October 16th, 2024
Well, it’s been a while since my last post. It’s odd (in odd ways) to go back to a life I’m familiar with after getting so cozy with unfamiliarity this year. It makes sense, as does the fact that I struggle to put words to the experience of returning to a routine life.
My handful of weeks in the summer were restful and honest. I went to Vermont a couple times, signifying the true of travel, a return to my home home. My family went to Appel Rowe, a lovely place my father went each summer as he grew up, where his ashes now rest.
As the semester began, my busyness returned, if in a different shape than the first part of the year. I now work as a Global Ambassador at the Northeastern Global Experience Office, mostly helping students navigate the web of resources that allowed me to spend so much time abroad this year. I’m also continuing the research that I began in Japan, investigating specific insights we can gain from large scale analysis of first hand stories of various disasters. I’ve been playing plenty of pool, volleyball, and writing a new murder mystery dinner party (my magnum opus, I daresay). It has been great to connect with friends old and new, as well. I live alone quite far off campus, so most social stuff takes some planning, but I am keeping busy on the weeks and weekends, all with fun and engaging things.
Another happy theme of my time back in Boston is that many of my friends from home are back in town! Seeing Luke, Jonathan, Ethan, Miles, and Calvin regularly has been a real pleasure.
I’ve had a few notable adventures which I’ll now detail. Two weekends ago I went to Vermont, it was peak foliage weekend. The best. Trees shimmering with molten gold, glowing from a depth greater than seems physically possible. On Friday I made applesauce, an at-this-point annual tradition. The main apple tree had sadly shed most of its more robust fruits, who made a valiant effort to carpet the ground beneath the branches. In past years, I’ve thrown a small branch at the dangling apples, tracking the fruits as they fell, and whisking the fallen fruits from the ground, attempting to keep the fresh separate from the apples which laid on the ground for god knows how long. This year, with more sparse pickings, I had to expand my tool box. I found a stick about 20-foot long and used it to shake up the branches I could reach. Once I had exhausted the crop within my extended arms reach, I resorted to my tried and true method of chucking stuff at the tree.
I collected all of the apples in a spare piece of canvas that I’d brought up and began the process of cleaning the fruit. They all got a hefty rinse before I began chopping. It took about two hours to slice all the apples into about 1cm pieces, quite the therapeutic process, listening to the birds, focusing on the task in front of me and nothing else, besides my hand cramping up a bit. The apples boiled on the wood stove for several hours before I added maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter. It came out quite well if I do say so myself, yielding nine quarts. But it’s more about the process for me, and coming back into the cabin to the smell of roasted apples and autumn warmth.
The weekend before I went down to New York to do a bit of research for the project I’m working on. I arrived Friday evening and decided I wanted to try and win a drink or two at a pool bar, maybe make a friend or two. Boy did I get my wish, and then some. I found a cluster of pool bars in the village and headed down there. After some delicious dumplings in Chinatown, I made my way to bar 1, where I won a couple of games but didn’t find quite the exact vibe I was looking for. I had a beer or two and then left, heading to the next bar. Here I was delighted to find an uncrowded pool table tucked behind a moderately bustling sports bar. I quickly made friends with Boris, a Belgian fellow whose mom lives about three blocks from my mom in Arlington, Mass. We bonded over this relatively small world fact and decided to play as partners: the table was played as doubles, and the winner stayed on. Boris and I won our first game. Now, I’m pretty hot and cold when I play pool. Something about the quantity of beer I had, the active audience, and Boris’s exacting teammateship put me in the zone. I was hot, and so was Boris. Our Arlington-based mothers and mutual skill on the felt bonded us and he soon made me vow that I would not leave until we lost a game (as I mentioned, winner stayed on). This took place around 10:30pm. I had a good bit of work to do the next morning, and I had not planned on staying out much past 1. To the dismay of my sleep schedule, Boris and I had come down with a case of severe Billiards Midas Touch, everythring we touched turned into sunk fucking balls. We won about 15 games in a row, remaining unseated as reigning winners, owners, champions, dominators of the pool table until the bar closed at 3:30 in the morning. The majority of the games ended with the losers buying each of us a beer. At one point I had a backlog of four drinks, waiting patiently for me to catch up. At a certain point, our challengers learned to stop agreeing to our terms, “loser buys a round?”, innocently offered, with a sly smirk between Boris and myself. It was an electric feeling, to so thoroughly be on play so well, defeating New York finance bro after New York finance bro, often in front of their disappointed girlfriends. The last little cherry on top was when a woman sidled over to Boris and I, telling us that she will be writing a screenplay about us, and that we would know when it comes out. What a rush.
The following day I saw my cousin Anthony, my friend and mentor Jay Ponazecki, and my dear friend Nick Portello, as well as doing my research. Awesome trip!
The rest of my semester looks like it will be largely full of hard work, academic and physical. I have a marathon in about two and a half weeks that I’m feeling good about. My research is likely due by the end of the semester and poses a signifigant mountain of work. My murder mystery dinner party is taking place in a week and a half, which should be a blast.
I have some delicious plans cooking up, but as any loyal reader of this blog knows, I am not one to spoil a future blog entry. I find that the suspense keeps my readers coming back. I just found out that there’s analytics for this site! How interesting. Until then, dear reader.