Boston, Part 1 - A Plethora of Brass Rats
Jun. 8th, 2010 06:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreI went up to Boston for my 30th MIT reunion. Because Major League Baseball does not, for some strange reason, consult me about schedules, I actually flew up a day early. Before I left, I made a slide for my office door with pictures of Fenway Park, the Great Dome, and a brass rat, along with the words "Gone on pilgrimage. Back Monday." When I returned, this had been horribly defaced,with the logo of the Source of All Evil in the Universe, a photo of the red brick school up the road and one of a Hahvahd ring. I don't get no respect, I tell you.
Anyway, my flight up on Wednesday night was about an hour and a half late. That meant grabbing dinner at the airport. The only sit-down restaurant at the pier of Terminal A that US Air uses for shuttle flights is Gordon Biersch and it was packed. So the hostess asked me if I minded sharing a table. I didn't and was seated with two other women. We were chatting about why we were traveling - and it turned out that one of them had gone to grad school at MIT. (We had a lot of general interesting conversation, mostly about creativity, by the way.) Afterwards, when I walked over to the gate, I chatted with a Navy captain - who was also wearing a brass rat. She turned out to be class of '84 (i.e. not a reunion year) - and was on her way up for a meeting the next day. And then the guy sitting next to me was also wearing a brass rat. He was class of '92 and returning home from a business trip. Apparently, we are everywhere.
I stayed at the Marriott Copley Place on Wednesday night (thanks to Marriott points). The room was very nice, except for one thing. There was a large window in the bedroom, with a nice view of Boston. In front of the window, there was huge big screen TV on a huge piece of furniture. The problem is that it was challenging to reach across this to close the curtains. It's a weird design flaw that I've never experienced before.
In the morning, I get together with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aliceinfinland and ron_newman for a volksmarch in West Roxbury. It was pleasant, though not the most inspiring walking route of all time. I tend to like walks with a lot of historic sites or unusual architecture and this was somewhat more suburban. Still, it was pretty and got us all to a part of Boston we'd never normally go to, which was part of the reason for going. And I do enjoy introducing others to my obsessions.
By the way, the hotel had left me USA Today and I read about Stephanie Meyer's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella. I have no interest in teen vampire porn, but I do want to object to calling a 192 page long book a novella. That is a perfectly reasonable length for a full length novel. Literary padding is one of the other things that is wrong with the world today.
The Red Sox and the actual reunion will be in subsequent entries, but I need to get moving now.
Anyway, my flight up on Wednesday night was about an hour and a half late. That meant grabbing dinner at the airport. The only sit-down restaurant at the pier of Terminal A that US Air uses for shuttle flights is Gordon Biersch and it was packed. So the hostess asked me if I minded sharing a table. I didn't and was seated with two other women. We were chatting about why we were traveling - and it turned out that one of them had gone to grad school at MIT. (We had a lot of general interesting conversation, mostly about creativity, by the way.) Afterwards, when I walked over to the gate, I chatted with a Navy captain - who was also wearing a brass rat. She turned out to be class of '84 (i.e. not a reunion year) - and was on her way up for a meeting the next day. And then the guy sitting next to me was also wearing a brass rat. He was class of '92 and returning home from a business trip. Apparently, we are everywhere.
I stayed at the Marriott Copley Place on Wednesday night (thanks to Marriott points). The room was very nice, except for one thing. There was a large window in the bedroom, with a nice view of Boston. In front of the window, there was huge big screen TV on a huge piece of furniture. The problem is that it was challenging to reach across this to close the curtains. It's a weird design flaw that I've never experienced before.
In the morning, I get together with
aliceinfinland and ron_newman for a volksmarch in West Roxbury. It was pleasant, though not the most inspiring walking route of all time. I tend to like walks with a lot of historic sites or unusual architecture and this was somewhat more suburban. Still, it was pretty and got us all to a part of Boston we'd never normally go to, which was part of the reason for going. And I do enjoy introducing others to my obsessions.By the way, the hotel had left me USA Today and I read about Stephanie Meyer's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella. I have no interest in teen vampire porn, but I do want to object to calling a 192 page long book a novella. That is a perfectly reasonable length for a full length novel. Literary padding is one of the other things that is wrong with the world today.
The Red Sox and the actual reunion will be in subsequent entries, but I need to get moving now.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-08 12:18 pm (UTC)The other day at Starbucks I saw someone with a 2006 brass rat yet he didn't look like a child. Strange. ;{)}
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Date: 2010-06-08 12:34 pm (UTC)You were course 6, right? You might know my cousin, Larry Lubowsky, who was also course 6, class of '92.
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Date: 2010-06-08 12:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-09 09:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-08 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-09 09:44 am (UTC)I've corrected the entry and she is a captain, not a commander. (That wasn't the sort of thing I can remember from a short encounter a few days earlier.)
no subject
Date: 2010-06-08 11:28 pm (UTC)I laughed. And then I realized I completely agree :-)