don't blog that!

Oh, oh, Boston you’re my [soon-to-be-almost] home!

This morning my family and I headed into Boston (Cambridge, actually) for the final non-busy day of our vacation.

The drive up was uneventful.  I managed to finish a few chapters of “Gödel, Escher, Bach” on the way up (down?), and it is really an interesting book.  Read it.  Now.

When we got there, I remembered one fact about major cities that had previously slipped my mind:

Parking is Hell.  Eventually we found a parking garage near the Kendall Square T station, and drove around and around and around and around until we finally found a parking space.  As my repetition indicated, it took quite a while.  We ended up on the sixth floor out of eight.  Here’s a view down the gap between the railing and the ramp, for perspective:

Now, we headed off to building 7 to try and accomplish my real mission here — to turn in the varsity athletic health form that was due… today.  It was harder than it sounded.

First, I had no idea where I was supposed to go, so we wandered around campus for a bit hoping for a shining arrow to guide the way.  No such luck.  Further investigation of the paperwork indicated that it should be turned in to room W35-297.  Great! A goal!

Next problem — I discovered that I really have no idea how to get around campus.  We somehow ended up in building 35 (notice the lack of “W”).  It would have been great to know that W35 was the Z-Center (I know it makes sense (athletics/athletic forms), but still…).  At least I got it in on time.

Next, I showed my family where I was going to be living this year (careful not to indicate the actual room, for my safety).  I also got a picture of a random part of EAsT camPUS that I will now insert into this post.

And then we were off to Kendall Square.  I bought myself another MIT sweatshirt at the COOP, and we headed down to the T station.  Our goal: FiRE and iCE, for lunch.

Aren’t I awesome? <_<

This was my first time there, and it is a really cool concept.  You grab a bowl and fill it up with veggies, pasta, meat/seafood/tofu, and whatever else you want.  Then, you choose a sauce from their selections and bring it over to their insanely large grill, where a chef cooks it all up for you.

The meal also includes a salad, rice, and tortillas.  For $7.95, it wasn’t a bad deal at all.

I got some pasta with eggplant, steak, salmon, sausage, and teriaki sauce.  Quite an eclectic mix.  When I got my meal, I discovered what was really my only issue with this place — some of the squid from the person next to me managed to migrate into my plate.

*stares at plate*
*contemplates squid*
*mentally says “what the hell” and eats squid*
It actually wasn’t that bad.

After that, we headed back to the parking garage and headed out of the city.  We were going down to Bridgewater State College so that my sister could begin her college search.

When we got there the admissions office was closed, so we ended up just driving around and checking it out.  While there, I saw this in one of the parking lots:

Man, that’s gotta be a long walk.  Bridgewater is more than 30 miles from Cambridge!

After we finished there, we all went down the highway to the closest Swedish embassy.

(Click for humorous Ikea-based song)

It really is amazing what they sell in there!  First there’s the obvious, furniture (which may have been the scene of a crime):

For that furniture, they of course have a sea of shopping carts (which are perfectly sized to fit the bed after it somehow magically folds into a 1′x1′ box).

They even had food!

Me: Wow, they have everything here!
Sister: I bet they don’t have clothes.
Me: I hope they do.
*after leaving the store*
Me: Darn you Ikea!! Why couldn’t you at least have a T-Shirt or something so I could have laughed at my sister?!
Sister: Hey!!

And then we went home.

The End.