The Weekend.

Friday:

I was really sick but went apartment hunting anyway. The first apartment I saw was right behind Joe and Nan’s house, but the building felt so unstable I knew I would wake up one morning in a pile of rubble. We nicknamed that apartment "Pitch and Roll" and had a good time laughing about how we wouldn’t be able to defend our "Marbles Champion of the World" titles anymore for lack of a good place to practice.

The second apartment I found was really awesome–it had a breakneck, windy staircase up to the third floor, where the apartment was long with beautiful hardwood floors and a really nice kitchen (I cook A LOT). I thought I had found the right apartment at the right price.

Friday night we went to see a Dresden Dolls play at the Onion Cellar. One word–fantastic. The whole theater was done up to look like an old cabaret-style bar, and we had a table front and center. Nan got a flower from Amanda and a drumstick from Brian. We laughed. We cried. It was awesome.

Saturday:

I was still really sick and dealing with a lot of apartment drama. Since Joe and Nan were home from work, we decided to take a long walk in the Arboretum.

Joe and Nan’s decision to move to Jamaica Plain (versus any other neighborhood in Boston) was based on a number of factors, one of which was the fact that JP has more green space than anywhere else in the city. Franklin Park, this huge, 500 acre monstrosity, is right out their back door, and Arnold Arboretum (established by Harvard) is just around the corner.

The arboretum was really beautiful, though I must admit that I it still felt too "city" for me. I couldn’t get past the fact that there were cars driving by as we were walking and there were far more people there than would have been nice. I have been really lucky to grow up in a town where there is still a lot of undeveloped space and going outside to be alone is relatively easy. The adjustment is going to be difficult.

There is a part of the arboretum where you can climb to the top of a hill that overlooks the whole city. I have a feeling that I will be spending a lot of time up there–it was really peaceful and beautiful (except for the little gremlin pig-like pug with one huge eye, one little one, and the most horrifying bark I have ever heard in my life). While we were there, we ran into Sarah (a friend of Joe’s), which made it the second time in a week that I have run into someone I know here. In some ways, this place is a lot like Reno.

After our walk we decided to go to the North End (affectionately know as "Little Italy") and get some pizza for dinner. I think the North End has been my favorite part of Boston so far–the buildings are all really old and really close together, and because the streets are narrow (and parking is terrible) no one really drives around there. It almost feels like you are walking in a movie set.

Joe and Nan decided to take us to Pizzeria Regina, often hailed as the best pizza in Boston. We waited in line for over an hour to get a table, but it was worth the wait. The food was awesome.
After dinner we decided to walk around for a bit and get some espresso and dessert (not that I needed it after the HUGE pizza I scarfed down). Dessert was first–ice cream injected brownies from this shop that was a weird shadow of Krispy Kreme, very 50's technological revolution-ish. Ice-cream injected cupcakes didn’t really sound that good to me, but since everything comes in multiples of two there, Nan shared one with me--It was a brownie-cupcake thing that they injected with vanilla soft-serve ice cream as we waited. The brownie was warm, the ice cream cold, and it was delicious.

The next stop was for cappuccinos at this little Italian place with a band (actually, just two guys with a fiddle and an accordion serenading the customers). The coffee, like the dessert, was really good, and the street was even more amazing–everyone was standing outside shooting the shit, smoking cigars, and for a second I could imagine that I was in Italy. Really neat.

For a while after that we wandered around–by the ocean for a bit, then to Quincy Market. Quincy Market is this strange sort-of-mall sort-of-not kind of place where there are a lot of shops and people. We found this really cool street performer who played drums on pieces of trash that he found. I caught some cool pictures of kids dancing to the beat and one trying to take off with the money bucket that the guy had out.

On the way back to the train, we passed by the Holocaust Memorial, which blew my mind. It is a series of six tall glass rectangular cubes with numbers etched into the glass. Six million numbers to be exact. That figure really does not register until you actually see the numbers up close, then see how many are actually etched there. It was very powerful.

I also found out on Saturday that I will be searching for an apartment for one--Will isn’t quite ready to move yet, and I have sort of an agenda. This means that I will have more privacy (yay for privacy), but will have to pay a whole lot more for rent. And, as it turns out, there really are very few studios/one bedrooms in JP. But, I have faith that everything will work out. I mean, I am not the type to end up homeless/jobless on the street selling my body for crack (at least I don’t think so). So, unless I find myself in that position, everything is a-ok.