Things I overheard while talking to myself

Well that didn't work. Went to take a walk to clear my head, and thanks to a combination of dumbfuck tourists, an overcrowded subway and the fact that the entire city turns dumber than usual thanks Marathon weekend and the Sox game I came back more pissed off than when I left.

Turns out I clocked in about three and a half miles total, which I can see thanks to a pedometer I installed on my phone, so at the very least I got some exercise.

Well, post Super Bowl Boston seems to be nursing a hangover from drowning their sorrows last night after the Pats lost, but people seem to have behaved themselves. Although I can already tell that people are going to savor the chance for revenge next season. And I was actually watching from the safety of my apartment, so I know exactly how painful that was. Oh well, revenge!

I just wrote what's probably one of my favorite paragraphs in the history of my writing for one of my fiction class assignments.

"Everyone in Southie knew Shannon Flaherty. She was the fourth of seven kids, though only five had survived to adulthood. She was in her late twenties, and the mothers called her a spinster behind her back, since she lived alone and her sisters had all married before her. She also never went to Mass, hung out with odd types, and had the nerve to occasionally wear pants."

For context, it's set in the 1960s, when a woman wearing pants really was on the same level as those other things. I still love it.

My roommate K was born in the U.S. but has spent most of his life living in the Philippines, so the other day he pointed something out to me that I'd never noticed.

Mainly, that when Bostonians say the word "Suffolk" (as in the name of my school or Suffolk County) the L is silent, meaning that it's pronounced "Suh-fuck" with the second syllable sounding, well, exactly like the swear.

K told me that when he first came back to the States and was trying to get some information someone on the phone told him to contact the Registry in Suffolk... and he thought the clerk was swearing at him over the phone. It doesn't help that K's originally from California and not used to the Boston accent, the thicker versions of which can be near unintelligble if you're not used to it.

So yeah, people might think whenever I say the name of my school that I'm swearing at them. Never thought of that.

I'm predicting that August 31st and September 1st are going to be a clusterfuck considering that I have one roommate who has to move his stuff in on the 31st and another who's leaving on the 1st, and due to truck rentals there has to be overlap. We might have to resort to putting some stuff in the basement, but at least the incoming roommate is staying in a hotel that night so we won't have to somehow deal with three people try to sleep here.

I'm glad I already took those days off. Luckily my classes don't start until the 6th so I have a bit of time to adjust before that starts again. And both the new kid, K, and my landlord have confirmed that the application process is moving ahead, so if all works out it should be settled well before we have to move stuff in and out.

After an appointment I had today I walked around the Back Bay, and witnessed an asshole on a cellphone step into traffic and nearly get hit by a duckboat. Luckily the driver was quick enough to slam on the brakes, but the asshole kept walking and didn't even acknowledge that he nearly caused a traffic accident. Now, there are two major rules of jaywalking in Boston that he ignored:

1. Do not step out into the road when there are cars. Wait until there are no cars. This is because you cannot count on them stopping, and indeed in many cases if it seems that the drivers are trying to kill you, they probably are. We are not referred to as Massholes for nothing.
2. Do not step out in front of a duckboat. Those things were designed to withstand artillery fire. If it's you versus a duckboat, you will lose. This also applies to other cars, since a couple times a year there are stories about some asshole cutting a duckboat off in traffic and getting into an accident. Again, armored military vehicle versus regular car = the car loses.

I finally managed to outwit the rain and not get rained on for the first in about a week! Score one for Ro!

The one bad part about being so high up in my building at work is that you can see the weather coming, so I tend to have at least an hour to watch the weather develop outside and dread having to go home in it. But today I managed to get back and pull my laundry off the fire avoider in time.

Speaking of fires, after last week's incident where the basement smoke detector kept going off they went and installed new smoke detectors in all the apartments, so now every room has one. The good news is they work. The bad news is they get set off every time we make toast, and I've now been woken up twice by them going off in response to D making breakfast. Ugh. I also think that four smoke alarms in one apartment may be a bit of overkill, but I think they technically weren't up to code before. Which, given that this building is 112 years old, isn't too surprising.

And randomly, the other night I caught a bit of Blazing Saddles on AMC, and D had never seen it. Her jaw was on the floor and soon she was laughing as hard as I was. Of course for the AMC version they had to bleep a particular word. Guess which one. This resulted in some awkward pauses in the dialog, though they didn't have to change the "bell" gag, which is one of my favorites.

I'm also dealing with a very whiny cat who seems to think it's a national emergency if I don't pay attention to him for five minutes. He doesn't seem to appreciate my imitation of his meowing either. But I don't think cats get humor. At all.

Since LoudTwitter seems to be having issues, some highlights of my exploits today.

Just for kicks I looked up the property info for my apartment building, and discovered one thing that wasn't surprising and one thing that was. The thing that wasn't surprising is that it was built in 1899 and was last renovated in the 1970s. That I could guess just by looking at it. But it's actually kind of cool in some ways, and given the location people were lining up to try and become my roommate for this place.

The surprising part was that even with all the "character" the building is still worth close to a million dollars. Considering that "affordable" houses as defined by the law my agency works with to build developments generally run about 170k it was a bit of a spit-take moment. And just shows you what Boston real estate is like that even a comparatively rundown place is worth that much. Location location location! Just for kicks I also checked the last place I lived, and it was built in 1910 and worth two million dollars, but it has about three times as many apartments in it, so the per-unit value is significantly more up here.

I then mentioned that to a kid I worked with, and for a moment he seemed surprised that I could get at the property records to see that. He didn't seem to get that this stuff is public record, and that anyone can look at it since it's kind of the law that it has to be publicly viewable. I then made his eyes cross when I said that you didn't even have to FOI it, FOI being the Freedom of Information Act, and I was reminded that despite my best efforts I've picked up some of the jargon of this field and that most people don't know what this stuff means. Incidentally I was amused when I heard someone on NPR say that they "FOI'ed" something (pronounced "foy-ed") since it's now become a verb.

When I mentioned that I'm in the North End to some other coworkers both of them -- completely separately  since I talked to them at two different times -- joked that I certainly don't look like I've been living the North End while pointing at my stomach, with the obvious insinuation being that living up here will make one gain weight because of all the good food. In fact the opposite has happened to me since I moved here, and when I told D that she remarked that people tend to say that, but for both of us we're usually too broke to buy all the delicious food! That said I did in fact go to Bova's, a 24 hour bakery, and get a chocolate stuffed croissant today when I went to get some bread because it had been a shitty day in general, not helped by the fact that I got caught in a downpour on the way home and had decided this morning that I hadn't needed an umbrella. Wrong.

Before the downpour I went to the gym after work and might have overdone it a bit, since I had a lot of frustration to work out. It was a good pick-me-up until the aforementioned rain, and at least I'll sleep well tonight as a result. Though I have a distinct feeling I'll be sore tomorrow.

I was also glad I set the slow cooker before I left since I had hot soup waiting for me along with fresh bread and salad, and a little white wine because why the hell not. So even though it was a frustrating day it more or less worked out.

So I went walking for a bit today since this damn heat has finally broken, and went up to Salutation Street to see if I could find the site of the police station that was bombed in 1916, since it's mentioned in a book I'm reading called The Given Day. I did eventually find the street, but the site either isn't marked or I overlooked it. Odd, I would have expected them to mark that considering how gung-ho Bostonians are about history.

I also walked by a club that has alleged links to the mob, but the shades were drawn. Naturally. The last time I was up there with Dad there was a guy sitting out front who looked like such a stereotypical mobster that I almost laughed, but wisely held my tongue.

But holy crap it is nice to not have this damn heat, I've been able to open my window and turn off the AC for the first time in a week. *flops*

So I was walking across the Greenway the other day and suddenly was hit with a very familiar odor. Mainly, horse manure. I probably know that smell better than most people seeing as I've shoveled it multiple times, and that's a smell you don't forget.

So I sniffed and covered my nose, since it was about 90 degrees out, and someone standing next to me on the curb said "What is that smell?"

"Horse manure," I replied, and they gave me an odd look.

"There are no horses in Boston!" they said.

I then pointed to a bag of fertilizer next to the flower bed.

"Oh," they replied.

I decided to not be a wiseass and point out that we do indeed have horses, mainly the ones who pull carriages and the police horses.

City folks.

So I had a dream a few nights back where I was in Japan again and had to speak it, and it was a pretty stressful experience. Especially since I kept lapsing into Russian. Needless to say, hilarity ensued.

That part about crossing the languages doesn't actually happen in real life, amazingly enough, since I think the two languages are filed in different parts of my brain. It also helps that I tend to "see" the words written in hiragana/cyrillic respectively in my head as I'm speaking them, and they look pretty different so there's little opportunity to confuse them. That was actually the reason I forced myself to learn the hiragana rather than use romaji (words spelled out phonetically in English characters). It also means that sometimes when I'm trying to remember it I "write it out" in the air which probably looks weird to people watching me.

There's going to be the big fireworks thing tonight on the Esplanade, but I've been there, done that, and the last time I went to that I spent hours trying to find a decent place to stand and was reminded of why I don't like crowds. I'm also entirely surprised that I didn't get mugged last year since there were about a dozen people who did. And of course my idiot neighbors will probably set off their own fireworks so I won't miss much.

I'm also glad I locked in our electricity rate at $35 a month since I've been using the AC so much, albeit on the energy saver mode (i.e. it turns itself off when it doesn't need to be on full blast). D told me about that, and knowing how high the bills could get in the winter it was probably a good idea. Basically if I do go over that amount they'll bill me at the end of the year.