Of beans, ghosts, and wearing red

So, I went to a conference last week, and Brian went with me. It was my first time sharing a professional event with significant other.

Seldom have I been to a more interesting place as Boston. I have seen lots of old edifices, grand cathedrals and the like. But this was MY history, and it had personal meaning because of that. Plus, it's just intellectually interesting - like the MIT study that was recently performed to test this supposedly haunted spot in the harbor where a lighthouse master and his family drowned (all except one daughter, that was waiting on the shore for the family to arrive and watched the tragedy occur). The MIT team's equipment supposedly went crazy when they got to the specific spot.


And Salem - jeez! What a creepy place. All this commercialism attempts to gloss over the events that transpired there over the centuries (of course, the witch hunts, but also all the pirating and the criminals that were hanged and the people that died of the plague or the pox or some other catastrophe, natural or otherwise) but if you stop and sense for a moment the residual energy that is still there... Well, we left at nightfall.


Going to the conference during the day and having my honey waiting for me when I got out was something that I would definitely like to do again. The only hard part was going to "school" while he was out galavanting around, taking in the sights. Luckily, the conference was really interesting, so as soon as things would get started, I was fine, but on breaks I kept thinking about Brian and calling him to find out what he was doing. Then we'd have the whole evening together, debriefing over dinner and visiting some other site before returning to our B&B. Really, really good feeling. As I said, I liked that.

I found out I ____ ABHOR___ lobster. At least when it's served whole, so you can see the head and the eyes and the antennae and the legs, and when you have to touch the bug shell to get the meat. Dear God, my stomach lurches even now as I write and remember. On to the next topic.

GOOOOOOOO CARDS!!!!!!!!!!

After catching a little bit of the beginning of the game at Cheers (the second one that they put in Faneuil Hall, not the real one that looks like the bar from the outside but doesn't on the inside), we went on a nighttime tour of the haunted parts of Boston (again, murders and plagues and such). Brian's gizmo that he can text-message and receive updates on had a half-hour lag time, so I called my friend Ed (who I knew would be watching the game unless he was under a surgeon's knife or incarcerated) to catch up on the score. Then we had just left the cemetery where Paul Revere, Sam Adams, and the 5 victims of the Boston Massacre (among many other names of greater or lesser renown) are buried when we walked past a bar that had a TV facing the window. A fellow tourist pointed at the TV and sure enough - Cards were jumping up and down and fireworks were going off. I brought it to Bri's attention and we hooted and hollered some. We were in an American League city, though, so the others around us didn't seem that excited. Plus, it was bloody cold and we had to get back on the trolley.


On Sunday, I watched the parade and rally on TV. Having gotten up at 4 a.m. and traveled for 8 1/2 hours, I just didn't have the energy to personally join in the revelry. And, as many of my coworkers, I wore red today to work.

I don't think we won against the Mets because we played that well in the playoffs; rather, they didn't really shine. But during the Series - boy, it was just good ball. Both teams did their best, and fortunately STL gets to celebrate, but really, it was just good ball.