Fortunately for me, I headed to Cali mid-January to attend Noah and Alicia's engagement party (Cali, they'd already done one in NYC), shown below, along with the -9 degree temperature I left behind in Acton. Maddy was there and we spent some time with Heidi as well. The trip included a visit to the Huntington Gardens, which we are members of and love, a pajama party for Alison, Maddy, Noah and Alicia, and visiting Janet in her assisted living facility.
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Took all the kids (/young adults) out for dinner when Alicia moved in to the house, having found an internship in Boston at a MIT AI startup in their marketing group.
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Many standard board games nights at RIck and Elizabeths.
We took will and his friends Marisa and Rachel out to dinner at Mistral
Random shot of Dobie and his eye that I thought was kind of cool.
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We had a fun dinner at Yvonnes, a funky restaurant in Boston, with Rick and Elizabeth.
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We did a trip to NYC; I was going to a conference, but we spent the evenings with Noah and Alicia, except for one big dinner out with the entire Acadian crew.
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I had an odd dream in NYC, which I will related on facebook and add here:
I was dreaming, in a post-apocalyptic landscape of suburban housing, the houses half collapsed ruins that looked like they had just rotted and fallen apart over time with no one to maintain them. I was hunting through the wreckage looking for survivors, along with other people that I couldn’t see but knew were around. I didn’t think there was much chance of finding anyone, because these houses had clearly been falling apart for decades, but I looked in house after house. All I found in each house was Styrofoam wrapped ball the size and weight of a bowling ball.
There was no way to open the Styrofoam; it was a smooth, unbroken
covering like it had been sprayed on. Suddenly I realized that the balls
were people that had been compressed into big balls of meat and covered
in the Styrofoam to preserve them, and that aliens had done it. The
aliens had small flying drones zipping around overhead spying on the
rescuers, but fortunately it turned out that anything I threw into the
air turned into a heat seeking missile that automatically targeted the
drones. There were other drones, however, that had laser beams that
destroyed the missiles as fast as I could create them, and I was running
while throwing things into the air so they didn’t shoot me, but they
were too busy shooting down my missiles.
I ran past a friend of mine (don’t remember who, it was a generic
friend) who was talking to David Bryne from the Talking Heads, and he
noticed that I was in the middle of this fight with the drones, so he
drove over and told me to hope in his pickup truck and he would help me
escape. I jumped in, and he drove off while talking to me, but he’d
forgotten about David Bryne and he crashed into him with the truck,
sending David flying into a tall wooden fence.
We both ran over to David, who looked fine, but said “why did you do
that? I can’t move now.” And my friend said it was my fault because I
had distracted him. But I realized David was wearing the white suit from
the music video “The bullet hits the bone,” and there was no blood on
it, and it was in fact a robot. More, that there was an alien on the
other side of the fence that had come to take robot Bryne to be fixed.
The alien reached over the fence, and he looked like a giant knight in
armor made of blue sparkling electricity.
Which is when I found myself really wanting to tell Alison about all
this because she thinks my dreams are interesting. So I was telling her
about the Styrofoam balls and she was saying that didn’t make a lot of
sense, because you couldn’t preserve balls of meat just by wrapping them
in Styrofoam, you had to refrigerate them too. Which I thought was a
little odd because we were both hiding in a cave from the aliens, and I
happened to have one of the balls, and I was showing it to her saying,
“just look at it.”
Then I wondered how I could be showing Alison a ball from my dreams and
realized I was dreaming about telling her my dream, and that if I really
wanted to tell her about it, I needed to wake up.
So I did, but she’s asleep, and I know if I wait until the morning I’m
going to forget this entire thing. Which is why I’m up at 3 in the
morning writing this down.
Just thought I would share that with everyone.
Of course, there were the three nor'easters that all hit in March. The area was a winter wonderland for most of the month as a result.
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 Bear thoughtfully helps snow blow the driveway |
Brie and Dianna took me out to dinner while Alison was in California with Maddy.
We tried curling with Rick and Elizabeth, which was fun but short. Rick looks like a natural.
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Along with Alicia, Noah's fiancée, we eventually ended up hosting her King Charles Cavalier puppy, Orwell. Brie was (and is) still living with us after her boyfriend Aidan took a job in and moved to Portsmouth, NH. So it was a little busy at the house. Orwell in particular was a little bundle of energy that he expressed through chewing on things, including but not limited to hearing aides, batteries, lacy underwear, dog bowls, toothbrushes, dirt, chair legs, dog bowls, and razors (the handles, not the blades). Some are pictured below.
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We did an impromptu dinner at Stir. As usual, it was a lot of fun.
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Meredith was up for the Boston Anime convention and stayed with us; it was passover weekend, and we flew down to North Carolina, so we didn't't overlap too much, but it was nice to see her. Below, one of her cosplay outfits.
We did passover at Liz Stern's this year. Flew down Friday, flew back Sunday. We did a puzzle room at Bull City Escape before the dinner, winning with an entire one minute and thirty seven seconds left on the clock.
