I went to the woods because...

... I wanted to pick some apples, but somehow I ended up at this pond:

 

Yes, this is Walden Pond.

I knew it was up here, and I knew it really wasn't that far, but I didn't realize just how close it really was and how easy to get to.

It's a local swimmin' hole, but even with all the people who were there today (and there were a lot), it was pretty quiet once you were off the main beach.  It's just a beautiful spot.  I can see why you'd be happy living there in a tiny little house and just thinking all day long.

There's a full path all the way around, and I'd say the loop's about two miles, just from how long it took me.  There are several other trail loops, but I had apples in the car and was wondering whether they'd be cooked when I got back (they were fine), so I just did the main loop.  

It is beautiful.  No questions asked.  I think I may have cheated, going there on a fall day, and I'd already just about driven off the road repeatedly on the trip out since the area itself is so amazing (seriously, NE mountains are something else).

And of course I got the chance to stand on some hallowed literary ground.

That last one's the view from the house site down to the pond.  It's up a bit, and tucked back off an inlet.

I don't have a whole lot else to say here, except that now I've got to try and pick up Walden again (and maybe finish it this time; I'm fairly sure I've read all of it at one time or another, but not all the way through).  Instead I'll end with the rest of my camera roll:

Maine/Grad School

So my sister talked my Mom into flying out to see me last weekend.  She's been talking about doing this for a while, since Mom wanted to know how to deal with flying if there was ever an emergency.
Well, this time we decided we were going to go to Maine -- a good pick, since I think it ended up being about 15 degrees cooler up there, and cloudy.

We visited two beaches, Two Lights State Park and the Wells Estuarine Research Reserve.

Two Lights is a rocky, somewhat scary beach, but absolutely beautiful.  I'm getting old, because it was somewhat difficult for me to get down the cliff face, but incredibly easy to get back up.  I think I just don't want to fall on my face.

I got the chance to see tidal pools for the first time.  If you can see past the reflection, there are mussels and snails in there.  Other things, probably, too.

Two Lights also had some really pleasant wooded trails.  And frogs.  And ducks.

I don't have too many great shots of the Wells Reserve, as it go cloudy, but it's kind of a watery Dawes.  There's a salt marsh, and of course the estuary.  The water was cold.

Probably the neatest thing we saw there were the piping plovers.  They're an endangered bird, and they're awfully cute little things.  They also look just like the sand and rocks, so there wasn't a chance on earth of getting a recognizable photo out of them with a phone camera.  You'll have to settle for the Wikipedia entry.

Oh, and we got noshed on by mosquitoes.  Maine mosquitoes are about a foot long and sound like a helicopter landing.

...

OK, maybe not, but they sure leave big welts.

After visiting the beaches we went for what we really came to Maine for.

Lobster.

There's a place in Wells called Lord's that prides itself on local and homemade everything.  So we headed there.

And my sister talked me into ordering a lobster.  Yeah, the big red thing that looks like it crawled out of a horror movie.

Of course before ordering I never realized that she didn't know how to eat said lobster.  Naturally the internet knows everything, so we weren't completely unprepared, but let's just say that a large mess was made.  But it was awfully fun, and they'd parked us in a corner, so we weren't much of a danger to anyone but ourselves.  So far as taste went, I much preferred the steamed clams we had as a starter, but the claw meat was plenty tasty, and it was an experience.

Next morning we were both worn out and on a bit of a schedule with the return flight, so we made a leisurely loop of Harvard square, spent a half hour at the pool, and ate lunch at Bluefin.  The highlight of the morning was "brunch" at Burdick's.  I'd had Burdick's chocolate home before, but this gave everyone a shot at the pastries and hot chocolate -- and yes, the hot chocolate was well received, even as the thermometer approached 90.

---

As a last little aside for anyone who missed it elsewhere, I did make it into the Extension School masters program.  Now things get real.

I'm on a Boat/Kalmus Beach

So t'boss invited us out to his place in Hull for an office retreat on Friday.  He drives, but he gave us a pass for the ferry.  The weather was rotten, but the trip was still awesome.  The downside was that I really was only able to get two pictures from the boat that were worth sharing, and they aren't even that great.

 

The boat back had a full-service bar.  All in all not a bad way to commute.

Then  here's the view from t'boss' back porch.

Yeah, seriously wish I had some money.  Of course if I lived somewhere like this you wouldn't be able to pry me away to go to work.

Then yesterday was supposed to be rainy as well, but just about as I was finishing up laundry, the sun came out.  I checked the radar, checked maps, threw a box of granola bars and some water in the car and headed to Hyannis to look for shells thrown up by the remnants of the first tropical storm of the season.

Holy cow, Kalmus beach was full of shells.

Now I can't say that I've been where I could go shell hunting all that often, but I have a rep for finding the good ones (it's the same skill that means I trip over four-leaf  clovers and makes me good as jigsaw puzzles).  When you've got piles like this, anybody can find good shells, though, so I just got picky and looked for the ones with the best markings.  I turned up four conch-types, though they were in pretty bad shape, so I only brought back one tiny one.  The scallops and slipper shells are absolutely beautifully marked.  I need to get some mineral oil to bring out the colors in what I brought back:

I've seen scallop shells in Myrtle Beach, but I've never seen them so big, or in such a variety of colors.  And I didn't bring back any quahogs -- I know where to get ones of those so big you can use them as plates, and that's the city beach, believe it or not!

Some photos of the beach itself:

I pretty much had the place to myself; I think the storm predictions and the fact that it cleared up late pretty much kept everyone but the locals home.  It's also a little early yet for tourist season.

The ocean was wonderfully warm, and I walked the tideline with my shoes off while I was searching.  I also got incredibly sandblasted because the wind was very high; I don't know if that's typical there or if it was just the day.

Happy anniversary to me.

Well, sort of.  Of all the days in the week between the date I left Ohio to the date I started at Harvard, today's really not the anniversary of anything in particular.  But it's a good day to blog.

So yes, I've been here a year now.  Arrived in town on the 11th, started the job on the 16th.   I've got a dozen and a half cupcakes headed into work on Tuesday to celebrate having survived this long.

I know there was a certain amount of disbelief mixed in with the genuine well-wishes when I took this job -- and I was one of the people doing the disbelieving.  If there was ever an adverse-to-change homebody, it was me.  I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there were folks opening pools on when I'd be back (I wouldn't be particularly hurt, either.  I am what I am; I'm not as blind to my foibles as I might seem at times.)

But a year's gone by, and I'm still here.

And I'm a little surprised to find that I like it here.

I'm not, as a friend put it a "city girl" yet, but I did confirm a suspicion that I'd had for number of years that I didn't like suburban life, but that I could handle true rural or urban living equally.    I'm fascinated by being able to walk to everything; I love to see the trains and buses and cabs and shuttles.   I'm intrigued by the street musicians, a little alarmed at how quick I learned to dodge eye contact with the street bums (and not particularly proud of it), and bemused at the number of people who want to hand you business cards for everything from facials to psychic readings.

My apartment looks very much the same as it did a year ago, save for the acquisition of two tables and several pieces of cooking equipment (and yes, I'm still using boxes for furniture in some cases.   Maybe I'm a redneck setter instead of just a red one).

I've learned to navigate on foot finally, and can follow my nose through most of Cambridge without getting horribly lost.  Driving's a different story, but you've got to figure that even the cabbies use GPS up here with as whacked as the street layouts are, but I can generally get where I'm going without getting too lost.    If you come to visit me, don't attempt to guess where you're going -- know your route.   I don't want to have to come rescue you!

I'd planned to look into the graduate program right from the start, and I didn't waste much time on that.  I'm on my 3rd and 4th class and officially applied.  With luck by summer they'll let me in and I'll be a Harvard student.

I've been to the beach three times since I came, and now with the little car available to me I'll be going as often as I can once it warms up.  Due to scheduling there's no plan for taking class this summer, so I'll be taking advantage of that to get out and about.  A trip to the Zoo is in my plans, plus a second trip to the Aquarium, and hopefully a whale watching voyage.   And of course once the flowers are blooming out (very soon) I'll be heading back to the Arboretum as well.

This is all provided that the job doesn't kill me.  We've got an ambitious redesign schedule laid out this summer (six months) and I'm mid-migration.  It's nice to finally feel competent -- Harvard has a particularly steep learning curve, and SEAS definitely has a frontier feeling to it, so it takes a bit longer to get situated that you'd otherwise expect.  But I'm back to doing good work, which is all I can ask.

Hmm... I'm not sure where there post was headed to begin with, but I guess I'll stop here with a invitation to whoever's interested: come visit me this summer!  I can actually show you around a bit now :)

An ode to Peppermint

I'm not sure I ever appropriately appreciated peppermint back home.  It's certainly a home scent.  We grew mint.  We made peppermint candy.  But I never really kept peppermint around for peppermint's sake.

Enter the city.  The city is a smelly place*.  Apartment buildings are REALLY smelly places.  And cats in a 500 square foot studio are unbearable**.  Some days you have traffic fumes, some days the storm sewers are outgassing.  Some days it's just somebody having a fireplace fire and the wind coming the wrong way.  Sometimes it's your neighbor cooking cabbage.  Sometimes it's that you really should have taken the garbage out earlier and now it's after dark.

Peppermint can help.

As a bonus, peppermint is a serious stress remover.  It'll help you sleep and clear your sinuses***.

People by all kinds of diffusers and things, but if you want to make your house smell nice, there are a couple ways to do it.   Soaking a tissue in a scent oil and vacuuming the tissue up will give you a gentle scent every time you vacuum.

I prefer the nuclear option.

Take a jam jar and pour some peppermint oil in it.  Don't bother measuring it.  That just dirties a measuring spoon.  Boil some water.  Make sure it's a rolling boil (and for God's sake, whatever you do, don't let it microboil -- when that sucker hits the peppermint oil it'll be all over the kitchen.  Atomized peppermint oil hitting you in the eyeball is not something you wish to experience twice).  Pour the water into the peppermint.  Avert your eyes.  Actually, maybe flip those last two. 

And that's enough peppermint to make 500 square feet smell like mint for three days.  

A warning: don't reheat this concoction in the microwave.  I blew the door off mine that way.   That wasn't very relaxing.

Now I'm going to sit back and sniff for a while before I go to sleep.



*So is Ohio.  Somehow manure isn't as bad as broccoli and ethnic cooking, though.

**And they know it.  And use it as a weapon.

***If you want to wake up and clear your sinuses, try cinnamon.  Be warned,  you will experience pain.

The Blizzard of '13

Took me a while to get this up here, but that's partly because it just won't stop snowing.  It's snowing now, in fact.  That results in just about every action, from shopping to going to work, becoming just about as exhausting as you can imagine.  One does not think much about blogging when one is trying to convince one's leg muscles to unclench.

Anyway, the February 2013 New England Nor'easter (I won't call it by the name the Weather Channel gave it, not matter how cute it was, because I have no respect for the Weather Channel) turned up about three weeks ago now.  That's hard to believe, seeing at there are still piles of snow out there from what was pushed off the roads and out of parking lots, and that's with all yesterday's rain.

Something that completely shocked me about the whole thing was the government response to the storm -- they ordered people off the roads, threatened them with jailtime even.  Now, it was pretty well know that the cops weren't going to go looking for you, they were busy enough, but it made the point: stay home, it's serious.

Well I did stay home Friday.  Word had gotten around that SEAS was going to be shutting down a 2:00 (by 9:00 Thursday night that'd changed to noon), and since I knew darn well no one was going to be getting anything done before noon anyway, I figured I'd be more productive if I didn't bother to walk in.

That gave me the chance to snap photos hour by hour as things started up.

9:30 Friday morning the lot looked like this:

   

Then at 2:00

At 5:00

And right before I went to bed at 11:00. 

Though you can't see it in the photo, the wind had gone absolutely mad at this point, and power outages were taking hold.  I wasn't expecting to make it to morning with the lights still on, and had prepped.  Being from the Midwest gave me a lot of outage experience, though I maybe leaned a little heavy on the generator and now I miss it.

But the lights didn't go out, and in the morning I woke up to:

That was about 19" of snow, according to my own measurement.  Accuracy was basically out the door, though, as it had drifted so bad that there really weren't any pristine areas.

Watching people walk their dogs in this was hilarious.  I saw a huge black dog, approximately the size of a small horse, just sit down and refuse to budge, even when his owner had slogged through the snow to the relatively clear parking lot and called to him.  I saw a Yorkie leap with abandon into the snow only to decide that maybe that was a bad idea.   And then the little kids were all having just an unfair amount of fun.

I ran out real quick in my jacket and slippers to take measurements and get a couple outside shots -- or so I'd intended, the only door that I could easily get out of was the front door.  The back lot  door looked like this (stuck slightly open, by the by):

And the door by the trash cans like this: 

The peak of that big drift is probably right around the 5' mark.

These folks had the right idea: cross country skis:

Keep in mind that the snow wasn't through at this point.  The final totals for Boston were about 25", though we had nothing on Hamden, CT -- 40".

Sunday morning dawned very bright, so I decided to take the opportunity to get out and get photos before things started to melt and get ugly.  I'm not going to narrate these, they speak pretty well for themselves.  They're in a loop from the apartment, down Concord to Harvard Square and back up through campus and then to Mass Ave.

 

As I mentioned, a good deal of the snow piles are still around; the largest I saw in my rambling was probably about 15' tall (since trucked away).  

You've probably heard in the news about people out this way complaining about how snow removal was handled.  They should all go live in Ohio for a winter.  Seriously; I've seen worse roads (recently!) in Ohio when there was only an inch of snow.  They did an excellent job with what they got thrown at them. 

Walking was a challenge Monday morning,  but not too awful.  The biggest issue was the few corners where no one had shoveled from the walk to the road.  Monday afternoon was a different story.  It rained.  It rained on packed snow.  It was like wading in a swimming pool built on an ice rink.  

But from then it got better.  It's slowly gone away -- when it's not being added to -- and there are signs that, hey, Spring might show up yet.

So that was the blizzard of '13.