Nathaniel's latest visit!
It’s been a few days since Nathaniel left and I’m slowly adjusting to not having him here. He posted updates while he was here (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), but I had neither the time nor the inclination to do that! I prefer to just do a big info-dump at the end, but I’d have a much harder time remembering everything if he didn’t keep such good notes during the visit, so I’m grateful that he does that.
So! Our five-week visit, broken down for your convenience.
When Nathaniel first got here, we had a few quiet days just hanging out and enjoying each others’ company. He arrived on a Monday, and on Tuesday we went grocery shopping, but otherwise we just hung out until Saturday! It was just as well, as we spent most of our visit doing a load of stuff and didn’t have too much down time.
On Saturday, we went out to New England Trans United Pride in Northampton. This was my first time there, just because Northampton is a bit of a schlep from Boston, but it was very cool. We left at 9 to make sure we’d get there by 11, and made it at 10.45. There were very few people there! By 11.30, though, there was a decent-sized crowd, and we even saw a few people we recognised, which was really nice. We got to carry signs for MTPC, but as soon as we started marching at 12, it started to rain. It wasn’t too bad, and it eased off after a while, but it stayed chilly and grey and damp, which was too bad. There weren’t many people out to see the parade, but we got a lot of supportive honking from passing traffic, and a few people did cheer from the sidewalks. Because there were so few of them, they each got their own big cheer from the marchers! I thought that was kind of fun.
The march ended in a car park, where there was a small stage and some tables set up for various organisations. We had a look round, but it started to rain again so I got out my umbrella, which I hadn’t bothered with while we were marching. A lot of folks hadn’t turned up because of the weather, it seemed, because about half of the tables stayed empty and two speakers weren’t there either. We got a few freebies and hung out with
zander05, waiting for our friend Gunner to speak - he was the Grand Marshal. It was about 2 when he finished speaking, and most people had left already, so we decided to head home as well. We’d run into another guy I know, who recommended that we take route 2 back rather than the Mass Pike, because the foliage on route 2 was apparently really pretty. We did that, and it was pretty, but it took a while longer than the Pike would have done! We went to Friendly’s for tea, though, which is always good.
On Sunday, we went to the local Harvest Fair, which I used to go to when I was little. It was so much bigger than it used to be! There were some kiddie rides, loads of folks campaigning for mayor or school committee or the board of aldermen, and a ton of stalls selling stuff. We bypassed the jewellery stalls, but paused at one selling handmade ties for $15. Nathaniel found one he loved, which looked like it had an old-world style map on it, so he bought it. There was another stall from a local cable TV station, where one of the folks actually recognised us from the 4th of July last year! Nathaniel got a nice free reusable bag from them. Plus, best of all, there was a stall for Cabot Cheese, where the very nice woman informed me that cheddar cheese is naturally lactose free, which means I can have all I want! (I’m lactose intolerant and Lactaid only sometimes, sort of, works for me - and I don’t like goat cheese, soy-based non-dairy stuff, etc. I only like cow dairy. Usually I eat it anyway and just suffer, because it’s worth it to me.) Apparently you can just check the label on any cheese and if it says Sugars - 0, there’s no lactose. Plus, on Cabot cheeses, it specifically says that they're lactose free if they are. Makes sense to me. I wish I’d figured that out sooner! I was overjoyed at the news.
On Monday, we decided to go to Walden Pond as it was so nice out. I’d only been once before, when I was maybe 13, so I was looking forward to going again. Nathaniel asked if it was near British Delights, a truly excellent shop that we’d been to last year, and I checked the map and found that it was just a little farther away on route 2. So we went to the shop first, intending to go to Walden Pond on the way back.
I really like British Delights, even if the stuff is expensive (understandable as it’s all imported). We managed to restrain ourselves and buy only a few things, even though we hadn’t intended to buy anything! Nathaniel was very excited to find Tunnock’s teacakes, as they’re one of his favourite treats, so we got a little box of those. I got a small bottle of Irn Bru and a little bag of pickled onion Monster Munch. As Nathaniel said, he’s obviously done really well in introducing me to only the best top quality British foods. When we were there last year, I got a thing of Pot Noodle, as it sounded like the Ramen we have here, which I really like. When I went to pay for it, the woman ringing it up looked at me dubiously and asked if I was sure. Unfortunately, I now know why. Maybe it had just been on that shelf for a long time, but it tasted really old - the noodles were a bit too cardboard for my liking, and even the flavouring tasted old and kind of weird. I’ll stick with Ramen, which doesn’t seem to taste any different when it’s been on a shelf for ages. (I’m not sure if that’s actually a good thing ...)
We stopped at Subway on the way to the pond. When I was at the Northeast Unschooling Conference in August, I went to Subway and discovered that all the meats used in their Cold Cut Combo sub - bologna, ham, and salami - are turkey based, rather than pork! I told Nathaniel and he was surprised and pleased by that, so he got one. When we got to the park, we wandered through the woods for a bit - at one point emerging into a cul-de-sac in front of someone’s house with no real idea how we’d got there - until we found the pond, and then sat on a low wall by the water to eat. Then we walked along the trail that runs around the pond, stopping frequently to take pictures. The trail was all fenced off with metal railings and signs warning that you’d be fined if you left the trail. I didn’t remember that from my visit there as a kid. They have a lot of issues with erosion, apparently, and I guess earlier efforts to keep people from climbing all over the hills and making the erosion worse hadn’t worked. It was still a bit much, though, and made it feel less like you were actually out in nature. It’s too bad that they’ve had to resort to that just to get people to stop eroding the hell out of the nature preserve.
Once we’d made our way round the pond, we sat on the low wall again and just enjoyed the view and the peace and quiet. There was a little beach right there with an unattended lifeguard station (‘Swim at your own risk’, etc.), and quite a few people were swimming. Clearly they were far more hardcore than I am; that water must have been freezing cold. At about 3.30, it started to get chilly, so we had a quick look in the gift shop before heading out. Nathaniel got some postcards and commended the guy working there on his choice of music, as he had the Beatles playing. The guy said that one nice thing about his job was that he could basically play whatever he wanted.
On Tuesday, we did errands! I’d been thinking for ages about getting a new mobile phone, so I had a look on T-Mobile’s site to see what I could upgrade to for cheap or free. Nathaniel wondered if he could get a prepaid phone to use while he was here, as it’s expensive for him to use his UK phone in the US, and he wanted to be able to text all his American friends and tweet and keep in touch with me while I was at work. The cheapest one on T-Mobile’s site was $20, but we found a $10 Virgin Mobile phone on Best Buy‘s site, which sounded promising. We went to Best Buy and found the phone, but the packaging said that it did texts and messaging, but didn’t say what messaging protocols (AIM, Yahoo, WLM, ICQ, etc.) it handled. We asked a guy working there, but he wasn’t helpful and didn’t seem to actually have any idea anyway. He said that he didn’t think any of the cheap phones did messaging, but obviously they do, because it’s written on the damn box. I just wanted him to look up the specs for the phone we were looking at, which should have specified the messaging protocols it handles, but he didn’t make any effort to do that. Feh.
We went along to the T-Mobile store and I spent ages playing with a few different phones and agonising over which one to get - they’re only cheap if you sign up for a two-year extension on your plan, which means that I’m stuck with whatever I get for two years, unless I want to shell out a ton of money for my next phone. Finally I decided on a Samsung t239, which is quite a bit nicer than my old t209. Once I was sorted with the new phone, I asked if we could just get a SIM card for my old phone so Nathaniel could use that. The guy was super helpful and helped us choose a plan that was ideal for Nathaniel, who would be doing a lot of texting and not much calling. It was $10, which was a great deal, even when we spent another $10 adding credit to it. So now Nathaniel has a US phone number! He did a load of texting and tweeting with it over the rest of his visit.
On Wednesday, we went to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I’d actually never read the book as a kid, but the film looked fun. It was actually really good and quite funny. I highly recommend it.
On Thursday I worked during the afternoon, so Nathaniel got some of his work done while I was gone. When I got home, I found that he’d been so busy working that he’d forgotten to print anything to read at TranScriptions that night! Fortunately he had his stuff on a flash stick, so I printed a few of his poems and we headed out. He spent most of the ride there angsting over whether to read, and what to read if he did. He still hadn’t decided when we arrived, but fortunately (as seems to be the norm with TranScriptions) it started quite late, so he had a little more time to decide. He decided to read three of the four poems we’d printed, and was 9th or something, so we got to see several other people perform before he went up. He was a bit unimpressed with the fact that TranScriptions doesn’t have a rule against performing someone else’s work, the way Gender Crash did, so a lot of folks performed stuff (mostly music) that wasn’t their original work. I don’t mind it quite as much, but it was nice when everyone was performing their own work at Gender Crash.
When it was his turn, Nathaniel introduced himself by saying that he was English (big cheer) and that he might use words or pronunciations that they weren’t familiar with, in which case they should FGI. I had thought that everyone at TranScriptions would get that, but they didn’t seem to, which was disappointing. Nathaniel had to clarify that they should Google it. First he read Out, which went down well; Return to Wonderland is much darker and wasn’t received quite as well, but You Can’t Do Yoga on a Beanbag got a lot of laughs and was a great one to end with. I took lots of pictures (they all came out blurry, unfortunately) and was so proud of him. As he went to take his seat, the MC said something about his accent being so sexy, so I called out, ’He’s mine!‘ She accepted this with good grace. ;)
There was a short break and then the feature came on. This month it was Kielbasia, the Accordion Playing Lunch Lady from the Old Country [Poland], which was fantastic. The artist, Matt, said that usually he gets ready backstage and then is in character when he comes out onstage, but as this was a gender-bending type of venue, he’d decided to get ready onstage instead. While he changed into his costume and applied makeup, he told us about the history of the character and how it had developed, which was really really cool. The performance itself was super fun. I highly recommend it, if you have the opportunity to see it at any point.
Nathaniel got compliments on his poetry afterwards when we were all hanging around and chatting, including from the feature, which was so nice for him. One person said that ’you can’t do yoga on a beanbag’ are words to live by which made him really happy.
On Friday I went to work again and Nathaniel did more work at home, and wrote his LJ post. Otherwise we just hung out and rested, which was nice after such a busy week!
On Saturday, we just did errands and wandered round a local mall, which was hardly thrilling but was still nice. I always tell Nathaniel that I'm not super fussed about what we do - I don't need it to be exciting or even especially interesting, as long as we're together. So we had a day that was neither exciting nor especially interesting. We did go to Uno's, where Nathaniel was very pleased to see that he had lots of choices for foods that didn't involve red meat or pasta, and he angsted a bit over what to get. He finally decided on the firecracker chicken burger, which was grilled chicken with lettuce and tomato, plus buffalo cheese and Uno's special firecracker sauce. We don't know what was in the sauce, but surprisingly, it tasted like it could have come from McDonald's. I think it might have been the pickle in it. Also surprisingly, this quality did not detract from the taste, so Nathaniel quite enjoyed his sandwich. He also got their mashed potatoes with cheese and sour cream on top (he asked for it without the bacon that usually comes on top as well), which is so good. It's like their pizza skins without the pizza crust and is one of my favourite things ever. We tried their 'mini' desserts, but as I don't like vanilla ice cream or 'whipped topping', I just wound up with a very small brownie with some hot fudge sauce on top. It was still tasty though! Nathaniel's 'mini' dessert, on the other hand, was huge. He had the Mini Macadamia Nut White Chocolate Chunk Deep Dish Cookie Sundae, which is as big as its name. The cookie was about 4 inches across and a good half inch thick, with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream, a generous amount of 'whipped topping' and lots of fudge sauce. Nathaniel loved it.
On Sunday, we trooped out to the annual Oktoberfest and Honk! Festival Parade in Harvard Square. Nathaniel had read about it in US Airways magazine on the flight over and thought it sounded really interesting, so off we went. Six stages of live entertainment, 50+ International Food Vendors and an outdoor market with over 200 vendors, artists, vintage items, and sidewalk sales. Apparently. We walked to our closest Dunkies for breakfast, as is our custom, and then headed off, since Oktoberfest didn't start until noon. We got there at about 1.15, so we just caught the tail end of the parade. We wandered round and looked at all the stalls, but we kept finding more and more stalls along different streets, so we wound up making the same loop a few times to make sure we'd seen everything! We were very impressed with the Big Skinny stall, which was selling wallets and purses that were specially made to be thinner than normal wallets. One of the people on the stall turned out to be the man behind the company. He showed us an empty leather wallet and one of their wallets which had 16 plastic cards in, and the leather one was much thicker even empty! He also said that he usually put several cards in one pocket but they never fit, so he'd designed the pockets to be wider to accommodate more plastic, and they're lined with rubber so the cards don't fall out if you open it upside down. Nathaniel had been wanting a new wallet, and he was attracted to theshiny bright colours these ones came in, so he got a nice bright blue one. It was only $20, and as it's made from microfiber, it's machine washable too! We were both very impressed, but I'm going to wait a while before getting a new wallet, as my old one is still fine.
A couple of stalls had spin-the-wheel games with prizes; from Wagamama, we both won metal keyrings with bottle openers on one end, and Nathaniel also won a coupon for a free juice when you purchase a meal. I didn't win anything from Carolina Rice, but Nathaniel won a sample bag of jasmine rice. Then, from Kangogift.com, Nathaniel won a cup of coffee and I won a cookie! We both really liked the idea of Kangogift.com. The idea is that person A buys a gift for person B, person B gets a text about it, then they go into the shop to pick up their present! Isn't that a great idea? It's still a new thing so there's not much on the site yet, which is a shame. (It was extra cool because the bloke on the stall was also called Nathaniel, except he goes by Thad, which we hadn't heard of before. He was extremely pleased to meet a fellow Nathaniel!)
We got so many freebies, of 'varying awesomeness', as Nathaniel said. Nantucket Nectars and Fuze gave out little cups with samples of their drinks - you could choose from a bunch of flavours to try - and Venom Energy gave out entire bottles of their drinks! Dunkies gave out gift cards which had the possibility of being already worth $50; we got three, but none of them had money on. They were supposed to all have a free coffee, but when we tried to use them, we were told that they didn't have anything on them, and the people didn't know anything about the promotional offer, which kind of sucked. Amnesty International had some petitions that I signed, and we got a free thing of poetry magnets. Floyd's Barbershop was giving out coupons for a free haircut, and one of the people there turned out to be an old high school friend of mine! She gave me a big hug and her phone number and said that we had to get together sometime and hang out. It was great to see her, and the whole thing was so much fun. I'm so glad Nathaniel told me about it!
On Monday, we were worn out from all the walking, so we had a quiet day at home. Nathaniel made sausage cacciatore with a recipe from Caden, who got it from his Italian-American mother, so it's authentic Italian food! It was really simple, but very tasty, even despite the presence of tomatoes, which I can't stand. Nathaniel put in plenty of Worcestershire sauce, basil, oregano and garlic which helped disguise that nasty tomato taste for me. He's so good to me. After tea, though, I had a craving for cake, so we had to make an emergency cake run to the supermarket. Yum.
On Tuesday it was kind of gross out, so we tried to find indoor stuff to do. We couldn't find a museum that was both interesting and not overpriced (besides the Science Museum, which we already had plans to go to another day with my cousin), so Nathaniel suggested that we go back to the arcade in Somerville that we went to last year. When I checked their website, it said that they'd been closed since June 2008! We couldn't really find any others, except one in Framingham that was closed on Tuesdays. Arcades have really died a death since home gaming consoles have become popular, which is understandable but kind of sad. We wound up hanging out at home, and Nathaniel tried to work more on a couple of DS games that he was stuck on. He didn't manage to make any progress with them, so he decided to trade them in at GameStop at some point.
On Wednesday, we road-tripped it up to the LL Bean outlet in Freeport, Maine with Caden. Both Caden and I had been needing to go for ages - me to return stuff, him to get a discounted winter coat. He got to us at about 11, so we set off immediately. We stopped in Kennebunk to get food at Burger King, so by the time we got there, it was 2.15. We had until 3 to shop so that we could get Caden back in time for him to go to work, so we hardly had any time at all! Fortunately Caden knew what he wanted, so he and I returned our stuff and he went to look for his coat while Nathaniel looked at plain white long-sleeved T-shirts. I used the gift card I'd got for my returns to get him a shirt, which he was pleased about. Caden got his coat at a 40% discount, which made him happy. We made it home in just about two hours instead of three. It must have been by magic (and because we didn't stop for anything), because I never ever speed. Ever.
On Thursday, before I left for work, I got out some sidewalk chalk I've had for a million years and told Nathaniel he could go draw outside if he wanted. I'd been meaning to do that for ages, as apparently kids don't draw outside with chalk in the UK, which I think is terrible. I hadn't been at work long, though, when I got a text from Nathaniel saying he was locked out of the house! He'd already been outside for about an hour, it was quite cold, and it would be at least another two hours until I got home. We don't have a spare key outside, and the neighbours don't have them anymore, so I had to tell Nathaniel how to get through the bulkhead into the basement. He was still locked out of the rest of the house, but at least it was a little warmer. Fortunately, my mother came home early and let him in about an hour after he'd made his way into the basement. He had mostly warmed up by the time I got home, and he showed me all the stuff he'd drawn on the driveway and the front walk, which was completely adorable. I'm glad he took pictures, because it rained a bit overnight and most of his stuff washed away! Woe.
On Friday morning, we went off to GameStop so Nathaniel could trade in his DS games for store credit. He got My Sims Agents, which looks incredibly cute. Then we just wandered round the area and looked at various shops - there's a toy shop that sells nothing but puzzle stuff, which we love - and headed home before I had to go to work.
On Saturday, after I went to karate and Nathaniel wrote out postcards, we decided to go apple picking. We decided to go to Shelburne Farm in Stow, as it had lots of different kinds of apples and was open until 6. It was quite busy when we got there, but the orchard was so huge that there weren't many folks near us as we walked and picked apples. We bought a peck (~10 lbs.) bag, which was $16, and found the Fuji trees first. We'd done a bit of apple research and found that Fuji are ideal for baking, so we mostly filled our bag with those. Nathaniel wanted to get a couple of Jonagold apples, but those trees had mostly been picked clean, so it took us a while to find two nice ones. Finally we went and got some Red Delicious, which are great to just eat as-is, and which I love. We also got pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns while we were there, which was really nice.
Before we left, we had a look round their shop - they have some seriously cute apple-themed stuff - and then got some mulled cider to share. Nathaniel calls it apple juice, because all cider is alcoholic in the UK but obviously it's not (the alcoholic stuff is hard cider), but I keep telling him it's not just plain apple juice! It has spices and stuff in! The cider here was a little too cinnamony, but it was still good. We got a cider doughnut too, which was minuscule, but still tasty. We went to Uno's on the way home, where Nathaniel got a crunchy chicken wrap and pumpkin tiramisu for dessert. It's pumpkin spice cake topped with a pumpkin mousse, maple-soaked sponge fingers and cinnamon whipped cream, garnished with candied pecans. Nathaniel loved it, but it was such a huge piece! It was at least 4 inches by 2 and a good 2 inches high. He wound up taking half of it home. I had their rattlesnake pasta, which was so tasty. I actually have a recipe for it and I'll have to make it sometime, because it was amazing. Pasta, lots of cheese, and some jalapeño to give it a kick. Awesome.
On Sunday, we had plans to meet up with D11 and D14 and their mom and go see the Head of the Charles regatta, because their dad's a rower and would actually be rowing in an alumni crew, plus the crew he coaches was rowing. As it turned out, D11 had more sense and went to a friend's house rather than be out in the miserable weather. It was cold and raining and just nasty. We met D14 and his mom K at Harvard Square, and she took us down to the river and to Harvard's boathouse for a bit of shelter. It gave us a great view, but we'd only just dried off when we headed back out to look at all the stalls. We didn't realise there would be so many! There were tons, and they had loads of amazing free stuff. We got mini bottles of hot sauce, a large box of salad with a tub of dressing each, a small tub of Turkey Hill ice cream, granola cereal and granola bar, various flavours of Lärabars, a dozen packs of gummy vitamins and little packs of biodegradable washing up liquid. Green Mountain had a stall with coffee dispensers, and they were giving away free cups of coffee! They had several different kinds available. I don't drink coffee, but Nathaniel does, and when he got a cup, he was given a sample pack of coffee plus a couple of coupons for $1.50 off! Despite the fact that we were getting wetter and wetter with every passing minute, we were also having a lot of fun seeing what the next stall had to offer us and finding room in our pockets for all our stuff!
Finally, even though we hadn't seen all the stalls, we were cold and wet and decided to give up. We went to Au Bon Pain, where we got some seriously good soup - I had chicken noodle, of course, and Nathaniel had chicken dumpling as he's weird and doesn't like pasta. We said goodbye to D14 and K and took the T home. Later on, the rain turned to snow! Wtf. It didn't really accumulate, but it was pretty to watch.
On Monday, we had plans to meet up withassiduous1, but not until 5, so we used most of the day to bake apple stuff. Nathaniel had a look at various recipes and we decided to start with the sour cream apple cinnamon coffee cake, which my mother used to make when I was little. (I don't like sour cream at all, but the cake doesn't taste of it any more than regular cake tastes of milk - it just gets its moisture from it.) We had to go to the supermarket for butter, sour cream, and walnuts, but we still had just enough time to make the cake. It's done in a Bundt (ring) tin, which is dusted with cinnamon sugar, then half the cake batter on the bottom, topped with sliced apples, walnuts and cinnamon sugar, then the rest of the cake mix. And then more cinnamon sugar. It had to be cooled in the pan for exactly 20 minutes after baking, or else it wouldn't come out in one piece, so we had to wait rather than just run out once it was out of the oven. We ended up leaving at 4.20 and managed to catch The Slowest T Ever™, so we were a little late in meeting up with Aden and his girlfriend. We wandered into Chinatown and went to the Gourmet Dumpling House for tea. I had udon noodles with chicken and veggies, which was so tasty. I seem to have developed a taste for udon noodles after trying them at a Japanese restaurant in August. After tea, we went across the street to Bao Bao Bakery & Café. They had loads of choices, and a decent-sized slice of cake was only $1.95. Nathaniel got some cheesecake and I got chocolate cake, both of which were pretty good!
On Tuesday, I got to work an early morning, which means getting up at 4 to be at work by 5, so D11 and D14's dad can leave at 5.15 to go row with his crew. (Their mom was out of town.) Fortunately, unless they have the day off from school, an early morning is over for me by about 8 am, but I generally don't go to bed when I get home. I also had a doctor's appointment at 12.40, but as my doctor's office is near whereslammerkinbabe works in Boston, we'd arranged to meet up with her while we were downtown. We'd arranged to meet in the Boston Public Library, but Kylie was running a little late, so I had to leave Nathaniel there and go to my appointment before she arrived. My appointment went fine - I had a chat with my doctor and gave five vials of blood for my annual bloodwork, and went back to the library feeling very hungry indeed. I hadn't eaten at all since the night before because my doctor likes to do a fasting glucose test just as part of my routine bloodwork (I'm not entirely sure why since I've never had blood sugar problems), and I usually bring cookies or something to have after I have blood drawn, but I didn't have any today. Plus I'd been up since 4! I didn't feel sick or lightheaded though, just really hungry.
I texted Nathaniel when I got back to the BPL to ask where they were, and found them on the third floor admiring and discussing the huge mural by John Singer Sargent that's up there. Kylie said there was some stuff she wanted to look at in the Rare Books & Manuscripts room, so we wandered up that way, but we got told that we couldn't go in without being library members, so Nathaniel and I had to sign up for guest cards that expire after a year. We were both amused that when I was in England, I joined the Bolton library, and now he's joined the Boston library! I think collecting library cards is much cooler than stickers all over your suitcase.
Once we'd filled out all our paperwork and locked all our stuff in the lockers they provided - you can't have cameras, phones, big coats with pockets, or much of anything else when you go in there - we wentthrough the airlock into the Reading Room, only to find that the items we wanted to see were unavailable because they were going up into an exhibit in the library. The woman working there was really helpful but said it was hard to know what to show us without knowing our areas of interest. I'm so not an academic - I don't have an area of interest! I just wanted to see stuffs! She could've pulled something out at random and we probably would have been impressed with it. As it was, she showed us a mediaeval psalter, which was ready for a school trip later on. It was absolutely beautiful, with really vibrant colours and loads of detail. I think Nathaniel and Kylie were more taken with it than I was, but I was still impressed. Nathaniel impressed the woman with some of his observations and I was all proud of him. She was so into it, really enthusiastic, and you could tell that she loved her job, which always makes it so much more interesting. It's hard to get excited about something if the person showing it to you is obviously not terribly interested. When we were saying goodbye to her, we found out that she was the Curator of Manuscripts! Very cool. All curators should be as psyched about the stuff they're curating as she was.
We had to say goodbye to Kylie so she could get back to work, but we stayed in the city for a while since we were already there and it was still early. We went to Wendy's for food first, as I still hadn't eaten, and then decided to go to Newbury Street and look at all the shops. Disappointingly, all our favourite shops were gone, except for Newbury Comics! Nathaniel spent $50 on belts in an effort to boost the American economy, bless him. As we were walking back to the T stop, we passed the Lindt shop, so I asked Nathaniel if we needed Lindt. He replied that he wasn't sure, so we should go in and check. It's a good thing we checked, because as it turned out, we did need Lindt!
On Wednesday I was worn out from being up so early on Tuesday and not eating enough and walking around the city, so we had a quiet day at home. We did go out to the bank briefly, so Nathaniel finished his postcards and posted them while we were out.
We had ordered a replacement battery for Nathaniel's iRiver on eBay, so I spent some time replacing it. I had to buy an eyeglass repair kit to get a screwdriver the right size, as I'd lost my old one, but I finally managed to get the battery replaced! Nathaniel was very pleased about that.
On Thursday I went to work as usual, while Nathaniel did his work at home, preparing a Powerpoint presentation for the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is pretty upsetting work to do. When I got home, we made enchiladas and had our homemade coffee cake with ice cream afterwards, and tried to focus on nice things and be grateful for them and each other.
On Friday we drove up to Vermont for the Translating Identity Conference! We were very organised and brought sandwiches so we wouldn't get overpriced food on the way up. We left at about 1, which would still get us there before dark, so that worked. We had to stop in New Hampshire for food, but since we just ate in the car, we were back on our way pretty quickly. We got to the motel and checked in at about 5, and wound up in a room just across the hall from the one we'd stayed in two years ago at TIC! We were going to go to Friendly's for tea, but there was a '50s-style diner across the street that I'd been to once before and enjoyed, so we decided to go there. There wasn't a lot of choice for poor Nathaniel, but he did manage to find something nice to eat - another grilled chicken burger, but with barbecue sauce this time. I had a yummy turkey club sandwich with potato chips and a pickle.
On Saturday, we had to be up at 7 in order to get to UVM for the start of TIC at 9. We managed to find one of the only two Dunkies in the area (wtf, Burlington?), but then it took us 45 minutes to find parking. UVM is not very visitor-parking-friendly. Then we climbed the stairs up to the 4th floor, looked around, and were told that registration was actually on the first floor. We took the left back down and up again.
The workshops were great, but TIC really needs to be over two days - there were just too many great options per time slot. I went to both of Samuel Lurie's workshops, and both were excellent. Nathaniel didn't come with me to the first one, but he came to the second one with me. It was called Teaching Trans, and we got several ideas of exercises to use in gigs, plus ideas for community resources to implement over time.
There was the opportunity for you to create your own workshop if you thought there was something missing from the schedule, so Nathaniel and I signed up to do one on Trans-Trans relationships, as there was one for partners of FTMs and one for partners of MTFs, but both were for partners only and weren't clear on whether that included partners who were also Trans - and usually, if they don't specify that, they're not super thrilled to have Trans people there even if they're willing to let them in. Unfortunately, as we had to sign up kind of last-minute, no one came! I wrote on the feedback form that they should really have something on Trans-Trans relationships next year, so hopefully we won't have to create our own at the last minute again.
Miss Major was the keynote and she was awesome. I really enjoyed hearing her talk and seeing the short video she'd brought about her organisation, TGIJP (Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project) in California. After the keynote, it was time to meet up withtrannytrent! He'd been supposed to do a workshop, but had to call in sick. He recovered enough to go to Applebees, which was fun. I hadn't seen him in a few years, so it was fantastic to get to hang out with him a bit, even if all three of us were kind of worn out. And I was so glad that Nathaniel finally got to meet him! It's always so nice to get to meet online friends. After that, it was back to the motel to crash!
On Sunday, we took our time getting up and going as checkout wasn't until noon, and we didn't really have anywhere to be. We drove into Burlington and parked near Lake Champlain so we could walk to the Skinny Pancake, a crêpe place that TJ had recommended. It was super busy, and it took us a few minutes to figure out that you ordered your food and then just hung out waiting for a table to become free, and then grabbed it before someone else could! We thought for a while that we were going to have to eat outside in the cold wind, but a table opened up just before our food was ready. Nathaniel had the Easy Rider, which had fried egg and cheese, and I had the Lumberjack, which had ham and cheese. They were wicked good! Apparently it's only that busy on Sundays, which was just our luck, but it worked out and I'm glad we went.
We walked back down to the lake and took a load of pictures until our hands were too cold to carry on, then walked up to Church Street. We found a great sweet shop and I got a bunch of yummy stuff, including several hard candy sticks because they were only 25 each. I also got a piece of chocolate orange peel, which I love but which is always really expensive so I can't buy big bags of it like I want to.
Later on, Nathaniel spotted an illustrated copy of Dracula in the window of a second-hand bookshop, so we went in and checked it out. The illustrations were done in a comic book style that looked really cool, so Nathaniel got it - for only $9! Then I had to go to the ATM, and on the little counter by the ATM was a Bookcrossing book! The book itself didn't really appeal to either of us, but Nathaniel thought his mother would love it, so he picked it up for her. We both love the idea of the book going all the way to the UK to be released.
Before we drove home, we went into the shopping centre to use the toilets, and we popped into Spencer's Gifts as it was right there, just to have a look. Nathaniel found a fleecy throw that has the Sgt Pepper cover art on, for only $20. Ipressured encouraged him to get it and I'm really glad I did. He's in love with it and it now has pride of place on his bed. We were both entertained that he had to go to Vermont to get it, rather than Liverpool! And then it was time to drive home to Boston, which took only three hours and gave us a beautiful sunset to watch. Not bad at all.
Monday was spent relaxing at home, as I was worn out from all the driving. We made another apple cake, amusingly called New York Nobby Apple Cake, which was much easier than the previous one. It looked like it was going to have way too much apple and very little cake, but the apples reduced down a lot so it turned out fine. It was seriously tasty, but very sticky.
Later, Nathaniel made sausages and onion gravy with mash. I'm used to only really having gravy on Thanksgiving, whereas Nathaniel's used to having it with just about everything! This suits me fine, as I love gravy. One notable year, my cousin and I were given our own separate gravy boat because the family knew that if we were expected to share the regular one, no one else would get any! Nathaniel showed me how to make gravy from scratch without roasting a turkey to get drippings for it, and it was seriously good. I'll have to make a lot more of it!
On Tuesday, Nathaniel decided to make French toast for breakfast. Before we'd gone to Vermont, we'd attempted to make some bread from a beer bread mix that we'd picked up at Trader Joe's - you can use any fizzy drink if you don't want to use beer, and you basically just add it to the mix, put it in a loaf pan, and bake it. We used ginger ale, and the bread didn't taste of ginger ale at all, and came out really dense and rather dry. Maybe we should've used soda with a stronger flavour. I had tried toasting a slice, which made it a little less dense for some reason, so Nathaniel decided to turn it into French toast. It wasn't bad, although it didn't soak up the egg mixture very well.
The weather wasn't great, so we decided to check out an arcade in Saugus, as it was Tuesday again and the one in Framingham would be shut. After nearly an hour of driving, we finally found it - and it was shut too! We were most unimpressed. We wound up wandering round the Square One Mall as it was right there. It wasn't particularly interesting, except for the pet shop, so we spent quite a while looking at the puppies. They were all in individual glass-fronted cubicles and some kind of plastic mesh on the floor, and maybe one toy each. They didn't seem particularly interested, and most of them were sleeping. It made both of us want to buy them all just to get them out of there. It doesn't seem right that dogs should be on display like that; it doesn't seem healthy for them at all. I'm not a fan of pet shops generally, but at least the one near me keeps two or three puppies in each (decent-sized) enclosure with a few toys, so they can play and generally socialise and be more used to other dogs, which seems much healthier than keeping them totally isolated.
From the mall we walked to the Super Stop & Shop next door, pleased that it had turned out to be pretty warm even though it wasn't sunny. We picked up a few necessities and then came home, where Nathaniel made yummy sweet and sour vegetables with Quorn pieces. He was so pleased with himself for making real sweet and sour sauce, and it was super tasty. We watched Empire Records, which I hadn't seen in several years, and which was a fun end to the day.
On Wednesday it was chilly and drizzly and generally not very nice out, so we decided to try again at Fun & Games in Framingham. We also found out that a friend of ours had had her baby on Sunday! She's a teacher at the high school where we usually do speaking gigs. We wanted to find a present, and I knew she and her wife would be overrun with baby stuff and would probably benefit more from a gift that they could use, so Nathaniel suggested gift cards to Dunkies and Lush, which was a great idea.
Before we left for Fun & Games, I called them to make sure they were open - I didn't want to drive for another hour to another closed arcade. I just got a recorded message, but it listed their hours, and apparently they were open! When we got there, it was totally empty except for a few workmen and two employees who must have been bored stiff (surprisingly they weren't playing any games - maybe they were forbidden to, or had played everything and were sick of it), so Nathaniel and I had the run of the whole arcade. It wasn't very big, but it did have a bunch of games, including Skee ball! I love Skee ball. We had a few goes on the Skee ball and got some tickets, then tried their two basketball games - one of which had mini basketballs and was probably for younger kids, the other of which used full sized balls and looked to be for bigger people. They were both a lot of fun, and I wished I had lots of tokens so I could keep trying the big one! After two tries on that one, though, both Nathaniel and I were really sore. We got a few tickets out of it, though.
They had a couple of classic arcade games, including Dig Dug, which I had on my computer when I was little and loved, so I had to have a go with that. Then we tried one of the shooting games, where you fired balls at a clown's face, trying to knock down its five teeth. I knocked them all down on the first try, which surprised the hell out of me, and got me 9 tickets. Nathaniel also knocked them all down, but because he only took four balls to do it, the machine thought he wasn't done, so it only gave him three tickets. Poor boy. When we'd run out of tokens, I had 62 tickets and Nathaniel had 53. He'd had his eye on a little stuffed dog that cost 45 tickets, and he was so pleased to be able to get it! I spent all mine on sweets, as I already have too many little cheapy toys.
We ran a couple of errands in the increasing rain, including getting the Dunkies card, before hurrying home and hiding where it was warm and dry.
On Thursday, we had a speaking gig at my old college! First, though, Nathaniel wanted to go to Floyd's Barbershop (which turned out to be a seriously cool place and which you should all patronise) and get a haircut from my high school friend whom we met at Oktoberfest. We drove to the college and parked, then rode the T the rest of the way to the barbershop. It's near Newbury Street, where there's a Lush, so I left Nathaniel in C's capable hands and ran to Newbury Street - and then most of the way down Newbury Street - to get the gift card, then made my way back along Boylston Street at a more sedate pace. The Lush was totally empty except for three staff members in what looked like clown make-up, which totally confused me, plus I wasn't entirely sure if they were all staff, and I think I looked wildly out of place and a bit scared. The girl whotook pity on me helped me was very nice, though, even when I declined to take advantage of their special offer - something about if I spent $40, I'd get some thingy, or a discount on something else, or something. All I remember is the 'spend $40' bit.
When I got back to Floyd's, Nathaniel had considerably less hair - particularly on the back and sides - and was looking really quite sexy for it. He'd brought a few pictures of the Tenth Doctor so C could get him all ready to be Ten for Hallowe'en, and she did a great job. When she got some hair wax and feathered his hair up, it looked just like Ten's. I was very impressed. And then the jammy sod got a neck massage! No one told me that was part of the deal! I've cut my own hair for years, but I think I'll have to go have C cut my hair sometime if there's a neck massage involved. It was just a brief going-over with one of those hand-held vibrating neck massagers, but even that would be amazing for me. I carry my tension mainly in my neck and shoulders, so they're always tight even when I try to stretch and work on them myself.
Then we rode the T back to the gig, which was a pretty small class, and they were quiet and looked pretty shell-shocked through the whole thing. I think we broke their brains. Their teacher assured us that they weren't very talkative generally, and that they were definitely taking everything in and processing it even though they didn't look excited about all the fascinating stuff we were telling them. Just as we finished with the four-line exercise, two more people arrived to be on a panel with us, which was excellent timing. One was a 15 year old Trans girl, and the other was an adult who identified as Two-Spirit and used masculine pronouns. I'd not really heard first-hand from a Two-Spirit person before, even though I know what it means, so that was really cool for me. We got more questions as we went along, which was good, and all in all it was quite a good gig. It ended at about 6.30, so we went off to Friendly's for tea!
Friday we just hung out and then I went to work. It was nice to have a rest as we had a busy weekend coming up!
Saturday was Hallowe'en. I was the Ninth Doctor and Nathaniel was the Tenth Doctor. I ultimately wasn't able to find a leather jacket like Nine's, so I wound up wearing an old brown suede jacket my mother offered me. It was too small and I felt like it looked a bit girly, but it was a lot better than nothing, and Nathaniel said it looked okay. Nathaniel was fucking gorgeous in his suit and I had to restrain myself from jumping on him from the moment I saw him in it. Fortunately my mother was also present at that particular moment, so I behaved myself.
We spent most of the day carving jack-o-lanterns; mine had wolves howling, and Nathaniel's was the same one I did last year, of the Tenth Doctor and the TARDIS. We got a load of compliments on them, including one dad in a bunny costume who asked if we'd carve his next year! We said we'd be happy to, for a small fee. One group of teens asked if we were artists, so I explained about templates and said that you could get them at CVS. Pictures forthcoming.
On Sunday we went to the Harry Potter exhibition at the Museum of Science with my cousin Cathy, which was so much fun. I highly recommend it if you're into Harry Potter at all. It was So Awesome OMG. So many cool props and costumes! Unfortunately they didn't allow any photography, so we only got two pictures - one of the flying blue Ford Anglia from Chamber of Secrets, the other of the giant chess piece that Ron uses in Philosopher's Stone - because they were on display in the main museum. Nathaniel got a Slytherin pen from their overpriced HP shop, because he'd been wanting it for ages, but Cathy and I didn't get anything. There was a hoodie I loved the look of, but it was $70. No thanks.
We spent a while in the main museum after that, which I always love, and then said goodbye to Cathy so we could get to D11 and D14's house on time for tea! Their mom had invited us over, which was so nice. They had another couple over too, who were very nice folks, and we had fun chatting to them and their son, who I think was 14 also. D11 and D14 ate with us and hung out with us a bit, and D11 got out his telescope and set it up so we could all look at the moon, which was full and very pretty. I was so glad Nathaniel got to meet D11 and D14 and their parents, because they're such a cool family, and he's already met D15 (who's part of a different family). Finally we came home and crashed after our very busy day!
On Monday we hung out and relaxed after our busy weekend. We went out to do a few errands - bank and Social Security office and supermarket - but otherwise just took it easy. Nathaniel had been given an ID number when he studied here for a semester several years ago, and they told him it was a Social Security number, so we wanted to verify that and - if it did turn out to be valid - change his name with them. (As it turned out, it was in SSN format - i.e., 123-45-6789 - but wasn't a valid SSN, which is what I'd figured.) I was so glad that I'd checked the Social Security website for locations, because we had been about to leave to go to North Station - but when I checked the website, it turned out there was one much closer to home! So we just drove over there and it was so much easier. I really hope that office didn't exist yet in 2000 when I changed my name; if it did and I hauled my arse all the way up to North Station for no reason, I'll be annoyed.
On Tuesday we went to vote, a new experience for Nathaniel (in the US). Then we went to one of my favourite local parks for a while, before heading home so Nathaniel could pack. He spent the rest of the afternoon packing, while I did stuff online - trying to catch up on LJ, mostly. We watched The Lost Boys, which Nathaniel likes and I hadn't seen before, and went to Friendly's for tea.
On Wednesday we hung out and Nathaniel finished the last bits of his packing before Caden arrived to take us to the airport. Letting go of my boy was so hard - all the more so when he decided to take an earlier flight, because the woman at the check-in desk said that if he took the later flight, he wouldn't really have enough time to catch his connecting flight in Philly. We still got a bit of time together before he had to go, and I stayed watching him through security until he waved one last time and disappeared to find his gate. Then I hung out in the terminal, texting with Nathaniel until he had to turn his phone off, and then texting people in the hope of some virtual hugs until I was sure that his flight had taken off. Only then did I go downstairs to catch the silver line, as I'd decided to go to South Station and get a bus home rather than take the T out - my car wasn't at the T stop since Caden had dropped us off, and I didn't want to walk all the way home from the T stop or pay for a taxi. I had a hard time finding the bus stop, as it turned out to not actually be at South Station, just near it. I wandered around for a while in Chinatown before I saw a bus, chased after it until I found a bus stop, then waited for 15 minutes before a bus came - and told me I wanted to be a block over, as he was going inbound and I wanted to go outbound. (They were one-way streets; otherwise I would've just had to cross over to go the other way.) Finally I got on the right bus, and listened to my iRiver on the ride home. When I got home, I stayed awake for ages because I didn't want to go to sleep without Nathaniel, but ultimately I did. Such a small bed shouldn't feel so big and empty.
Now we count down until May, when Nathaniel will hopefully be returning!
So! Our five-week visit, broken down for your convenience.
When Nathaniel first got here, we had a few quiet days just hanging out and enjoying each others’ company. He arrived on a Monday, and on Tuesday we went grocery shopping, but otherwise we just hung out until Saturday! It was just as well, as we spent most of our visit doing a load of stuff and didn’t have too much down time.
On Saturday, we went out to New England Trans United Pride in Northampton. This was my first time there, just because Northampton is a bit of a schlep from Boston, but it was very cool. We left at 9 to make sure we’d get there by 11, and made it at 10.45. There were very few people there! By 11.30, though, there was a decent-sized crowd, and we even saw a few people we recognised, which was really nice. We got to carry signs for MTPC, but as soon as we started marching at 12, it started to rain. It wasn’t too bad, and it eased off after a while, but it stayed chilly and grey and damp, which was too bad. There weren’t many people out to see the parade, but we got a lot of supportive honking from passing traffic, and a few people did cheer from the sidewalks. Because there were so few of them, they each got their own big cheer from the marchers! I thought that was kind of fun.
The march ended in a car park, where there was a small stage and some tables set up for various organisations. We had a look round, but it started to rain again so I got out my umbrella, which I hadn’t bothered with while we were marching. A lot of folks hadn’t turned up because of the weather, it seemed, because about half of the tables stayed empty and two speakers weren’t there either. We got a few freebies and hung out with
zander05, waiting for our friend Gunner to speak - he was the Grand Marshal. It was about 2 when he finished speaking, and most people had left already, so we decided to head home as well. We’d run into another guy I know, who recommended that we take route 2 back rather than the Mass Pike, because the foliage on route 2 was apparently really pretty. We did that, and it was pretty, but it took a while longer than the Pike would have done! We went to Friendly’s for tea, though, which is always good.On Sunday, we went to the local Harvest Fair, which I used to go to when I was little. It was so much bigger than it used to be! There were some kiddie rides, loads of folks campaigning for mayor or school committee or the board of aldermen, and a ton of stalls selling stuff. We bypassed the jewellery stalls, but paused at one selling handmade ties for $15. Nathaniel found one he loved, which looked like it had an old-world style map on it, so he bought it. There was another stall from a local cable TV station, where one of the folks actually recognised us from the 4th of July last year! Nathaniel got a nice free reusable bag from them. Plus, best of all, there was a stall for Cabot Cheese, where the very nice woman informed me that cheddar cheese is naturally lactose free, which means I can have all I want! (I’m lactose intolerant and Lactaid only sometimes, sort of, works for me - and I don’t like goat cheese, soy-based non-dairy stuff, etc. I only like cow dairy. Usually I eat it anyway and just suffer, because it’s worth it to me.) Apparently you can just check the label on any cheese and if it says Sugars - 0, there’s no lactose. Plus, on Cabot cheeses, it specifically says that they're lactose free if they are. Makes sense to me. I wish I’d figured that out sooner! I was overjoyed at the news.
On Monday, we decided to go to Walden Pond as it was so nice out. I’d only been once before, when I was maybe 13, so I was looking forward to going again. Nathaniel asked if it was near British Delights, a truly excellent shop that we’d been to last year, and I checked the map and found that it was just a little farther away on route 2. So we went to the shop first, intending to go to Walden Pond on the way back.
I really like British Delights, even if the stuff is expensive (understandable as it’s all imported). We managed to restrain ourselves and buy only a few things, even though we hadn’t intended to buy anything! Nathaniel was very excited to find Tunnock’s teacakes, as they’re one of his favourite treats, so we got a little box of those. I got a small bottle of Irn Bru and a little bag of pickled onion Monster Munch. As Nathaniel said, he’s obviously done really well in introducing me to only the best top quality British foods. When we were there last year, I got a thing of Pot Noodle, as it sounded like the Ramen we have here, which I really like. When I went to pay for it, the woman ringing it up looked at me dubiously and asked if I was sure. Unfortunately, I now know why. Maybe it had just been on that shelf for a long time, but it tasted really old - the noodles were a bit too cardboard for my liking, and even the flavouring tasted old and kind of weird. I’ll stick with Ramen, which doesn’t seem to taste any different when it’s been on a shelf for ages. (I’m not sure if that’s actually a good thing ...)
We stopped at Subway on the way to the pond. When I was at the Northeast Unschooling Conference in August, I went to Subway and discovered that all the meats used in their Cold Cut Combo sub - bologna, ham, and salami - are turkey based, rather than pork! I told Nathaniel and he was surprised and pleased by that, so he got one. When we got to the park, we wandered through the woods for a bit - at one point emerging into a cul-de-sac in front of someone’s house with no real idea how we’d got there - until we found the pond, and then sat on a low wall by the water to eat. Then we walked along the trail that runs around the pond, stopping frequently to take pictures. The trail was all fenced off with metal railings and signs warning that you’d be fined if you left the trail. I didn’t remember that from my visit there as a kid. They have a lot of issues with erosion, apparently, and I guess earlier efforts to keep people from climbing all over the hills and making the erosion worse hadn’t worked. It was still a bit much, though, and made it feel less like you were actually out in nature. It’s too bad that they’ve had to resort to that just to get people to stop eroding the hell out of the nature preserve.
Once we’d made our way round the pond, we sat on the low wall again and just enjoyed the view and the peace and quiet. There was a little beach right there with an unattended lifeguard station (‘Swim at your own risk’, etc.), and quite a few people were swimming. Clearly they were far more hardcore than I am; that water must have been freezing cold. At about 3.30, it started to get chilly, so we had a quick look in the gift shop before heading out. Nathaniel got some postcards and commended the guy working there on his choice of music, as he had the Beatles playing. The guy said that one nice thing about his job was that he could basically play whatever he wanted.
On Tuesday, we did errands! I’d been thinking for ages about getting a new mobile phone, so I had a look on T-Mobile’s site to see what I could upgrade to for cheap or free. Nathaniel wondered if he could get a prepaid phone to use while he was here, as it’s expensive for him to use his UK phone in the US, and he wanted to be able to text all his American friends and tweet and keep in touch with me while I was at work. The cheapest one on T-Mobile’s site was $20, but we found a $10 Virgin Mobile phone on Best Buy‘s site, which sounded promising. We went to Best Buy and found the phone, but the packaging said that it did texts and messaging, but didn’t say what messaging protocols (AIM, Yahoo, WLM, ICQ, etc.) it handled. We asked a guy working there, but he wasn’t helpful and didn’t seem to actually have any idea anyway. He said that he didn’t think any of the cheap phones did messaging, but obviously they do, because it’s written on the damn box. I just wanted him to look up the specs for the phone we were looking at, which should have specified the messaging protocols it handles, but he didn’t make any effort to do that. Feh.
We went along to the T-Mobile store and I spent ages playing with a few different phones and agonising over which one to get - they’re only cheap if you sign up for a two-year extension on your plan, which means that I’m stuck with whatever I get for two years, unless I want to shell out a ton of money for my next phone. Finally I decided on a Samsung t239, which is quite a bit nicer than my old t209. Once I was sorted with the new phone, I asked if we could just get a SIM card for my old phone so Nathaniel could use that. The guy was super helpful and helped us choose a plan that was ideal for Nathaniel, who would be doing a lot of texting and not much calling. It was $10, which was a great deal, even when we spent another $10 adding credit to it. So now Nathaniel has a US phone number! He did a load of texting and tweeting with it over the rest of his visit.
On Wednesday, we went to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I’d actually never read the book as a kid, but the film looked fun. It was actually really good and quite funny. I highly recommend it.
On Thursday I worked during the afternoon, so Nathaniel got some of his work done while I was gone. When I got home, I found that he’d been so busy working that he’d forgotten to print anything to read at TranScriptions that night! Fortunately he had his stuff on a flash stick, so I printed a few of his poems and we headed out. He spent most of the ride there angsting over whether to read, and what to read if he did. He still hadn’t decided when we arrived, but fortunately (as seems to be the norm with TranScriptions) it started quite late, so he had a little more time to decide. He decided to read three of the four poems we’d printed, and was 9th or something, so we got to see several other people perform before he went up. He was a bit unimpressed with the fact that TranScriptions doesn’t have a rule against performing someone else’s work, the way Gender Crash did, so a lot of folks performed stuff (mostly music) that wasn’t their original work. I don’t mind it quite as much, but it was nice when everyone was performing their own work at Gender Crash.
When it was his turn, Nathaniel introduced himself by saying that he was English (big cheer) and that he might use words or pronunciations that they weren’t familiar with, in which case they should FGI. I had thought that everyone at TranScriptions would get that, but they didn’t seem to, which was disappointing. Nathaniel had to clarify that they should Google it. First he read Out, which went down well; Return to Wonderland is much darker and wasn’t received quite as well, but You Can’t Do Yoga on a Beanbag got a lot of laughs and was a great one to end with. I took lots of pictures (they all came out blurry, unfortunately) and was so proud of him. As he went to take his seat, the MC said something about his accent being so sexy, so I called out, ’He’s mine!‘ She accepted this with good grace. ;)
There was a short break and then the feature came on. This month it was Kielbasia, the Accordion Playing Lunch Lady from the Old Country [Poland], which was fantastic. The artist, Matt, said that usually he gets ready backstage and then is in character when he comes out onstage, but as this was a gender-bending type of venue, he’d decided to get ready onstage instead. While he changed into his costume and applied makeup, he told us about the history of the character and how it had developed, which was really really cool. The performance itself was super fun. I highly recommend it, if you have the opportunity to see it at any point.
Nathaniel got compliments on his poetry afterwards when we were all hanging around and chatting, including from the feature, which was so nice for him. One person said that ’you can’t do yoga on a beanbag’ are words to live by which made him really happy.
On Friday I went to work again and Nathaniel did more work at home, and wrote his LJ post. Otherwise we just hung out and rested, which was nice after such a busy week!
On Saturday, we just did errands and wandered round a local mall, which was hardly thrilling but was still nice. I always tell Nathaniel that I'm not super fussed about what we do - I don't need it to be exciting or even especially interesting, as long as we're together. So we had a day that was neither exciting nor especially interesting. We did go to Uno's, where Nathaniel was very pleased to see that he had lots of choices for foods that didn't involve red meat or pasta, and he angsted a bit over what to get. He finally decided on the firecracker chicken burger, which was grilled chicken with lettuce and tomato, plus buffalo cheese and Uno's special firecracker sauce. We don't know what was in the sauce, but surprisingly, it tasted like it could have come from McDonald's. I think it might have been the pickle in it. Also surprisingly, this quality did not detract from the taste, so Nathaniel quite enjoyed his sandwich. He also got their mashed potatoes with cheese and sour cream on top (he asked for it without the bacon that usually comes on top as well), which is so good. It's like their pizza skins without the pizza crust and is one of my favourite things ever. We tried their 'mini' desserts, but as I don't like vanilla ice cream or 'whipped topping', I just wound up with a very small brownie with some hot fudge sauce on top. It was still tasty though! Nathaniel's 'mini' dessert, on the other hand, was huge. He had the Mini Macadamia Nut White Chocolate Chunk Deep Dish Cookie Sundae, which is as big as its name. The cookie was about 4 inches across and a good half inch thick, with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream, a generous amount of 'whipped topping' and lots of fudge sauce. Nathaniel loved it.
On Sunday, we trooped out to the annual Oktoberfest and Honk! Festival Parade in Harvard Square. Nathaniel had read about it in US Airways magazine on the flight over and thought it sounded really interesting, so off we went. Six stages of live entertainment, 50+ International Food Vendors and an outdoor market with over 200 vendors, artists, vintage items, and sidewalk sales. Apparently. We walked to our closest Dunkies for breakfast, as is our custom, and then headed off, since Oktoberfest didn't start until noon. We got there at about 1.15, so we just caught the tail end of the parade. We wandered round and looked at all the stalls, but we kept finding more and more stalls along different streets, so we wound up making the same loop a few times to make sure we'd seen everything! We were very impressed with the Big Skinny stall, which was selling wallets and purses that were specially made to be thinner than normal wallets. One of the people on the stall turned out to be the man behind the company. He showed us an empty leather wallet and one of their wallets which had 16 plastic cards in, and the leather one was much thicker even empty! He also said that he usually put several cards in one pocket but they never fit, so he'd designed the pockets to be wider to accommodate more plastic, and they're lined with rubber so the cards don't fall out if you open it upside down. Nathaniel had been wanting a new wallet, and he was attracted to the
A couple of stalls had spin-the-wheel games with prizes; from Wagamama, we both won metal keyrings with bottle openers on one end, and Nathaniel also won a coupon for a free juice when you purchase a meal. I didn't win anything from Carolina Rice, but Nathaniel won a sample bag of jasmine rice. Then, from Kangogift.com, Nathaniel won a cup of coffee and I won a cookie! We both really liked the idea of Kangogift.com. The idea is that person A buys a gift for person B, person B gets a text about it, then they go into the shop to pick up their present! Isn't that a great idea? It's still a new thing so there's not much on the site yet, which is a shame. (It was extra cool because the bloke on the stall was also called Nathaniel, except he goes by Thad, which we hadn't heard of before. He was extremely pleased to meet a fellow Nathaniel!)
We got so many freebies, of 'varying awesomeness', as Nathaniel said. Nantucket Nectars and Fuze gave out little cups with samples of their drinks - you could choose from a bunch of flavours to try - and Venom Energy gave out entire bottles of their drinks! Dunkies gave out gift cards which had the possibility of being already worth $50; we got three, but none of them had money on. They were supposed to all have a free coffee, but when we tried to use them, we were told that they didn't have anything on them, and the people didn't know anything about the promotional offer, which kind of sucked. Amnesty International had some petitions that I signed, and we got a free thing of poetry magnets. Floyd's Barbershop was giving out coupons for a free haircut, and one of the people there turned out to be an old high school friend of mine! She gave me a big hug and her phone number and said that we had to get together sometime and hang out. It was great to see her, and the whole thing was so much fun. I'm so glad Nathaniel told me about it!
On Monday, we were worn out from all the walking, so we had a quiet day at home. Nathaniel made sausage cacciatore with a recipe from Caden, who got it from his Italian-American mother, so it's authentic Italian food! It was really simple, but very tasty, even despite the presence of tomatoes, which I can't stand. Nathaniel put in plenty of Worcestershire sauce, basil, oregano and garlic which helped disguise that nasty tomato taste for me. He's so good to me. After tea, though, I had a craving for cake, so we had to make an emergency cake run to the supermarket. Yum.
On Tuesday it was kind of gross out, so we tried to find indoor stuff to do. We couldn't find a museum that was both interesting and not overpriced (besides the Science Museum, which we already had plans to go to another day with my cousin), so Nathaniel suggested that we go back to the arcade in Somerville that we went to last year. When I checked their website, it said that they'd been closed since June 2008! We couldn't really find any others, except one in Framingham that was closed on Tuesdays. Arcades have really died a death since home gaming consoles have become popular, which is understandable but kind of sad. We wound up hanging out at home, and Nathaniel tried to work more on a couple of DS games that he was stuck on. He didn't manage to make any progress with them, so he decided to trade them in at GameStop at some point.
On Wednesday, we road-tripped it up to the LL Bean outlet in Freeport, Maine with Caden. Both Caden and I had been needing to go for ages - me to return stuff, him to get a discounted winter coat. He got to us at about 11, so we set off immediately. We stopped in Kennebunk to get food at Burger King, so by the time we got there, it was 2.15. We had until 3 to shop so that we could get Caden back in time for him to go to work, so we hardly had any time at all! Fortunately Caden knew what he wanted, so he and I returned our stuff and he went to look for his coat while Nathaniel looked at plain white long-sleeved T-shirts. I used the gift card I'd got for my returns to get him a shirt, which he was pleased about. Caden got his coat at a 40% discount, which made him happy. We made it home in just about two hours instead of three. It must have been by magic (and because we didn't stop for anything), because I never ever speed. Ever.
On Thursday, before I left for work, I got out some sidewalk chalk I've had for a million years and told Nathaniel he could go draw outside if he wanted. I'd been meaning to do that for ages, as apparently kids don't draw outside with chalk in the UK, which I think is terrible. I hadn't been at work long, though, when I got a text from Nathaniel saying he was locked out of the house! He'd already been outside for about an hour, it was quite cold, and it would be at least another two hours until I got home. We don't have a spare key outside, and the neighbours don't have them anymore, so I had to tell Nathaniel how to get through the bulkhead into the basement. He was still locked out of the rest of the house, but at least it was a little warmer. Fortunately, my mother came home early and let him in about an hour after he'd made his way into the basement. He had mostly warmed up by the time I got home, and he showed me all the stuff he'd drawn on the driveway and the front walk, which was completely adorable. I'm glad he took pictures, because it rained a bit overnight and most of his stuff washed away! Woe.
On Friday morning, we went off to GameStop so Nathaniel could trade in his DS games for store credit. He got My Sims Agents, which looks incredibly cute. Then we just wandered round the area and looked at various shops - there's a toy shop that sells nothing but puzzle stuff, which we love - and headed home before I had to go to work.
On Saturday, after I went to karate and Nathaniel wrote out postcards, we decided to go apple picking. We decided to go to Shelburne Farm in Stow, as it had lots of different kinds of apples and was open until 6. It was quite busy when we got there, but the orchard was so huge that there weren't many folks near us as we walked and picked apples. We bought a peck (~10 lbs.) bag, which was $16, and found the Fuji trees first. We'd done a bit of apple research and found that Fuji are ideal for baking, so we mostly filled our bag with those. Nathaniel wanted to get a couple of Jonagold apples, but those trees had mostly been picked clean, so it took us a while to find two nice ones. Finally we went and got some Red Delicious, which are great to just eat as-is, and which I love. We also got pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns while we were there, which was really nice.
Before we left, we had a look round their shop - they have some seriously cute apple-themed stuff - and then got some mulled cider to share. Nathaniel calls it apple juice, because all cider is alcoholic in the UK but obviously it's not (the alcoholic stuff is hard cider), but I keep telling him it's not just plain apple juice! It has spices and stuff in! The cider here was a little too cinnamony, but it was still good. We got a cider doughnut too, which was minuscule, but still tasty. We went to Uno's on the way home, where Nathaniel got a crunchy chicken wrap and pumpkin tiramisu for dessert. It's pumpkin spice cake topped with a pumpkin mousse, maple-soaked sponge fingers and cinnamon whipped cream, garnished with candied pecans. Nathaniel loved it, but it was such a huge piece! It was at least 4 inches by 2 and a good 2 inches high. He wound up taking half of it home. I had their rattlesnake pasta, which was so tasty. I actually have a recipe for it and I'll have to make it sometime, because it was amazing. Pasta, lots of cheese, and some jalapeño to give it a kick. Awesome.
On Sunday, we had plans to meet up with D11 and D14 and their mom and go see the Head of the Charles regatta, because their dad's a rower and would actually be rowing in an alumni crew, plus the crew he coaches was rowing. As it turned out, D11 had more sense and went to a friend's house rather than be out in the miserable weather. It was cold and raining and just nasty. We met D14 and his mom K at Harvard Square, and she took us down to the river and to Harvard's boathouse for a bit of shelter. It gave us a great view, but we'd only just dried off when we headed back out to look at all the stalls. We didn't realise there would be so many! There were tons, and they had loads of amazing free stuff. We got mini bottles of hot sauce, a large box of salad with a tub of dressing each, a small tub of Turkey Hill ice cream, granola cereal and granola bar, various flavours of Lärabars, a dozen packs of gummy vitamins and little packs of biodegradable washing up liquid. Green Mountain had a stall with coffee dispensers, and they were giving away free cups of coffee! They had several different kinds available. I don't drink coffee, but Nathaniel does, and when he got a cup, he was given a sample pack of coffee plus a couple of coupons for $1.50 off! Despite the fact that we were getting wetter and wetter with every passing minute, we were also having a lot of fun seeing what the next stall had to offer us and finding room in our pockets for all our stuff!
Finally, even though we hadn't seen all the stalls, we were cold and wet and decided to give up. We went to Au Bon Pain, where we got some seriously good soup - I had chicken noodle, of course, and Nathaniel had chicken dumpling as he's weird and doesn't like pasta. We said goodbye to D14 and K and took the T home. Later on, the rain turned to snow! Wtf. It didn't really accumulate, but it was pretty to watch.
On Monday, we had plans to meet up with
assiduous1, but not until 5, so we used most of the day to bake apple stuff. Nathaniel had a look at various recipes and we decided to start with the sour cream apple cinnamon coffee cake, which my mother used to make when I was little. (I don't like sour cream at all, but the cake doesn't taste of it any more than regular cake tastes of milk - it just gets its moisture from it.) We had to go to the supermarket for butter, sour cream, and walnuts, but we still had just enough time to make the cake. It's done in a Bundt (ring) tin, which is dusted with cinnamon sugar, then half the cake batter on the bottom, topped with sliced apples, walnuts and cinnamon sugar, then the rest of the cake mix. And then more cinnamon sugar. It had to be cooled in the pan for exactly 20 minutes after baking, or else it wouldn't come out in one piece, so we had to wait rather than just run out once it was out of the oven. We ended up leaving at 4.20 and managed to catch The Slowest T Ever™, so we were a little late in meeting up with Aden and his girlfriend. We wandered into Chinatown and went to the Gourmet Dumpling House for tea. I had udon noodles with chicken and veggies, which was so tasty. I seem to have developed a taste for udon noodles after trying them at a Japanese restaurant in August. After tea, we went across the street to Bao Bao Bakery & Café. They had loads of choices, and a decent-sized slice of cake was only $1.95. Nathaniel got some cheesecake and I got chocolate cake, both of which were pretty good!On Tuesday, I got to work an early morning, which means getting up at 4 to be at work by 5, so D11 and D14's dad can leave at 5.15 to go row with his crew. (Their mom was out of town.) Fortunately, unless they have the day off from school, an early morning is over for me by about 8 am, but I generally don't go to bed when I get home. I also had a doctor's appointment at 12.40, but as my doctor's office is near where
slammerkinbabe works in Boston, we'd arranged to meet up with her while we were downtown. We'd arranged to meet in the Boston Public Library, but Kylie was running a little late, so I had to leave Nathaniel there and go to my appointment before she arrived. My appointment went fine - I had a chat with my doctor and gave five vials of blood for my annual bloodwork, and went back to the library feeling very hungry indeed. I hadn't eaten at all since the night before because my doctor likes to do a fasting glucose test just as part of my routine bloodwork (I'm not entirely sure why since I've never had blood sugar problems), and I usually bring cookies or something to have after I have blood drawn, but I didn't have any today. Plus I'd been up since 4! I didn't feel sick or lightheaded though, just really hungry.I texted Nathaniel when I got back to the BPL to ask where they were, and found them on the third floor admiring and discussing the huge mural by John Singer Sargent that's up there. Kylie said there was some stuff she wanted to look at in the Rare Books & Manuscripts room, so we wandered up that way, but we got told that we couldn't go in without being library members, so Nathaniel and I had to sign up for guest cards that expire after a year. We were both amused that when I was in England, I joined the Bolton library, and now he's joined the Boston library! I think collecting library cards is much cooler than stickers all over your suitcase.
Once we'd filled out all our paperwork and locked all our stuff in the lockers they provided - you can't have cameras, phones, big coats with pockets, or much of anything else when you go in there - we went
We had to say goodbye to Kylie so she could get back to work, but we stayed in the city for a while since we were already there and it was still early. We went to Wendy's for food first, as I still hadn't eaten, and then decided to go to Newbury Street and look at all the shops. Disappointingly, all our favourite shops were gone, except for Newbury Comics! Nathaniel spent $50 on belts in an effort to boost the American economy, bless him. As we were walking back to the T stop, we passed the Lindt shop, so I asked Nathaniel if we needed Lindt. He replied that he wasn't sure, so we should go in and check. It's a good thing we checked, because as it turned out, we did need Lindt!
On Wednesday I was worn out from being up so early on Tuesday and not eating enough and walking around the city, so we had a quiet day at home. We did go out to the bank briefly, so Nathaniel finished his postcards and posted them while we were out.
We had ordered a replacement battery for Nathaniel's iRiver on eBay, so I spent some time replacing it. I had to buy an eyeglass repair kit to get a screwdriver the right size, as I'd lost my old one, but I finally managed to get the battery replaced! Nathaniel was very pleased about that.
On Thursday I went to work as usual, while Nathaniel did his work at home, preparing a Powerpoint presentation for the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is pretty upsetting work to do. When I got home, we made enchiladas and had our homemade coffee cake with ice cream afterwards, and tried to focus on nice things and be grateful for them and each other.
On Friday we drove up to Vermont for the Translating Identity Conference! We were very organised and brought sandwiches so we wouldn't get overpriced food on the way up. We left at about 1, which would still get us there before dark, so that worked. We had to stop in New Hampshire for food, but since we just ate in the car, we were back on our way pretty quickly. We got to the motel and checked in at about 5, and wound up in a room just across the hall from the one we'd stayed in two years ago at TIC! We were going to go to Friendly's for tea, but there was a '50s-style diner across the street that I'd been to once before and enjoyed, so we decided to go there. There wasn't a lot of choice for poor Nathaniel, but he did manage to find something nice to eat - another grilled chicken burger, but with barbecue sauce this time. I had a yummy turkey club sandwich with potato chips and a pickle.
On Saturday, we had to be up at 7 in order to get to UVM for the start of TIC at 9. We managed to find one of the only two Dunkies in the area (wtf, Burlington?), but then it took us 45 minutes to find parking. UVM is not very visitor-parking-friendly. Then we climbed the stairs up to the 4th floor, looked around, and were told that registration was actually on the first floor. We took the left back down and up again.
The workshops were great, but TIC really needs to be over two days - there were just too many great options per time slot. I went to both of Samuel Lurie's workshops, and both were excellent. Nathaniel didn't come with me to the first one, but he came to the second one with me. It was called Teaching Trans, and we got several ideas of exercises to use in gigs, plus ideas for community resources to implement over time.
There was the opportunity for you to create your own workshop if you thought there was something missing from the schedule, so Nathaniel and I signed up to do one on Trans-Trans relationships, as there was one for partners of FTMs and one for partners of MTFs, but both were for partners only and weren't clear on whether that included partners who were also Trans - and usually, if they don't specify that, they're not super thrilled to have Trans people there even if they're willing to let them in. Unfortunately, as we had to sign up kind of last-minute, no one came! I wrote on the feedback form that they should really have something on Trans-Trans relationships next year, so hopefully we won't have to create our own at the last minute again.
Miss Major was the keynote and she was awesome. I really enjoyed hearing her talk and seeing the short video she'd brought about her organisation, TGIJP (Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project) in California. After the keynote, it was time to meet up with
trannytrent! He'd been supposed to do a workshop, but had to call in sick. He recovered enough to go to Applebees, which was fun. I hadn't seen him in a few years, so it was fantastic to get to hang out with him a bit, even if all three of us were kind of worn out. And I was so glad that Nathaniel finally got to meet him! It's always so nice to get to meet online friends. After that, it was back to the motel to crash!On Sunday, we took our time getting up and going as checkout wasn't until noon, and we didn't really have anywhere to be. We drove into Burlington and parked near Lake Champlain so we could walk to the Skinny Pancake, a crêpe place that TJ had recommended. It was super busy, and it took us a few minutes to figure out that you ordered your food and then just hung out waiting for a table to become free, and then grabbed it before someone else could! We thought for a while that we were going to have to eat outside in the cold wind, but a table opened up just before our food was ready. Nathaniel had the Easy Rider, which had fried egg and cheese, and I had the Lumberjack, which had ham and cheese. They were wicked good! Apparently it's only that busy on Sundays, which was just our luck, but it worked out and I'm glad we went.
We walked back down to the lake and took a load of pictures until our hands were too cold to carry on, then walked up to Church Street. We found a great sweet shop and I got a bunch of yummy stuff, including several hard candy sticks because they were only 25 each. I also got a piece of chocolate orange peel, which I love but which is always really expensive so I can't buy big bags of it like I want to.
Later on, Nathaniel spotted an illustrated copy of Dracula in the window of a second-hand bookshop, so we went in and checked it out. The illustrations were done in a comic book style that looked really cool, so Nathaniel got it - for only $9! Then I had to go to the ATM, and on the little counter by the ATM was a Bookcrossing book! The book itself didn't really appeal to either of us, but Nathaniel thought his mother would love it, so he picked it up for her. We both love the idea of the book going all the way to the UK to be released.
Before we drove home, we went into the shopping centre to use the toilets, and we popped into Spencer's Gifts as it was right there, just to have a look. Nathaniel found a fleecy throw that has the Sgt Pepper cover art on, for only $20. I
Monday was spent relaxing at home, as I was worn out from all the driving. We made another apple cake, amusingly called New York Nobby Apple Cake, which was much easier than the previous one. It looked like it was going to have way too much apple and very little cake, but the apples reduced down a lot so it turned out fine. It was seriously tasty, but very sticky.
Later, Nathaniel made sausages and onion gravy with mash. I'm used to only really having gravy on Thanksgiving, whereas Nathaniel's used to having it with just about everything! This suits me fine, as I love gravy. One notable year, my cousin and I were given our own separate gravy boat because the family knew that if we were expected to share the regular one, no one else would get any! Nathaniel showed me how to make gravy from scratch without roasting a turkey to get drippings for it, and it was seriously good. I'll have to make a lot more of it!
On Tuesday, Nathaniel decided to make French toast for breakfast. Before we'd gone to Vermont, we'd attempted to make some bread from a beer bread mix that we'd picked up at Trader Joe's - you can use any fizzy drink if you don't want to use beer, and you basically just add it to the mix, put it in a loaf pan, and bake it. We used ginger ale, and the bread didn't taste of ginger ale at all, and came out really dense and rather dry. Maybe we should've used soda with a stronger flavour. I had tried toasting a slice, which made it a little less dense for some reason, so Nathaniel decided to turn it into French toast. It wasn't bad, although it didn't soak up the egg mixture very well.
The weather wasn't great, so we decided to check out an arcade in Saugus, as it was Tuesday again and the one in Framingham would be shut. After nearly an hour of driving, we finally found it - and it was shut too! We were most unimpressed. We wound up wandering round the Square One Mall as it was right there. It wasn't particularly interesting, except for the pet shop, so we spent quite a while looking at the puppies. They were all in individual glass-fronted cubicles and some kind of plastic mesh on the floor, and maybe one toy each. They didn't seem particularly interested, and most of them were sleeping. It made both of us want to buy them all just to get them out of there. It doesn't seem right that dogs should be on display like that; it doesn't seem healthy for them at all. I'm not a fan of pet shops generally, but at least the one near me keeps two or three puppies in each (decent-sized) enclosure with a few toys, so they can play and generally socialise and be more used to other dogs, which seems much healthier than keeping them totally isolated.
From the mall we walked to the Super Stop & Shop next door, pleased that it had turned out to be pretty warm even though it wasn't sunny. We picked up a few necessities and then came home, where Nathaniel made yummy sweet and sour vegetables with Quorn pieces. He was so pleased with himself for making real sweet and sour sauce, and it was super tasty. We watched Empire Records, which I hadn't seen in several years, and which was a fun end to the day.
On Wednesday it was chilly and drizzly and generally not very nice out, so we decided to try again at Fun & Games in Framingham. We also found out that a friend of ours had had her baby on Sunday! She's a teacher at the high school where we usually do speaking gigs. We wanted to find a present, and I knew she and her wife would be overrun with baby stuff and would probably benefit more from a gift that they could use, so Nathaniel suggested gift cards to Dunkies and Lush, which was a great idea.
Before we left for Fun & Games, I called them to make sure they were open - I didn't want to drive for another hour to another closed arcade. I just got a recorded message, but it listed their hours, and apparently they were open! When we got there, it was totally empty except for a few workmen and two employees who must have been bored stiff (surprisingly they weren't playing any games - maybe they were forbidden to, or had played everything and were sick of it), so Nathaniel and I had the run of the whole arcade. It wasn't very big, but it did have a bunch of games, including Skee ball! I love Skee ball. We had a few goes on the Skee ball and got some tickets, then tried their two basketball games - one of which had mini basketballs and was probably for younger kids, the other of which used full sized balls and looked to be for bigger people. They were both a lot of fun, and I wished I had lots of tokens so I could keep trying the big one! After two tries on that one, though, both Nathaniel and I were really sore. We got a few tickets out of it, though.
They had a couple of classic arcade games, including Dig Dug, which I had on my computer when I was little and loved, so I had to have a go with that. Then we tried one of the shooting games, where you fired balls at a clown's face, trying to knock down its five teeth. I knocked them all down on the first try, which surprised the hell out of me, and got me 9 tickets. Nathaniel also knocked them all down, but because he only took four balls to do it, the machine thought he wasn't done, so it only gave him three tickets. Poor boy. When we'd run out of tokens, I had 62 tickets and Nathaniel had 53. He'd had his eye on a little stuffed dog that cost 45 tickets, and he was so pleased to be able to get it! I spent all mine on sweets, as I already have too many little cheapy toys.
We ran a couple of errands in the increasing rain, including getting the Dunkies card, before hurrying home and hiding where it was warm and dry.
On Thursday, we had a speaking gig at my old college! First, though, Nathaniel wanted to go to Floyd's Barbershop (which turned out to be a seriously cool place and which you should all patronise) and get a haircut from my high school friend whom we met at Oktoberfest. We drove to the college and parked, then rode the T the rest of the way to the barbershop. It's near Newbury Street, where there's a Lush, so I left Nathaniel in C's capable hands and ran to Newbury Street - and then most of the way down Newbury Street - to get the gift card, then made my way back along Boylston Street at a more sedate pace. The Lush was totally empty except for three staff members in what looked like clown make-up, which totally confused me, plus I wasn't entirely sure if they were all staff, and I think I looked wildly out of place and a bit scared. The girl who
When I got back to Floyd's, Nathaniel had considerably less hair - particularly on the back and sides - and was looking really quite sexy for it. He'd brought a few pictures of the Tenth Doctor so C could get him all ready to be Ten for Hallowe'en, and she did a great job. When she got some hair wax and feathered his hair up, it looked just like Ten's. I was very impressed. And then the jammy sod got a neck massage! No one told me that was part of the deal! I've cut my own hair for years, but I think I'll have to go have C cut my hair sometime if there's a neck massage involved. It was just a brief going-over with one of those hand-held vibrating neck massagers, but even that would be amazing for me. I carry my tension mainly in my neck and shoulders, so they're always tight even when I try to stretch and work on them myself.
Then we rode the T back to the gig, which was a pretty small class, and they were quiet and looked pretty shell-shocked through the whole thing. I think we broke their brains. Their teacher assured us that they weren't very talkative generally, and that they were definitely taking everything in and processing it even though they didn't look excited about all the fascinating stuff we were telling them. Just as we finished with the four-line exercise, two more people arrived to be on a panel with us, which was excellent timing. One was a 15 year old Trans girl, and the other was an adult who identified as Two-Spirit and used masculine pronouns. I'd not really heard first-hand from a Two-Spirit person before, even though I know what it means, so that was really cool for me. We got more questions as we went along, which was good, and all in all it was quite a good gig. It ended at about 6.30, so we went off to Friendly's for tea!
Friday we just hung out and then I went to work. It was nice to have a rest as we had a busy weekend coming up!
Saturday was Hallowe'en. I was the Ninth Doctor and Nathaniel was the Tenth Doctor. I ultimately wasn't able to find a leather jacket like Nine's, so I wound up wearing an old brown suede jacket my mother offered me. It was too small and I felt like it looked a bit girly, but it was a lot better than nothing, and Nathaniel said it looked okay. Nathaniel was fucking gorgeous in his suit and I had to restrain myself from jumping on him from the moment I saw him in it. Fortunately my mother was also present at that particular moment, so I behaved myself.
We spent most of the day carving jack-o-lanterns; mine had wolves howling, and Nathaniel's was the same one I did last year, of the Tenth Doctor and the TARDIS. We got a load of compliments on them, including one dad in a bunny costume who asked if we'd carve his next year! We said we'd be happy to, for a small fee. One group of teens asked if we were artists, so I explained about templates and said that you could get them at CVS. Pictures forthcoming.
On Sunday we went to the Harry Potter exhibition at the Museum of Science with my cousin Cathy, which was so much fun. I highly recommend it if you're into Harry Potter at all. It was So Awesome OMG. So many cool props and costumes! Unfortunately they didn't allow any photography, so we only got two pictures - one of the flying blue Ford Anglia from Chamber of Secrets, the other of the giant chess piece that Ron uses in Philosopher's Stone - because they were on display in the main museum. Nathaniel got a Slytherin pen from their overpriced HP shop, because he'd been wanting it for ages, but Cathy and I didn't get anything. There was a hoodie I loved the look of, but it was $70. No thanks.
We spent a while in the main museum after that, which I always love, and then said goodbye to Cathy so we could get to D11 and D14's house on time for tea! Their mom had invited us over, which was so nice. They had another couple over too, who were very nice folks, and we had fun chatting to them and their son, who I think was 14 also. D11 and D14 ate with us and hung out with us a bit, and D11 got out his telescope and set it up so we could all look at the moon, which was full and very pretty. I was so glad Nathaniel got to meet D11 and D14 and their parents, because they're such a cool family, and he's already met D15 (who's part of a different family). Finally we came home and crashed after our very busy day!
On Monday we hung out and relaxed after our busy weekend. We went out to do a few errands - bank and Social Security office and supermarket - but otherwise just took it easy. Nathaniel had been given an ID number when he studied here for a semester several years ago, and they told him it was a Social Security number, so we wanted to verify that and - if it did turn out to be valid - change his name with them. (As it turned out, it was in SSN format - i.e., 123-45-6789 - but wasn't a valid SSN, which is what I'd figured.) I was so glad that I'd checked the Social Security website for locations, because we had been about to leave to go to North Station - but when I checked the website, it turned out there was one much closer to home! So we just drove over there and it was so much easier. I really hope that office didn't exist yet in 2000 when I changed my name; if it did and I hauled my arse all the way up to North Station for no reason, I'll be annoyed.
On Tuesday we went to vote, a new experience for Nathaniel (in the US). Then we went to one of my favourite local parks for a while, before heading home so Nathaniel could pack. He spent the rest of the afternoon packing, while I did stuff online - trying to catch up on LJ, mostly. We watched The Lost Boys, which Nathaniel likes and I hadn't seen before, and went to Friendly's for tea.
On Wednesday we hung out and Nathaniel finished the last bits of his packing before Caden arrived to take us to the airport. Letting go of my boy was so hard - all the more so when he decided to take an earlier flight, because the woman at the check-in desk said that if he took the later flight, he wouldn't really have enough time to catch his connecting flight in Philly. We still got a bit of time together before he had to go, and I stayed watching him through security until he waved one last time and disappeared to find his gate. Then I hung out in the terminal, texting with Nathaniel until he had to turn his phone off, and then texting people in the hope of some virtual hugs until I was sure that his flight had taken off. Only then did I go downstairs to catch the silver line, as I'd decided to go to South Station and get a bus home rather than take the T out - my car wasn't at the T stop since Caden had dropped us off, and I didn't want to walk all the way home from the T stop or pay for a taxi. I had a hard time finding the bus stop, as it turned out to not actually be at South Station, just near it. I wandered around for a while in Chinatown before I saw a bus, chased after it until I found a bus stop, then waited for 15 minutes before a bus came - and told me I wanted to be a block over, as he was going inbound and I wanted to go outbound. (They were one-way streets; otherwise I would've just had to cross over to go the other way.) Finally I got on the right bus, and listened to my iRiver on the ride home. When I got home, I stayed awake for ages because I didn't want to go to sleep without Nathaniel, but ultimately I did. Such a small bed shouldn't feel so big and empty.
Now we count down until May, when Nathaniel will hopefully be returning!