Our first meeting of the day Monday included breakfast. It was a pretty good breakfast, just a little too early in the morning for me. I took a half slice of French toast, a little 100-calorie cup of Yoplait peach yogurt (that was too gloppy and tasted mostly of the color orange rather than peach, so I didn’t finish it) and one slice and one link of bacon and sausage.
I had one last meeting, that I am supposed to report on, mashcat, the idea of getting library catalogers/metadata creators/library technologists together with more general IT people, and learning how to communicate. Afterward, I went to Flour one last time, and got a mug of black coffee and, wanting better yogurt, a yogurt parfait. I got my coffee in a real mug, but since I grabbed the yogurt from the refrigerated case, it looked a lot more like the one on the right – but still several orders of magnitude tastier than the Yoplait.
I walked back towards Copley Plaza, aiming to get to somewhere on Boylston where I could get a new neck warmer or scarf. I found this nice real Scottish wool (the tag says) on at Marshall’s for $10.
I worked at the Boston Public Library (“welcome ALA Midwinter” the sign said) until the battery of my computer was down to about 20%, then I went to the hotel room, 5 minutes away. At about 3:15, I decided to head to the MFA – we had paid $50 to get in to see the Dutch Masters on Friday, and the tickets were good for a repeat visit within 10 days. I took the T – the Google directions were all, “bear left to stay on Huntington, turn right, loop around here, stand on your head” – I thought, “fuck that I’m taking the T” – and it was super easy, and I was at the museum by 3:30ish, with a whole hour to spend until they closed at 4:45. I looked at the modern crafts, and contemporary – a big wall mural by Kara Walker, an Andy Warhol, and a quilt made out of 8 mm. film stand out in my mind. I blundered into an Impressionist gallery, and there was a Monet haystack, water lillies, and the Rouen cathedral.
Mark got done at conference and texted to ask if I wanted to meet at a Starbucks – we rendevoused at the one that I think was “our” Starbucks, a big one on Boylston, the last time we were in Boston when we stayed at the Charlesmark. While we were sitting there, we decided to go see a movie and ended up at Spotlight at the Loews 19-plex at the other end of Boylston. Kinda cool to see a movie set in Boston, while in Boston.
Tuesday we traveled back to the Midwest, and Southwest is buying me a new suitcase.
Actually they already have – I traded for this wheely beast from REI – not sure I’m going to like it better, though, because the top doesn’t pop up so you can stuff in more stuff – but the pop up is why the green one got caught in the machinery. First world problems.
Wednesday back to work, when it was 4°, and all day I wondered why I wasn’t wearing one of my earflap hats, followed by Thursday, 33° and sunny, and I didn’t even need a hat. I made winter vegetable soup on Wednesday night – some leftover homemade pizza sauce, a few leaves of kale, celery, rutabaga, cabbage, lentils. On Thursday, we went to a pretty impressive retirement party – Nancy, the head of reference at Memorial Library, who’s a sweetheart – but we didn’t eat there, and instead came home and had pita bread pizzas. The holiday food is officially almost all gone from the fridges. I have a small stash of cookies in the basement, springerle, the hard anise ones I like with coffee and biberli, the little wedges of gingerbread with marzipan inside, and some marzipan dates, too. I’ve been sneaking them into my lunch. And two and a half boxes un-stuffed dates, lots that is, to use up in something – oatmeal, sticky toffee pudding, date nut bread … There’s kind of a lot of cheese, too. I used up that carton of ricotta making these crepe manicotti on Saturday – they were good, but I left out the eggs from the filling, thinking it’d be too gooey.
Friday we went to see the new James Bond at the cheap theater, at 4:45, so we got the day price, $2.50 each. The perfect start to the long holiday weekend.
It’s Sunday now, and the Packers lost so we have to join my bro in rooting for the Steelers. He’s drinking Rolling Rock, but I’m so behind on getting ready for the start of classes on January 19th that I can’t start yet. Thank god – or MLK – for the extra day tomorrow.