I left work mid-afternoon Friday, and my bus made very good time.
adrian_turtle and I rendezvoused at Harvard Square T station, and then wandered around Harvard Yard until we found the building where Vericon was being held, to meet up with the generous
ckd. He handed me a bag containing a Palm m150, charging cradle, and case, and advice on where to find a belt clip for said case. We chatted a bit, I said hello to another congoer who looked familiar in the "yeah, I've seen this guy in the halls at other cons" way, and then Adrian and I had Thai food for dinner.
We attempted to get dessert at Finale, a dessert restaurant that I remembered from downtown that now has a branch in Harvard Square, but they said it would be a 20-minute wait for a table, and I was just awake enough to realize that if "should we wait 20 minutes?" is a difficult question, the answer is no. Realizing I didn't want to stop in quickly at Toscanini's for ice cream instead was much simpler, so we went home and to bed, but not before I gave Adrian her Biodome membership card. She was pleased and surprised--I deliberately hadn't mentioned here that I'd bought a family membership, rather than a singleton, because I want her to have the membership card too and want to support the Biodome. (Technically, we are members of the Société des Amis du Biodôme de Montréal.)
Saturday included unsuccessful baking (none of the substitutions should have made the muffins tasteless, so I suspect the original recipe wouldn't have been terribly appealing either), and another expedition to Cambridge. This time, we spent some time at Pandemonium, where we ran into an old Yale/Story Reading friend of mine, David Wald [who as far as I know is not on LJ, but I didn't ask]. He introduced his wife, whose name I forget; I introduced him to Adrian; he asked if I was now living in the Boston area. A reasonable question, since I'm hanging out in a Cambridge bookstore with my girlfriend. I told him
cattitude and I are still at the same New York address, and if he doesn't have it, we're both in the phone book (unusual surnames have some advantages). They then went home to cook and eat dinner, and we wandered a bit, failing to find a chocolate shop but catching up on a bit of conversation that had been left over from the night before, before making another attempt at Finale.
The original plan had been "eat dessert first", but it turned out Finale's menu includes light, savory foods--salad, soup, pizza, that sort of thing--in what the menu claims are "appetizer sized portions" so patrons will have room for dessert. Adrian had soup, I had a pizza--it was a fairly standard pizza-for-one size, and not terribly impressive otherwise; I ate about half, the waitress wrapped the rest up for later, and it's sitting in Adrian's fridge because I forgot about it this afternoon. For dessert, I had something called "Masari [sp?] mousse," a mousse cake served with a "Napoleon" of small, thin butter cookies and blackberry sorbet. The cake turned out to be basically good chocolate mousse with a thin layer of sponge cake around it, and a tall, curled piece of dark chocolate on top; it was similar to the sort of things that Bruno's bakery, down in Greenwich Village does. Adrian had molten chocolate cake and banana sorbet. The sorbet was excellent--she compared it with Maple Delight for quality, and I think it may live up to that; it was intensely banana. I also had a pot of English breakfast tea, because caffeine is good. The desserts were good, though overall it left me with a desire to get back to Chikalicious; the pizza was disappointing, and I don't know if I just picked the wrong thing, or if savories are really not their strength. If I go back, I'll have the protein and vegetable part of supper elsewhere, either before or after.
In between cavorting and lying around idly in bed, we talked, of course: life and work and people we know and books. I mentioned
zorinth and Adrian observed that I have a cool nephew. I knew this, but like any proud aunt, I'm pleased to hear people say so. It also transpired that I almost certainly can't trace what, if any, distant biological family connection
papersky and I may have, because her grandfather almost certainly changed his name when he moved to Britain.
Today, we slept late--well, Adrian did, I was up before ten--and eventually went out, had sushi for lunch after the Indian place we tried to go to was unexpectedly closed, and then I got a bus back to New York and Adrian went home to do laundry. Memo to self: yes, the Greyhound from Boston to New York always stops at the Roy Rogers in North Haven. That is not sufficient reason to get fried chicken there. A soda, sure--they'll give me lots of ice cubes to go in my water bottle--but the fried chicken is unimpressive and the "biscuit" is dire. Fortunately, I got home at a reasonable hour--my buses in both directions made very good time--and
cattitude fed me ham steak and a baked sweet potato, followed by chocolate ice cream.