Right Field Roof

Pete was given tickets to Sunday's Red Sox game by one of his coworkers, and we lucked out with perfect weather. The "seats" were actually for standing room up on the right field roof, which is one of the few sections of the park that we haven't been in before. I wasn't sure that I would like standing for an entire game, but I would do it again! It's much more comfortable up on the roof - you're not packed into the small seats and there's a constant breeze and plenty of room to move around. We were there early enough to snag a pretty sweet spot right along the small counter at the front of the space (overlooking the right field roof tables, which would also be awesome but are three times the cost), so we had somewhere to lean on and set our drinks. Maybe the best part of the right field roof is that the bathrooms are restricted so that only folks with the right field roof tickets can use them - there were never more than two women in line the entire game!

Number 7: Ride my bike to Nut Island on a beautiful day

It’s on my life list to visit all of the Boston Harbor Islands (NPS site, more informative site), which is going to be tricky as there are 34 of them and less than half are open to the public. I’m still trying to figure out how to solve that problem, but in the meantime I’m trying to hit up at least one new-to-me BHI each year. Last year I made it to Long Island (not open to the public!), the year before I dragged Pete and a friend out to World’s End, and the year before that was when I first discovered the Harbor Islands with a visit to George’s Island while we had friends visiting from out of town. This year I’m hoping to add more than one island to me visited list, so I started easy with a bike ride to Nut Island.

I told you guys earlier, I’m riding the heck out of my bike! Nut Island is about 6 miles from home, depending on how you go. I was planning on a route that seemed like a compromise between scenic and direct…and brought me past Starbucks, because I hadn’t yet decided if I wanted an iced chai to kick off my ride or not. ;) I mostly followed that route, aside from missing a turn somewhere and then just guessing at turns – at one point leading me down a super fun hill (internal monologue: “weeeeee! This is going to be AWESOME, I’m gonna go SO FAST flying down this hill!”) that led to a dead end (internal monologue: “craaaaaaaaap! This is going to be SUCKY, I’m gonna go SO SLOW back up that hill!”), but that mistake was easily corrected and I was back to roads whose name I recognized soon enough. Then there was another giant hill. At which point I hopped off my bike and walked it, I’m sure significantly faster than I could have pedaled up it! Finally, on the other side of that hill, was that big, brown, National Park Service sign telling me I’d made it!

Nut Island is one of a handful of harbor islands that is no longer an island. It’s been joined to the mainland for some time now, and is home to a sewage screening facility. You can read more about that here, including a paragraph which I’m going to start quoting whenever people question my refusal to swim at Wollaston Beach: “The old Nut Island primary plant, which had been in service since 1952, has been demolished, ending more than 100 years of waste water discharges to the shallow waters of Quincy Bay.”

Nut Island isn’t huge, but it is beautiful. There are a number of trails for walking, running, or biking. There is a pier for fishing. There are benches with amazing views to the Boston skyline, Quincy’s adorable Hough’s Neck neighborhood, and a number of the other harbor islands. There are also stairs that lead down to a very rocky beach, where you won’t want to swim (see above) but you can easily spend a lot of time skipping rocks and searching for sea glass and shells. Or, if you’re the crusty old man I saw, you can spend a lot of time hiding amid the rocks tanning yourself while chain smoking. Small island, plenty to do! I was kicking myself for not having packed a snack and my Kindle so that I could lie in the sun and read for a bit before heading home. I was also kicking myself for not having packed lunch so I could enjoy a mini-picnic!

In fact, that’s what I think you should do! You can drive to get there, by the way, you don’t have to ride your bike. ;) Pack yourself a picnic lunch and a good book, and head to Nut Island. Don’t pack dessert, because rumor has it that Ginger Betty’s is pretty amazing and you’re going to pass right by it, so just stop in there to pick up dessert on your way. After you park, walk up the hill a bit to the big, grassy, open area with a great view of Downtown Boston, throw down your blanket, and enjoy your picnic lunch (and dessert). Maybe read a bit, maybe nap a bit, and then once you’re ready for a stroll drop your picnic leftovers at the car and head along the trails until you find the stairs down to the water. Practice skipping rocks, find a few pieces of sea glass and a few teeny tiny sea shells to take home as mementos. Then go home, happy to have found such a beautiful little slice of nature hidden in Quincy, of all places.

**You can see a few more photos I took while I was there over on Flickr

Boldfacers

I was at an event tonight at the Boldfacers studio, home to this awesome display hanging from the ceiling. I have more to say about the event itself, but as it revolved around a book that I haven't read yet, I'm going to wait and say more about it once I've at least started, if not finished, the book!

Root, root, root for the RED SOX!

...If they don't win it's a shame.

And it was a shame. But we had fun anyway! Pete picked up a few tickets from a co-worker, and I snuck out of the office for a few hours to join he and Jamie for the game. The seats were awesome - immediately against the fence of the Tampa Bay bullpen, where there was a ton of hilarious interaction between their pitchers and the crowd.

The seats were also hot! It was 90° out (poor marathoners!) and we were in full sun for the entire game. I sweat my face off and managed to get sunburn on a small, crazy shaped patch on my back. There's always that one sunburn every spring just to remind you exactly how thoroughly you need to apply sun block, isn't there?

Being in the sun at Fenway, though...I'm not sure there's anything else that feels more like summer in Boston.

Castle Island

Remember when I put "buy a bike and ride it" on a zillion of my seasonal to do lists before I actually did it? I've been making up for lost time and riding the heck out of that bike lately...even though the front gear doesn't shift properly so going uphill is significantly less than enjoyable.

I knew I wanted to go on a longer bike ride today, and I prefer to ride on some kind of scenic bike path whenever possible, so I mapped out a few options before I left the house. Because I'm crazy, I chose the longest loop. Eighteen miles, from Quincy along Dorchester Bay and then Boston Harbor to Castle Island, and then home again. I brought my T Pass with me because if it all proved to be too much, I could bail around mile 11 and hop on the T to get home.

And yet I knew when I left the house that I wouldn't do that, that I would be too happy riding my bike to "cheat" and take the T part of the way home, no matter how tired I was. And I was tired! I stopped halfway to wait in the looooooong line at Sullivan's and get a frozen yogurt (you need to fuel for a ride that long!) and I climbed up the hill and found a patch of sunny grass and enjoyed the view while I finished my yogurt. I had plenty of water with me, and even with a headwind all along the beach in South Boston, I wasn't ready to stop riding when I got to the peninsula with the JFK Library and UMass Boston...so I just kept riding. My quads were killing me, my butt was sore, and there was no way I was getting off my bike yet. I took another short break around 15.5 miles, once I got back to our old stomping grounds at JPII Park, then made my way home.

And collapsed from exhaustion.

Number 4: Attend a live taping of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

I have more laugh out loud moments while listening to Wait Wait than I do watching any show on TV (possible exception: Big Bang Theory), so I've been thinking that it would be fun to visit Chicago sometime when we're already in that neck of the woods visiting Pete's family. Because we're planning a trip out there in June, I went to the Wait Wait ticket site and it turned out that they were going to be in Boston...and tickets were going on sale a few days later. I put it on my calendar, recruited friends to go with me, and then stalked the ticketing page for days until I was able to snag four seats. And then I waited approximately forever for April 12th to get here.

You guys! This was so fun that it makes me want to move to Chicago so I can go every week. You should make it a point to a) listen to the show as often as possible, and b) attend a live taping. There is so much that is edited out of the show that is equally hilarious. After two hours of watching them tape, my cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing so much. It was so awesome.

For all my DC Metro family and friends, they'll be taping in Bethesda on Thursday, June 7th. Go here and read about tickets, and then be sure to buy some and go!

I'm a Modern Girl

Since I'm back posting, I can reveal my secret without spoiling surprises! After work, I walked over to the North End to wait in line at Modern Pastry and buy cannolis as a 70th birthday gift for my Dad.

The TSA will definitely inspect your checked bag if it has in it a soft sided cooler with two ice packs and three coffee cups full of cannoli filling, and they will leave you a little (love?) note saying that they're watching you, but they will not confiscate anything. Lucky us, because I think everyone enjoyed the cannolis...it turns out it's pretty hard to find good ones in Bumpass, VA. ;)

Beauty as Duty

I was at the MFA for a work event in honor of Women's History Month...in addition to a guided tour, there was networking with other ladies from work, wine, and some cheese (and crackers and veggies, but I think we all know that I only cared about the cheese). Anyway, we were given a tour of the Beauty as Duty exhibit by the woman that curated the exhibit, which was pretty awesome and has completely spoiled me for seeing museum exhibits any other way.  How do I get curator led tours all the time? I need to work on making that happen.

I knew as soon as I walked into the room that I would love this exhibit. I've been wholly immersed lately in books and TV shows set in Britain, set anywhere in the few years before WWI to just after WWII (Downton Abbey and Maisie Dobbs, anyone?), so of course it would happen that the exhibit we were seeing was about WWII Britain! I had to laugh as I realized it, as I had RSVP'd to the event without paying any attention to what we would actually be seeing at the museum. After I walked into the room, I turned to the wall with the exhibit write up (Is there a technical term for that? You know what I'm talking about - the bigger blurb on the wall right at the start?), and there was a photo of Winston Churchill - by Yousuf Karsh, hands down one of my favorite portrait photographers. Clearly I was meant to see this exhibit!

If you're in Boston, check the exhibit out! I'm pretty sure it will be interesting, even if you don't get a guided tour from the curator...plus, I accept bribes (small ones work, I'm easy) and would be happy to see it again and share my knowledge! ;)

Number 5: Ice Skate at the Frog Pond

My friends Norm and Michelle and I kept trying to get to the Frog Pond for ice skating and being foiled by the few days that we actually did get winter weather this year. It turns out that the third time really was a charm! On the final night of the season, we made it! Just in time for the zamboni to head out and groom the ice while we tied (and retied) our skates and laughed about how it felt to walk in them after so many years.

Pete, despite having grown up in a state with winters worse than New England's, has no idea how to ice skate and didn't want to try. He went for a walk and came back just in time to laugh at us as we worked our very cautious way around the rink for the first lap.

One lap is about all it took for me to fall in love with it and regret not having taken advantage of living within walking distance of a free outdoor rink for all the time we lived in JP. By the time we were done, I had decided that next winter I need to get my own ice skates and then buy a season pass for the Frog Pond, because I could TOTALLY ice skate on my lunch breaks at work! And then drag all my friends back to skate with me on the weekends. Friends: consider yourself warned...but hey! Hot cocoa is on me.

Number 3: Take the BPL Art & Architecture Tour

I have been wanting to take the Art & Architecture Tour at the Boston Public Library for a long time, but hadn't found anyone interested in doing it with me until recently. Katie saw it on my Winter To Do List and mentioned she was on board, so we finally got around to meeting up after work for the ~hour long tour (after a stop at Thinking Cup for tea/hot cocoa).

The tour guides are all volunteers, and ours was great! She certainly knew her stuff, and added to the basic information with anecdotes that were often quite funny. Our group was probably the perfect size - about 12-14 of us total - and the tour was the perfect length. I'm sure there is a lot more to the library than was covered, but any longer would have been a bit overwhelming. My favorite bits were when she talked about recent restoration to the artwork and what it entailed, and hearing about the process behind getting some of the artwork into the spaces.

I can't recommend this tour enough...for one thing, it's free! There's so much to see and do in Boston that I think a lot of people miss out on smaller things like this because they aren't as well publicized. The tour is just over an hour, and it's smack in the heart of Back Bay - folks should be able to work it into a trip easily! In fact, I'm interested in taking the tour again if only because I'm curious to see if different tour guides offer different anecdotes.

The next time you're at the library, for the tour or otherwise, don't forget to pet the lion's tail on your way past - rumor has it that stroking the tail of a lion statue will make it come to life!

Beacon Hill

I was back at MGH for a follow-up appointment with my hematologist and I stopped on my way out so I could snap a photo of the view from the Yawkey building.

Number 4: (day nineteen) Workspace

This isn't the view from my work space, it's the view from my window at Club MGH* over dinner - the sun setting over Cambridge and the Charles River. Not bad, hey? All of the nurses and doctors told me I had the best view on the floor. I'm pretty sure that this view would make any work day a little bit better.

*About why I was there.

Number 4: (day eleven) Something Red

We went to the Harpoon Brewery with a few friends today to try and catch one of the last tours and tastings. Unfortunately the tours had sold out by 1:30, and we were out of luck. At least we bought a growler of beer, and there was plenty of "something red"s for me to take pictures of!

Some quick smart phone sleuthing told us that the Blue Hills Brewery was still open for tastings, so off we went to make sure we still got in our fair share of beer tastings. (Well, not me. I don't drink beer because it's gross.) We bought more beer there, too.

Pete is distraught that I didn't want to buy a t-shirt, because I was also handcrafted in Canton, Mass. "These are your people! You should support them!" he kept saying.

You can see a few other photos from both the Harpoon Brewery and Blue Hills Brewery here.

Number 4: (day six) Looking Up

The view as I was walking outside my office at lunchtime today...blue skies and sunny, but don't be fooled, it was chilly! There are some really beautiful buildings in the financial district near work, and a great mix of architectural styles. Some days I really love being able to look out form the tenth floor and see the detail at the top of our neighboring buildings - it's nice to think that when the buildings were being designed, people were thinking about the view from neighboring buildings and not just the ground!

More importantly, what this photo taught me was that I desperately need to clean my lenses and take my camera in to have the sensor cleaned ASAP...there was a lot of dust speck removal in Photoshop today!

Home

I had amazing views from my flight today - taking off and landing!

Love me some US Airways Shuttle flights.

10 on Tuesday

1. It was a pretty beautiful spring day today! Only...uh, it's nearly winter? I took a 3 mile walk at lunch to return a book to the library, and it was awesome. I'm so glad I decided to walk instead of taking the T! Even if it is borderline ridiculous to have this warm weather pretty consistently in November.

2. The book I was returning to the library was On The Road, one of the Penguin Best Books...Journeys. And you know what? I'm aborting that item on my Winter To Do List. I've been trying to read through the Penguin Best Books list because I feel like I need to read more classics. I read the Best Minxes over the spring/summer and enjoyed them, but I hated reading On The Road and I just kept wondering how many more books I was going to have to read that I would hate. I'm still trying to decide how to achieve this "read more classics" goal of mine, but I don't think the Penguin list is the way to do it.

3. When I got home from work, I threw a bunch of roasted potatoes and onions that were leftover from Thanksgiving into a pot with some stock (well...with some Better Than Bullion) and a bunch of carrots in an attempt to turn it into a tasty soup. It was such a great idea! SO TASTY.

4. Also when I got home from work, Barley followed me around until I sat down and he could climb into my lap. Apparently he doesn't care about the warmer weather, he's still solidly in snuggle mode.

5. Champ has been getting much more social lately and has been jumping up onto the couch with Pete and I regularly! It's totally out of character for her, but we're hoping it's a sign that she's slowly getting closer to someday, maybe being a snuggly cat. Possibly.

6. I keep having to remind myself that today is only Tuesday - it feels like Wednesday, at least.

7. I am one person away from being done with my Christmas shopping, woohoo! Well...if you don't count Pete. Rumor has it that he was on the naught list this year, though, so not sure if he even deserves a Christmas gift! ;)

8. Pete and I started watching Burn Notice on Netflix and are hooked. I also started watching White Collar. No matter what show I'm watching, in the middle of each episode I'm always thinking that "if only..." the main character from the other show were there! It would solve all their problems!

9. I don't usually have a sweet tooth, but I have for the last few days - mug brownies every night! Pretzel M&Ms with my afternoon tea at work every day! Guess I need to drag myself back onto the treadmill.

10. I've been staying up later than usual lately, but getting up at the usual time and not missing the sleep. I thought maybe that it was actually a better sleep schedule for me and I didn't need the extra 45-60 minutes of sleep I usually get. Imagine what I could do with all the extra time! I could take over the world!!! Only this morning it caught up with me - I snoozed my alarm at least twice without even waking up/knowing it, and now I'm exhausted. I guess I just had a good run for a few days, and now it's back to my regularly scheduled sleep!

It's Christmastime in the city!

Christmas decorations are going up everywhere, Salvos are out ringing bells, holiday music is playing in the stores...

If it weren't for all the 60+ degree days we've been having recently, it would be starting to feel like Christmas around here!

Seventy Degrees!

Of all the days I should be carrying a camera, today is definitely one of them. It was seventy degrees out this afternoon, so when I checked the temperature at lunch and saw that I practically ran out of the building for a loooong walk. I have two go-to places when I need to get my fill of nature at work - Post Office Square and the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Today I headed off to the Greenway, and it was so awesome to feel the warm sun and see the fall colors (and to not have to fight swarms of tourists on the way there, too!).

Let's all cross our fingers that this warm-ish weather sticks around for the weekend so that we don't get hypothermia while we're camping this weekend, okay? Thanks!

Brattle

I have walked by the Brattle a zillion times, and even browsed the outdoor racks a few times, but I've never set food inside the actual store before today. I was looking on the off-chance that I'd find one of the books on my Fall To Do list, but instead I found a few of the Anne of Green Gables books -  unfortunately not the next one that I want to read. That spurred a walk to Raven Used Books on Newbury Street to see if I could find any of the books there...where of course I didn't.

Maybe tomorrow's football avoidance adventure will include a trip to Cambridge to check some of the used bookstores there.

DTX

I took today off from work to go to the dentist (who says hi, Dad, he hopes you guys are enjoying your trip!), and walked through Downtown Crossing on the way home. The weather was pretty beautiful, and the picture doesn't capture it, but the thing hanging over the street between the flags is all mirrored pieces that reflect the sunlight. It's really beautiful - I need to find a way to capture it on camera.