Guests

This is yet another old post that I just need to get off my chest. No pictures for this one.

A couple weeks ago Andrew and Moriah came over for dinner with me and Marissa. They were our first official guests, and our very first dinner guests. They brought the wine and garlic bread, and Marissa and I made Spaghetti and salad. The spaghetti was topped with Marissa’s famously delicious tomato sauce and the salad was made up of Romaine lettuce, Annie’s Goddess dressing, nutritional yeast, kidney beans, sunflower seeds, and pepitas. Dinner was great. It felt like the perfect meal for dinner guests… and dinner hosts. After we ate dinner Marissa took off to hang out with Eric because she had plans to hang out with him. Moriah, Andrew, and I chatted for a few hours and Marissa came home sooner than we expected. We all watched an episode of The Office together and by that time it was late. Moriah and Andrew left right after the episode was over to head back to Somerville. It was really fun to have people over for dinner. We hope more people will come hang out at our place soon. 

Jon has already spent the night over our house twice, and Charlie, Skerry, Ray, Kbotsch, Tin, and Erik have stopped by too. Get on it everyone. Let’s hang out.

Old post that has pictures… now it’s a month later and in the past tense.

I went to Boston to look at two different apartments with Colleen Yanchuk… the real estate agent Marissa and I love to hate. I can’t believe we payed HER $1625 to open a door and walk around an apartment for the first time pointing out only the most obvious of things. It’s money we will never get back. Granted, we love the apartment, and we are very happy with choosing to live in Central Square, blah blah blah… We don’t like Colleen of Apartment Rental Experts in Davis Square. The pictures that follow are from a month and a half ago, when I drove into Boston to look at two apartments with Colleen.

It rained a bit on the way there and I hit a little bit of traffic. In stop and go traffic there was a truck in front of me with the best license plate ever. I figured it would be a good day.

The traffic let up and the rain started to as well. I neared the city, and had to snap a photo of the skyline… so I can get it tattooed on my back or something.

I had to drive out to Somerville to meet up with Colleen. I parked and met up with her at the Davis Square office.

The first one I looked at was really small and there was some repair work going on. Colleen and I walked in the door, making sure that was the apartment that I wanted to see, found out it was, but Colleen felt awkward about walking around the apartment while the workers were in and out, and we left in a matter of seconds. Literally. It was way too small anyways, but really, I didn’t get much of a look at the tiny place. The second place we asked where it was and ended up walking into the wrong side of the building, and looking at the wrong apartment #1. This one was in the basement and it smelt like garbage. We found the right one but the keys wouldn’t work. We had to walk a block to the Central Square offices to get the correct keys. We got in the second try and walked around. It was really small and quant. I was pretty pumped on it and thought maybe we should jump on it. Marissa was in Brooklyn for that week, cat-sitting for Christa and Jody, which made the apartment searching pretty difficult. I tried my best to describe it, but it’s totally something you need to see and be in to know if you want to live there. I left there pretty disheartened, not knowing if we should REALLY jump on this or wait. It was getting closer and closer to April 1st. Like, it was two weeks away. We were both stressing.

I talked to Marissa later on, and she found a place in Central Square through another agency and figured I should look at it for the hell of it. I called the realtor and made an appointment for a few hours from then. This would top off my bad day of apartment-searching, but in the end, make up my mind about where to live.

I parked and walked a few blocks to this place…

Not only was it a giant apartment building, while we wanted to live in a small house, it was on the same street as some cute older homes… and looked really ugly and out of place. I waited for the realtor (I don’t even know why). She pulled up in a black Mercedes SUV and parked across the street. The woman who climbed out was a scrawny middle aged woman with orange tanned leathery skin, fake boobs, bleach blonde hair, and a tight black pant-suit. Oh, and the biggest diamond ring I’ve ever seen in real life on her left hand. I can only imagine the guy who married this dreadful woman. I shook her boney hand and walked into the building.

Her, the building manager, and I took the elevator up to the 3rd floor, and looked at the apartment. There was a really kind woman working on moving her things out as we walked in. She was nice, but it made me feel even more awkward. It was like a really cheesy early 80’s hotel room. I looked around out of obligation and then we left. The realtor asked me what I thought of the place as she, the manager, and I took the elevator back to the first floor. I told her it wasn’t what I was looking for. That I didn’t want to live on the 3rd floor, in a large building, or anything like that. I felt really weird and as we got to the first floor I started making my way towards the door. I thanked them both for their time and left. In shock, I called Marissa right as I left the door and walked away as quickly as I could. Seeing that place for the same price as most of the other places I had seen pulled me back to reality.

Marissa and I talked it through and decided we should really just jump on the first apartment we had seen, the nice 1st floor apartment of a two family home. I figured if we are going to be paying the same price everywhere in Central Square, we should live in the first place we fell for, and really loved. So after driving back to Plymouth, I ended up calling the rental “experts” in Davis Square and telling them I wanted to start filling out paper work for our dream house. A few days later, after Marissa and I had both put down some money and secured the place, we finished the final steps of making the place ours, as crazy as it seemed. We have lived here for a month now, and are happy with our decision. Central Square rules. We are close to everything. And Boston is feeling like home.

Booyah!

Life Update

As far as some of you are concerned I am still in limbo and have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m moving to. Well, I haven’t updated because I’ve been busy signing a lease, moving to Cambridge, working on house stuff, and job-hunting. I moved to Central Square with Marissa and we love it. It makes me look at Boston in a whole new way. We’re close to everything… Central Square really is an impressively central location. We finally have all the furniture we need, are relatively settled, and still working on some improvements here and there. The next thing to do is paint the living room and bedroom. I will have pictures up soon, or maybe you should just stop by and see it in person. Some of you have already. Marissa and I are going to throw a house-warming party once things are totally together… probably a barbeque to ring in the great weather!

Plymouth skatepark on Easter Sunday

Sunday I went to Plymouth skatepark after easter brunch with my mom’s side of the family at my house. My family isn’t all too religious… my grandmother is the only one who went to church on Easter.
I got to the skatepark at around 4:30pm. Jon, Erik, Dave, and Meatball were there. And Maddie was there too, taking pictures of Jon and Erik for a school project. It was good to skate around and let out some of my stress. These past few weeks have been really long and draining, but being able to skate out all my feelings is always good. I even learned benihanas! Sorry, Erik, they ARE kinda stupid. I skated around and hung around… Maddie took some pictures of me and Jon with her iphone.

As it started getting dark Dave and Meatball decided to head out. Jon, Erik, and Maddie hung out a little longer but took off to go to Jon’s house. I stayed at the park for a few more minutes to get in my last tricks before dark, and then headed home too. All in all it was a good day.

Total lack of updates… my life is crazy right now

For the past month or so, Marissa and I have been trying to figure out where we are going to live… and that has meant trips back and forth from Plymouth to Brooklyn, NY and trips in and out of Boston. We were thinking about moving to Brooklyn… and also contemplating moving back to Boston. We were both back and forth for a while and unsure of what to do. We think we are going to finally make the decision to move to Boston. We’ve been looking at apartments in Central Sqaure in Cambridge and have even started the process of filling out the lease for one place. Everything still feels really crazy and up in the air… but we will see what happens in a week. Move in for this apartment is April 1st, so I expect things to get even more stressful.

Day in the Life…

So about a week ago Tin followed me around for a day of skating with Jon, Erik, Charlie, and Skerry for a “Day in the Life” video. I’d say it’s reasonably accurate, minus all the bails. On a normal day I never screw up.







You can also check out his blog where the video is posted along with a lame-o little interview and some other things at Get Gnartsy

Brooklyn, New York

I took the Lucky Star Bus from Boston to New York on Monday morning. Marissa is staying with her sister in Greenpoint for a while and I went to visit her and check out the neighborhood as a possible future home. The night before I hung out with Erik, Jon, Skerry, and Charlie. We ended up going over Tin’s house because he was having a party. We stayed there and danced to shit music until about 2:30AM. I was winging it, not knowing where I was going to spend the night… and Erik, Jon, and Skerry decided on driving back to the south shore after leaving Tin’s. I had about 4 hours to kill before I could take the first bus to New York so I didn’t know if I should go back with them or not. I got in the car and 4 blocks into the drive I decided I would just stay in the city, still not knowing where I would spend the next 4 hours. It was raining off and on and when I got out of Erik’s car I just started walking. I made it about ten blocks and it really started to rain. I sat under an overhang on Huntington Ave. near Massachusetts Ave. to wait it out. It started feeling sketchy to be sitting there in the rain, and luckily it let up enough for me to keep walking. I figured staying at someone’s house was pointless… and it was almost 3AM, so I kept walking toward downtown, figuring if I could make it to the bus station I would be able to stay dry and have someplace to doze off.

I finally made it to the bus station at 3:30AM. It was a shitty walk, but when I got there I felt better. I got some water from McDonald’s and sat down. For the next three hours I fell asleep and woke up every fifteen minutes. At 6:30AM I hopped on the bus to New York after a miserable four hours. I slept the whole way there and got to Chinatown around 11:30AM.

I got in touch with Marissa and after struggling to find the Subway stop she was going to meet me at, I found it and met her a little after 12 noon. We rode the subway back to Brooklyn and went right to her sister’s place. It was good to finally be there after such a strange night and morning. Christa had the day off of work because it was President’s Day. Not even ten minutes after we got there, we all went to check out an apartment that Christa had found on Craigslist for Marissa. It was only two or three blocks from Christa’s. It was a one-bedroom place with one bathroom, a kitchen, and living room. We were really just there to see what kind of place we could get for our budget.

After looking at the apartment, Marissa grabbed some coffee next door and we headed back to Christa’s. We sat around for a while and then ended up going to the store to get some food for lunch. Christa and Marissa got some soup and I bought some pasta to cook up. We ate and vegged out for a few hours.After that we took the Metro to Jody’s work and saw the shop where he works. It was in a cool little warehouse in a really industrial part of Brooklyn. It was an awesome workshop. After meeting some people he works with and hanging around the shop, we drove around in Jody’s truck, checking out some neighborhoods in the area. It was good to have tour guides to show us some places.

The next day Christa and Jody both had work, so Marissa and I had to be our own tour guides. I wanted to check out KCDC Skateshop, so after we ate some breakfast and hung around for a little while, we started walking toward the shop. It was a cold walk but a good one. It was only a few blocks from the apartment and totally worth the walk. It’s a cool shop with a great selection of stuff. It’s in a warehouse right across the street from the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg. We looked around for a while, I lusted over the mini ramp, and then we took off. There’s a trendy but awesome thrift store next door to KCDC so we went in there and looked around for a while. Marissa found a bad-ass denim jacket lined with fleece for $20. After that we walked around Williamsburg for a bit. We ate lunch at Tai Thai after being lured in by their $5.55 lunch special. We ate there and then headed back to Christa’s.

Marissa was going to meet Christa at the Museum of Modern Art (Christa’s work) because there was a super-exclusive employee party for the opening of a new exhibit. I decided I would go downtown with Marissa and just walk and skate around the area for a few hours while they partied and made use of an open bar. It was crazy at 7PM on 5th Avenue on a Tuesday night. I mostly walked around because there were so many people, skating a few blocks here and there. The city is really crazy at night, even when it’s less than 30 degrees out. A few hours later I met up with Christa and Marissa. We went back to Brooklyn and ended up getting burritos from Yummy Taco, a Mexican place run by Chinese people, and then heading to bed.

Wednesday was my last day in New York because I had work on Thursday so we thought we would walk around Greenpoint a little bit more and get a better feel for the neighborhood. We did that for maybe an hour and decided we should check out Fort Green, another possible neighborhood to live in. We got on the Metro, and figured we would just wing it. We got off at the Fulton St. stop and wandered around trying to find the main street we drove around on the first night we toured Brooklyn with Christa and Jody. It was freezing and we soon realized we were getting farther and farther from Fort Green. We didn’t have much time, because we had plans to go out later that night, so we started trying to figure out how to get to Harlem so we could meet up with Marissa’s friend, Ryan, who was coming out with us that night. We started walking the wrong way to the subway station and ended up walking into a bad neighborhood before asking someone how to get to the station. They told us we were walking in the wrong direction, so we back-tracked about six or seven blocks.

We made it to Harlem, where Ryan lives, and went to his place. We were meeting Christa and Jody at the Apollo Theatre for Amateur Night in Harlem. We left Ryan’s place and met Christa and Jody at the theatre. We got some pizza and then went to the show. It was insane. The theatre is really old and there were thousands of people there. The bulk of the show is a talent show where the audience judges the acts. It was mostly singing but there were a few dance groups too. The way they judged if the act went on to the finals or not is by the audience’s cheering and booing. Kids would sing or dance their hearts out, and get booed off stage. It was intense. The show lasted for a few hours and was really entertaining. We went back home after that and called it a night. It was a good way to end my stay in New York, but the days flew by too quickly.

I woke up at 5:30AM the next morning. I took the subway to Chinatown, getting lost at one point, and missed the 7AM bus by 5 minutes. I had to wait until 8AM for the next bus back to Boston. I slept most of the way back and then hopped on the Redline at South Station at around Noon, heading to Braintree Station, where my mom picked me up at about 1PM. She drove me to Jon’s house in Halifax, where my truck was parked. We got there an hour later. She headed home and I went to the mall to get some food before work at 3PM. I ate some rice and steamed vegetables, headed to work, and worked until 7PM. It was a crazy day that started early. Now I’m back in Plymouth figuring out when I can go back to Brooklyn.

Down with the Sickness

So I’ve been sick for a couple weeks now. It started off with normal cold-like symptoms like cough, congestion, fever, headache, etc. Two days later it progressed and the headache from all my congestion was unbearable. I slept for almost 2 days straight because being awake was downright painful. I started taking Emergen-C, Zinc lozenges, and Garlic pills, to try to boost my immune system and get better faster. I started to feel better… and maybe three days later, stopped taking anything at all because I felt okay. Well that was a mistake. A couple more days passed, and by last Friday night, I barely had any voice at all, and my throat was SO sore. I haven’t had much of a voice for the past few days and it’s driving me nuts.

When I was working, I had a lady ask me, “What’s wrong with you?” I told her in my terrible sounding scratchy voice, “Well, I’m sick.” She asked if I was taking anything for it, and informed me that she was a nurse, and that’s why she was asking. I told her all the things I was taking. She looked at me like I was an idiot, and replied, “That’s not going to help. You need antibiotics. You should really see a doctor.” I just told her I was going to keep taking what I was taking and let it take it’s course. In my head, all I was thinking was, “Yeah, don’t give me advice, that’s why you’re a nurse not a doctor.” Sure enough, I just looked up how to treat a sore throat.

“Because viral illnesses are the most common cause of a sore throat, it is important not to use antibiotics to treat them. Antibiotics do not alter the course of viral infections. Unnecessary use of an antibiotics exposes you to the risks of an allergic reaction and antibiotic side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, rashes, and yeast infections. Antibiotics also may kill beneficial bacteria and encourage the development of dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”

I knew I didn’t have Strep because I didn’t have any yucky white boogery stuff in the back of my throat. So the hell with anyone who suggested I take “medicine”. I am taking the right things to get rid of this cold. I still don’t have much of a voice, but my throat is starting to feel much better and my coughing has chilled out a little bit. I just gotta wait it out.

VOTE OR DIE

So I voted today… and it made me feel accomplished. And then I hear all this crap about Hillary Clinton winning in like every state… and I felt a little less accomplished. 

Having twins

So I searched “grotesque” on google image search and got this weird photo of a two-headed baby in formaldehyde that made me really uncomfortable. My mom gave me a couple of those ‘t-shirt transfer’ things that you print onto and then iron them on to shirts and stuff for Christmas. I decided to do something with the creepy formaldehyde ‘twins’ and make it a t-shirt. This is the final image I am going to print. It’s like a family photo… if your family was a two-headed baby and instead of printing an 8×10 you just printed a bunch of wallet sized photos and put them in a big frame.