Saturday, July 21, 2007

Here I am!

Andover is gorgeous! And the drive was beautiful!

I've arrived safe and sound after a fun and funny trip where I learned very valuable lessons about bungee cords, aerodynamics and the things you can and can't do while driving at high speeds... (texting OK, searching for CDs isn't) luckily no real incidents, once I abandoned the tarp, which kept catching the wind wrong. My longsuffering truck is a champ and made it through with flying colors...

New Jersey was funny -- there was in fact gorgeous scenery once you got away from the highway -- but somehow I couldn't tear myself away from the gas stations, which were amazing studies in human behavior. The gas station attendants get very flustered when you try to pump your own gas, because apparently that's illegal in the state of New Jersey. What *is* that?

I came up via Albany, and thus got to see some of the gorgeous scenery in western Mass... I found a neat hostel in New Paltz, about 40 minutes south of Albany, which turned out to be a fun little hippie town with crazy pedestrians, dreadlocked hitchikers and several great natural food stores.

The MIT class is fun so far (I'm doing lots of reading and research to get ready for it at the moment) -- the building we're in is right on the Charles River, which is gorgeous... I'm casting about for ways to make some money for the summer... I have some interviews in Boston coming up -- but then there's a Harvard sleep study that will pay you $10,000 if you will agree to not leave a hospital room and let them interrupt your sleep cycle for 40 days. Hmm.

I had a great fourth -- Both Boston and Portsmouth, NH, had great fireworks displays. The Portsmouth display (so I understand from a seasoned resident) has a history of crowd casualties, but happily, this year the flying incendiaries stayed in the sky.

In Andover, so far I've visited the public library, the grounds of Phillips Academy (alma mater of our esteemed President and also our esteemed columnist Charlie Patton) and the local and fabulous Andover Bookstore. It's two stories of wall-to-wall books, and ... they give you cookies at the door. And, of course, the Dunkin' Donuts. Spectacular.

Also, (HURRAH) I finished the clockface I was working on!



Write and let me know how it's going...Miss you all lots.

Also -- check out breakdancing Yoda:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=3384765

1 comment:

Minnie said...

The clock is beautiful! Tell us more. I started a blog too, because everyone else did, and I want to be like everyone else, don'tchaknow? I think if you click my name you can get to it. Miss you! Also, I got the photography book! Thanks!