Busy travels

What a whirlwind last 4 days.

Started off still in L.A., where I said goodbye to my parents and sister, who headed back to their respective homes, and to my Grandma and Grandpa.

I then headed over to a good friend's place in Pasadena, where I was greeted with a hug and a whisper, "I'm in the process of breaking up with ****".  Thus began 24 hours of wild, sometimes comical and often depressing drama, including all manner of yelling, insults, and inconveniently locked/blocked doors to my things.

A red-eye flight then whisked me to NYC at 6am yesterday, where, after a much needed nap, I and a couple of friends got into the taping of the Colbert Report.  It was as hilarious and fun as expected, including an "out-of-character" Q&A that you're treated to prior to the show. It turns out one of the reasons Colbert is so good at what he does is likely because the ridiculous character that he plays (though perhaps not the literal statements that he makes) seems actually quite representative of the humor and personality of the real-world Colbert.  That said, his final comments to the audience, in response to a single post-show question, noted that when he participates in public events out of character, he does not allow any media to join so as not to confuse the true feelings and beliefs of real world Colbert with those of his satirical pundit self.

Last night ended with some food and drinks with another overworked friend of mine now living in NYC.  This morning, we headed out on the 7 train to Flushing to catch the US Open for the third year in a row, which was, as always, a ton of fun.  The highlight came from the Grandstands towards the end of the day, where a front-row fan behind the court caught a laser serve with his hat, then after a standing bow was forced to give the ball back to a young blond lineswoman, leading the audience to boo and the man to gently drop the hat onto the lineswoman's head.  He might have been kicked out had he not executed the maneuver with such expert precision and endearing innocence.

Back to work, tired yet rejuvinated.  Except for the traffic that the Bolt Bus is currently sitting in.

Visiting Grandparents

Yesterday and today we visited my Grandma and Grandpa (step-, but seeing as I never knew my real grandfathers, there's no real need to make the distinction) and Auntie Diana.  We mostly spent the time eating -- Max's fried chicken, Goldilocks filipino bakery, the Boiling Crab, Dim Sum.

I hadn't seen my Grandma in 5 years, and honestly it probably was the first time I personally made an effort to think about Family.  Growing up, we were never close to our grandparents, which after age 12 was really just my Grandma here in L.A.  My parents have permanently moved far from where they grew up, so connecting with extended family was not something that was emphasized growing up.

And so its only been recently since I've been in Boston that I've come to appreciate much more the time spent with my immediate family; while living in Madison, though I was not distant in any way with my parents, I also was very independent-minded, presumably taking a page out of my own parents' life stories.

In seeing my Grandma again, who is now 87 years old, it made me realize something else that is lost in a household detached from your elders -- an intimate, natural connection to death.  I do not in any way mean this in a morbid sense, but more in the sense perhaps of what children get when they have pets (which I did not have) that pass away: you learn important lessons about the ephemeral nature of life.  These experiences are at first very negative -- losing a loved one can surely be very difficult -- but ultimately positive as you learn to come to terms with events that all people will have to deal with.

In my case, though, after 27 years of living I've really still never had to cope with the loss of a close loved one.  In the case of my Grandma, though she is still doing generally well, she is still quite old and has recently been diagnosed with dementia.  I haven't been close with her through my life, but I have known her throughout it, and I can't help but feel an innate sense of Family when around her that I have never really bothered to acknowledge until now.  All of this makes her passage through old age seem not sad but natural to me, in a way that I would never have even thought about 5 or 10 years ago.

I suppose the point is that familial lines can do more than connect individuals to one another, it can also at a much deeper level serve to connect birth and death.  This is new for me.

Los Angeles Pt 1: The Getty, UCLA

Family vacation begins with a trip to the Getty Museum, with its white square-draped architectural wonder and a set of small but impressive art exhibits.  This includes impressionism -- with one of my favorite pieces of all time, Monet's "Sunrise", which I swear is done using no more than 11 brushstrokes -- and a temporary exhibit on Gustav Klimt, who does a range of great yet simple drawings, primarily of women in erotic positions, that are created using a small number of bold long lines.

I'm a big fan of technically-simple, yet immensely deep art.

Afterwards we headed over to Westwood near UCLA for dinner, where it seemed that literally every other storefront was vacant.  Very, very strange, the Boston area is a bit of a bubble from the reality that the economy is still down in many other parts of the country.

Big Kids Night at Boston Children's Museum

Tonight was the first ever installment of Adult Night at the Boston Children's Museum.  Some 700 people sol the event out almost two weeks in advance, and I'm proud to say that at least 15 of those were directly through me and I'm sure more beyond that.

Overall it was a very fun night, climbing the three-story CLIMB, making giant bubbles, fingerpainting etc.  Some of the museum is bit too academic (not surprising so near to Cambridge), with a lot of emphasis on culture, teaching life lessons (e.g. eating healthy, which to me isn't a particularly interesting feature of a museum), and other components that just didn't demand much in the way of creativity from the child/adult.  The Madison children's museum seemed to do a much better job of this, including multiple different giant erector-type sets, than BCM.  The other aspect that I think works to BCM's disadvantage is its enormous space, which means strangers simply don't bump into each other nearly as frequently.

That said, the event was still a blast and everyone I talked to said they had so much fun.  It turns out that beer + basic fun childhood activities can easily entertain adults for 3 hours.  I'm hoping they'll do it again in a few months and perhaps try to add some more twists (live music, perhaps) to keep me coming back into the future.

Dollar stores

Yesterday I went to meet Laura at 6pm at the Dollar Store to check out art supply options in prep for our upcoming birthday pARTy.  I walked in, didn't see her around and so started gathering supplies.  At 6:15 she calls saying which aisle she's in and that she's going to come find me.  At 6:20, another call...

"Which Dollar Store are you at?"

Family Dollar vs. Dollar Tree. It turns out both can be referred to as the "dollar store".

I hopped on my bike and headed 10 minutes down the road to the Dollar Tree, where every single item is actually $1.

Festival of Santa Maria

Sunday night a group of us met up at Meg's place in the North End and then ventured into the mess -- food and drink and trinket stands lining the streets -- that was the Santa Maria festival.

Laura and I got rice balls with marinara sauce, which is apparently actually an Italian thing (verified by Roberta) much to our surprise.  Mike got his face painted like a cross between KISS and a dog (it was supposed to be just a dog).  And we watched the spectacle of the young yelling Italian girls on balconies, singing the praises of Santa Maria as strings of dollar bills were wrapped around her shrine being carried through the streets.  This all culminated with the harnessed girl floating across the street suspended 40 feet in the air, chanting more praise for Santa Maria and she was repelled down to near-street level to kiss the statue and then back up to the balcony.

If only Americans had more random festivals of this sort, it was pretty hilarious.

Six flags

Yesterday I joined Mike, his older brother, Breon (interesting Irish names), and his fiancee Jill for a day at Six Flags New England, which also includes the medium-sized Hurricane Harbor water park.  I love fast, tall roller coasters, and the purple Bizarro ride fit the bill quite well.  In the morning we tried out each of the four main roller coasters -- Bizarro, G[???] towers (new this year), Batman, and MindEraser (a painful, small hard-corkscrewing stell coasteR).

After Breon began to feel quite ill, we headed over to the water park and hopped around on various water rides, all of which exist in bigger and better form at Noah's Ark, but nonetheless were generally pretty fun.  Mike and I then split for the final two hours and had two front-row rides on Bizarro, which were just awesome.  Nothing beats sliding slowly over the pinnacle of the first drop right at the start, watching as the track shifts quickly to what seems to be a pure vertical drop.

The rest of the park, though, has a distinctly depressing feel to it -- a contrived fantasy world absent any real character or charisma, along with any water fountains (water bottles $3.50, what a crime) or sensible food.  Though I am well aware that such places will charge a big premium for food and I am okay with that, a single slice of pizza should never cost $9.  Ever.  During the course of the day, my meals consisted of fries, more fries, and an almond Snickers bar.

Web Log, take 2

It turns out that, until I opened up Blogger this morning seeking a place to start keeping a blog in its original form, I actually had no recollection whatsoever that I had already started this very blog back in Summer 2010.

It was fun to read through all the old posts just now. As was noted by the leader of the Software Carpentry Bootcamp I attended a few weeks ago, the human brain appears to have unlimited long-term memory, but accessing it requires the proper cue.  When you read old, forgotten journal entries, this fact becomes abundantly clear: literally every single detail of every event that I described I could recall, but without the journal many of them would have had zero hope of ever resurfacing.  Pretty cool, and also obvious motivation to really, truly keep a consistent but simple blog going.  My old roommate Ben does it, and I love reading it even though I may go years without seeing him in person.

Here's to making these memories last :)