A Most Excellent Evening

The workday closed with Sameer and I planning out how we want to tell the boss how we want to be allocated project-wise, in light of new people coming in, starting in the next few weeks.

I missed the 6:45ish 78 back into Harvard Square, but it turns out I didn’t actually miss it but that the previous 78 was running very late. The end result was that I had started walking along Concord, and then stopped at the bus stop I was closest too as the 7:05 78 approached. I think I freaked out the girl already waiting at said stop, because I was fast-walking, and then suddenly stopped, and she sort of… inched away from me while I was waiting for the bus.

I grabbed some din-din in The Garage, and then wasted time at the Harvard Bookstore reading Sandman #3 and #4. I’ve been slowly working through them at bookstores. I felt sort of bad for wasting an hour and a half there without buying anything, but on the other hand, I did make some Christmas purchases there. I also didn’t have my Harvard Bookstore card with me, which allows me to earn points towards a discount.

I then hopped the T north to Davis and walked the 10 minutes to my coworker Mike’s (and his roommate Zack’s) birthday party. It was good fun – I went through two beers, a G&T, and one run of SoCo on the ice luge for novelty. I think I spent most of the time talking to fellow BBNers, and some former BBNers, but his (very drunk) neighbors came over later in the evening as well. Note that this is not the Mike that is in church choir with me; this is one of the two (three starting Monday) Mikes in my group; Mike-at-church is in an entirely different department.

I also met Sam, someone who was formerly in our group and worked closely with Liz and Marjorie on the information extraction engine that I get to treat as a magic black box that takes sentences as input and gives me useful linguistic data as output.

As usual, I hung about the food table, and managed to fit in my usual amount of geeky rants about code and/or Star Trek. I am still able to interact normally with cool people, including females. So WoW hasn’t completely stolen my soul ;o). It struck me that this Zack guy was only turning 23, so I was in fact older than one of the hosts – which weirds me out in some crud-I’m-an-adult way that I can’t quite explain.

This ice luge was decidedly smaller than the one that was on the roof behind Jordan et. al’s apartment summer before senior year, but it was still fun. One of the very drunk neighbors was complaining that the ice luge was being wasted with so few people using it. I ran it with a fellow BBNer who works in Building 6; I’m not sure what he does, but I know his name is Rob and he’s older (in the grey hair sense) than me.

I left the party at 12:34, thinking that with the 10 minute speed walk back to Davis I’d catch the last inbound train in time to get the wait-for-train 71 or 73 out of Harvard Square and back home. Unfortunately, I missed said train (the inbounds stop earlier, apparently) by two minutes. I don’t know what the rather large Caribbean-accented woman who entered the station at the same time did, but I resigned myself to walking home.

On my way from Davis Square to Mass. Ave. via Dover, I thought I might be able to catch the last 77 down Mass. Ave., so I hurried a bit. After a few blocks along Mass. Ave., I started to lose hope, but stopped to help some people with a flat tire. I couldn’t offer any more strength than the two buffer-than-me guys that were already there, but I confirmed that they were doing it correctly and suggest that the needed a longer lever arm on their tire iron. At this point, a 77 appeared, which I sprinted after while apologizing to the stranded people for not being able to offer more advice to fight the lug nuts that had been rebolted with some sort of ridiculous pneumatic device. Thankfully a red light stopped it for me, and a quick rap on the door allowed me on board.

As we approached Harvard Station, we passed a 71 idling in the bus standing zone along Cambridge Common, so I knew that I’d be golden for getting home, albeit with some wait. It’s a good thing I had my backpack (and included science magazines) along, because I did have to wait for about 15 minutes onboard the last 71 while it waited for the last outbound train to pass through Harvard.

I finish the night up with this post, and brief IMs with my parental units in their silly Pacific time zone. My father has selected the 1080p HDTV of his dreams.


Comments

2 responses to “A Most Excellent Evening”

  1. See. You should get out more.

  2. I agree with the above commenter. Getting out is important.

    But perhaps more important is learning how to drive, getting a license, and inheriting a ridiculous automobile for free. jerk :)

    btw, if the shock of reading this post hasn’t worn off yet, keep in mind I’m not planning on making any LJ posts; a recent conversation with flammifera prompted the idea that I could make comments on friends blogs if I got an account :)

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