Beware of Nerd

Spent a very lovely and not-quite-too-hot Saturday schlepping around parts of Boston, motivated in part by getting into Anthropeum.

Anthropeum is one of the many "identify this" puzzles on the internet; this one asks you for an approximate date and place of manufacture for a set of ten artifacts from the Met collections. 

Anthropeum is also making it very clear that my usual museum strategy of hanging out in the galleries I already know things about has left gaps in my education.  

So off I went to the MFA to hang out with the African and Mesoamerican art. As it turned out, it was also an open house day, but luckily for me the crowds were there to see the refreshed 18th century galleries and not to do homework for an online puzzle.

The Kelleher Rose Garden is just passing out of peak bloom right now. I would say "stop and smell the roses" but it's more like "dodge the influencers and smell the roses."

Other highlights:
the Scottish invasion has gone south for the...well, summer, but there were still a few cones on statues despite recent blustery days
a handsome and professional blonde retriever gentleman named Olaf who does reading therapy
BPL has not run out of summer reading totebags yet, and they are a nice heavyweight canvas with sides
picked up some more sticky rice pu-erh on the way home (I have a reasonable amount of tea and will surely get through what I already have in a timely manner, she said delusionally)

Posted a student job for the summer and am now taking bets on what percentage of applications will successfully read and follow the line "With your application, please include a list of times you are available to work on-site during listed business hours."

For Patriots Day not falling in the middle of Holy Week this year, we thank you, O Lord.

Every time my mother steams something she boils the pot dry--

--look I know this sounds like the beginning of a recipe blog but it's important context. anyway--

--boils the pot dry, using Farberware aluminum-clad pots on an electric coil stove, with ill effects ranging from "it's fine" to "the vegetables are mushy and the pot's a little scorched but it's nothing you can't recover from."

So you can see why I thought this would not go the way it did. ( Read more... )

Well, this is going to be a valuable learning experience for both of us, by which I mean I have never had a non-family roommate before and she doesn't know how to snake a sink.

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recap: I have moved in with a friend-of-a-friend, a woman approximately old enough to be my mother, in a small basement apartment due to my old landlord raising the rent by 25%

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New roommate is reasonably tidy, as a person, but seems to struggle with cleaning. It's not unspeakably filthy but there are a lot of areas that definitely should have been cleaned more often or with something besides a disinfecting wipe. This is mildly baffling but I can work with that.

Meanwhile I have been here for three nights and have already replaced the missing light bulb over the bathroom mirror, ordered a new toilet seat, and fixed the aforementioned sink with the power of a drain snake and a bottle of toxic chemicals. Fifteen minute job.

She has a dishwasher. She has never once in however long she has lived here used the dishwasher. I, who have spent the past 6.25 years cursing my lack of dishwasher, can't relate. She apparently washes dishes immediately after use and immediately dries them and puts them away. I picked up dishwasher detergent as soon as the stores opened again today. This is mildly baffling but I can work with that.

I am also not convinced she cooks, on the grounds that she does have food but none of it is less complete than say a jar of pasta sauce. She has a variety of cooking equipment, much of which she apparently does not use, as I have been told I can have the space when she has time to clear it out in a couple days. This is mildly baffling but I can work with that.

(she is also one of those people who keeps the boxes for things indefinitely and this may involve negotiation as I believe I am entitled to some of the space where those boxes are living - this is less baffling but I certainly hope I can work around it)

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Is there an early Gen X translation for "damn, bitch, you live like this?" Perhaps a slightly gentler version?

Look, I may be from the cornfields of Ohio, but I was raised by Michiganders.

The song itself, of course

The Edmund Fitzgerald (WDIV Detroit)

Gales of November: Diving the Edmund Fitzgerald (KMSP Minneapolis-St. Paul)

National Museum of the Great Lakes

Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum

Mariners' Church of Detroit

Merry October the twenty-fourth in the house of Elrond, to those observing.

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I am moving in with a friend-of-a-friend a little closer to Boston at the end of the year, hopefully for not more than a year or two. It's not a situation I'd really like to be in long-term, though not any fault of the FOAF; she's very nice, but not, afaik, my flavors of weird, and it's a small basement apartment. That said, it is cheaper even than my pre-increase rent, and I can make it work for now.

On the plus side, it's within walking distance of branches of both the Boston PL and the Minuteman library network! I haven't been within walking distance of a public library since I was eight.

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This year I set myself a reading goal of 100 books. I got to February, realized this meant about 2 books a week, and figured I wasn't going to make it and that was fine because goals are made up.

I hit 100 books yesterday.

I have been working through the Very Short Introductions series, which run somewhere around 100-120 pages each, so that helps. This is not to say a book only "counts" at a certain length; I'm just used to reading standard nonfiction monographs and 350+ page fiction.

Lo, it is the beginning of the semester, as demonstrated by:

--flocks of half-naked jogging teenagers returning to their winter habitat

--extremely lost parents with out-of-state plates wandering vaguely and slowly around campus

--faculty placing course reserve requests on textbooks we mailed across the country less than 24 hours ago

Someone posted on our Buy Nothing group that they were getting rid of some candles.

(how is this a Stupid Injury, I hear you ask? I'm getting there, but not in the way you expect)

( minor, non-graphic injury )