behaviour. They would be on the side of the cage and jump backwards to land onto a perch in the middle of the cage. It was nifty to watch, and I wish I had been able to get some video of it. They did a lot of jumping, but the backwards jumps were especially delightful.

PS — My weekend was so fabulous that I haven’t come close to catching up with LiveJournal, and probably won’t. If you posted something I should see, feel free to point me at it.

On Saturday, plumtreeblossom and I went to the American Museum of Natural History, one of my favourite places. sexykneesocks, who happened to be in town as well, met us there, and it was great catching up with her. I took lots of photos, which I will try to get posted at some point.

plumtreeblossom and I tried to go next door to the Rose Space Center, but we got there close enough to closing that we couldn't see a show, so we went back to the AMNH for another half hour or so.

After that, we met nex0s and midnightstation for dinner nearby, and had a fabulous time. I'd seen nex0s in Boston a few months ago, but I hadn't seen midnightstation in far too long.

On Sunday, we got together at Fred's, a dog-themed restaurant I've posted about before, for brunch with beetiger, eisa, and fairyleathrdady, who surprised us by paying for brunch. Lovely seeing all of them, and I'm so glad beetiger drove in to meet us.

Then we made our way back to Chinatown to take the Fung Wah back to Boston and had a lovely snuggly trip back with lots of nice conversation.

Y'all should also go read plumtreeblossom's post about the weekend here, since I'm posting this in a hurry and I'm certainly missing stuff.

Happy birthday eisa! You’re one of my favourite people, and I hope your birthday is full of joy and warmth and delight.

As I mentioned, eisa and I saw Pan’s Labyrinth on Saturday, and I loved it. I think that might be a movie I need to own, although I’m very glad I saw it on a big screen. (Actually, we got to the theater pretty late and ended up having to sit in the very front row, so I saw it on a trapezoidal screen which was big at the bottom and small at the top. :-)

( Dream, CPAP, good food, and dogs. )

Then we went to the American Museum of Natural History. We’d been there the last time (or so) I visited, but we’d only had time to see the Darwin exhibit (now in Boston at the Museum of Science, and to dash through a tiny bit of the rest of the museum. This time we spent almost all of our time in recently revamped Hall of Human Origins, which was really amazing. The science and physical discoveries presented there were very current; it was neat seeing casts of bones I’d read about in the news recently. Notably, they had a cast of a Homo floresiensis skull. That was very impressive. I’d love to go back to that exhibit. Before we left, eisa took me to see the dinosaur and extinct mammal fossils, mainly to show me a giant sloth and a glyptodont, both very impressive.

( Weird Japanese toothpaste. )

Highlights since I’ve been back (which are getting fewer column-inches than they deserve just because I’m exhausted and need to stop typing and start sleeping) are a delightful date with plumtreeblossom on Monday, which included some very nice hanging out with thanos73 and mynext_boldmove, and dinner (and dessert) tonight with cathijosephine and xmelancholia. Oh, and a highlight from before the trip was a couple phone calls with missingworlds, a good friend of mine from college.

I confess I’ve been mostly skimming LJ lately, so apologies if I’ve missed important stuff. If you invited me to a party or offered me a free car or the presidency of a small but peaceful and mineral-rich country on LJ recently, you might want to comment here to make sure I saw it.

Just saw Pan's Labyrinth with eisa. Wow.

(Also, when I'm not posting via my phone I should post about my appointment with my sleep specialist; she had a cancellation on Friday so I was able to get in to see her.)

plumtreeblossom and I celebrated St Patrick’s Day with the delightful dan4th and dabunny. We started with dinner at Christopher’s in Porter Square (mmmm, the sirloin tips in garlic sauce were to die for!), and then all hung out chez dan4th et dabunny. One of the better St Patrick’s Days I can remember.

Then plumtreeblossom and I retired to her place and promptly collapsed. In the morning I found us tickets that we can actually afford to Las Vegas in May to meet sionnagh and her father! That was great, because the last time I looked I hadn’t seen anything cheap enough, and it would have been a shame to miss the opportunity to see her while she’s on the mainland. While I was doing that, plumtreeblossom made us bacon and eggs, and we had a nice relaxed breakfast.

Then I went to the Diesel to meet eisa, who was here for the weekend. It was a delight to see her! We got lots of catching-up in and had a great time before I took her to South Station to get her train home.

You know, I’ve got a good life.

Just got home from a fabulous date with plumtreeblossom. We were going to see each other yesterday, but she had a bad cold. :-( Tonight was great, though. Among other highlights, we ordered Chinese takeout and watched Primer with her housemate, which film had been on my list to see for some time. I really enjoyed it, despite (or perhaps because of) its extremely low budget and non-professional actors. It was a movie about engineers, and so it reminded me a lot of people I know.

I had a wonderful time reconnecting with plumtreeblossom. We’d seen each other for dinner on Tuesday, but not for very long (and I was kind of out of it, having just gotten back from Hawai‘i that morning), so we were due for some together-time. She rocks.

Other pleasant recent occurrences include The Best Pastrami Sandwiches on the Planet with cathijosephine, followed by hanging out at her place and cuddling Chickenfinger (her cat), and a lovely phone call from eisa. Oh, and this morning I went to my housemate mynext_boldmove’s brunch and had fascinating conversations with fascinating people, not least her.

At work, I’m moving offices to the one vacated by our sadly departed Windows admin. This means I now get sunlight (which my sleep specialist has assured me I need more of), and a bit of a view of the MFA.

So, life is good!