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Showing posts with label christopher's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christopher's. Show all posts

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Music in the park

Today I woke up at noon.

Julia and I were planning on heading down to JP for an Arternoon at Ian and Sarah's place at 2:00 PM.

So we did that.

By 1:00 or so, I found myself walking down Mass. Ave towards Harvard Square, guitar in tow.  I stopped at Simon's Cafe for a scone (Carberry's) and some coffee.  Julia and I met at the Church St. T entrance at around 1:30 or so.  We took the red line to Downtown Crossing, then Orange down to Green St.

Eventually, we ended up down by the Pond, sitting on a blanket, hanging out.  There was this couple playing mandolin/guitar there, and after a few moments of wondering whether I should interrupt the air with my own noises, decided to get my guitar out and enjoy myself regardless.  I went there to play, after all.

It was such a nice day.

We stayed at the pond until 4:30 or so, I think.  It was really nice to sit there, with other people around doing something musical, and actually feel like I was vaguely holding my own.  For almost the first time, I think, I kinda felt like I had a right to be there playing music.  That is a wonderful feeling.  I'm by no means great, and my repertoire is still pretty small, but I do actually have some ability.  Whew.

After that, Julia and I took the T back to Harvard Square, and walked back to our respective apartments.

I then proceeded to take a 45 minute nap.

Eric and I bummed around in the living room for a while before deciding to go to Christopher's around 11:00 PM.  In the meantime, I started downloading Starcraft II.

That download has finished.  We'll see how well this runs in a VM.  Gulp.

Here goes!

Monday, January 25, 2010

Wondrous work, Crappy Class, Delicious Dining

The title sums up the day.  I got into work early today so that I could make sure that all the tasks, estimates, spreadsheets, and graphs for our current project were up to date and accurate.  It took a little while, but in the end, I got a clear picture of how far along we are, and it feels great.  I'm much more comfortable with the project knowing that all known tasks are accounted for on the board, the burn-down chart is accurate, and I'm prepared to update it all properly the next day.

Yay!

Following all that administration work, I got in quite a few great hours of working on "branding kits".  I'm starting to feel pretty good about them, and I expect to be able to finish them up sometime this week, hopefully before anyone needs them.  I have an e-mail I need to send to the customer - maybe I can get in early tomorrow and send that off.

For lunch was some excellent Tofu Yellow Curry from The Similans (Brown Sugar Cafe) near Cambridgeside Galleria.  I saved half of it and ate it at 6:00 PM or so.  That was an excellent idea - I felt like I had actually eaten an appropriate amount of lunch (as opposed to just being... full.).  Yarm.

I stayed at work until approximately 7:00 PM.  I didn't have a Jazz Theory class tonight, so I had nothing to do until 7:30 PM.  Thus, more awesome branding kit work.  At 7:00 I left work and took the Red Line into Park, then the Green Line (E) out to Symphony, as I do every Monday.  I arrived outside class at 7:32 PM, and had apparently walked right by our dear teacher, Rani, on my way into the building.  He was wearing a hat and ear warmers and I didn't even recognize him.

Class was difficult for me tonight - crappy because my brain wasn't working, not because of anything anyone else did.  I just couldn't wrap myself around hearing intervals properly.  By the end of it, I was starting to get back into a groove, and I'm grateful to Rani for going easy on me when he was going around the class.  I think he could tell I was frustrated tonight.  After class (which is an hour), I decided to walk to Prudential instead of taking the train from Symphony.  It was a beautiful night, so it seemed a lovely idea.

A few minutes away from the building, my housemate Eric gave me a call and asked if I wanted to go get something to eat at Christopher's in Porter.  I had had the second half of my lunch earlier in the evening (see paragraph re: Yellow Curry, above!), but agreed to go anyway.  I couldn't turn down good company and Christopher's; it's just not possible.

Amazingly, we arrived at Christopher's within about a minute of each other.  In the time that it took Eric to drive home and walk to Porter from the apartment, I had walked to Prudential from Symphony, gotten on the Green Line to Park, and taken the Red Line out to Porter,  Apparently he had a long drive; either that or the trains were fast.  Dunno!

We had a nice set of appetizers at Christopher's.  We ordered "assorted" nachos (I'm not sure what that meant), and a Mediterranean Plate with hummus, feta, katamala olives, cucumbers, tomatoes, pita bread, and tabouli.  I had an Imperial Porter.  We talked about the video game industry as it exists in Japan and the United States, as well as the evolution of various game genres in the two cultures.  For instance, have you ever heard of an RTS, shooter, or tactical combat game developed in Asia?  I haven't.  Apparently that half of the world just isn't into that sorta thing!

And now, here I am at home, writing to all you lovely p(eople || erson).