THURSDAY: Spend about 9 hours flying to Hartford from LA / Burbank. Stopped off in Phoenix and then Nashville, all flights booked to the last seat. Mostly slept after having been up most of the previous night packing and whatnot, though I did get in a few chapters of The Stand and watched a few eps of Aliens in America thanks to the magic of my Macbook. Got into Bradley airport at about 10 pm-ish, got home, felt like I had just taken a 10 hour trip to the twilight zone and back. Mostly, dying to know what happened on LOST.
FRIDAY: Drove up to Boston with the parents. You can imagine the fun of that two hour car ride that seems to always take twice as long when I'm subject to various lectures. Due to poor planning, last-minute plan-changes, etc, we hadn't originally anticipated arriving in Boston as early as Friday. But my brother decided we should all attend the big family Shabbat dinner gala at the BU Hillel (my old stomping grounds ... well, kinda - the new multi-million dollar Hillel building didn't exist back when I was a student). So yeah, this complicated things as of course all hotel rooms in the Boston area are pretty much sold out about a year in advance for graduation weekend. Ergo, the strange necessity to stay in a hotel in FRAMINGHAM, which is a good 30 - 40 minutes from Boston proper. Slightly absurd, when you realize another hour's drive and we'd be home in CT. But I guess that's the nature of family trips, especiall those involving two grown children who live on opposite sides of the country - things tend to get wonky. The Hillel dinner was nice, though it was certainly a little strange to be back eating Friday night dinner at the BU Hillel. In the course of a few mere hours, all my old feelings for the place seemed to come and go in waves. At first I saw a few familiar faces and remembered the fun sense of community that I had enjoyed there. Despite the new building, the food was pretty much the same as always, for better or for worse. Great challah rolls, okay chicken, odd-tasting soup, some tasty desserts. Just like I remembered it. There was probably one self-congratulatory speech too many and a bit of that old feeling of insularity, but overall it was a fun dinner, and I was happy to see the new building, etc. Anyways ... back in (yikes) Framingham, I watched the Lakers-Jazz game, hit the hay, and prepared for another day of Super Family Fun Time. Random tangent: at Hillel, some guy made a comment that he couldn't believe I was 25 and that he thought I was the younger brother as opposed to Matt. Um, say what now? This is my perpetually baby-faced younger brother we're talking about here too. Hmmm ... Well, not to worry, this trip should prob age me a good few years or so ...
SATURDAY: Which brings me to today ... Let's see ... we moved to Hotel #2, this time in Boston proper nearby to the Copley area, which itself isn't far from BU. Had some lunch in Copley Plaza, then did a little (okay, A LOT) of walking around Boston. This was fun though - my brother and I went up and down Newbury St., home to one of my absolute favorite places ever, the original Newbury Comics. Newbury Comics, if you don't know, is basically a mecca for all things awesome. Any cult DVD, great CD, graphic novel, or hipster T-shirt you could want is sold within its incense-tinged walls, and all at crazy-low prices, for the most part. Man, I wish there was a Newbury Comics in LA. On a whim, I checked to see if they had some hard-to-find Coen Bros. classics in stock - Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy. They did! And now my Coen DVD collection is almost complete ... Anyways, we walked all around Beantown, from Copley to Newbury to the Boston Common and then finally to Quincy Market and Faneul Hall. We had some food at Quincy Market's famed foodcourt, the T'd it back to Copley. Luckily, it was quite the nice day in Boston, so despite some sore feet, it wasn't a bad day for walking. Finally, my brother and I went to see a Boston staple, Blue Man Group! I saw them once way back during my freshman year of college. It was funny too, because that event was one of my first time hanging out with many of my soon-to-be best friends - Aksel, Christine T., and Stephanie P.. My brother had never been, so we went, enjoyed, and got caught up in all the alien blue trippiness of it all. Gotta love the Blue Man Group.
Which brings me to now. Holy lord, it's about 1 am and I have to be up in like 6 hours. Sonofa ... all I can say is that this is DEFINITELY one of those "vacations" where I'll be needing some sort of vacation from my vacation. Ugh - and I apologize in advance to a few Beantown-based friends who I had contacted last week about meeting up. This is one of those trips where I feel like I'm on a leash or something -- just too much craziness and no moment to slip away.
So, tomorrow is graduation day. Two count 'em two ceremonies (one big BU commencement, one just for COM). Then, dinner with the extended family, then, home to CT ... finally. Oh, but then Monday I am waking up at about 5 am to help my brother move out of his apartment. Just kill me now.
Oh, it's funny too - in the hotel I'm staying in tonight, hated rival Boston College is having this really obnoxious senior ball thing. I say it's obnoxious because:
- students are riding in on these horrid disco-busses with flashing lights and blaring music, leaning out the windows yelling stuff like "college!"
- the attendees are dressed ridiculously. I've never seen so many dudes sporting ironic vanity canes in my life. Is that a new thing? If so god help the youth of America.
- in general, well, you BU peeps know how it goes: BC SUCKS!
And yeah, I'm still wondering what happened on LOST.
Live from BOSTON, this has been the All-New, All-Awesome (and some not so awesome) Adventures of Danny Baram.
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