What I'm Thankful For

The train I take to work happens to continue on to Logan Airport. Today, when I got on the platform to wait, I was surrounded by the same thing: college kids with their small wheeling suitcase, heading home for Thanksgiving. A good majority were from Boston University, as I could tell by their matching hoodies, and judging by their nervousness, not many of them had ventured out to the blue line train yet.

Last year at this time I was home, having flown a Tuesday red eye from Los Angeles to Hartford. At this very moment I was probably asleep on the couch, since those flights always left me in a zombe-like state for several hours after landing. This year I'm not even leaving until tomorrow, on Thanksgiving Day. That luxury is one of the biggest reasons that I moved back to the east coast in the first place.

A funny thing happened earlier this year. A good number of my friends in Los Angeles decided to move away. None of these people were California locals, all had moved out there in the past 5-7 years and had decided that their time out on the west coast had drawn to a close. The hassle of planning a trip home from Los Angeles was always difficult - needing to know so far in advance, then practically losing two of the days because of the travel - the visits always seemed a lot shorter than they actually were.

That's what I'm thankful for, in this most hectic of years. The move was incredibly strenuous and I do miss a lot of close friends from California, but I wouldn't change what I've done for the world. I'm thankful for being closer to my family, living with my wonderful girlfriend and settling in to this new life of ours. I'm even thankful to be preparing for the dreadfully cold winter which will surely kill me.

Rainy Day Cliche

It's raining out. Harder than usual, but not completely unbearable. This kind of weather is difficult to stomach when using an outdoor subway station as your primary mode of transportation. During my junior year of college I had a similar situation over at St. Paul Street, which was actually worse, because the full express trains would pass right by. Now that I'm further down the line I can at least hop on and pray for the train to go express.


While I was outside waiting this morning there were a handful of unhappy people cluttered under the tiny bus stop awning. The braver people were out in the open, leaving their umbrellas to protect them. I waited with the brave folks. After about five minutes, a truck came barrelling down the road a little too close to the stop. I wasn't worried about the truck hitting us, but rather the giant puddle that had accumulated along side the barrier wall. Sure enough, it hit, and my legs got a little wet. The guy that was two spaces down from me got the brunt of it, soaking his backpack and legs. After that moment, everyone took a big step away from the wall, on to the yellow safety line next to the tracks. We all held out our umbrellas facing the puddle, attempting to sheild ourselves from the onslaught. Another girl made her way to the station and decided to lean right against the wall, despite everyone else standing a good two feet away. All of the umbrella holders glanced down the road to see an oncoming school bus, sure to soak the poor girl. Fortunately, the bus got caught by a red light and the train arrived, saving her from a damp morning.


The Aquarium is located right along the water, in the central wharf. There is an alley between the main building and the IMAX which creates a great place for wind to come shooting through. Naturally, while walking up the main plaza today, the wind was hard to walk against. Out of nowhere, a huge gust turned my umbrella inside out. The only reason it didn't completely blow away was that I had the wristband wrapped around my hand. It was terribly cliche and took a little while for the umbrella to be coaxed back into its normal shape.

So, the car splashed me and my umbrella turned inside out. What else could happen? I am probably going to step in a puddle that turns out to be about a foot deeper than it looks. Wayne Knight could crash his jeep on to our front stoop, only to be blinded and eaten by dinosaurs. Maybe Spider-man will hang upside down off the balcony across the street and kiss someone. Then Tim Robbins is going to tunnel out of the basement of my building, only to raise his arms in the middle of the street, victorious.

Actually, that last one would be awesome.

Emerson Quidditch Team

Emerson, Boston University clash in Quidditch


Yes, my alma mater has a Quittitch team.

No, they can't fly -- I think they are aware of that. I guess it would have to be considered similar to playing hockey in sneakers, on pavement. You're not moving around on the right surface, or as fast as you should be, but it's more like kids pretending to do something their own way.

I'm curious as to how the golden snitch works. I think maybe they hide it in the grass like an easter egg. Maybe someone in a full body camoflauge or green screen suit runs around holding it and they have to chase him. Maybe when the game gets too long, someone just chucks it up in the air and the seekers go apeshit chasing it down.

Apparently they have a well constructed plan: "In muggle Quidditch, a snitch is a person dressed in yellow with a sock hanging from the back of their pants. If a team's seeker is able to catch the snitch and grab the sock, the team is awarded 30 points; games do not end until it is caught."

Yeah. So the snitch is a person. And to win you must pull the sock out of his pants. That will teach him to mislead the ladies in the first place. Either way, I wish them luck in their next two games at the University of Narnia and home against Mordor State.

MBTA Guilt Trip

This morning apparently there was an issue on the blue line train where a passenger was holding the door open in order for someone else to make it on to their train. The driver became exceedingly angry and this is how it progressed:

"Please do not hold the door."
Fine, a nice verbal warning over the public address system. The typical warning should teach him. Assuming he heard it, we should be ready to roll.

"Why don't you just tell me when you're ready to leave?"
Stepping it up, the driver is now utilizing the same guilt tactics that most Jewish mothers have perfected over the years. The door shut soon after this was said over the speaker for everyone to hear.

Once the train started moving, we were all privy to this gem:
"Everyone on this train is now going to be late because of you. Do not hold the doors open."

Harsh. I guess there's no reward for trying to help your fellow commuter.

Hey Mister Owl...

Remember when we were kids and there were only a few kinds of tootsie roll pops?

• Chocolate
• Orange
• Cherry
• Grape
• Raspberry.

There was a bowl of them at work this morning and I did not recognize any of them. The label colors were bright and neon, certainly different from the dull, solid colors of my youth. The new roster of flavors includes:

• Strawberry
• Lemon-Lime
• Blue-Raspberry
• Watermelon
• Pomegranate

The idea of the tootsie pop is that the middle chocolate section goes well with one of the exterior fruit flavors. I can understand the strawberry choice, those suckers have been working with chocolate for a long time. I don't understand the rest. Lemon-Lime + Chocolate? Watermelon + Chocolate? Pomegranate?? Really? I didn't even know what a pomegranate was during my peak trick-or-treating years, and now it's popular enough to gain Tootsie pop status? Which brings me to my rant of the day: Blue Raspberry.

Not that Blue Raspberry is bad, but I guess I refuse to believe we are living in a day and age where this made up "blue" version of raspberry is more popular than the original. I know the main reason kids want this unnatural blue candy is to make their mouths match the shade, but there must be another way. Raspberry is a good enough flavor on its own, it doesn't need to be taken down a peg by this blue, bastard cousin. My thought: make up a flavor for the blue, like powerade did. "Mountain Blast" is surely nothing more than food coloring, water and sodium, but it works for them. It's a color not found in nature, so don't make kids grow up thinking that they can scamper through the woods and find the ever elusive blue-raspberry bush, it's not happening.

... and we're back

Almost three months to the day and I'm back in the blogosphere.

I guess there were more pressing issues since my last post in July.

1. Find a job
2. Furnish/settle in to an apartment.

Okay, well maybe the list wasn't entirely long, but those are pretty important in the grand scheme of things. I was able to finish list item number one twice, working for Boston Duck Tours during the end of summer and beginning of fall before starting a more permanent job over at the New England Aquarium. I'm a supervisor of box office, so it's a lot of ticketing - for the whale watch, groups, Imax and actual aquarium.

I have a bunch of half-finished blog entries that I've started months ago when I was still in Los Angeles, so hopefully theres going to be time to get a few of those good ones up in the future. In the mean time, things are good in Boston. I've got a job, an apartment, a new kickball team and a girlfriend who loves me. And now I have a blog that is going to be updated occasionally. Huzzah.

Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

Monday was a terrible horrible no good very bad day. I wanted to move to Australia.

It started, as all days like this usually do, at the Watertown DMV. The branch opened at 8:30 am, so Lindy and I decided to head over there around 8:15, only to find that there were about fifty people in line already. We got our tickets which said we would have to wait about seventeen minutes before we would get our new licenses. Nearly an hour later, our numbers were called and we got our brand new temporary Massachusetts licenses (the real ones would arrive in 7-10 days). All in all it seemed like a pretty good start to the day, as we were finished at the DMV before 10:00.

Since I had newly registered the car in Massachusetts, I would need to get the car to pass the state inspections. Only nine months ago, this same car passed the California state inspection, which is arguably the most difficult inspection to pass. Some time during the inspection, I happened to look closer at the temporary license that I was issued that very morning, and noticed there was something wrong. According to the state of Massachusetts, I was officially listed as a Female.

This led to a long time on hold with the DMV, because the last thing I wanted to do was go back there and work it out in person. The exchange with the woman on the phone went something like this:

Woman: How can I help you?
Paul: I just got a license today, and it has me listed as a female.
Woman: And you're not a female.
Paul: No, I just checked and I'm still a dude.
Woman: Okay. What kind of ID card did you use to get your license.
Paul: Birth certificate and social security card.
Woman: Okay. Go back to the DMV and show them the card and the evidence.
Paul: Show them the evidence? Like right there in front of everyone?
Woman: No, not that evidence. Nobody wants to see that.
Paul: That's not nice. I'm sure somebody wants to see it.

So, lucky as I was, after passing the inspection, I was able to go back to the DMV for a second time and get the error taken care of. Thankfully I didn't have to get back in line, I just snuck up to one of the windows and was able to get it taken care of. In and out. Things were starting to go my way.

I spent the rest of the afternoon sending out resumes and inquiry letters for potential jobs, as this marked the one month mark of not having a job. I was waiting for a call from a place that I had applied to and had several interviews, both in person and on the phone. My last interview was seven days ago and they said I would hear by this afternoon, so I was hoping to get some good news to dilute the rest of the day. The phone did ring and it was a woman I had interviewed with. She did not have good news.

It turns out that instead of hiring anyone for the position, they were putting the position "on hold," while the higher-ups were going to think about restructuring the department. I didn't get the job. Nobody got the job. I wonder how many other people were waiting a week to hear this was the result. I would have been happier if someone else got it, just to know there was something I could have done better in order to improve my interview skills. Instead she said that I was a great candidate, but there was nothing to offer anyone right now. I wish there was at least some kind of awareness of this being a possibility of an outcome, instead of it hitting me from out of nowhere. I guess saying "Paul, while you're a great candidate, it's highly likely that we'll choose to take you through the whole process only to eliminate the position," wouldn't have gone over that well.

I was feeling down, but I knew that there were some good things on craigslist that we wanted to go pick up. One of them, a table, was only available after 8:00 pm, so I called the man involved around 7 and told him we could come get it. He said we could only come at 8:00 am and someone else was coming to get the table because we didn't call that morning, even though the e-mail he sent us clearly said 8:00 PM.

Sigh. We found another desk to look at and walked to the car to find that... the car was gone. We have a temporary parking space in the building lot that goes until the end of August. The building manager took pity on us trying to figure out the parking permit/registration process and let us have the spot for a couple of weeks. Little did we know that during this process, there is a good chance that when your license plates switch to Mass, you're going to get towed. In order to get the vehicle inspection I needed the new plates, so we sent a message to the managers blackberry telling him we were switching plates. He said to send the info and he'd inform the towing company of the new plates in order to keep our car from getting towed (this was the current agreement we had).

We sent the message containing our new plate information at noon.
At 2:45 pm we returned from the vehicle inspection.
A short time before 7:00 pm we found the parking spot empty.

The Boston parking department is the most efficient department of any branch of government in any city on the planet. The truck was ready to swoop in and take our car, despite it being the same make and model of the car that belonged in the space, just with different plates. After a series of calls with our building manager, he said we needed to pay $117 to the company, but we could subtract that from our August rent check. I told him straight forward, being without jobs, it's not so easy to just lay down $117 in cash, and he was able to talk to the tow yard manager and make the charges go away. The unsung hero of the night goes to our neighbor Ben who gave us a ride to "sketchy-town" where the tow yard was located. He's a cool guy.

That is the story of the terrible horrible no good very bad day.

In other news, we got some furniture:

Check out this rockin' Ikea dresser. Originally thought we were missing over twenty pieces that were required to hold it together. In the end we were only missing three pieces, and none of them were really required to build it. They were more like accent pieces.

Our awesome bed.

The couch and chair set we carried up the stairs ourselves. We had a bit of an adventure getting the furniture using a zipcar. We ended up getting the Honda Element, which was big enough to fit 92% of the couch inside, and the smallest bit was hanging out. It was secured using old telephone wires around the end, guaranteeing that sucker didn't move at all during the drive from Cambridge to Brighton. It's comfortable and will be warm in the winter, so come test it out.