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Where are the Beatles when you need them?

(yesterday)

This has got to be one of the most decadent things I’ve ever done in my life. It’s dark outside, I’m in a big rental car and I’m typing away on Todd’s laptop while jazz plays on the car radio. All I can see are the dashboard lights and the lights of the cars ahead; the sky is cloudy and Todd’s driving. We spent the weekend in Boston, and it was perfect. Absolutely lovely, and so much like one of those movies with long montages of scenes of a couple wandering around a big city together that we felt like we should be changing our outfits more often in order to keep the audience entertained. And a nice solo piano soundtrack would have been nice. One of George Winston’s more obscure works, perhaps.

Todd says, “We’ll be making our final approach soon, folks, FYI.” He does a good Reliable And Knowledgeable Airline Pilot voice. I think I should put up my traytable and return my seat to its full and upright position. Oh, and see if I can find my notebook under all of those Taco Bell bags.

(today)

When Todd walked in the door on Friday night and the first thing he said was, “Hey, d’you still want to go to Boston for the weekend?” I rolled my eyes and said I’d rather be a homebody and hang out here. He was crushed. He told me all about how he’d figured out on the way home that we could take the laptop with us and I could play on the computer in the hotel room and everything, and was so traigic and hopeful and eager in general that I couldn’t bear to disappoint him, and by Saturday morning we’d decided that if we only spent one night away from home we’d feel okay about not calling Sarah and asking her to check on the cats. (Which meant, of course, that we spent the drive home in paroxysms of guilt over being away overnight.)

We rented a car and set off. The drive went relatively quickly, we listened to NPR and I read Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot aloud. The strangest thing we saw on the way was an electric road sign that, instead of saying “Road Work Ahead” or “Icy Conditions” was blinking: “This is a sign test. Test. . .Test. . . . . . . . . Test Test Test. . .” which reminded us both of the electric road sign in the movie L.A. Story.

Todd told me a horror story about seven people at work sitting around a cafeteria table talking about children, theirs or children of friends/family. They were commiserating about a particular moment every night when everything went wild in their house. The Moment The Ritalin Wore Off. (Cue scary organ music.) I asked if there was a another table full of spouses talking about The Moment The Prozac Wore Off. He said not yet.

We decided to drive by the apartment we used to live in on our way to Boston and were surprised by how much things have stayed the same. With the exception of a store and a gas station, not one of the big or small businesses we remembered from years ago had closed. It was a startling reminder of how different the economy is where we live now; here we count a small business lucky if it survives more than a year and keep another option in mind when we go anywhere, because the first option might be closed permanently by the time we get there.

We’d forgotten what driving in Boston is like.

I mean, we’d completely underestimated it. We used to jaunt into Boston on a whim when Todd got home from work and drive around because the city was so beautiful at night, and make fun of people who looked petrified behind the wheels of their cars. On Saturday I have no doubt that people were making fun of us. Picture this: there’s a red light three cars ahead of us. We stop right next to an alley to let someone merge in front of us from a parking space on the left, and suddenly, as that person’s merging, this huge van comes zooming in from alley on the right. The van wants to cross the road. Meanwhile, the person on the left’s still merging. The light’s still red. The merging person moves ahead a tiny bit. The van keeps zooming towards us, Todd looks to see if he has any room to go into reverse so the rental car doesn’t get hit, and suddenly it occurs to the van’s driver that he’s not going to be able to continue his zooming. He stops, sticks his head out the window, and literally inches by our car and the still-merging car without so much as a tiny bump on either side. Todd and I let out the breath we’d been holding, and Todd says, “Well, there you are. They may be insane people, but they’re very SKILLFUL insane people. You have to give them that.”

We tried going to a three different hotels, all of which were full up, and ended up finding an absolutely perfect one near China Town. After we’d gotten settled, checked email, caught up on the web pages we like, Todd sat down and looked for a good vegetarian restaurant on the net. Nothing sounded very promising, so we decided to take the subway to Cambridge and wander around until we found one we liked.

When we arrived at the subway stop we could hear a group of people yelling in an ominous way on the street level, so we took different stairs in order to avoid them. Then, as we were coming around a corner, we saw a large group of people standing in a semi-circle around something we couldn’t see, and a big sign that said, “LEGALIZE HEMP!” with a box for donations. Figuring it was a rally of people who wanted to legalize drugs, we didn’t go anywhere near them. I was expecting the police to show up any minute, the way the man everyone was listening to was yelling.

Yeah, the guy who was yelling was talking loudly so everyone could hear what he was saying about his fire-juggling act. The sign and the box had nothing to do with him. I’m such a fool sometimes.

Finding a restaurant was easier said than done, and we ended up going to The Border Cafe. There was a long line stretching from the door around the corner of the building that reminded me of a slightly smaller version of the line to see Superman 2 on opening night at the movie theater. This wasn’t the line to get a table; this was the line to get into the restaurant to get your name on the list to wait for a table. But they had vegetarian food, and we were tired and hungry, so we got in line. It was quite a jolly wait, actually, we listened while the people behind us talked about playing the computer game Doom and while the people in front of us talked about a salesclerk who tended to dance while she showed you clothes and shoes. When we arrived at the front of the line we waited for another five minutes while people walked up to the door, were told that they had to wait in line, and got crabby about it. I hope the guy manning the door was getting paid a lot of money. This is where the story gets strange. We walked in, saw the even huger line of people who had their names on the wait-for-a-table list, and almost balked. The hostess asked if we wanted smoking, non-smoking, or first available. We told her non-smoking. “Are you going to be drinking alcohol this evening?” was her next question. We told her we weren’t. She wrote something on a piece of paper, told us that there was a table ready downstairs, and to give the piece of paper to the hostess down there. I kid you not.

We did. The hostess downstairs asked “Are you going to be drinking alcohol tonight?” after consulting the mysterious piece of paper, and when we said no, she seated us. I must say, in five years this is the very first time we’ve ever gotten rewarded so beautifully for never ever drinking any kind of alcohol. Evidently we were in the no-alcohol area, or that’s what the sign near our table said. Can anyone explain this to me? I’m wildly curious about the reasoning behind all this.

After eating, and seeing the same people in the same line still waiting to sit down, we went to a net cafe. I was curious to see what people look at when they look at the web, but no one was doing anything online but chatting with other people. We drank coffee and played computer games, had a good time and only humiliated ourselves twice: “Um, this doesn’t seem to be working.” “Let me see… ah yes. It doesn’t seem to be plugged in.” and then later: “Sorry to bother you, but the QuickCam for this monitor just comes up completely blank when we tell it to take a picture.” “Hmm. That would be because it’s aimed at this black wall over here.” (After the second time Todd called after the clerk, “We’re not usually this dumb, honest!” but I don’t think she heard. Tee hee.)

Sunday we went to the Boston Science Museum, which wasn’t quite as exciting as I’d remembered it being, or maybe I’m too tall and too old for the best exhibits. We decided to leave early and have lunch but couldn’t agree on where we wanted to eat. I wanted to eat at the museum and then go home, Todd wanted to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant. We giggled as we were crabbing about it, because disagreeing about where we were going to eat happened quite often our first year together in Massachusetts. Todd says he thinks it’s something about the state itself. We ended up at a completely vegan Chinese restaurant, which had a nine page menu of mouth-watering food and meals that tasted so much like meat we would have believed it was meat if we hadn’t known better.

From the silliness file:

(Todd and Sage are eating breakfast at the Boston Science Museum. It’s nine a.m., the sun is shining, and there’s an awe-inspiring view of the Charles River out of the enormous glass windows of the museum.)

Todd: Everything’s so beautiful I want to dive out the window and eat it all up.
Sage: That’s how I know you’re a true Paul. A Bruce would say, “I want to dive out the window just like The Terminator.”

From the silliness file:

(Sage and Todd are listening to a radio program for children, which I’ll talk about more tomorrow, and a little boy calls in.)

Boy: (in a monotone) Hel-lo. I - would - like - to - hear - the - song - Help.

Sage: He doesn’t need to hear the song Help, he just needs help in general.

Todd: (in a high voice) Help! Get me off this Ritalin!