First year in Boston in short

Well, it's been about a year since I updated this -- much longer than I intended.

The biggest thing is that I've been in Boston (well, the Boston metropolitan area) for a year now. I was a little worried when I decided to leave BlueStripe and move to Boston that I'd feel unsettled and that I'd want to move again soon. Fortunately, nothing of the sort has happened. I really like it here and feel at home. Speaking of home, I've changed mine. I was living in a shared apartment in Brighton most of the year, then I moved to a shared house in Watertown across the river in December. I like it here, though I miss being within a few minutes' walk of the rowing boathouse.

Weather's been a bit off average, but nothing for me to complain about. It snowed substantially (more than six inches) the first three weekends I was living here, which is a bit more often than usual, I guess. The April showers of spring lasted through July, or at least it felt that way. The summer was lush and green and I happened to be out of town for the one particularly hot week. The fall was quite mild through mid December, when we got our first big snow. It's snowed a few times since, with an interval of heavy rain followed by the current bitter cold.

As for rowing, it was a big priority for me in 2009, being one of the big draws to Boston. I was at practice early in the morning (5:00 a.m. generally) three or four times a week from April through November. And I really liked it. I like the guys I'm rowing with (the CRI competitive men), I like the coaches, and I like rowing generally, and on the Charles River in particular. It ranges from quiet and beautiful to crowded and stressful, as one would expect for a great urban recreational space. With the competitive team, I raced in regattas in Boston, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Camden, N.J., Lowell, Mass., and Manchester, N.H. The highlight was rowing in the Head of the Charles Regatta at the end of October. Fortunately, the weather for our race was blustery and chilly, and without the wind-driven wet snow that showed up on Sunday afternoon. Our crew even was in a pretty big photo in the Sunday Boston Globe. After rowing on the water was done at the end of November, I felt a bit of a let-down -- rowing for the season and in the Head of the Charles was something I'd looked forward to for years, and it was over. Indoor training on weights and rowing machines pales in comparison. I'm eager for the river to thaw and for us to be back on the water in a couple of months!

Near the end of the rowing season, though, I started something else I'd wanted to for a while: I joined the Boston Gay Men's Chorus. My first concerts were the holiday concerts in December at beautiful Jordan Hall, featuring fairly traditional Christmas music, plus a big dollop of music highlighting the difficulties faces by Elves at the North Pole with Mrs. Clause, accompanied by over-the-top dancing Elves. (I, regretfully, didn't audition to be one of the dancing elves.) We were invited to sing at Boston Mayor Menino's inauguration party, which was an honor, even if the performance was challenged by technical difficulties. I'm looking forward to our next concert "We the People" featuring a big recent piece about marriage equality, which is engaging, interesting, and dramatic, and accompanied by video and audio recordings of people involved. Then in the spring will be the Pride "Divas" concert. Whee!

On the equality front, I went to Washington D.C. for the March for Equality. It was delightful and moving to be there.

On the professional front, I did a consulting engagement for New Relic in Portland, Ore. and San Francisco. That was interesting and rewarding. And I learned that I'm not as interested in consulting work as I thought I would be. I took much of the year as a sabbatical and kind of independent study in preparation for going back to interaction design work here in Boston. I'll be starting that work shortly. I've written up that "independent study" separately for those who are curious.

I got a nice amount of visiting in this year. I visited Dad and Grace and family on Saipan in January with stops out and back in Portland and San Diego. I visited friends in San Fancisco, Raleigh, Washington D.C., New York, Cape Cod and Minneapolis (for the state fair and yummy corn dogs!). It was also nice for friends to come and visit from Washington, D.C., New York, Minneapolis and even Australia. I got to see family in Philadelphia around July 4th while I was there for a regatta. And now that I live within a half-day's drive of my mother, I've gotten to see her more often, and she and Cindy even came to Boston for a chorus concert and a couple days of being a tourist.

I went to Easton Mountain retreat center north of Albany, N.Y. a few times to participate in workshops and to volunteer. It's a lovely place and I've met many of my close friends there. In a similar vein, a friend of a friend put together a "happy group" in the fall where people got together every other week to share dinner and talk about positive psychology (the study of how to help regular people be happier). It was quite nice to learn and talk about it with such nice company. Toward the end of the year I started with the happy group organizer to have a daily call to help us get important things done. It's been an interesting and useful practice for me.

Speaking of friends and happiness, it felt really nice to realize toward the end of the summer that I felt I'd established a group of supportive friends here around Boston. It really helped me feel more settled here.

For other recreation, I spent a lot of time with visual art and at performing arts events.

On the visual art front, I've spent good chunks of time at museums. The Boston MFA, Gardner Museum, Boston ICA, Mass MoCA, the Met and Frick in New York, the Museum of the City of New York, the Getty Villa, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts all had exhibits that really appealed to me. I also took a drawing class for the first time, and a museum class which involved sketching and writing at some length about various works at the MFA. And I've been paying a lot of attention to and reading about typography. And an insightful (pun acknowledged) friend of mine sent me a nice little book called How to Use Your Eyes. I've been using my eyes a lot more thoughtfully this year.

For performing arts, I've mostly been to orchestra concerts (lots of BSO, and I got turned on to the Boston Philharmonic), musicals (Jerry Springer the Opera was my favorite this year), and plays (Fences at the Huntington was riveting). I made the pilgrimage to see Pilobolus again. I also had a fun and surprising stretch of drag performances (Varla Jean Merman, Gold Dust Orphans, Hasty Pudding Theatricals, Strange Fruit). I have a new favorite performing artist: the puppeteer Basel Twist, whose Petrushka and Johnny Boy I saw this year. It's been a while since I've been interested in TV programs, but Modern Family, Glee, Better Off Ted and Arrested Development all grabbed me. (Thanks, Hulu!) Thanks and farewell, King of the Hill.

I keep a list of stuff I want to do and short notes about my experiences at http://carlsstufftodo.blogspot.com/ if you're interested in joining me for something coming up or are curious about what I've been seeing and doing.

Another draw to Boston was to be closer to mountain hiking. I made it up to Mts. Moosilauke and Monadnock, but want to go more often this coming season. And I'm hoping to get on a bike this year, too. Mine stayed in storage.

So those are the highlights for me this past year. I'm looking forward to a lot of the same, plus getting back to work this year. And I'm hoping to spend even more time with family and friends old and new. Happy 2010!

My "independent study"/sabbatical

I've spent a lot of this sabbatical year paying attention to and learning things I've been interested in, and it's felt a bit like an independent study period. With a year having passed, I wanted to write down the things that made a good impression on me (not everything did), and I recommend everything on here. I've put in bold those few books that made the biggest impression on me. If you're curious about something, I'm happy to tell you more, too.

I put most energy into learning about interaction design. I have a long reading list, including:

• Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin
• Contextual Design by Beyer and Holtzblatt
• Visual Thinking for Design by Colin Ware
• Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few
• Experience Design 1 by Nathan Shedroff
• Glut: Mastering Information through the Ages by Alex Wright
• The Reflective Practitioner by Donald Schon
• Designing for People by Henry Drefuss
• Designing for Interaction (2nd ed) by Dan Saffer
• Designing Gestural Interfaces by Dan Saffer
• Don't Make Me Think (2nd ed) by Steve Krug
• Web App Design Handbook by Fowler and Stanwick
• Universal Principles of Design by Lidwell, Holden and Butler
• Do You Matter by Brunner, Emery and Hall
  

I also went to two interaction design-related conferences:

• Interactions '09, the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference in Vancouver, B.C.
• CHI2009, the ACM's Computer Human Interface conference in Boston.
  

I attended a number of design-related events and groups around Boston.

• BostonCHI, particularly Ben Schneiderman's talk on social media involvement
• Pecha Kucha Boston
  
• UX Book Group Boston
• UPA Boston
• IxDA Boston
• Refresh Boston
  

While I was thinking more seriously about consulting and entrepreneurship, these books were particularly illuminating:

• Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
• Getting Started in Consulting by Alan Weiss
• Inventor's Bible by Ronald Louis Docie Sr.

I also put some effort into understanding storytelling:

• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Heath and Heath
• Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds 
• The Elements of Persuasion by Maxwell and Dickman
• The Story Factor by Annette Simmons

Along with the "happy reading/discussion group" that I was with, I read a few other things in a similar vein:

• The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
• Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony by Deng Ming-dao
  
• Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Ten Poems to Change Your Life by Roger Housden
  

I paid attention to visual communication and understanding.

• The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam
  
• How to Use Your Eyes by James Elkins
  
• How to Read a Painting: Lessons from the Old Masters by Patrick de Rynck
• The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution by Denis Dutton
  
• Why Architecture Matters by Paul Goldberger
  
• Prints and Visual Communication by William Ivins
• The Digital Photography Book Volume 1 by Scott Kelby
  
• Illustrator CS4 Visual QuickStart Guide by Weinmann and Lourekas
  

Along with the time spent reading, I spent a lot of time looking. These are some of the most rewarding places and exhibits for me this year:

• Boston MFA, particularly the Venetian masters exhibit, the ways of seeing class, and the Greek and Roman carved miniatures and seals.
• Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum
• Boston ICA, particularly the Shepard Fairey exhibit
• Mass MoCA, particularly the Sol Lewitt installation
• The Metropolitan Museum, particularly Roxy Paine on the roof, middle age pen and parchment exhibit, and the sculpture courtyards.
• Museum of the City of New York's Saarinen exhibit
• Getty Villa
• Minneapolis Institute of Arts, particularly the large and appealing Asian collection
  
• The Frick Collection

And there were a few books that didn't quite fit into any of these groups, but were still quite appealing -- my electives or recreational nonfiction reading.

• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
• Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone and others.
  
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
• The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher

I also read a bit of fiction:

• Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books, as well as his Isabel Dalhousie Mysteries
• Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson