Most notably, I finished up work at BlueStripe and moved to Boston. More specifically, I moved to Brighton, near the western edge of Boston's city limits and quite close to the Charles River and the lovely new Community Rowing boathouse.
Here in Boston, it's already snowed, rained, and frozen with weather cold enough to slow my speech and get ice slick enough for me to slip my first spill. I feel welcomed by winter, and I'm happy to be living in a big city again (though my place is really in a streetcar suburb).
Driving the rental moving truck up here with my car in tow went uneventfully, with fair cold weather and no traffic delays, and unloading into my place and storage for the bigger furniture went just fine. I was unpleasantly surprised by how much stuff I had to pack and load, though. I haven't moved a fully-loaded one-bedroom apartment before, and I got all the stuff over time, so it was a surprise to gather it all up in the truck.
I'm trying to promptly take care of all my moving minutiae: car registration, insurance, changes of address, and such. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that a town I used to live in has me on record for owing tax during a year after a moved out of state for a car that I didn't own any more. I'll be at town hall on Monday morning at the tax assessor's office for that.
On the arts front, I've been to see a pleasant number of shows, including an art show of Goya and contemporaries, Stravinsky's Les Noces, Poulenc's Breasts of Tiresias, Chicago the musical, The Little Prince, a simulcast of the Metropolitan Opera's Thais, A Chorus Line, a Bread and Puppet Theater spectacle, and a play called The Corn is Green here in Boston. I write these things up, and things that I want to do coming up on another blog (http://carlsstufftodo.blogspot.com/) if you're interested in finding out more.
I read and enjoyed a few books: Alan Hollinghurst's Swimming Pool Library, Ken Follett's World Without End, Billy Collin's poetry collection Sailing Alone Around the Room, and Deng Ming-Dao's 365 Tao: daily meditations.
At my bedside, I keep a stack of books that I try to read a bit from each morning:
- De Rynck's How to Read a Painting: Lessons from the Old Masters
- The Mentor Book of Major American Poets
- Reinhold Aman's Opus Maledictorum: A Book of Bad Words
- Le Mot Juste: a dictionary of classical and foreign words and phrases (so far 'ataraxia':perfect peace of mind; calmness, and 'Actaeon' have caught my fancy)
- Deng Ming-Dao's Everyday Tao
- Thaddeus Golas' The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment
- Gina Trapani's Upgrade Your Life
After being sucked in repeatedly watching What Not to Wear, I invested in some better clothes. I'm particularly happy with a couple of sport coats that were on sale.
On the social front, a friend in Cary had people over for a couple of game nights and a big post-Thanksgiving party, which were fun. Every month I'd also look forward to a happy hour in Chapel Hill, which I'll miss. And a friend of mine who I lived closed to in Durham and I would head out to brunch and book browsing at Fearrington Village about every couple of months.
The Triangle Gay Men's Chorus had our holiday concerts in Chapel Hill and Durham, which I think went quite nicely. I'm glad my mother came to visit for the one in Chapel Hill, and I do miss singing with them.
There was a fun office holiday party, where it was nice to see people (spouses, kids) I don't get to see very often, and there was a classical guitarist and Santa Clause. Yay!
I spent Christmas at Mom's in Vermont, which was pleasant and relaxing.
The couple days after Christmas were spent in Boston looking for housing and visiting friends.
For New Year's Eve, I regretfully missed a party I was invited to and just slept.
Inauguration Day was a snow day in Durham, so I got to watch lots of the ceremony. I was particularly touched by the four-instrument setting of Simple Gifts, Aretha Franklin's hat, and a friend's leading the Lesbian & Gay Band Association contingent in the parade.
The last couple months at work had a few highlights: a bunch of usability testing leading to some reworking of the interface and a 1.2 release; a work trip to Chicago (and meeting in the Sears Tower); my conscious pulling back from lots of decision-making so that others can step up; and recruiting a new interaction designer.
I also participated in a World Usability Day project working on transportation. Our group looked at ways to improve peripheral bus stops. I got to learn a fair amount about signage and wayfinding, and got to work with some interesting folks from a design firm in Cary.
For my next work, I'll be looking around Boston. I'm about to update my resume and such, and start networking.
My next networking event will be the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference in Vancouver, B.C. next weekend. I'm looking forward to that.
I'm adding to that trip west a trip even farther west to visit my dad on Saipan and some friends on the west coast. While I'm not looking forward to the time in planes, I am looking forward to seeing old friends.
