yupp...

So, I decided to be all earth-friendly, and take a bus into Boston, to go to Octoberfest. Boy was that a mistake. Forty minutes after leaving my house, I'm still about three miles away... the bus stops to pick up everybody and their grandma, apparently following a schedule of its own. Not so good.

hole in the heart

After much preparation, and some last-minute packing, Susan left for France. She's gonna be teaching English in a high school in Paris... and I'll be missing her for seven months.

It's never easy to say goodbye, even if we are gonna see each other in just over a month - but I am reassured in knowing that she's doing what she wanted to do for so long. I'm proud of Sue for putting up with the corporate world that she dislikes so much, just to have this opportunity.

In every situation, there's a silver lining - in this case, I have just enough time to man-ify the house. I told Sue that when she comes back, race car pictures are gonna be everywhere, and she thought I was kidding. Hehe... I guess we'll see what happens seven months from now ;p

hole in the wall

Yup, I literally have a hole in the wall of my house:

Why? Well, a big part of the reason is that the hole used to contain this attractive chunk of metal:
... which was once an air conditioner/heater. Too bad it showed no signs of life, and it's also too bad that it weighed about 150 pounds. My dad and I def. went to town on it with my sledgehammer... now I just have to figure out how to make my wall impervious to cold and small animals again.

nifty museum

It's always amazing to discover something completely new in a city that you think you know very well. Thanks to yelp, we did just that last week.

As it turns out, Isabella Stewart Gardner was an avid art collector who passed away in 1924. She spent much of her life setting up the museum that now bears her name, and left instructions in her will to leave the collection untouched. So, for about a century, her eccentric composition, with religious artifacts competing for space with medieval furniture, European paitings, and Asisan knick-knacks, has been in the shadow of the Museum of Fine Arts.

The building itself is very interesting - plain on the outside, but made to look like a Venitian palazzo on the inside. Most of the room that surround the indoor courtyard are dimly lit, and the atmospehere is very much different from your run-of-the-mill sterile rooms that other museums tend to have.

One of the rooms has a few empty frames - a remnant of a robbery that occured in 1990, when several vital pieces were stolen, including works by Rembrandt. Because the collection cannot be altered, the frames remain there, and FBI is supposedly still busy trying to track down the theives.

Speaking about a steal - yelp got us in for free, and hooked us up with free drinks. What's not to love?

um yeah

I can safely say that I've been pretty darn busy lately. Having a house turns out to be a lot like having a baby (at least, from what I understand about having babies, which is not much). This particular baby, however, needs painting, electrical work, and all around "intensive TLC".

At the same time, I'm trying to spend as much quality time as I can with Susan, as she's leaving to teach English in Paris for seven months. Last week, we visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum - definitely some quality time there, I guess I should write about that separately. But yeah, the next few months are gonna be something else, let me tell ya.

This weekend, Daisk, Chris, and Anne all came down from New York to say bye to Sue. Wish I could spend time with them - but, as Daisk can attest to, much of the weekend was spent running around, visiting places, picking up things, and barely having a chance to catch up with people. The highlight was us dropping by to watch the Pats' game with Adam's friends - and staying there for exactly 20 minutes, before we had to jet back to South Station.

...

Some weeks are good, some weeks are all right, and some weeks make you ask, what the hell is happening...

Last week, my grandpa passed away. He's lived a great life, much longer and many times more meaningful that mine could ever be. Born in 1914, he took the brunt of what life had in store for him – and emerged victorious, able to look back at the calamities that he has dealt with, and crack a joke as only he could. Heck, he’s outlived Communism, never bowing down to the ones who thought they were in charge. It was because of men like him that Russia could survive, even if it was bled dry by Stalin and then thrown in front of the Nazi war machine.

I say all these things, and yet I feel how big of a void grandpa's passing has left in my family. Worse yet, we're separated by thousands of miles, and I feel like I couldn't be there for my grandpa when he needed me most, and I never got to say goodbye. All the memories, all the things he taught me - I can no longer share with him. But one thing for sure - they will stay with me forever.

Later on in the week, I called Kenny Kwong, and was shocked to hear that a good friend of his young family, the girl that I walked with in their wedding party, has passed away unexpectedly. And this wasn't all. The same week, Kenny lost his dad to a heart attack.

Like mine, Kenny's family is small. Him and his younger brother have just mourned the passing of their mother just a few years ago, and what is happening now is just unthinkable.

I have never believed in God, and I'm glad that I don't have to make excuses now. But I did believe in the general fairness of life. Right now, I'm not quite sure what to believe.

love thy neighbor

Today I discovered a corner in my house that's getting wireless reception from one of the houses nearby. Hmm. I just might have to relocate my desktop, and forget about calling Verizon.

cancellation trip

On Monday, with the Labor Day upon us and all, I headed to Maine. We normally have a cabrewing (canoe + beer) adventure that lasts a couple of days, but this year everybody was just too busy. Still, I got a chance to get on the river, and also check out the deck that Jeff is building. That's probably why I end up going every year - to get a taste of life that's so different from mine. Folks in Maine are self-reliant by definition: you have to be if you're surrounded by forest on all sides. I caught myself thinking, how would Maine react if it was hit by Katrina? My guess: "F it, man. Let's finish this joint, and fix up this bad boy."