Archive for November 2011
Rooftop View
In case it gets hot in Boston, Cyndie’s building has air conditioning. A lot of air conditioning.
Looking Up
In what is obviously a repeating theme for me, while walking around Boston, I frequently found myself drawn to the view above.
Complex Experience
First off, I can happily report that I did not witness anything in the way of excess crowding or delays in either leg of my air travel over the holiday weekend. Maybe that incongruity contributed to the complexity I felt in my first visit to Cyndie’s new residence.
We had a wonderful time. The weather was unseasonably warm. Cyndie’s brother was a wonderful host in a variety of ways, particularly in enlisting our company to join him in heading out on Thanksgiving morning to visit the historic house owned by his friend, Michael, followed by the spectacle of the reenactment of a fox hunt. The progressive Thanksgiving meal with Barry and Carlos’ friends was a particular delight, regardless how distant it was from my life-long experience of the traditional gathering of relatives around our family table.
The ultimate complexity for me, really was the situation of being in Cyndie’s new apartment, as a visitor, when both of us truly would prefer to be living together. Amid all the festivity and activity of the holiday, I was trying to wrap my mind around the possibility of living there with her.
I am left with a sense of how incredibly comfortable I am in my current living situation in Minnesota.
Only 25 days until she flies home for the holidays. I don’t expect that visit will feel quite so complex to me.
Home Alone
It is Sunday. We pack our things and head to the airport, leaving Cyndie with her one-bedroom apartment all to herself again. I get to go home, but alone.
We’ve had a wonderful time here, hosted in large part by Cyndie’s brother, Barry. Yesterday he drove us to Faneuil Hall marketplace and we heard a huge group of tuba players perform Christmas music. We toured Cyndie’s workplace to see her office and walked up to the water of Boston Harbor. It has been beautiful weather in Boston this weekend. We walked around without coats yesterday.
Me, Shop?!
Traveling can do strange things to a person. Yesterday, I allowed myself to be talked into going into a retail store on the busiest shopping day of the year. It is the very last thing I can think of ever choosing to do with my time. In consolation, at least the first store we entered was an Apple store. While we have been in Boston, Julian and I have tended to some maintenance on Cyndie’s computer, iPod, and iPhone(s) [she now has a work phone in addition to her own]. We also set up her new printer, connected an antenna to her television, and fixed her bedside clock so it would read 12-hour time.
We visited the Apple store for an appointment at the Genius Bar to have her MacBook Pro diagnosed. Since she has AppleCare, it won’t cost her anything, but she will need to leave her computer there for a few days. We bought an external hard drive to back up her computer and she will wait to take hers in for service until after she receives the new work computer that has been promised. The trackpad on her computer isn’t responding to ‘clicks’ properly. It takes several tries before it senses it, unless you press in the very lower left corner.
While out tending to shopping errands on foot, it is enticingly easy to step into a pub for a little snack break, and so we did, sitting at the bar where I made myself a nuisance with the staff and where I was able to catch a fix of sports broadcasts on the multiple TV screens. It felt a bit like being on vacation for me. I certainly wasn’t in my usual frame of mind, …shopping …on Black Friday?!
Cyndie showed off the car she has been provided for use on school business only, and today I’m hoping she will take us to see the office where she works.
This is all worlds away from a horse farm in Minnesota, I tell ya.
Only Cyndie could envision the two scenarios as fitting together into one dream. I have no doubt that she is one who can pull it off!
Faux Hunt
Thanksgiving morning we headed out into the New England countryside and attended the start of a “pretend” fox hunt. Everything is authentic, except for the fox. They use the scent of fox to entice the dogs to chase, and the horse riders follow along, jumping stone walls and any other obstruction the faux fox happens to have crossed. It was quite a spectacle.
Happy Day!
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Julian and I have reached Boston, safe and sound. All my positive thinking about our air travel played out exceptionally well. The threat of the overwhelming crowd of holiday travelers was unrealized. We had less than expected activity at the Minneapolis airport. Of course, since we expected it to be busy, when we found a line at the security check point, we immediately took our place at the end of it. After shuffling along for about 5 minutes, an agent announced that there was NO WAITING at the station two positions over. We walked over and went right through security.
The only problem that popped up was a slight delay in clearing our plane for boarding. That turned out to be a blessing for Julian and me. Others chose to go back and sit down, but we remained standing near the gate, so when they announced we could board, Julian and I got right in and easily stowed our gear. When all passengers were seated, we discovered that Julian would have an open seat next to him.
At the Boston airport, it was so desolate, it appeared as if the passengers from our plane were the only travelers in the whole place. The moment we exited the airport, Cyndie and her brother were right there to scoop us up and whisk us away to her apartment located on Harrison Avenue.
Today starts with a planned visit to the start of a fox hunt, and then we will experience a progressive dinner for the Thanksgiving feast.
What a treat!
Possible
.
.
if it was possible
to tell it all
in the little span of time
as it takes to peruse
the lines of a rhyme
and life could be whittled
all neat and tidy
into the two hours it takes
to present feature-length films
would it belabor the point
of hashing the thrash
and dashing the dash
to dot all our “i”s and cross each the “t”s
to speak all the words
which we too often do
that mean so much less
than “Hi, how are you?”
.
.
Naked Truth
Hello, I’m John W. Hays, and I have a problem with planning. It bugs me.
I don’t know why it bothers me so much to plan in advance. There are times when I do pretty well at it. Maybe, it is the very fact that I am bothered by the need to deal with planning, that I tend to get it done. If I didn’t give it any thought, I might not prepare myself for anything.
When it comes to planning, truth be told, I don’t even like deciding what clothes to wear every day. That chore gets compounded, twice a week, when I need to prepare to leave early in the mornings to play soccer before work. If I don’t take care of that preparation the night before, I am hard-pressed to get out the door on time. This week, I have the added burden of making sure I am packed in advance to leave immediately from work on Wednesday, to get to the airport for the trip to Boston.
I suppose the thing that makes this such a peeve for me is my ongoing dilemma of focusing on being fully present in the moment, at the same time as being prepared for future moments. And that doesn’t take into account my interest in genealogy and remembering the past. It all seems so at odds. It is, and it isn’t. A lot like everything in life.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the thing that is really bugging me in this regard is the recent addition of needing to decide all my own meals every day. It is proving to be a great calorie reducing diet for me. Last night, I didn’t get around to taking care of the decision about what to eat, so I just didn’t bother eating. It is a solution I can live with when in need of some relief from the burden of at least one little planning decision.
That is a much more acceptable detail of life for me to neglect planning, than say, choosing my daily wardrobe. It’s not like I could get away with not bothering to wear clothes and going about my days naked, after all.
Relative Something 