July 17

Can you guess what this is?

It's been a weirdly unproductive day today. I woke up late, I didn't get much done this morning (although I did what I could to help a neighbor in need), and once at work, I got the necessary tasks out of the way without getting a lot accomplished otherwise. On the plus side, the night has passed pretty quickly. All these factors combined explain both why I'm posting a photo so late -- I had trouble getting one that I liked -- and why the one photo I chose is difficult to interpret.

The photo, by the way, is a close-up of the Murano glass chandelier in the lobby of my workplace. Pretty, isn't it?

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July 16

I live a life mostly free of conspiracy theories (and conspiracy theorists). So it was with some surprise that I pulled this single from my wallet this afternoon and saw the stamps some conspiracy theorist had festooned it with:

The Federal Reserve is
Privately Owned
This money is backed by
Nothing

All righty, then.

I showed it to my friend Anna, who graciously did a pseudo-Norma Desmond impression for me holding the worthless little piece of paper in question.

One has to wonder if the person who bartered to have the stamp made (since money is worthless) only crusades about the Federal Reserve Bank. I'm left wondering whether he also rails on about the New World Order, or chemtrails, or the idea that the moon landings were faked.

On reflection, I suspect not. Conspiracy theorists are loyal to their theories, and this guy (I can't imagine it's a woman) gets his jollies telling the rest of us about this theory -- and stamping money in the process.

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July 15

The past few days have been beautiful in the Boston area, and I've taken advantage of that (and serendipity) to work on catching up on laundry.

Why serendipity? We've had a rotating clothesline connected to our back porch since we moved in eight years ago. As our enclosed back porch is also the only storage space we have, we piled it so full of our crap that getting access to that clothesline wasn't a big deal. Then our clothes dryer broke. Since this has been the summer of hemorrhaging money, we haven't had enough money at any one time to have it repaired or replaced. So weekly trips to the laundromat to dry our clothes have been an integral part of the ol' summer routine.

However, our cleaning jig over Independence Day means that we can reach our clothesline now. Which is nice, once you get past worrying whether birds are going to use your laundry as a loo. With the nice sunny weather and access to the clothesline, we're no longer at the mercy of the Big Spin Laundromat.

Well, until it rains.

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July 14

It was a beautiful, partly-cloudy day in Boston today. High temperature of 80, light breezes, and just really delightful.

It's a pity I had to work.

I took my camera with me both times I had to go do the meter dance (moving my car space to space), and caught the clouds reflecting on the mirrored glass facade of 111 Huntington Avenue. I originally planned to zoom way in and get the faceted effect up close, but I only had a mid-range zoom. Cropping was a possibility, but after polling friends online, I decided I liked this composition well enough to go with it as-is.

Many city dwellers -- unlike tourists -- go about their lives in cities with their heads down, charging through the crowds to get where they need to be. It's really a shame, because you can see beautiful things if you just look up occasionally.

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July 13

It's no secret that I'm picky and have an eye for detail. I'm meticulous about many things, and I have a laser eye that homes in on errors, omissions, and the just plain stupid. Combined with my occasionally-blunt nature and strongly-held opinions, this makes some interactions with people less than productive.

Fortunately, my friends have learned to accept these traits about me, in the same vein that I've learned to shut up occasionally and not spout my instant appraisal of things if somebody's feelings may be hurt. It's a good combination.

Sometimes, though, being the bastard described above can have its benefits. My friend Julie is applying to graduate school, and she's enlisted me to help proofread and edit her written application materials. I made sure to ask first before I really ripped into her stuff, and even though it is well-written, I still managed a page and a half of handwritten notes before I put fingers to keyboard to write up my recommendations.

And for what it's worth, I was careful to preface my comments to her, so she wouldn't think I thought she'd written complete crap. :-)

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July 12

Oh, pretty flowers, my constant summer fall-back option.

After yesterday's ambitious photo walk, today I didn't really feel like going out (except to put my poor sneakers on the clothesline to dry after getting caught in the cloudburst). When hunger overcame apathy, I grabbed my camera for a quick walk to Roslindale Square and a stop at the fabulously cheap-and-cheerful Wapo Taco. It was closed.

Turns out, the highlight of my walk was right at the beginning. I stopped and got photos of these marvelously blue-purple flowers on my neighbor Nicolene's porch -- perhaps 150 feet from my own front door. They have a sort of wild exuberance that helped cheer me up.

I wish I could grow plants. Except for tomatoes, which are known to thrive under benign neglect, I've never grown anything substantive. Maybe someday, when I have a yard, I'll try again.

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July 11

Periodically in Boston -- every ten years or so -- we're visited by a flotilla of tall ships.

Being a Sailor, I'm always drawn to these events. Many people assume that any sailing ship is a tall ship, so all the sailing ships in the harbor generate quite a bit of buzz. To be considered a true tall ship, the vessel has to have traditional rigging, usually has square sails, and is a fairly large ship. In this case, there were several tall ships among the myriad smaller sailboats.

The ship in the foreground is the Portuguese sailing ship Sagres. Their ship was definitely the best lit tonight. I may try to make it back tomorrow for a tour, but if I don't, I'll feel better knowing I got to see them.

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July 10

Most taxicabs in Boston are white Crown Victorias, so you have to give these guys points for originality on a couple of choices.

They call these things rickshaws, though I always thought a rickshaw was carried through the streets, not pedaled through the streets. As a lazy pedant, however, the distinction is only enough to bug me a little.

Their other original choice is that they don't have set charges. They only request you "pay what you please," which strikes me as an utterly ridiculous way of handling things. Sure, most of the pedicabs have advertising on them, but unless the advertisers are paying more money than I would, charging for their services wouldn't seem unreasonable.

Then again, I was a liberal arts major and never was very good at math, so there you go.

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July 09

Today's Photo of the Day was selected with the advice and sage counsel of my friend and doorman, Ennio.

Some days, it's easy to get a great photo. Other days, you kind of have to pick from the best of a mediocre lot, perhaps photoshop it a bit for an artsy-fartsy effect and hope your readership (all five of you) will give you a pass. When you get a day sort of in the middle, with three possibilities, all dodgy, you have to call in your arbiter of taste -- in my case, that's Ennio.

Ennio thought the fuzzy, through-the-windshield shot of the man with the questionable fashion choices was "too weird." He found the photo of the statue of Athena atop the Cambridge Athenæum "unmoving." So it fell to the DUKW --pronounced "duck" -- to carry the day.

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July 08

The word "FAIL" has become a catchphrase among young people. It's a fair and accurate -- and brief -- descriptive word; it's sort of the "NOT!" of the new generation. There's even a blog dedicated to it. So when I saw it on a parking meter, the bane of my existence as a street parker in an urban area, I couldn't help but think how appropriate it seemed.

My life sometimes feels like a big fat "FAIL", but I keep plugging along. What was a leisurely job search, a "what-if" exercise in the current perilous economic climate, may be taking on a new urgency soon. Keep your fingers crossed and let's hope this one is FTW (For The Win), as the kids say.

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July 07

So far today, I've had a trash pickup, handheld a mover through the processing of scheduling a move, had dinner with a lady friend (where a cute tattooed restaurant manager flirted with both of us), then watched her devour a pound-sized milk chocolate bar. You'd think I would have an utterly fascinating Photo of the Day today from these adventures.

You would be wrong.

On the plus side, that Bagster that we filled over the weekend was picked up today, in the pouring rain, and taken away. It was pretty nifty watching the crane unfold from the truck and lift the big ol' green bag out of the driveway and making it disappear. And really, it put me in a better mood for the rest of the evening.

Not utterly fascinating, but still relevant -- which is more than I can say for my life. :-)

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July 06

This is a Bagster. It is an eight foot by four foot by 2.5 foot container designed for refuse. Basically, with a few exceptions, if you can fit it in there, the Bagster people will take it away.

Boyfriend and I spent the entire weekend cleaning and decluttering. While our goal wasn't explicitly to fill the Bagster, it was nice not having to worry about how much stuff we carried out. As you can see, we did fill the thing -- starting off with the 80s-styled dresser that was my first furniture purchase on my own. Beating it to bits with a hammer was spectacularly cathartic.

We made a dent in the household clutter and will hopefully make more progress now that we have some momentum. Meanwhile, I'm pretty proud that we've let go of so much crap.

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July 05

This is one unhappy kitty cat.

When my landladies go away for a weekend, I usually volunteer to take care of their critters -- Jasper the dog, Tico and Ulti the cats, and the fishes (thus far unnamed). Tico is accustomed to having his time outside every day, but when I'm in charge he has to stay indoors. It's not me being a bastard by keeping the cat in; it's more that I worry that he'll go out one day and get injured, or hit by a car, or perhaps worst of all, simply not come back. I'm not ready to be the person responsible for caring for the pet who mysteriously disappears -- particularly when I write the owner a check once a month for rent!

I caught Tico gazing balefully at me from the front window today, either longing to go outside or trying to make me feel guilty by hamming it up. Either way, I think it makes for a POTD that really tells a story.

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July 04

Happy Independence Day!

Boyfriend and I got our usual late start today, but we did shoehorn a full day's work into it. We positively filled our bagster, though we're still shoving stuff into the nooks and crannys. We got an excellent start by moving a large but beat-up dresser first; getting something large out of the way showed real progress right away. I also have to admit, busting down the drawers with a hammer to lay flat was quite cathartic.

Unfortunately, even with all our work, we're not nearly done with the cleaning and decluttering. Fortunately, we have tomorrow to try and finish up.

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July 03

The lottery is often dismissed as a tax on people who can't do math.

I can't argue with that, really. I was a liberal arts major, so it turns out that I'm not that good at math. Still, I don't see the harm in purchasing the occasional scratch ticket, or powerball ticket, or even the odd raffle ticket. I'm certainly not gambling great amounts of money on stuff like this -- I can't afford to -- but it's nice to entertain notions about what Boyfriend and I would do if we were to win all that money. The powerball, by the way, is up to $113 million tonight.

$113 million. That's a lot of Dr Pepper ....

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July 02

My dog died late last night. It seems most appropriate that it's raining cats and dogs today.

Pogo was unique. Dog lovers knows that every dog has a distinct personality, and Pogo was no exception. He was wickedly intelligent and had a strong will. Part border collie, part husky, genetics played a joke on him. He had the broad chest, thick fur with undercoat, and curly tail of a husky, but a tiny rear end, short legs, and face of a border collie. That didn't stop him from trying to herd Boyfriend and me to where he thought we should be. He was the runt of the litter when Boyfriend's parents picked him as a puppy, but in his youth he could leap snowbanks and, when excited, would simply jump up and down, over and over. My sister-in-law told me that was one of her first memories of Pogo, jumping continuously like that.

Pogo's health had been in decline for the past year. He had a tumor taken off of his belly last July. Last October, he became diabetic. Cataracts took most of his sight in February. Still, he ate heartily and was still adept at climbing the stairs and getting up onto the king-size bed with us to sleep. When he got very sick last night and couldn't keep his food down, Boyfriend took him to the animal hospital, where he declined quickly. I left work early to go there with him. We talked about it and agreed that it was time to let Pogo go.

He went quickly -- within 10 seconds -- after the injection.

The folks at Parkway Veterinary Hospital -- Dr. Segal, Dr. Higgins, Dr. Mekler, Sandie, Heather, Nancy, all of them -- are phenomenal caregivers, both for Pogo and Pretty Boy, our cat, and for Boyfriend and me, their two overanxious owners. And the emergency staff at the MSPCA's Angell Memorial -- especially Dr. Clark -- were kind, comforting, and thoroughly professional.

It seems absurd to eulogize a dog, but I've never been one to shy away from absurdity. I know that we made the right decision for Pogo, and we made it at the right time.

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Today's Photo of the Day was taken on Christmas Day 2007.

July 01

If I had to come up with a title for this photo, I think it would have to be "Dueling Parking Tickets."

Seeing parking tickets in Boston's Back Bay is as common as seeing grass in a park. Parking Enforcement Officers (to call them "meter maids" seems both dimunitive of their jobs and pejorative) are tasked with enforcing the byzantine series of laws governing parking in the city. Traffic Rules and Regulations, the official City of Boston document governing parking, is 49 pages long. It's full of interesting information, such as Article IV, Section 17, Item 1a: "If the parking regulations at a particular location change due to time, then a second parking ticket may be issued after the expiration of ten (10) minutes from the time the first parking ticket was issued."

Seeing two tickets on one car, undoubtedly two perfectly legal tickets according to Traffic Rules and Regulations, is a bit more unusual. It's also noteworthy enough for a Photo of the Day on a rainy, slow Wednesday.

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June 30

Everybody in Boston has been complaining about the weather this month. It's been cool, damp, and a little dreary, with 25 days of overcast skies this month. At first, people compared it to living in Seattle; now the globetrotters among us have begun comparing it to London. That's really unfair; London's forecast calls for sunshine and highs in the low 80s tomorrow, which is considerably better than Boston.

Surprisingly -- especially to me -- I haven't found the weather too unpleasant this month. Sure, I enjoy the sunshine as much as anybody, but the cooler weather is nice, and the payoff for all the rain is in the verdant green grass and flora we're having.

Besides, almost anything is better than this winter, and frankly, I'm already planning to bitch about the heat and humidity come summer. So, if I'm to be true to myself, I can't in good conscience bitch about this month's weather.

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June 29

It's the start of a long week, one that will lead up to Independence Day on Saturday. We're doing a deep, deep housecleaning this weekend, something I'm looking very forward to. Planning something on this scale requires -- as almost any project I'm involved with -- lists.

The good news is that the lists are coming along fine. We're labeling stuff to donate and the rest will be thrown out. My intention is to fill our bagster to the brim, leaving our house emptier and hopefully, more habitable.

I'm looking very forward to this project. It's going to feel awfully good to get things in order!

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June 28

This is a bagster.

Boyfriend and I, when we moved in together, brought two households worth of stuff into one household. Then we added stuff. Clutter, as it is wont to do, has accumulated and multiplied and otherwise overwhelmed us in our own home.

Next weekend, while we're both off, Boyfriend and I are cleaning house. I think I said it best earlier when I told a friend that we're "getting rid of shit." That which we can't give away or donate will be tossed into the bagster in the driveway, to be taken away by a big truck the following Monday.

Independence Day is taking on a whole new meaning in our house next weekend.

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