New Year Update

Happy New Year everyone! Just a brief catch-up post before I leave for Canada tomorrow. Gah... dialup... hate... hate...

Hanging out in New York City was great; I got to see Air Force Guy (Doug) and his wife (‘Stina), on the day they were moving up to Boston. Went to lunch and MoMA with Perlick and Probe (but not ‘Becca and their baby Sophia). Picture below is the crowd hovering in front of Dali’s The Persistence of Memory--I figured it wasn’t worthwhile to fight my way through, so that was as close as I got.


And finally, I saw a bunch of folks at the Power Dinner at Hallo Berlin (German beer hall restaurant in The Neighborhood Formerly Known as Hell’s Kitchen, see note). Many thanks to all of you who made it out! (and great meeting many of you for the first time!)


Note: In case you’re curious, the neighborhood is sometimes called Clinton, post-gentrification. Wikipedia notes: The Clinton name originated in 1959 in an attempt to link the name to the DeWitt Clinton Park at 52nd and 11th Avenue.... Today, most residents of the area, and most New Yorkers in general, refer to the area as "Hell's Kitchen," with "Clinton" being the name favored by the municipality, "gentrifiers," and eager real estate agents. The park is named after Governor DeWitt Clinton, of Erie Canal fame.

Nope, the report’s still not done. Unfortunately, I am still finding things on Long Island to keep myself busy instead of writing: downloading and printing the manual for my dad’s new electric razor (“You can get manuals from the web?” “Um… yeah dad.”), blogging, moving the exercise bicycle up from the basement, installing a three-prong electrical outlet for the new fridge, buying/installing new windshield wipers for my parents’ car, and removing mineral buildup around the bathroom faucets with CLR and a toothbrush. Yeah, working hard at this punting thing.

I totally lamed out on any New Year’s plans; I had an invite to hang out with Perlick and his NYC crowd. So while they went and partied like rock stars (at least for sufficiently large values of ‘rock star’), I just stayed out on Long Island and recharged my batteries.


Okay, yeah, that was terrible. But basically, this is how I rang in the New Year:


“2007. Yay.”

Anyway, one last family anecdote: I informed my family that I am going to be staying with JMD when I return to Boston. My folks fail to remember most of my friends; she appears to be no exception. JMD met my sister while living at Tep over the summer: she was blasted out of bed by my sister coming to use my turntable to play some opera at 9 AM. My sister’s memory of the event: “Oh, you had a roommate with red hair, right?”

So the conversation with my parents was a bit interrogation-like:

“The apartment is in Arlington. It’s a duplex; the landlords live in the other half.”

“She has four cats. One of them is an antisocial feral that nobody ever touches.”

“Her brother is a Tep. He’s the one that I usually celebrate Thanksgiving with—him and his wife and family.”

“She lives by herself; she’s not married.”

At that, you could pretty much hear the cooling fans of my parents’ brains kick in:


So, do my readers have any good/creative ideas on How To Mess With My Folks along these lines?