Bahsten, part 1

I write this blog from my friend Ben Leubner’s room in Boston, MA. It’s spring break time once again, and this year I’ve taken a short trip to New England to visit my friend whom I hadn’t seen since I returned to Waukesha from Montana, and to (hopefully) take some photos.

Yesterday wasn’t a very photoriffic day, but more on that to come.

I arrived about half an hour late, but it was a nice flight on the ol’ Midwest Signature service. The two seats across were nice. Of course, the plane was not nearly full, so I’m sure three seats across wouldn’t have been that bad. The plane was a Boeing 717.

Let’s rewind just a little further back to Thursday night — I met Jen & Joe and Raul & Kelly and Steve W out in Waukesha the night before, since my plane was leaving from Mitchell early on Friday morning.

I proceeded to get completely drunk Thursday night, to the point where, when Jen woke me from the couch on Friday morning, 70 minutes before my plane was due to take off, I didn’t even care that I would ruin my trip with beer. I wanted to sleep.

Wound up just rolling out of couch, pulling on clothes from the night before, and speeding across town to meet the plane. I got to the gate as it was finishing boarding, but at least I made it.

I felt like hell in the morning, and I threw up a little bit on the plane before it even took off. I think that that grossed out the woman sitting next to me enough that she didn’t speak to or look at me the rest of the flight.

Anyway, I got into town, Ben met me at baggage claim, and we rode the train back to his place. Dropped my stuff at his apartment, then we had lunch at a restaurant where one of the pieces of art on the wall was a painting someone had done of a family outside a Wal-Mart?.

We walked up to the North End, to a small Italian cafe where Ben enjoys the cappuccino. It was tasty. The walk was also nice — we saw a little bit of the tourist-y stuff in town, and some that wasn’t so tourist-y.

After that, we got on the train again, and went to walk around Harvard. We got there and made fun of the extremely wealthy smart kids. We thought of looking around for the English department, and I realized at that moment, looking for the English department at a university while I’m on spring break makes me simultaneously old and a big geek.

Harvard’s bookstore (The Coop) is basically a Harvard-branded Barnes & Noble. Where most university bookstores have a lot of merchandise with the school’s name enmblazened on it, this one did not. I wanted to get a “Harvard alumni” coffee mug, because I thought that would be funny. We discussed the lack of merchandise a little, and decided that they might only print up enough Harvard alumni mugs for each graduating class, or there is a secret code that we were, of course, too stupid to know, that would allow one access to the merchandising section of the Harvard bookstore.

We went out to a bar called Cornwall’s later on, where we met up with Ben’s romantic interest, Stephanie, and a couple other friends of theirs from class, Jason and Jim. They all seem like good people, and the sort of dorkiness that you would expect from graduate students in English.

Ben is proving to be quite accomodating in terms of lodging. He has worked tirelessly to assure that Wordy and I have a place to stay every night, even if it means that Ben himself is put out of his home. For example: last night I slept in Ben’s bed, while he stayed with Stephanie.

We’re due to pick up Wordell @ the airport in about three hours, so that means I’m going to take a little walk around the neighborhood, have some coffee and a bit o’ breakie perhaps, before Ben returns for the morning.

More on everything as it happens, although, if previous vacations are any indication, I will get to the day that I’m too tired or busy to write something in the blog, so be prepared.

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