Esto Perpetua: An Olsen/Anger Production

 A book I helped make. Read on.

Over the course of the semester each of us poets were randomly assigned an artist from the visual art MFA program. We all made collaborative projects with our artists, and last Monday (May...9th) they unveiled their final projects and we got to see them.

My artist was Kyle Anger. How about that for the coolest name in the freaking world? Here's a very poor picture of both of us:

Kyle decided to use a few of my Idaho poems and he responded to them with ink prints that illustrated/interpreted/made awesome the subject matter I had chosen to include in my work. He made the cover out of dirt (dirt! so rad) and each of the poems is followed by one or two of his ink prints. Anyways, here's the pics I took of it.

 "Geography"

 "Amalgamated Sugar Company"

 "Cascade"

 "Timber"

"Lightning"

Esto perpetua, my beloved Idaho.

Low Brow, High Brow

 Layover in the Denver airport. Time for today's second update.

Last Thursday (May…7th) was my low-brow/high-brow entertainment day in Boston.

In the morning, I was bored and sick of thesis-ing, so I sent out a mass text to see if anybody wanted to go to the Red Sox game with me. Two church friends answered the call/begging for company: Brad Huggins and Mary Nielson, two of my favorite people.

 My boy Dustin Pedroia

I wanted to hit up games for all of the professional sports teams before leaving. I’ve been to a Celtics game and a Bruins game, but not a Sox game. Technically the Patriots are New England and not Boston, so they don’t count. Which is good, because ticket prices are through the roof and their stadium is built in the middle of nowhere.

I bought a flat-bill hat (my first) and Brad and I got some $7 Polish sausages (so good) while we waited for Mary. Mary decided it was a good idea to drive (it’s not) and had walked in the wrong direction for about half a mile, but she we got in just in time.

Polish dog in a flat-bill

Our tickets were legit. We were behind home plate about, oh, 25 or 30 rows back, which meant that we were under the overhang. Being under the overhang is a great idea, especially when the game has a two-hour rain delay after the second inning. Lucky for us, it didn’t get rained out completely. Anyhew, we beat the Minnesota Twins 4-0 and it was a grand afternoon.

 An easy reason to make fun of baseball

The game was over at 6pm, then it rained pretty hard. I took the T home, showered, changed into my dress clothes, and headed to the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I probably should have taken a date, but it was easier to take TJ, who is prettier than most girls anyway. We met there.

 Warming up

So I guess a cool rich dude decided it would be philanthropically assertive to subsidize Boston Symphony Orchestra ticket prices for patrons under 40 years of age. I decided to take the cool rich dude up on his offer, so our seats were $20 and legit. They played Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette. The music was beautiful, with a full orchestra and a solid 80 or 90 person choir. I’m glad I remember some French, because the English translation they had in the program sucked (TJ thought so, too, I’m not just uppity).

 My surroundings at the Symphony

Anyways. We were in like the third row, but since the stage curves we were just about as close as you can get. I could have stood up and bit the violinist playing in front of us, and I made a game of staring angrily at the second-chair cello-ist (is that a word?) who could just barely see me out of the corner of his eye. I don’t know if I threw him off, but he noticed me a few times. Hilarious.

 Random old dude who did nothing but came out and got some flowers anyways.

After that we went next door to the Symphony Eat to watch the Celtics game and, well, eat. Then I went home and went to sleep.

Good day.

My Friend Tiff and My Baby (No Relation, Fortunately and Unfortunately)

It happened a few weeks ago (April...19th I believe), but my dear friend Tiffany Jones came to see me for a day. I took her to a few sweet places, including the Holocaust Memorial near Quincy Market—powerful to say the least—and as usual, the freedom trail. Here's my favorite picture from the trip:

So that post has been waiting to happen for a while. Tiff's on her mission in Washington, D.C. now and who knows when the next time I'll see her is? Not too worried about her, though. I’ve been so busy lately it’s not even funny. Ok, it’s kind of funny now that it’s passed.

Who would have thought that finishing up your one-year masters program early would be so much work? Not this guy. Here’s the beautiful thing I created over the last eight months:

 I swear it looks just like me.

So, yeah, my thesis has been approved by two of the most (perhaps the two most) famous and decorated living poets in America and is officially in the hands of the Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Took a lot out of me, but I’m done.

I turned the thesis in on Monday, and yesterday I didn’t really know what to do with myself, so I went to campus after waking up and compiled all of the translations I did. For my translation course I needed to translate five to seven poems for my final project. When all was said and done, my translation of Alberto de Lacerda’s poetry collection, Exile, weighed in at 91 pages. That’s a little more than twice as big as my thesis. Talk about a project. I loved doing it, and I’ll spend a lot of my time in Europe translating the other book of his that I was able to get my hand on.

So I’m done with my first shot at grad school. Getting good vibes that my grades will rock, and I’m off to Europe on the 28th.

End.

One Month Later

Been a while since I updated. I'm sure some of this will be repeats from things I talked about before, but I don't care.

First things first: a map. One month from tomorrow (the 28th) I will be leaving Boston for here:

Boo ya Iberian Peninsula. I received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. I'll be doing some translating, some out-of-print document location, and a bunch of sight seeing. I'ma start in Lisbon, then move to northern Portugal, then hit Madrid, (hopefully) run with the bulls in Pamplona, spend a few days in the tiny, tiny country of Andorra, then Barcelona. I pulled strings to fly out of Rome, so Italy is on the list as well. I'm half tempted to put a change of clothes and a camera in a backpack and just wing it for ten weeks, but we'll see. To use an understatement, it's gonna be epic.

~

That up there is a fancy tilde-denominated section break, if I do say so myself.

Tonight after our weekly student-only poetry workshop Danielle Dobson and I went to Snappy Sushi to eat some, well, snappy sushi. She told me her tradition is to get a few things that sound disgusting. I highly approve of that idea, so we got two: octopus and sea urchin. Octopus didn't taste like much and I kinda thought it was fun to eat (really gummy). She wasn't a fan of the texture. And sea urchin, well, that's somethin' else. Basically, it looks like crap and tastes like the ocean smells when it's at its worst. In other words it's highly disgusting, but totally worth trying because now I can say I ate sea urchin and I never have to do it again. We washed it down with lots of ginger and then got ice cream.

~

Yet another sweet section break brought to you by the shift key and its partners. 

So...since all but shaving my head a few months ago, I have decided that I want to try growing my hair out for a year. I've trimmed my neck once or twice (gotta do that) but that's kinda it. It's to the point where I have to deal with it, which I'm not a fan of, but it also wings around the back of my trusty BSU cap (Go Broncos) so I'm a little bit okay with it. I haven't grown my hair out long enough for it to be curly for a while, so we'll see how long it lasts. Maybe I'll tell people that I want to grow it out long enough to be able to donate it. That makes it charity (which never faileth). I'm also thinking about not shaving while I'm in Europe, which will make me look amazing by the time I get back. I'll be an all star.

~

I think this tilde thing is gonna be my new thing for a while.

I'm nearing the end of my semester, and consequently nearing the end of my time at BU, which is absolutely insane to me. It's amazing how fast time passes, but I'm ready to not be super-worried about writing and school for a little bit. I've compiled everything that will be going in my thesis, and I've revised about 15 of the 35-40 pages to the point that I'd like to. I have met one-on-one with both of my professors now, which is probably something I should have started doing before the last two months of my program, but I think it's for the best. A few Sundays ago I dropped by Robert's house (I still am amazed that I kick it with Robert Pinsky...and I'll never get sick of name dropping) after church to go over a few poems. It was a good experience. I met his cat, Bobo, who is a beautiful but sheddy animal. We chatted for a while and then went over three of my poems. As usual, he had some great insight. He told me that he finds that one of my characteristics he sees in my poetry is deflection. He said that I deflect seriousness with my wit, which might be more true in my life overall than I'd like to admit. Either way, I did write down my favorite thing he said word for word (mostly). He told me, "My reaction to your work is always admiration, followed by a burning desire to force you to be more serious." I took both as compliments.

~

I have a feeling you'll get sick of the tildes well before I do.

So, yeah, things are progressing nicely. Chad gets married two weeks from this Friday, I taught my last day of class with my creative writing kids this afternoon (we acted out their one-act plays: hilarious), I rocked my second-ever poetry reading last night at the Boston Playwrights' Theater (hooray for the Writers at the Black Box series and my 25+ friends who came just to see me), I can almost bench 2/3 of my weight again (boo surgery), my thesis is getting where it needs to be, and I have no freaking clue what I'll be doing with my life come August 7th. But I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

Life is good.

East Coast

So much has happened since I wrote last. I didn't cover much or any of Mom's visit, so here's some bullet points:

• We roadtripped in Massachussets. First we went to Salem with Melanie. We saw the House of Seven Gables, the birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Phippen House (I'm descended from Phippens, but the gov't owns the house as part of the city of Salem, so we didn't go in), the memorial built for the 17 people who were convicted of practicing witchcraft in Salem and hung (or pressed to death), and some cool houses.

• We roadtripped North. Mom wanted to visit Joseph Smith's birthplace in Vermont, and I wanted to see if Maine exists, so we rented a car and went on a roadtrip. First we went up the coast of Maine. We saw Portsmouth, Rockport, Rockland, and some other places. The best lighthouse was Nubble Light in York, ME. We visited Bowdoin College in Brunswick, where we found the only gargoyle in the state of Maine and visited the arctic museum. After some good time in Maine we decided to try and make it part of the way to VT. So we took off heading west. It started to snow really bad in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, so we stopped at this place called the Town & Country Motor Inn Resort. The old guy at the desk talked and talked about his old days in Boston and the place was actually really nice. When we woke up we heard about the tsunami that hit Japan. Keep praying for those people. We woke up and drove to Joseph Smith's birthplace right by Sharon, VT. We had the place to ourselves other than the nice missionary lady that gave us a tour. It's quite the place and the obelisk is gorgeous and has an incredible how-I-got-here story.

Nubble Light - York, ME

The only gargoyle in the state of Maine - Bowdoin College - Brunswick, ME

My favorite inuit artpiece.
• We roadtripped South. The day after we got back from VT we piled in a car with Allison 1 and Mel and went to Newport, RI to look at some mansions. The mansions were freaking huge. Some people just have too much money. My incision was acting up by the end, but I couldn't not go see The Breakers (one of the mansions). The gate and the inside reminded me of the Palace of Versailles, which it turned out to have been based off of. The billiards room was the coolest. Absolutely crazy.

The Breakers

Captain Morgan pose in front of the awesome tiger-killing-crocodile statue

Allison 1, Me, and Melanie in RI
• We stayed in Boston. Mom's last day here I took her to Bartley's for my Boston hamburger experience. She got the Oprah and I got the Viagra (best burger in Boston, so far).

Now Mom is home and I miss her. Especially when I had to do my own dishes. I'm glad she came. Totally saved my butt.

Since Mom left I've done even more. More bullet points!

• The opera that Robert wrote had its American debut. He got me two free tickets to the full dress-rehearsal the night before it opened. Danielle Dobson came with me. It's called Death and the Powers: The Robot's Opera and was all sorts of craziness. There were robots controlled by MIT people who look exactly like you'd expect MIT robot-controlling students to look like (geeks), a part where the poor and starving attack the main character's daughter (it was a total zombie-esque scene and really well done), and even a man that sang super high and sounded like a woman. All in all I'd say that the words were fantastic and the music was just okay. But overall it was a good time.
• I went to Boston Restaurant Week. Essentially, it's a week when restaurants make special menus so that you'll go try their stuff. Nishan, Rich, Daniel, Darin and I went to an upscale steakhouse called Mortons. It's down on the waterfront. The waiters all wear tuxedos and the cheapest steak we were shown was $68. Enter restaurant week: big chef salad with anchovies, filet mignon with broccoli and mashed potatoes, and desert. All for $35. It was the ultimate man night.
• I went to Block Island, RI. Block Island is a tourist trap about an hour (by ferry) off the coast. It was me, Nishan, Danielle, Mel, and Dianne. Turns out it was still off season, so the place was deserted. Lucky for us we're all pretty chill, so we made an adventure of it. We walked around till we found a guy to ask for directions. He sent us to the grocery store (only thing open) where we got some food. Danielle found a number for a guy who rents out cars, so he came and picked us up in a Buick and we did some paperwork. Then we went all over the place. We walked out to the North lighthouse, had a picnic on the beach, skipped rocks, visited the anti-climactic "painted rock", checked out the South lighthouse, walked down to the bottom of the cliffs, and went to opening night at the one soon-to-be-open restaurant. We also found a human bone and talked a bunch about how much living there would be like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Dianne is a great photographer and got it all documented really well. Overall it was a blast.
• Rich, Nishan, Reed, and I went to Joshua Tree to watch the BYU game the other night. My bracket is so freaking screwed up (freaking Rick Pitino), but BYU is doing pretty well. As usual, I am happy that we win but don't care when we lose. Jimmer's pretty amazing though. If we beat Florida (not a chance) I might root for us for a game. Don't cross your fingers.
• I saw a racoon in Allston the other night. That was cool.
• Last night Dan called me up and told me that he had discounted tickets to the Bruins/Devils game at the TD Garden. His roommate was supposed to come but had bagged out. I'm busier than I ever have been in my life, but I really like hockey. So I went to the game with Dan. Dan's from New Jersey, so he was in a Devil's jersey. The guy behind us gave him so much crap. It was hilarious (to me). The Bruins won 4-1 and I was a happy camper. Although there were no fights, which was super disappointing. After the game I had to pee, so I went into the bathroom where there were lines to every stall. The guys there were so drunk but they were making fun of each other and it was so funny. My favorite was the jab at the guy that had his hand up on the wall and the dude that suggested we unzip our pants early so that we saved some time. Gotta love hockey.

So, yeah, that's an update. More has happened but I think that's the big stuff. I'll try uploading pics again later; the computer is being stupid as usual.

As Nacho Libre would say: My life is good. Real good.

How to Have Your Appendix Removed

Check it out!

Isn't it beautiful?

So, last week I got my appendix taken out by Dr. Hackford at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center near my house. Sunday night I went to bed around midnight with some pain in my stomach. It wasn't like a stomach ache, but actual pain. That never happens. So I decided to sleep it off. At 2:30am I woke up and it still hurt, but a lot of the pain had moved down right above my belt on the right side.

I got up to get a drink of water and the thought popped into my head Maybe I have appendicitis. So I got on WebMD.com (never fails) and looked up the symptoms. I had all of them except a fever, and I don't really get fevers, so I decided to call Melanie, since she lives the closest and is a nurse. While I was waiting for her, I got bored. So I made my bed, tidied up my apartment, and paid my rent downstairs. Then I got in Mel's car and we drove up Beacon Street and then down Washington Street to St. Elizabeth's.

The guy at the emergency room door looked bored and kinda bummed when I walked under my own power. I told the lady at the front desk that I thought I had appendicitis and gave her my insurance stuff. A few minutes later a large, scary nurse came out and took me in to question me and take my temperature, etc. Our conversation went like this (she talks first, then we switch off):

Do you smoke?
No.
Drink?
No.
Never?
Never.
Ok.

Little did I know that I would have that conversation 800,000 times before they ripped out a part of my body and let me go. So they gave me a bed and Melanie came in and sat with me till  7am when she knew when my surgery would be (she's a trooper). The next lady came in and we had this conversation (same format as before, with her talking first):

Do you smoke?
No.
Drink?
No.
Never?
Never.
Recreational drugs?
Haha, nope.
What do you do?
I play basketball.
Oh.

She was my favorite. Later a girl doctor came in and poked me a bunch and then set me up to go get a CT scan. One of the sweetest movies ever, The Patriot, was on TV, but I didn't get to watch hardly any of it because the doctors and nurses would all come in right as it started up and ask questions and poke and prod and then they would leave right as the commercials started. Then the next one would come in right as the commercials ended and stay till the next commercial break. So I saw Mel Gibson be sad a few times and wave a flag. Still good, but not what you want from The Patriot.

Next I went in for my CT scan. I like that they call it a "cat scan". My radiologist's name was Jaime and she was a few years older than me and had some cool piercings in her right ear. She told me that I would need to fill my bowels with dye so the cat scan could see my innards. There were two options. Option 1, I could drink the dye, wait for two hours and let my appendix throb, and then get the cat scan. Option 2, she could "fill me up in reverse."

Being the adventurous type, I went for Option 2. Now Jaime is the woman that knows me better than any woman on Earth. She filled me up backwards and we talked about her 5-month-old and how funny it was that there's a balloon at the end of the tube she was using to keep it in place. I didn't feel much (I'm good at relaxing) so it wasn't as horrendous as I thought it would be (given, I don't ever want to do it again, but you know what I mean). The cat scan made lots of cool noises and I watched the green lights spinning around and around.

Then we were all done, she drained me (forward?), and then I got a new hospital robe, which was shorter. Sexy. Jaime wheeled me back to my room in the ER and I asked her if I could see the pictures. She told me that they'd show me later, but we were buds, so she said she'd see what she could somewhat-illegally do. A few minutes later she came in with a CD and told me that it had the software I needed to see my guts and to hide it with my stuff so they didn't take it away or charge me for it. So I gave it to Mel and she put it in her purse for safe keeping.

Then a new doctor came in. He was a few years older than I was, too, and didn't like to make eye contact. He showed me my guts and saw that my appendix was blocked halfway down instead of at the opening where it hits my intestine. He said that was different but that if he had been told that I was young he would have treated the symptoms and set me up for surgery without having ordered the CT scan (toss up...I never would have met Jaime, but I never would have been filled up backward either). So he set up my surgery for noon and left Mel and I to the closing credits of The Patriot.

Mel left and a few hours later I was wheeled up into the recovery area. They took my glasses and my iPod, so I was bored and blind so I asked Carol (my nurse) for a urinal and something to read. She gave me the urinal first. It looked like a wide-mouth water bottle and I filled it up almost to the brim (but didn't drink any). Then she could tell that I was bored and brought me one of those stupid celebrity magazine. I gave her my best I'm-not-an-idiot-,-are-you-? look and she laughed at me and went to find something. She came back with an outdated Time Magazine. I read it cover to cover and right as I was finishing one of my doctors came to meet me. He looked and sounded exactly like Jeff Bridges. Unfortunately, I was not in a movie, but it was still awesome.

Jeff Bridges-Kinda and I had the smoke/drink conversation. Carol and I had it. Then some new guy that was really cool but didn't stay long asked me all the same questions. Then I met Dr. Hackford who looked very extinguished. He asked me all the questions and then poked me harder than anybody else had poked me. Then he drew a line on me with his pen and said "Ok. Let's go." So they wheeled me into the operating room and gave me some gas and told me to breathe.

Next thing I remember is Carol's voice asking me if I can wake up. It took a long time, and I was really mad that she kept asking me if I could roll left when I just wanted to sleep. Eventually I came out of it. It was 4pm. I stayed there for a while until I wasn't quite so groggy and then they sent me to my room. I got the window side.

My roommate's name was Carl. He was 32 and had been in the hospital for a long time. He had something wrong with his large intestine that nobody under 50 ever has and instead of following protocol and removing the entire whatever-it-was they only took out half. But he was still sick and knew a few doctors here in Boston who told him to come here and work with a specialist. So he did. He hadn't eaten in like 9 days and was set to get a pick, which is, as far as I gathered, a giant IV that fills him with milkshakes or something.

Then I had visitors. First Kelly Welch, Katie Thornton, and Austin Walters came to visit me. They had just come from FHE and had missed me. It was sweet to see them and I learned how much visiting someone in the hospital really does help their spirits. Then I called Mom. She was on her way to take care of me. I told her not to, but I'm really glad she did. Then I watched the Bruins game. There were lots of fights, which made me feel better. I did my best to not get riled up and I resisted the urge to throw off my IV and start punching Carl. Resisting that urge was the hardest thing about surgery.

Then I texted Allison Mitton and asked her to come get my keys and then go to my house and get my iPod charger so I could continue playing Solitaire for hours. So she stole a car from one of her roommates and did just that, but it was late so the nurse gave her a hint that it wasn't a good idea to stay long. How rude. I am thankful for good friends. Huge, huge, HUGE blessing. I got calls, texts, and emails from worried people and Chelsea Ashton had some chocolate covered pirate-themed brownie suckers sent to my house from Sheri's Berries. Hooray for good people.

Then I kinda slept. Every two hours Carl's machine would start beeping so he could get more medicine. It would wake me up and I had to pee every time, and getting out of bed was a process (the urinal was fun, but not that fun). It felt good to get up, though, and my calves were really sore from the little air-filled braces they put on me during surgery and recovery that squeezed my legs every few seconds so I didn't get a blood clot (not worth it).

Then it got light. I asked the nurse for breakfast. When it came we had to convince the lady that I was Calvin and Carl was Carl. Nobody really wrote down that I was at the window, so they just assumed the food was for him since they had seen him for a while. I kinda felt bad when one of the nurses came in and handed him a menu and told him that he was allowed to eat and I had to tell her that I was Calvin. Then the brunette doctor I didn't remember very well came in and told me that I was free to go whenever I wanted. Mel was picking up Mom at the airport so I decided to try and get dressed. When I was mostly done they showed up and I slowly made my way out of the hospital.

So now it's been a week. My cut (seen above) is healing nicely. I'm not allowed to lift anything heavier than 15 pounds for a 4-6 weeks and I have to take it really easy, but I can eat whatever I want. I'm officially out of Percocet so I am enjoying my Advil and this morning I finally put on my own socks. Mom is here for another week since she had limited flight options for medical emergencies. It's been nice to have her here and she's seen some of Boston, but our adventures can wait since this post is forever long.

So, yeah. I am now appendix-less and trying to get back into the swing of things.

The End.

Holy Busyness, Batman

Hello world. To make up for a month of silence I have included multiple (pushing too many) pictures for this Calvin-VS-World update. Let's start with some classmates.

Langston and Sophie looking at Leonardo Drew's "Number 122" - Harvard Art Museum

Tons has happened. Bullet time:

• Had Superbowl dinner with my poetry mates. Packers won. Aaron Rodgers is the man.
• I cut my hair off. Originally I did it all at 1/2 inch, but that wasn't fun enough. So I went with 1/8.
• I started a dream diary. Supposedly if you write down your dreams you'll remember them more easily and/or dream more often. I decided to do it because I had dreams two nights in a row (never happens). I've only had one dream since I started writing them down (two weeks ago). Let this be a lesson to you: never try.
• I ate an African lamb sausage crepe at Mr. Crepe's in Davis Square. Best non-dessert crepe I've ever had. The best dessert crepe I ever had was at the Eiffel Tower.
• I finally went to the Boston Museum of Fine Art (MFA). We get in free with our BU student card (a $20 value) I went with Sophie a few weeks ago and again with TJ today. Sophie and I went to the "Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition" exhibit. The MFA let ten living Chinese ink artists interpret classical Chinese pieces. One or two of them were exceptionally good, one or two of them sucked. The rest were just ok.
• I went to the Coolidge Corner theater to see a broadcast of King Lear. Derek Jacobi played Lear (in case you didn't know, he's an extremely big deal: the hand-picked prodigy/student of Lawrence Olivier, who, if you didn't know, was an extremely big deal). Professor Carroll got us $20 tickets for $5. I'm auditing his 'Shakespeare, Tragedy, Succession' class, because I love Shakespeare and $5 tickets. Jacobi was incredible and Cordelia sucked. Good show.
• We poets all got paired with visual artist MFA students (also known as painters) to work on collaborative book projects. My painter's name is Kyle Anger. Tell me that isn't the coolest name ever. He is tall and skinny and has a pony tail and makes the kind of art that I don't get but he is in a black and white phase, which I'm all about. If the Mugar (BU library) likes our stuff, they'll buy it and put it in their permanent collection. I've decided we'll win.
• For Valentine's Day I went to Robert's class, went to my translation class, sent some emails, taught a lesson at FHE, decorated cookies, and listened to Dwight Yoakum songs. Same crap, different year.
• I got shot down for lots of jobs. I hope to get shot down for more.
• I made a goal to write one new poem a day for all of February. I ran out of ideas on the 4th. But I have pushed through and gotten a few new things. In case you don't know, writing one new poem a day is insane. I wrote less than 35 poems all of last semester.
• I will know about study abroad (please oh please oh please) by the end of next week. The suspense is not killing me, but I'd like to know. It's basically a gamble, so if I don't get to go I'll be fine. If Lisa and I both get in we're gonna meet in Barcelona and run away to Rome together.
• Tonight, after TJ and I went to the MFA, we met Melanie, Allison, Pam, Allison 2, Ty, and Dan in the North End for dinner at Panza (Italian). I got the beef and veal tortellini (I recommend it) and we got some calamari. I got a whole baby squid. I kinda like don't-think-about-it-just-shove-it-in-your-face experiences.
• I saved the best for last. The one and only Jared Purvis flew in February 10th. Here is an illustrated edition of what could very well go down through history as the greatest Boston weekend of all time:

This is where we went Thursday night. Please note the Los Angeles Lakers on your left.

This is how we felt about it

The man on the left broke the all-time NBA 3-point shot record in the first quarter and we went hoarse from screaming. The man on the right, who is even more incredible in person, owned the fourth quarter and took the W back to L.A. with him (boo ya).

This is proof I was there, I was rooting for Ray Allen, and it was cold.

Without sports, this wouldn't be disgusting (Thank you, ESPN commercials)

This is the place we toured Friday morning. Sweet place.

Memorial Hall was actually open (Allison is good luck)

This pretty much sums up winter in Boston.

This is my city.

They repainted my favorite sign in the world. This pleases me.

This is me.

This is J-red P

Jared and I ate at three burger places in three nights (Burger King on the way to the game, Mr. Bartley's with Allison before going to Kelly/Katie's birthday party, and Eagle's Deli [I ate the Godzilla, he had the King Kong]with Kelly and Katie [They had weak-sauce girl burgers] on Saturday night). We partied hard and I want him to come back.

School/teaching is fun, Boston is cold, and life is good.