How to Drive on Unplowed, Narrow, One-Way Cambridge Streets; Or, An Exercise in Skidding Tastefully

I had a 3pm appointment to get to in Brookline yesterday, and it was snowing. Powdery, packing-snow, and some four inches had fallen throughout the morning. The City of Cambridge, personified, was offstage wringing his hands, spotlight-shy, fretting over his entrance. No plow to scrape the asphalt streets, no salt to melt the slush-mire. Through this I drove my trusty Corolla, tentative at first. All cars on the road (actually cars and not trucks, vans or SUVs: this is Cambridge) were struggling, 20 mph tops and fishtailing periodically as they hit particularly powdery, slushy bits of unplowed road. [A note from a Buffalo native: 4 inches is not a lot of snow. And yet, road conditions were legitimately treacherous, because none of those four inches had been removed from the streets.] I've been paying a bit more attention lately to doing things properly: Downton Abbey has of course inflamed nascent passions for ascots and stickpins, and I've finally broadened my collection of garishly-colored argyle socks to include tasteful colors, such as lilac. When a little depressed last Tuesday night, I set about cheering myself up by polishing up a pair of wingtip brogues and practicing a flawless full Windsor knot. So as I made my way down Garden St., skidding periodically, it occurred to me that this, too, could be done properly.

Notes on skidding well:

-Foremost, it is rude to swerve into oncoming traffic. One ought to exercise caution in one's right turns. 

-When driving down narrow, winding, unplowed one-way streets with moderately expensive cars parked on either side of you, the asshole behind you honking his horn can go fuck himself.

-Turn on your headlights in daytime. This is primarily a courtesy to other drivers, as it helps to distinguish your car (moving! or intending to move when not stuck!) from cars that are parked or stranded, or when visibility is poor, from snowy expanses of empty road.

-Anticipate stops and turns. Start braking for stops earlier than in non-snowdrift conditions, as your stopping distance increases unexpectedly when tires lose traction. If possible, approach turns at a low speed and maintain that speed throughout the endeavor, so that you are neither braking nor accelerating into the turn.

-Do not forget the pedestrians. They are still out there, walking, and it is more miserable for them in this weather than it is for you.

That's the extent of my meditation on snow-driving, so here's wishing everyone a good Sunday.

-R.

I Resent the Intimation That It's Already Fall

It's August, still, but just barely. The mood shifted in my absence, of its own accord, without my assent. Languid late summer gave way to that energetic crackle of the-week-before-classes-start, and I am dimly aware that I ought to buy pencils. The undergraduates are moving in, setting up their dorm rooms, excited for a new semester. I returned to Cambridge to find things pretty much as they were all summer: warm breeze through the window, feet up on the couch, fudgesicles in the freezer. Whatever shift occurred on campus this past week, it left our apartment untouched. Do I forge ahead into the fall semester?  In mood and thought I am still immersed in that easy absence of nervous excitement inherent to summer; there's just a little bit of it left, and shouldn't I do that little bit justice? I'm certain that I'll emerge from this happy summer indolence, make the shift, but it's all too early now. Classes begin August 31st -- appalling -- this year. I think I'll catch up once it's properly September.

In other news, I can't hear anything. I caught a cold while on the Hawaii field trip, and the congestion is awful. My poor little eardrums have been through a cruel Hawaiian altitude wringer -- Kilauea, sea level, Mauna Loa! sea level, Kilauea, sea level, Mauna Kea! sea level etc. etc. repeat. And then I got on an airplane. My ears still haven't popped, and everything sounds dim, distant. Oddly this lack of aural functionality is making it difficult to write -- I feel as though I can't hear my own internal monologue. Head is too stuffy. I'm off to chug some Gatorade and hope that things clear out.

-R.

Hello Blog; Hello World.

Hello blog. 

Hello world.

It's been a while.

I am sitting on my couch again, and am happy to report that I'm back to loving it, in all its old-person flowered fabric and above-the-mean comfort-level glory. If you've never sat on this couch, I do contend that you are missing out. That said, I'm sure that it was these qualities precisely that did annoy me so the last time that I wrote, given that I was in such a mood as to be perpetually annoyed. I cannot offer an explanation for the fact that I have slipped into the circuitous locution and leisurely cadence of a Southern lawyer (please read this paragraph with a suitable drawl), expect perhaps to say that I loved Matlock as a child. It did not occur to me that I fell far outside the intended demographic for that show until much later. Part of me is still waiting to grow up and be Tyler Hudson.

And, a lightning storm. There was a lightning storm in Cambridge, MA last week; it was our allotted aftermath of the tornado-bearing storm that damaged the western part of the state. I was terrified by all the flickering, flashing and rumbling going on, but I wanted to see what it looked like in replay-format, wanted to watch from the immoderate comfort of my couch; safe, later. So I propped up my little point-and-shoot on my windowsill, put it in video-recording mode and pressed Go. Unfortunately the battery only lasted for 4 minutes, but I caught the onset of the storm, and it constitutes a sort of time-integrated view from my window, if you will:

I'd never seen it flicker like that. 

That's all for now, but I promise to write regularly again.
-R.

I Am Sitting Comfortably on My Couch, Which I Hate With an Abiding Passion

I hate everything right now, except for this pretzel.

That's not really true.

(I rather like my flannel pantaloons.)

It's November, again, and it's time to take stock. Buckle down, count the beans, tighten the laces and whatnot. Let's start with the positives. The Corolla is chumming along happily, in fall, covered with bright yellow leaves. In a week's time, those leaves will be crisp and brown, and it will smell definitively of autumn in Cambridge. Fall in academia is bright, trenchant, new; new talent, new thoughts, new challenges. I have a wonderful set of students this year. I am writing a paper on an entirely new topic of study. I am learning to play a mandolin (named Hermes).

 Well, that worked. I should start with the positives more often. You see, I have been irrationally irritated by things -- specific objects -- in the past few days, and I'm not entirely sure why. Remote controls, for instance. The couch. Plastic bags. I won't get into it -- actually I did, I wrote quite a bit, but then erased it all. Therapeutic, that. You'll never know just how irked I was by that bottle cap.

That said (ha!), I think it's better now. This couch is lovely, and comfortable, and warm. And now I think it's time for bed. Sweet dreams, travelers and friends.

-R.

Summer Doldrums, Over and Over

I started today by failing to kill a mosquito. A sitting duck on the bathroom wall. I slapped at it with my flip-flop, then flailed in anger as it floated away. Two minutes later, it bit my ankle while I brushed my teeth. Spiteful bastard.

I've been traveling all summer. Like, non-stop. First, NYC for PPPCon. Boston. Then Buffalo, to drive to Chicago for brother's commencement. I enjoyed the drive. Always loved driving west on the 90. Always felt like an adventure, a new undertaking -- Go west, young man, and all that. Towards Chicago, City of Industry. This time it felt solidly like a return, which was interesting. Took 10 hours, as usual. We entered Indiana around 5pm, and spent the next few hours eagerly exiting it. The state of Indiana obliged by allowing us to legally drive 5 miles faster per hour, which was thoughtful. Soon enough, the smokestack-skyline of Gary, Indiana loomed before me. We were done. I was back.

It was fun to drive through Chicago again. I love cities planned on grids. My parents have a thorough distaste for city driving, so I was given free reign to drive us all over the place. Evanston, Lincoln Square, Streeterville, the Loop. I took the parentals out on the museum campus one clear night for a photo-op:

Lovely trip. More thoughts on the Midwest, and the theme of Returning, later, perhaps.

(I've fallen in love with commas, a bit. The hesitation, the halting, waffling, a step, forward, back, so on, so forth. It suits my state of mind this summer. It's all crap.)

Long story short: after Chicago, Knoxville for a week. Boston. Then Santa Barbara for three weeks. I'm currently wrapping up my three week stability-grounding phase in Cambridge, soon bound for Buffalo, Cleveland, and finally Yosemite. FINALLY, COMMA, YOSEMITE. To be honest, I am eager to be on the other side of August. Perhaps when the new school year starts, I will regain my inherent stylistic distaste for hesitation, and commas, and waffling, and return to straight, direct prose. Here's hoping.

-R.

Spring Forward, and All That

March. March? Really? Ok, I guess.

It is my quals semester. I should be stressed out, but I've been conscientiously reading some other dude's PhD thesis watching Alex Cabot episodes of SVU and practicing the secret extra verse to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air's intro rap (watch Season One, fools). 

It's getting warmer, and Cambridge walks are wonderful. Garden Street, ever-menacing, fed my deep-seated fears of being lured into captivity once more: Wednesday morning, I counted twenty to thirty brightly-colored candied oblate spheroids strewn between Grey Gardens and Robinson. Orange, yellow, brown. Thought: If M&M's, not likely to be effective child-trap. Reds and the greens are crucial to maintaining visual appeal. Second thought: probably Reese's pieces. Reese's pieces?! A bit lavish, no? I guess jelly beans didn't pan out very well, huh? Third thought: most likely explanation presumably involves inadvertent candy-loss by children (primary consumers?), notoriously unable to hold on to anything. Children of North Cambridge: stop spilling candy everywhere. It's a waste of good sugar, and it makes me anxious.

Walking on Huron Avenue a couple nights ago prompted further contemplation. I was trudging north, grocery-laden, when my peripheral vision picked up on a dark masculine figure emerging from a doorway to my right. Not quite emerging. Lurking. Inexplicably holding a large dry sausage. I'm not resorting to crude euphemism here: the guy was just standing in a doorway, looking out over Huron Ave, holding sausage, preoccupied. Note to self: If at any point you absolutely must be in possession of a large dry sausage, do not lurk. (We mustn't lurk in doorways. It's rude --Ed.). I'm sure this guy was waiting to go out to some dinner party and had decided to bring sausage, which is thoughtful.

Anyway, it's high time I did something productive with my day. Hope all is well, regards,

R.

The R--ts

I somehow bought the clean version of The Roots' Phrenology, which is essentially all just bleeped out. The Seed (2.0) is especially ludicrous. Beware of poorly-labeled Amazon downloads.

Is it weird that I hesitate before typing "ludicrous?" As though "Ludacris" might actually be the proper spelling?