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!

Had a fabulous time at Arisia. It was wonderful spending the weekend with plumtreeblossom, and getting to see and catch up with eisa and so many other wonderful people I don’t get to see very often (and many that I do).

One of the highlights was hearing plumtreeblossom and surrealestate and a bunch of other folks perform an original radio drama live (complete with commercials). If I don’t post a link to the group shortly, remind me. (It’s on the CD I bought but haven’t unpacked yet.)

Had a fabulous visit with eisa this past weekend! I was so glad to get to see her. Don’t have time to do it justice, but one of the highlights was meeting a delightful sweetie of hers. (And we watched Shaun of the Dead, which I hadn’t gotten to when it was in theaters.)

In other news, I’ve shaved off my beard. I did that mainly so that my full-face CPAP mask would fit better; I’ve slept with it without the beard once, and it seems to help. (I couldn’t actually detect any leakage with the beard, but the mask seemed more effective last night judging by how I felt this morning.) I’ve had to switch to the full-face mask because I discovered recently that I no longer consistently wake up when I open my mouth in my sleep and I’m wearing the nose-only mask (and all the pressurized air rushes out my mouth), and if I’m blithely sleeping away with my mouth open and using the nose-only mask, the CPAP machine isn’t doing me much good.

I’m not thrilled with the way my face looks without the beard (it really makes my head look round and boyish), but if it makes a difference in how effective the mask is, it’s what I have to do. And it doesn’t look terrible.

My chin felt very cold yesterday morning. :-)

Now to bed!

Happy birthday, eisa! My life is better for knowing you.

Slept really late yesterday, and was conscious today. (Er, by “today” I mean “Sunday”.)

Got to go to King Richard’s Faire today with the wonderful eisa, who’s up from New York City for the weekend. We got to see [person who’s LJ name I don’t know, if he has one], who works there. They had tigers, leopards, and a stunningly huge liger, a falconry exhibition, an albino Burmese python, and oh, I think there were also some people walking around in funny clothes. It was quite fun. Afterwards we watched Grave of the Fireflies, an amazingly well done and amazingly depressing animated Japanese film about a young brother and sister orphaned towards the end of the war. It also presented a rather, um, simple picture of the war, but I wasn’t too surprised at that. Very good movie, but I’m glad I wasn’t alone when I saw it. Oh, and we got to play a couple games of Chez Geek, which neither of us had played in years. And on my way home from dropping her off to meet jadasc, I got to spend a little time with cathijosephine’s cat Chickenfinger.

Still wish I could have made it to BiCamp, but today still made for a good weekend. Now I must sleep. Actually, a long time ago I must sleep, but now I’m going to.

PS — Eventually I will post photos of the cats and raptors.