January 31st, 2008 – Thursday        32 F, partly cloudy

John and I arrived at Boston’s Logan International Airport on the direct American Airlines flight 226 from San Diego a little bit before our scheduled arrival time, 5:15p. We didn’t actually get off the plane until our scheduled arrival time due to the captain pulling too close to the terminal and therefore making it impossible to bring the jet way to the door. After much replacing of luggage and finding seats, the plane was pushed back by the tug and we were able to disembark. We moved down to baggage claim D and collected our four big bags and added them to the four small bags and two large jackets we had lugged on the plane. Like a couple of packhorses, we then found a taxi (needed the minivan taxi!) and took the $40 cab ride to our new house in Cambridge. It might have been a bit cheaper had the driver ever heard of our street or had we been able to give him any directions, but with a little bit of help from his GPS, we made it to our obscure, one block long street.

Our landlord met us at the house and the house was even cuter and better than I had remembered! You walk in the red front door and are straight away in the living room. To the left is a half bath and if you are to walk straight, to your left you will pass the stairs, winter coat closet, and water heater and gas furnace closet before you enter the kitchen. The kitchen is a fantastic size with plenty of space. Once in the kitchen, to your right is the large dining room and once in the dining room, you can make a full circle and head back into the living room. Upstairs we have a large full bath (at least bigger than my previous hole in the wall bathroom) and two bedrooms. We’ve decided to use the bedroom at the front of the house (as it will be gorgeous in the spring when the leaves come in on the huge tree just out front) and we will use the other larger bedroom as our office, workout room (treadmill will arrive soon!) and guest room (heaps of room for you when you come to visit!) In the backyard we have a deck and bar-b-que and in front we have a driveway such that our car is off the street when the show plows come roaring by. The house is blue with a tall evergreen and an azalea bush on either side of the front porch…I imagine the yard will be lovely during the rest of the year.

After dropping things off at the house and finishing up matters with the landlord, John and I headed for the Kendall Square/MIT T station in order to catch the underground to Leslie’s house. We grabbed sandwiches at Au Bon Pain and then boarded the inbound train to Downtown Crossing before catching the outbound train to Roxsbury Crossing. We headed up Fort Hill to Leslie’s where we hung out and had dinner with her and her sister Laura, before collecting my aerobed and miscellaneous jackets that I had left in December…I am going to need all of those jackets!

Once back home at around 9:30p, we set about unpacking some of our clothes, deciding who got which side of the medicine cabinet and blowing up the air mattress (which by the way goes much faster when you close the vent at the bottom). It was a bit weird to go to bed in a strange house; it felt a bit like we were on vacation. I am however really excited about making this transition in my life and both John and I agree that moving together was a fantastic idea. Moving is never an easy endeavor (especially after having been entrenched in one place in San Diego for so many years) but now that it’s happened, it’s really exciting. Yea for the new Erin and John adventure! On another note, if you are anywhere near as exhausted as I was after moving, no matter how new or exciting the new situation, you will sleep soundly.

February 1st, 2008 – Friday        42 F, cold rain (and I mean rain)

The landlord’s call at around 7:00a woke me up. Turned out the water guy needed to get into the house this morning and the landlord asked whether I’d be home to let him in. I mentioned I be around until about 9:30a and he said it should only take a minute…well it should have just taken a minute but it didn’t…I wish I had been prepared for some early morning drama. The water guy arrived at 8:30a and I staggered down in my pjs to let him in. I knew where absolutely nothing was at this point and so we were back on the phone to the landlord asking where the meters and shut off valves were located in the house. Turns out that the main water valve is in the subfloor (we have a good sized space under the house for storage and such with access through the coat closet) and so the water guy climbed down. He climbed back up and fiddled with things in the back of the closet behind the hatch. Water was leaking out all over the place (nice) and I was trying to be as present and helpful as possible while really hoping that he’d be able to stop the water flowing all over the closet and soon. While waiting to be told whether I should turn on the sink again, I was sitting on the cold floor wishing I had my slippers when I heard him getting ready to get out of the closet. He places a bucket of tools out the doors and just as I’m thinking, “I hope he doesn’t fall in to the giant hole,” he crashes down through the open hole in the floor, catching himself on his toolbox before falling all the way in. With the wind knocked out of him and his ribs likely very bruised if not cracked, he’s grunting and all together battered stuck halfway out of the hole trying to get a grip and find the ladder just below him with his toes. Let’s just say my carried over exhaustion kept me from freaking out at this point but there I am in my pjs with water all over the place (and still coming out) praying he wouldn’t be so badly injured that I’d have to call for paramedics! He was one very tough water guy and managed to help himself out with me the hole. Well, he landed on and broke his most important tools (such a bummer) and although he tried his best to fix whatever the heck was broken in the first place, all I had now was a puddle in the closet, a broken water guy and indeed a call for backup (although not of the medical kind, thank goodness). Now after 9:30a, I am in desperate need of a shower before I zoom off to the Harvard Medical School where I am scheduled to meet with my future postdoc advisor in less than an hour to review a fellowship application, due today. Turned out I could use the water and so I raced to get ready and was out the door in about 15 minutes, leaving John with our now team of water guys trying to resolve our water drama.

I rode the redline to Park Street and then caught the green E line to Longwood Avenue. The meeting with my advisor went well and within a few hours (so much formatting!), I had sent off the online version and hard copies of the application. Now fairly drenched by the rain, I ran to catch the T back to Kendall/MIT in order to meet up with John. John had spent the morning at MIT and doing some great errands, including increasing our number of house keys from one to three and buying a shower curtain (let’s just say I took my shower sitting down this morning so as not to get the entire place soaked!). I grabbed a cab at the Marriott just outside the T station and then picked up John at the house. Our next mission was to pick up my car in Woburn (pronounced woo-burn). In hindsight, the cabbie took us for a bit of a ride and I now highly doubt the trip should have cost $60,but it did. That’s less than what it would have cost had we arranged for door-to-door service so chalk it up to lesson learned. It took a while to reach Woburn considering the torrential rain and traffic but we made it there and found my little car waiting patiently in the rain in the parking lot on Salem Street. The car took a while to warm up but it felt so comfortable and good to be in my car and driving. Even though the streets seem strange, to be in my car in unfamiliar territory felt really safe and really good. The trip home took no time at all (considering the route we took to Woburn in the taxi) and on the way home we managed to find the Shaw’s grocery store and the Target.

Feeling very accomplished, we arrived home to find our new down jackets from L.L. Bean on the porch…yea! We decided we’d open them after putting away all the groceries and newly purchased items and they were worth the wait…I love my new mountain red, down parka and John’s black down jacket is equally cool. We posed for a few photos in our new winter coats and then with them still on, headed down to Kendall Square to try the Cambridge Brewing Co. for dinner. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I started eating but I was definitely starving. Dinner was fantastic and it was nice to relax after a very busy but very productive day.

February 2nd, 2008 – Saturday  42 F, windy (I mean howling!), partly cloudy

So much well needed sleep, finally! John arranged for the cable guy to stop by in the morning in order to get us connected to the internet. He arrived early and unlike the water guy, was only at the house for a few minutes. John was able to get us connected quickly and although we need a router in order to use wireless at the house, we are now back online. After setting that up, we decided to go for a walk along Cambridge Street. We walked up Cardinal Medeiros and then headed left along Cambridge Street. The neighborhood is super cute with loads of little shops including a bakery, pastry shop, tropical foods store, spice shop and a couple of hardware stores. In addition to the tiny shops, we also found lots of great looking restaurants that we’ll have to begin exploring. The neighborhood has significant Brazilian and Portuguese influences and those restaurants in particular will be fun to try…I know little more about Brazilian and Portuguese food than what I learned from AnaPaula and Susanna back in San Diego. On our walk, we purchased a new snow shovel and another tool that looks like a spackle tool on crack. It has a long, broom-like handle and at one end a flat, shovel-like metal blade that is driven into ice to break it up. I did a little searching online and the only name that I could find is ice scraper…that name doesn’t do this scary tool any justice. We bought the tools as our driveway entrance is currently covered by a thick layer of ice. While unlikely to snow in the next week or so (a fact that most people we saw wanted to point out as we walked home with our new snow shovel) and although we didn’t have trouble getting the car in yesterday, we decided is would be both nice and important to have a clear driveway to start off our time here. We worked on and cleared our ice patch out front (meeting a few neighbors in the process) and then headed inside for lunch.

After lunch, we bundled up again (and might I add we looked way over dressed today…the sun was out and it wasn’t freezing so most people were without jackets, hats, gloves, and scarves while we were in long sleeves, sweaters, our down jackets with gloves, scarves, hats and sunglasses…yet another thing no one seems to wear over here…we definitely looked like newbies today!) and we headed out to find the Public Works facility for Cambridge. I am really excited about setting up our place so that we have less of an impact on the environment. In addition to buying Method products at Target yesterday, I’m really excited about joining a recycling program. We found the Public Works station on Hampshire and picked up some new bins to have in the house in order to sort plastics and papers and now the only job left is to find out when we are to put our bins and trash for pick-up.

Once back home, we decided to take another long walk. Ok, so I would like to justify my large winter outfit by mentioning we planned on a very long walk and it was cold and really windy! We decided to explore the area a bit more and get our bearings with respect to the MIT campus and the waterfront southeast of our house. We walked down Cardinal Medeiros, which turned into Portland, before turning down Main Street. At the intersection where Vassar Street becomes Galileo Galilei Way, we turned right into the MIT campus and walked through, seeing John’s building, number 54 (aka The Green Building), along the way. We continued down to the Charles River where we watched some crazy kids in sailboats zooming around almost flipping their sabots, before continuing east along Memorial Drive. We crossed under the Longfellow Bridge and then walked along Cambridge Parkway until we reached the Museum of Science. The entire waterfront is fantastic and the views of downtown Boston fabulous. We kept walking until we found the Cambridgeside Galleria Mall and there we did a bit of shopping. John found a pair of dress shoes and a sweater that will both come in handy and at Best Buy we found the router we needed. Again, another successful day and after dropping the next round of loot off at the house, we headed out to find dinner. We tried Kendall Square first but found Emma’s too crowded and Amelia’s not exactly what we were in the mood for, and so we headed back up Cardinal Medeiros where we tried the Snack Bar. We both really loved the Snack Bar and it is likely to become the go to restaurant of choice when we want something delicious and fast. For $5 each, we ate two of the best calzones ever. After dinner, we sat upstairs and watched the movie Once. John had already seen it but loved it so much that he bought the soundtrack and watched it with me again so I could experience the movie. It was indeed great, a real life story, that I know a lot of people would both enjoy…for the story and the music.

February 3rd, 2008 – Sunday        42 F, mostly sunny

Superbowl Sunday with the Patriots in the big game has made today a bit of a holiday in Boston. With no T.V., our plan right now is to try and find a bar tonight so we can watch the game with some true Patriot’s fans…yea! While tonight is likely to be a bit busy and fun, it has felt really good to have a slower day today. Our only plan for today was to go back to Target to pick up some additional household items and check to see if we could reroute the cable internet into the closet through the subfloor. The Target run was a success and while we have yet to properly route the cable, we’ve devised a plan and can likely take care of it this week. The remainder of the day has been spent putting together our lamps and the shoe rack, eating, cleaning the house and working on our computers. While not warm by any stretch of the imagination today, it is a lovely sunny day and I have no complaints. I do wish our movers would arrive with our things in the very near future but I’ll continue to be as patient as possible…promise!

I spent the afternoon writing and working around the house and then to watch the superbowl, John and I headed down to Tommy Doyle’s pub down the street for dinner and to watch the first half of the game. It was cool to watch it in the bar with other fans but at half time, we decided to head over to John’s friend Morris’ house to watch the second half. To watch the end of the Patriot’s run was very sad and rather than witnessing a crazy, celebratory crowd on the walk home from Central Square, we saw a lot of sad faces…very sad faces.