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!
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