matt

A Quick Update

Posted on by grahams

I’ve been really busy, for obvious reasons, but here’s a quick update as to what’s going on:

  • We’re still go for both closings this Thursday.  Everything seems to be on track, all the repairs to our new place that we asked for in the Purchase and Sale agreement have been taken care of.  In addition, we have a verbal agreement with the seller to move our stuff in on Wednesday (but not ourselves), but we need to get that signed off tomorrow or else our movers will have nowhere to put our stuff on Wednesday morning.  =)
  • Speaking of movers, I’m packing, packing, packing… 
    [info]coco_b

    has been working a ton lately, even this Saturday and today!  So I’ve been doing most of the packing, which is okay with me, especially since this will hopefully be the last move for many years..  I’ve pretty much got most everything except the bedroom packed up now…  Not sure if we will have enough boxes for everything, so there might be a last-minute scramble for boxes tomorrow.  Or, I suppose, we will just have to buy a few boxes from the movers and box up the last of the stuff while they are moving what we have boxed up.  We’ll see though..  Many thanks to

    [info]rat_girl3

    and

    [info]equalize

    for helping us out with the boxes.  They just moved into THEIR new place, and the timing just so happened that while they were emptying their boxes we were in need of them…  They were life (or at least wallet) savers!

  • For some reason I’ve started to sort of follow the Red Sox.  I’m not sure what happened, I think it’s
    [info]roryk

    ‘s fault.  Perhaps it was only a matter of time before I caught the local disease.

  • Yesterday we took a break from work and packing, and headed out to
    [info]adamfletcher

    ‘s folks house for grilling and pool chicanery.  It was awesome, we had a great time as always…  It was a much needed break from all the adult seriousness the two of us have been dealing with lately…

Beeeeeeeeewwww

Posted on by grahams

Friday after work,

[info]equalize

,

[info]rat_girl3

, and I left for Rochester…  We hit the road around 6:45pm and expected to arrive some time near Midnight..  Unfortunately, as soon as we were ready to leave, it started snowing..  Apparently in Boston it quickly turned to rain, but we had white-out conditions until the Mass border, delaying us like crazy…  We were planning on driving directly to Nick’s, but had to bail just because we arrived so late.   But we just revised the plans to hit Dinosaur for lunch on Saturday and grab some Nick’s for dinner just before FUMN started… 

We hit up Dinosaur with some folks as planned, and then headed over to CSH to hang out on floor for awhile…  Unfortunately, almost everyone was at some stupid RIT function that ResLife leaned on the house to attend…   I was pretty much set to go to Nick’s before FUMN, but I got guilted into attending

[info]james_kieliszek

‘s birthday celebration..  It was a great time, but I really wanted Nick’s…

FUMN seemed to be a great success..  The committee picked a fine selection of flicks this year:

The films seemed to be pretty well received, although each flick had it’s detractors, but that’s to be expected..   We might have shown another film, but we got a late start as it was (after 10pm) and finished things up around 4am…  As it was I was contemplating dropping Oldboy and going out to Nick’s, but I decided to make that sacrifice….  :)

Sunday we swung by DiBella’s on our way out of town, which was as delicious as always.  We had a really nice drive back though…  The TomTom did us right, guiding us directly to Garrett’s for his Super Bowl party..  We watched the boredom of the Super Bowl and hung out with friends I hadn’t seen in awhile..   Finally rolled into Boston at 11pm, and crashed pretty quickly…

Brainwaves

Posted on by grahams

This weekend was the Brainwaves Festival over in Arlington, which was a ton of fun. Jon really did a great job pulling the whole thing together, and while I wasn’t in to every artist, it was great seeing so many different bands. The highlight for me was The Dresden Dolls turning out a great set (even if they seemed out of place in the midst of the other bands on the lineup). Amanda and Brian brought out Edward Ka-Spel (from The Legendary Pink Dots and The Tear Garden) for “Missed Me”. I’m not the biggest Ka-Spel fan (I actually left before his set, closing out Friday, was over, but I was mostly just exhausted).

After a Kelly’s brunch, I made it back to the theatre on time on Saturday Afternoon. This daytime lineup seemed to be mostly noise artists, which can always be hit-or-miss. Fortunately, none of them seemed to take themselves too seriously, which made it more palatable. came out Saturday night to join me, and it was great seeing him again and catching up. Saturday night was definitely my favorite overall night of the show. It was dedicated to Steven Stapleton, who did a “DJ” set playing some of his favorite records. All of the artists Saturday night were enjoyable, but the stand-out band were also the headliners, Volcano the Bear. They had great energy, and while at times they seemed to be in Schtick Coma, they really rocked it out.

I missed the final day of the festival as I had previously committed to heading over to ‘s place for some Nintendo Wii love. He has preordered his and was having a big party to celebrate (and play). We mostly played Wii Sports, Tennis and Baseball are the standout games, but Bowling is pretty cool too. Golf and Boxing were a bit spottier though. Boxing definitely felt like your actions with the remote had the least correspondence to what happened on screen. That, and Corinna kicked my ass at Boxing, so I can’t like it. :P

We played from like noon until 6pm, when and I had to run off to see “Casino Royale”. I really, really enjoyed it, as did seemingly everyone who showed up to the club this week (17 people!). Definitely removed the crappier aspects of Bond for the past however-many years and stuck to spying and action (Parkour FTW).

You know you’ve been living in a place for awhile…

Posted on by grahams

…when the number of times you run into people you know begins to skyrocket. The past few weeks, Corinna and I have either separately or together run into people we know either through work or the film club… This past weekend we were at Six Flags New England, which is 80-ish miles away from Boston, and we ran into two film club members who were there on a date. The odds of that are pretty crazy, especially given how packed the park was. I normally reserve trips to amusement parks for mildly overcast or even rainy days, but the season was winding down and we had to use the discount tickets Corinna got from Harvard, so we pulled the trigger and went on a Saturday. The park was so packed. The shortest wait was for the Scrambler, but pretty much everything else was a 45-60 minute wait or more. It’s really an unpleasant experience waiting on line that long. One of the best parts of the trip, though, was waiting on line for Superman for 60 minutes, getting in the first car due to the kindness of strangers (who wanted to ride with their friends), and after our ride, the ride broke and we were stuck waiting for maintenance to get out of the coaster.. They blamed it on the temperature change, and had it going in about 15 minutes, but I was so glad that it waited to act up until AFTER our ride. If not for those strangers, we would have been waiting to go and probably nervous about flying off into the river or something

Rewinding a little, last Friday a bunch of us got together down at Fanueil Hall for ‘s birthday. Drinks and food were to be had, but Corinna and I couldn’t stay out all that late due to our Saturday plans. It was great seeing everyone, as always, and we even had a special guest! As of September 1st, I was able to count the number of times I had seen since he moved to Boston on one finger. And that one time was for 5 minutes. But with the Welcome Back party as well as Matt’s birthday extravaganza, that number has increased by leaps and bounds! Rumors are that he will be at Girard’s Wii party next month as well!

Sunday was delicious brunch at ‘s abode, which was awesome. After the brunch wound down, I headed over to the Kendall for my own little double-feature. I caught American Hardcore which was a documentary covering the hardcore punk scene of the early-mid 80s. It was a bit frenetic, which can be expected given the subject matter, but it was great. After that, I met up with the film club to see The Last King of Scotland, which I really wanted to be much better than it was. When I left the theater I was pretty strongly against the flick, but after I settled down a bit I realized that it wasn’t terrible, but it just could have been so much better.

Weekend Hijinks

Posted on by grahams

This was a crazy weekend… Friday night I went over ‘s place to watch the first World Cup games (Tivo delayed, of course). There was chili to be eaten, booze to be dranked, and friends to scream and yell with. Before lots of people got over we played some pass-around Worms. We had to play passaround because people had to wait until Sunday to get their DS Lites… Anyway, that was tons of fun and I didn’t get home until like 1am.

Saturday morning I had to wake up extra-extra early to take to South Station, as she was headed to NYC for the weekend to visit with some college friends.. When I got back to the apartment I couldn’t sleep, so I watched some TV and geeked out until noon. At noon I returned to Matt’s for grilling, DS-in, and more soccer. At night we headed out to Saugus for some delicious Kelly’s Roast Beef, but on the way noticed that the Krispy Kreme in Medford (which has been closed for months) will soon be replaced by ANOTHER KELLY’S! Kelly’s delicious roast beef only half as far away? Sign me the fuck up!

Sunday was more of the same, except Pat and Matt both had their DS’ finally, so we were able to play wireless Worms instead, which was way more fun… Saw Raiders of the Lost Ark with the film club last night, which was awesome on the big screen, and Corinna returned, exhausted, from her weekend trip.

This morning we met with the contractor who will be renovating our bathroom in the next few weeks, which took way longer than expected, but he answered alot of important questions for us and made us feel generally better about the whole process.