Always Coming, Never Here

Not much posted here recently - Facebook gets most of my attention these days. But there is a lot going on, I'm doing a lot more living than blogging about living.

Over the last couple of months I've been making a lot of friends in my neighborhood. Being able to hang out in cafes in the afternoons is extremely conducive to meeting people. I've always been a cafe person, and I love that I have four or five different places right on my street that I can just "be" in that aren't bars. So I've befriended nearly everyone who works behind the counter at all these places, and am now a regular everywhere, and get introductions or get involved in interesting conversations everywhere I go and even connect people with other cool people or talk about neat ideas. I love it.

I decided to try and get some of my new friends together for an underground dinner hosted at my place and catered by my friend Sara and her Lightbulb Oven. Sadly, most of them could not make it, but I will be seating 15 folks here for a five course dinner - including a reporter from some magazine, and a photographer. This inspired me to clean out and redecorate my apartment. My office is now located in the back of my apartment, and I've reorganized the kitchen a little bit; my landlord even got me a brand new stove! Ultimately I'd like to take down the afterthought of a closet and storage area here in the new office to make the room bigger, and then paint the walls blue to inspire creativity. I might get around to doing that by late Summer or so, maybe.

I am now "officially" dating someone long distance; those of you following on Facebook have no doubt seen pictures and references to Nari (narnarthinks). We went out for about a month before she moved back to Austin, Texas to live with her family and return to her company's HQ out there - a few weeks later she flew back to visit for a long weekend. She's coming back to visit me again from 5/10 to 5/17, and to say that I'm looking forward to that would be the understatement of the century. Long distance, as one would expect, is a good and bad thing; but, in this case, since we weren't able to spend much time together when we were short distance, I'd have to say it's much more bad than good.

I'm actually putting a lot of time into iPhone development now, and am learning the ins and outs of Xcode and associated tools. There's a roadblock I've been attempting to overcome, and debugging with the tools is helping me better understand what I'm doing wrong. I feel like I'm making progress though; at this point, since I'm going to WWDC 09 the first week of June, I really need to have some kind of application finished before I get there; I'm hoping to have two ready, but we'll see.

If Facebook ever did go the paid route, I would ditch it instantly. It's not worth it to me, I already pay for this journal and other avenues of expression... what does this say about the "value" of my social network? I think what it tells me is that the network is at any given time just a commodity - one that I can rebuild and reform anywhere. It's great when I have it up and running somewhere, and there's a new and/or interesting application I can use with it, but ultimately all that matters is that I have my network and nobody can ever take it away from me. My network is internal to me at all times.

Going to bed now. Still buzzed from pork overload.

A quick summary of me (stealed from arachne8x):
33 going on 34.

Grew up in North Branford, CT but born in New Haven, CT.

Fluent in English, smattering of French, currently studying Homeric Greek.

Nearly 100% Italian - father is all Italian, mother is 75%, with some German and Irish.

Schooled publicly until college, then started studying Physics at WPI. Eventually switched to Computer Science.

Longest relationship was 4.5 years, ended in a broken engagement in 1999. Have since been alternately single and dating sporadically; current relationship is longest one since then (1 year!). [polyamorous]

Working as a consultant for Robert Half Technology, sourced to Plus One Holdings.

Leo, spiritual, anti-religious.

Very fond of cats.

Rapturous lover of preparing and eating food; most fond of pizza, wine, cheese, and chocolate.

Ambitions to get a tattoo (maybe a depiction of Quetzalcoatl).

LARPer and LARP GM/creator.

Comic book collector (approximately 5,000).

Gamer (board, card, video, miniature, role-playing, ANYTHING).

Writer (mainly poetry and short fiction).

Aspiring artist.

"Oh look, a black squirrel."

"I've never seen one of those before! Holy crap!"

"Me neither. Oh look, it's going into the hair salon."

"Wow, he's just walking around in there."

[insert the screaming of a bunch of women, followed by chasing with a broom, and a squirrel plastered up against a glass window trying desperately to get outside]

Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn is a lot of fun, and not just because of squirrel terrorism. There's a bunch of adorable little cafes, bars, and restaurants of all stripes - including The Chocolate Room which I believe may be the best retail chocolate store in the city (I'm not counting boutique chocolatiers who sell their own chocolates). It's the first place I've found that actually sells Domori chocolate bars (sophisticated Italian chocolate from Venezuelan cacao) and also has the full line of Vintage Plantation chocolate bars from Ecuador and I believe elsewhere (not even Murray's or other gourmet stores I've shopped at carry all of these). Additional, TCR is staffed by an amazing pastry chef; kitteridge and I devoured a dark and dense chocolate cupcake that was impossibly moist and slathered with a pudding consistency ganache, and were entranced by the selection of other cookies and confections available.

Most of the cafes and restaurants there seem to be burgeoning businesses, and have extremely thrifty prices for the quality of food served. Luscious was a small take-out joint which looked as though it was just starting out; a comfort food establishment, where you can purchase meatloaf, stuffed chicken breasts, and a variety of sides like mac n cheese, corn spoonbread, tabouli, broccoli and such. I had a tasty cuban mojo with ham and pork on a ciabatta, and loved it dearly.

There's a street fair happening there on Sunday, May 20th, and I plan on attending...

Located near East 4th Street and Avenue B, the E.U. takes good food seriously, yet still has a casual flair for its atmosphere. The cavern-like dining area is decorated sparsely, but creatively, with neo-industrial lighting and artifacts; a miniscule bar at the back of the establishment speaks to the recent acquisition of their liquor license.

( Read more... )

A week and a half ago my bosses took me and three other co-workers out for dinner at Abbicci, an amazing restaurant right up the street from me. Turned out that this was their last dinner before major renovations that will be taking place over the coming 4 plus months (raising the building off its foundation, pouring a good one and making a basement, and adding an addition to the first and second floors). It was also one of their wine pairing meals - 7 courses with 7 wines from the Piedmont region of Italy... they even had the actual vintners from Italy eating with us! It was an amazing experience.

( This is what we had )

The two restaurants have filed for Chapter 7 and are closed. It is a black day for good barbecue in Massachusetts.

All right folks - tonight is the night! However, in the interests of economy, Zipango will not be the restaurant of choice this evening. Instead, we will journey to Osaka in Shrewsbury at the White City Plaza, where there is cheap sushi in abundance! My housemates went there and spent 40 dollars between the two of them for a heaping helping of sushi and dessert, and they brought back a VERY reasonably priced sushi menu with most sushi under 5 dollars and most maki under 4 dollars. This may be only because it's a new place, so the prices may not last forever! Also they have teppanyaki tables like Sakura Tokyo - so invite people that don't like raw fish and they'll enjoy it!

That is all. Come tonight!

This Friday I will be going to the Bijou for dinner and a movie. I'll be going to see "The Fast Runner", which plays at 6:30pm and goes for about three hours. I'll be showing up early, like around 5:30pm, to get dinner and a drink or two. I've invited a few friends, but I'll be going myself regardless of who actually shows up, so I figured I'd make it an open invite anyways...

So, for those not aware - Big Blue turned 30 on 9/10/2002. I took it upon myself to help him celebrate his birthday in grand style, and we had a day of delight throughout the city of Boston this past Friday.

Tom showed up at my place a little after Noon; after I downed my lunch, we set off for Waltham and hit Danger Planet, a rather nice little game store off Moody Street. Tom dropped off his car, and we carpooled into Beantown.

After parking near a Mormon church off Brattle Street, we made our way towards the Adrenaline Zone, a PC arcade establishment. MickD caught up with us a little while after we arrived, and the three of us got to blow each other up a lot a lot. Much fun... Tom got to snipe my head into little bits, and I got to blow him and a lot of bots into a bunch of luscious gibs.

Moving on, we found ourselves at the L.A. Burdick's cafe right up the street. The sign advertised "Iced Chocolate", so we stepped up to the counter and ordered two of those, and two slices of chocolate mousse cake. We were served, and Tom sampled his sweets... and declared that he no longer needed women in his life, as long as he had his precious, precious mousse cake. The drinks and cakes were exceedingly scrumptious (but maybe not quite that scrumptious).

Our next stop was The Garage in Harvard Square, where we hit Pandemonium and Tokyo Kid, as well as another new Japanese toy store and the "All Your Game" retro video game mini-store in the stairwell. At this point, our good buddy Jski hooked up with us, and we continued onward.

We walked to the extreme end of Harvard all the way down to The Games People Play (are you seeing a theme yet?) and chatted with Joseph, one of the merchants, about various games and their pros and cons. Jski bought 1870, and I bought Humping Humping Hedgehogs! Okay, that's not really the name, but I can't remember the name because it's a German game. On the way back, we hit the Harvard Coop bookstore and Wordsworth... and at wordsworth, I bought Tom his own copy of "I'm Just Here For The Food", Alton Brown's (host of Good Eats) new book. Tom has trouble boiling water - but I believe Alton's book will be Tom's introduction to the wonderful and exciting world of food preparation.

We next went by car out to Copely Square and hit The Compleat Strategist. On the way, Jski ran into one of the three people he knows in Boston - Agthorr's sister. She's a real cutie, a very sweet girl... but she sadly couldn't come along, as she had frozen chicken and ice cream in her shopping bags. At the game store, Jski and I bought Tom a bunch of game books he really wanted. We next went by T to dinner...

Which was had at the wonderful Sunset Grill & Tap. I ran into Jen Johnson as we entered; she was just leaving with some co-workers, but we got a quick hug in before we parted ways.

That evening, the Sunset had 112 beers on tap... but the clear winner at our table was the Kopparberg Pear Cider, a Product of Sweden. Tom's got a taste for sweet drinks, and the Kopparberg was his own find - but Jski and I both loved it, and when Drak and Lee joined us later at night, they too found themselves ensorceled by the bodacious brew. Drak ended up drinking a yard of beer, and I had a couple of nice Beertails (chocolate covered cherry and fruit cocktail). Dinner was awesome... Tom and Jski hadn't eaten much all day, between the three of us, we packed away a full basket of sour cream and chive fries and fried calamari; I had a delicious tuna melt, Tom had a salmon dinner, and Jski had a mondo half pound burger (Drak and Lee had their own food when they joined later, but I can only remember that Lee got the Mahi Mahi).

All in all, a very exhausting day out on the town. But we had a very happy Tom at the end of it all! 30 years down - and many, many more to go, huzzah!