Went out again to another Baskin-Robbins to get another free scoop. I had to make up for Nhut being out of the country, and Qi being too lazy to go. I asked for cookies and cream, but got chocolate chip. Guess I shouldn’t complain too much, it’s free. Went to 7-Eleven afterwards for a soda, and they had hostess fruit pies on sale 2/$1, so I got 4 of them. It’s a weakness dating back to high school, they are one of my favorite sweet junk foods. Going to hit the barber shop tomorrow morning before work, and ride my bike home tomorrow after work… I swear. 
Well, Baskin-Robbins free scoop night was tonight, and there’s one right on my walk to the T station near MIT! I had a pistachio cone, which was pretty good, and there was almost no line. I think I waited about three minutes. I was expecting the line to be out the door, but maybe it’s still a little chilly for ice cream…
I blew off the haircut and the bike ride home, might have to handle those items tomorrow. 
Weather on Saturday was a major drag, it rained hard all day long. The good thing is it cleared up and was beautiful on Sunday. Went for a walk along Memorial Drive in Cambridge, and I was wishing I had my bike here… and maybe the dogs too. I could have covered a lot more ground on the bike. Took the T over to Park Street, and walked through Boston Common, back over to Charles St, and down to the river. Then walked along the river down to Newbury street, and saw a few places to rent bikes and blades. So if you don’t have your own when you come to visit, you can rent some there!
My bike arrived on Monday, and I picked up a lock for it, but have worked late the last two nights, so I haven’t rode it home yet. I did manage to install the lock holder on the seat post, so there’s a place to store it while riding. I need a haircut, where is the cheap asian barber in Cambridge anyway? There is a $12 barber near Harvard Square, may have to stop by there on the way home later.
The commute to work is interesting, it takes me a couple minutes to walk through Harvard Square to the T stop there, then two stops on the red line to MIT/Kendall Square, and a ten minute walk from Kendall to work. If I were really lazy, like someone else I know, I’d take the red line to Park St., switch to the Green Line and take it to Lechmere, then the office is only three blocks down. Still, the weather is so nice, that the walk is worth it. Plus taking the T that extra distance doesn’t get me here any earlier.
I really do need a digital camera, gotta take some pictures here… back to work, more later.
Well, things kind of settled down a bit towards the end of the week, and the weather was really nice on Friday. I met a friend for lunch on Friday, we grabbed a sandwich from K2, over by MIT and walked down to eat sitting on a park bench facing the river and downtown Boston. Then it rained all day Saturday, blah. Well, I guess I’m getting my $5 worth out of the umbrella I bought at Old Navy anyway. I walked over to Peet’s coffee shop and to a pho place (Pho Pasteur) in Harvard Square, both of which were pretty busy. Seems that the area fills up with tourists on the weekends. I did a bunch of laundry Friday night and Sautrday. It’s nice to have access to a washer and dryer in the apartment, even if they’re small.
Well, I made it back here… Arrived late on Saturday night, and took a taxi to the apartment near Harvard Square. I was abducted on Sunday morning, and spent Easter Sunday on Cape Cod with my dad, his fiancee Trish and my Aunt Ann, and cousin Alexander. Monday night we went for dinner at Locke-Ober, near the Park St. T station, and Tuesday was dinner at Legal Seafood on the long wharf neat the Aquarium. I’m finding my way around pretty well on the T, dealing with not having a car pretty well. It’s really kind of nice, even though the weather is still a bit cool, to walk and take the T to work. Work has been pretty busy though, lots of meetings and planning going on.
Well, Thursday was my dad’s birthday, I hope everyone else remembered to send a card and call! I did. It was good talking to dad, sounds like he and Trish will be coming to visit me in Boston, which is good… I’ll be packing up my stuff the rest of this week in preparation for spending the summer there. Going to ship my office PC to Cambridge so I’ll have it there. I need a digital camera to take some pics of stuff while I’m there too. The Canon PowerShot S50 looks good, and my birthday is coming up too… (hint).
OK, California is getting the rain and snow we should have gotten over the last two months all squeezed into this weekend. So, that means the dogs are afraid to go outside and get their feet wet, the garden and fruit trees are getting watered by themselves, and the front lawn is turning into a jungle. It did give me a chance to catch up on laundry though. I managed to pull some weeds and prune the cherry tree a bit yesterday before it started.
Going home finally, caught a taxi to the airport, no traffic, but the airport was pretty busy, that’s OK, I made it here early enough. Grabbed a bagel and coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts. Their bagels are only OK, but the coffee is great. Another thing that hasn’t made it far enough west yet. I’m catching up on my blog stuff.
It snowed overnight, and half of the team didn’t make it in today. It’s April, it’s not supposed to be snowing still, but whatever. I got an offline message from Nhut overnight… File this one under “I told you so.”. Makes me really glad that I decided not to go to Japan. More on that later. I’m hoping he’ll have some time to spend a few days in Boston in June, there’s so much to do and see here. I got back from my last meeting to find out that my flight back to San Jose was cancelled. Got my flight rescheduled for tomorrow morning, and I got booked back into the hotel again. Decided to go to the Union Oyster House for dinner since I have to be here another night. Managed to navigate my way there and back on the Green Line without getting on the wrong train. Nhut was updating his gallery today with pictures from our 2001 Australia trip, and says he wants to go back there again. Maybe we can visit Adrian in Melbourne this time around. He sent me a picture of the outside area of the house taken just after he had ripped out the deck, which confirmed the thing had been under construction for nearly two years!
Back to work… I wrote up some conference notes, and posted them in our teamroom database. Since I had made some contacts that the MBA recruiting manager could use, I mentioned it on our team call too. This was a busy day at work, I’m really liking the team here, and the office, and looking forward to spending the summer in Boston. The weather report was calling for snow all day today, but it held off till pretty late. I met Lilac again for dinner, we went to a place in Harvard Square, that was famous for it’s Burgers. The restaurant was celebrating 42 years of being in business. It was fun, and the food was great. Of course, hanging out with Lilac is always fun, she’s awesome. Had an interesting conversation with an online friend who apparently still needs counselling in anger management.
Early morning wake up call to catch the Shortline bus up to Woodbury. Damn, the bus is expensive, $27 for a round trip ticket. There was a huge line for the 10:00 AM bus, and they actually had to bring up a second bus to accomodate all the people. There was this really rude woman who got in line behind me, and as it was starting to look like we wouldn’t make the early bus, she starts cutting ahead of me in line. I was seriously annoyed with this biatch, but it wasn’t worth making a scene over, that’s for sure. When the driver started pulling people out of the line who were going beyond Woodbury, she looks at me and cuts right across in front of me, asking some lame-o question about why are they pulling people out of line… I flashed her my best mad face, and that biatch got back into line behind me. Game over! Anyway, I caught the express bus, so it was quick, traffic was light. Joe picked me up at the bus stop in his new truck, which was really nice, should be great for pulling his boat and stuff. We hung out at his place for a while, had breakfast and caught up for a bit, then went over to see his parents and a few friends. We eventually headed back to his place and hung out, Barb came home and we told some stories while Joe was making dinner. I have to plan a couple trips up to Lake George this summer to hang out with Joe and Barb. Dinner was really good, but I had to totally eat and run to make the 5:21 bus. Made it into the city quick again, another express bus… so I walked up to Penn Station from the Port Athority Bus Terminal. Amtrack had a pretty nice waiting area for Acela passengers in Penn Station. There was a decent pizza shop there too, had a slice while I was waiting. The train ride was a little less jerky on the way back to Boston, we got in around 11:30 I think, I caught the T back to the hotel. Note to self: Lechmere station is closer to work and hotel than the Science Park station on the Green line.
Got up for the conference breakfast at 9:00, still haven’t hooked up with any of my coworkers at the conference, and I am definitely not feeling it here. The breakfast speaker was good though, he had some intersting insights on responsibilities, and giving back to the community that I made some notes on. I attended a morning panel sponsored by IBM and Jaguar that discussed two case studies for marketing to the GLBT community. The conference was in full swing, and starting to get interesting. After the first panel, I walked up and introduced myself to Rob Schook, one of the other IBMers there, who was talking to Stan Kimer, another IBMer, and Joseph Bertolotti also stopped by. The keynote speaker at lunch was a gay executive from Ford, who also had some great insights about being out at work and the business case for diversity. I saw Kat, one of the people I had met at the conference last year, who was a panelist on the employee groups panel representing Ford Globe. Then I sat in on an afternoon panel on being out in the recruiting process, heard some interesting insights and got a few ideas on things to do to make recruits feel more comfortable during the recruiting process, and making people available to talk to recruits about what it’s like to be an out gay employee at IBM. The last major thing to do at the conference was to help out at the company Expo/recruiting area. I worked with Larry Dunn and Ben Jobes to represent IBM at our table. I met some career services folks from schools where Extreme Blue doesn’t recruit, who would like for us to come to campus next year. Columbia, Wharton and NYU all expressed an interest in having Extreme Blue come to campus. I spoke with Liz Zale who left IBM to go work at Columbia University, it was so great seeing her, and she seemed happy in her new role at Columbia. We had a great chat, which was really nide… she pointed out that if I wanted to find some friends to go snowboarding or mountain biking with, I needed to make friends with more lesbians! Larry and I wrapped up the recruiting materials and packed up all the extra stuff kinda late, and we decided to walk up to Carnegie Deli for dinner. It’s one of my favorrite places to eat and take out-of towners. On the way uptown, I asked Larry if he knew how to get to Carnegie Hall. (break out your dinosaur joke book for the answer) There were two women seated at the table next us, who were talking about going to the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building (tourists), so we get to talking to them, and she asks me if I know how to get to Carnegie Hall. Larry and I were sickering as I answered; “Practice”. After they figured the joke out, I gave them directions, not like it’s that difficult, it’s just around the corner. Anyway, I called Joe and Barb and let them know I wasn’t going to be able to make it up to their place till Sunday. I called Sandra to let her know that I would sublet the apartment in Harvard Square, and sent an e-mail off the the guys in Porter Square to let them know that I wouldn’t be subletting their room.
