Tag Archives: Fun

Nov15

Daniel’s birthday party in the grand town of Boston

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Early August, 2014

 

Daniel was born.

I know, I was surprised too.  I always thought that he just sort of appeared one day, descending down from the heavens on a sport rope, wiping the chalk off his hands and asking who was ready to give him another belay.

But, he is in fact born of humankind, and thus celebrates a birthday like the rest of us.  So…. we threw a party.

To prep for it, I walked over to Liz’s place.  Then, Liz and I walked to Porter, to pick out a cake topper.  See… Daniel likes trains [Ed Note: See the post about the TGV in France], and I like making fun of Daniel.  So, I was aiming to throw him a train-themed party.  And what theme party is complete without a cute little cake topper?  None, that’s what party.  And I wasn’t going to throw an incomplete party, no sir!

The first store didn’t have any trains.  The second story didn’t have any trains.  Thankfully, the children’s bookstore did, in fact, have trains.  And the second store had a train-shaped balloon… so the combination of the two was deemed sufficient to create a train-themed atmosphere.

A few miles longer found us picking out a cake.  Another mile after that, the Mass Ave Tavern.

The Mass Ave Tavern is a good party place.  There are many reasons for this, but chief (in my mind) among them is that it has tons of cool games.  Rock ’em, Sock ’em Robots found me winning a streak against Chirag (we later found out that one robot always wins…), and building blocks found Daniel constructing a set of train tracks for his new toy train.  Enjoyment was had by all, especially when it came time to attempt to navigate the train tracks with the little toy… turns out, children’s blocks don’t make the best of rail systems… but given enough time (which we were), people can make anything happen… and after a solid 20 minutes of tweaking and carefully laying out the starting block, we were able to make the trip… or at least, make the train make the trip.

Jan17

New Years Eve 2014

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Wednesday, 31-Dec-13

New Years… it’s one of my favorite holidays, though I honestly can’t really tell you why.  I think it’s partially because it’s a time for new beginnings, and it has a “people should make out!” element added into the countdown.  Ohh, and popping champagne corks is always nice too.

So this year, Daniel hosted New Years… I think he held is last year too, but I’m not 100% sure.  Either way, it was EXCELLENT!

I dressed up, as usual, in my Kurta from Jig and Dave’s wedding… if anyone hasn’t seen a Kurta before, look it up quick – they’re amazing.  Very bright colored and lots of sequins… not the best with dreads, I’ll admit, but I survived and thrived non-the-less.  Mine was bright emerald, with perfect aquamarine fancy slippers, so I was definitely the belle of the ball for this one night.

The party night itself was a bit of a  blur – Terese and I took the train out, since the plan was to crash at Daniel’s place anyways, so there was no concern about cars or parking or any of that nonsense.  The train was completely packed, but that’s just the price you have to expect to pay on New Years Eve.  Nothing too bad, though I was a bit saddened by the lack of crazy people or interestingly dressed folks riding with us.

Instead, we got to the party, helped set up, and then proceeded to party down!  There wasn’t one overarching story to the party, so let me sum it up with a few fun points:

  • We had TONS of random and amazing drinks – Daniel and I both spent time playing bartender, though I have to say that I’m pretty sure that my Baileys and Frangelico coffee was basically the best thing ever.  I did make that, right?  Not a dream?  Hmm….
  • Brian (Daniel’s brother) and Mike LeVasseur were both able to make it out from Florida and California, respectively.  Thus, lots of time was spent catching up and hearing about various enterprises.  Damn, both of those guys are getting stuff done!
  • Terese pulled off a VERY nice outfit… I do enjoy events where people dress up.  It’s fun, and is a good excuse to play the fancy card.
  • The countdown was awesome, and lots of champagne was drank by all.  Daniel, I apologize for how messy your floor must have gotten.  My bad.
  • Some people are nice guys, and feel bad about crashing in bed with a girl who’s ex is in the same room with them.  Mike and I are not nice guys, so when the nice guy is drunk and just wants to sleep, we drag him to the room and toss him in the bed with the girl (they’re both clothed, don’t worry about it.  He’s a gentleman) and leave the annoyingly drunk ex to deal with it himself.  Laughs were had by all.  And high-fives.

The night ended well, basically with all of us crashing at random places throughout the house.  Terese and I found ourselves in the downstairs bedroom, on a sleeping pad that Daniel had laid out.  It wasn’t the most comfy thing ever, especially when on a hardwood floor instead of outside in the forest, but it was definitely acceptable, and we slept pretty well.  Very well, when you count everyone getting up constantly, people leaving at 5 in the morning, and the partiers outside.

 

Thursday, 01-Jan-14

The next morning started slowly and painfully… but honestly not nearly as painfully as I expected.  Chirag and I were the first ones away (technically Brian was, since he came downstairs, but that doesn’t count because he went back to sleep), followed quickly by Terese.  After I got up and put Terese back to bed, we got dressed and headed out for a constitutional… AKA a walk to Dunkin Donuts to get stuff for everyone.

Was a nice walk, doubly-so for seeing everyone taking the walk of shame, or being painfully hungover waiting for their coffee.  We got a box of coffee and a ton of donuts, said hi to a few police officers who were just too tired to deal with any of this shit, and headed back to start making breakfast.

Three Bostwicks later, everyone was awake and downstairs, eating bacon and sausage and eggs and other delicious concoctions.  The day went quickly from there, leading us on a few light adventures as we tried to shake the hangovers.  The Hobbit was watched, snacks were had, and the new year started out with a nicely comfortable sigh.

Dec23

The Restaurant: Lolita

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28NOV12

 

I first saw Lolita while wandering around the city with Mike, Chirag, and Big T. No, I don’t mean the movie. Nor the book. Not even the character in said book. I mean the restaurant, near Copley square.

It was the kind of place that you look at twice before realizing that it actually is a place. There’s no sign, no flashy lights or big windows. It’s just a doorway, with a menu in a glass case beside the door. A small red awning covers the entryway.

I wanted to check it out, but we had just started our wandering, and weren’t really ready to sit down for a meal. And by the time we were ready, Daniel had already called us suggesting California Pizza Kitchen.

So I stored it in the back of my head, waiting for a chance to bring it out and explore.

That chance came on the 28th, a Wednesday, when I had occasion to celebrate the fact that I’d started in on setting up a new apartment in Cambridge. I’d already had plans to meet a friend for dinner that night, so I suggested Lolita and no complaints were made.

We headed over, found that there was a line, and put our name down. Then they handed me the little buzzer thing that you see in every restaurant.

“How far does this work?” I ask, “I was kinda hoping we could wander around the city a bit, I’m feeling kinda restless”.

“Ohh!” the hostess replies, “Don’t worry about it. If you leave your phone number, I can give you a call when your table is ready”

And that’s when I realized that this place was freaking awesome.

Seriously. When we sat down, after getting a phone call saying our table was ready, the waitress offered shaved ice as a pallette cleanser. She also offered Tequila (on the house) to flavor said shaved ice. And it wasn’t served in a boring bowl, it was served in a bowl suspended over dry ice, which loosed a light fog over the entire table.

And that fit the atmosphere perfectly. I’ve described the place to friends as “A vampire club… but not stupidly gothy/twilight crap. It’s classy old-school vampire”. That’s really the most complete way to describe the place, in my opinion – it’s in the basement of one of the big buildings off Copley, with stone pillars and dark red walls. The walls have black roses stencled everywhere, and the lights are just low enough to give an edgy vibe, but not so low that you can’t easily see across the room. On the table there are roses (but just the flower) in a small bowl, arranged on top of dark red glass beads.

The food and drink matched – it’s Mexican themed, unsurprisingly, but not your standard-issue Tex-Mex fare. I had “Mexican Winter Stew”, which was a variation on the standard beef stew… all South American style ingredients with just enough spice to make things interesting.

And the drinks were awesome… I felt a bit girly ordering Sangria, but it looked so good… and tasted to match. Red sangria with strawberries and raspberries. It was excellent.

And for dessert? I finally found a place that actually serves good fried ice cream that isn’t Brown Sugar Cafe. No spicyness though… I could have gone with some kind of spicy shell to go with the cool ice cream and the cool atmosphere.

… I think I just wrote a restaurant review. Damnit.