Photospam: Vividcon -- Boston -- Berkshires -- CT (121 photos)
Deep breath. I can format this! I can. And I figure 2 or 3 big posts are better than a million small ones. I don't even know why I figured that, but 
zulu said it was okay, and she's smart, so. Here goes. My summer in photos, part 1:
(Needless to say, this is image heavy. So caveat watcher!)
Vividcon:
Flying to VVC was awesome. It was this tiny little plane, and I had just had a conversation about silly bandz with a college dude at the terminal so I was in a friendly mood, and when I took my seat I discovered I was sitting next to this woman reading what looked like a YA fantasy book with tattoos all over her arms. The tats were a convenient conversation starter and we ended up talking almost the entire flight. She was a currently unemployed History teacher/PhD student on her way to Lollapalooza, and it was just one of those fleeting acquaintances where I had no problem telling her I knew a lot about MCR because I read fanfiction about them and she was perfectly cool with that, and it was just one of those getting to know strangers moments. For all that I spent 2 months traveling "alone", most of the people I met weren't actually strangers, and it's really fun, having that small connection.
Vividcon! I can't even. I'd never been at a con before, let alone a con with so many people I knew or knew of (yet only two I'd ever actually met), and seeing the table with everyone's marked plastic cups kind of made me flail.
Consuite snacks, most of them homemade! They were so good. I don't remember who baked them, but I love you whoever you are (and your daughter!). I munched on the bag I packed myself for like three days afterward.
The official premiere of sweetestdrain's Adam Lambert vid Tightrope.
I haven't actually written a con report because I suck, so I will write a very brief one here, which will at this point mostly be namesdropping but it's pretty clear that for me, at least, meeting people was the best part.
I arrived Thursday afternoon and met
bironic in our beautiful beautiful suite, and ate a sandwich because she is brilliant and went shopping for groceries earlier, and apparently putting grapes into cheese/tuna/lettuce/tomato sandwiches makes all the difference. Down in the second floor of the hotel I met
kass for the first time since two years ago, when she,
bironic and I all met in Jerusalem, so that was awesome. I also met
celli and
astolat and hapex_legomena and
ellen_fremedon and probably a few other people;
xenakis and
emef, maybe I met you then? -- IT'S ALL SO BLURRY NOW.
Basically over the next few days I, uh, met people. I had an Idol fangirl lunch with
butterfly, goseaward,
anoel and meeeep I've forgotten the other usernames. I bonded with
shinetheway over Bandom and MCR. I flailed over favorite authors (
dira!
frostfire!
seperis!
elynross! AND MORE), out loud as well as inside, and got music from
damned_colonial, and met and met
anatsuno and
deepad (though I missed her panel! /o\) and counteragent and
settiai (I'm pretty sure? GOD I SUCK) and
the_shoshanna and cappylicious and okay,
paraka,
hellpenguin, I definitely remember attempts at Bandom conversion there. (Basically if you were at the con and remember a girl with curly hair trying to pimp Bandom and still attempt to participate in Idol discussions, it was probably me. Also if you remember a girl walking around with a laptop with
marina's waving face on it, that was probably me too.)
Okay. I could namedrop a little more but I still have over 100 photos to go -- none of which will actually have this long an explanation -- so I am moving forward. Needless to say that in Vividcon I had a a GRAND OLD TIME x INFINITY.
Leaving Chicago. *waves goodbye* (it was tearful okay?)
Boston (& Suburbs):
[Note: from here on out it's just photos with captions, not narrative. Because that would take. Time. If a photo has no caption, it probably didn't need one.]
Flight to Boston! There is a sunset, kind of. You might note that taking off from Chicago it's kind of dark, but it got lighter once we rose above cloud level.
Grumpy MIT student under the MIT dome! AKA The Next Rodney McKay (=All MIT Students Ever in my mind) (Except Bibi) (By the way has anyone seen this bb!Bibi video? Don't watch unless you're really interested in Israeli politics, and even if you are you probably won't care, it was just amusing to see him so tiny and going as Ben Nitay. LOL.)
Frank Gehry's Stata Center at MIT, aka the building that would probably make Rodney really mad if he saw it.
Fire & Ice Grill
It is very important to notice the FLYING SLICES OF CHEESE that guy was tossing at the burgers. His aim was dead on. It was inspiring.
Subway doggie!
Faneuil Hall/Quincy market area. Spandex! :D
Visitors entrance to the New Massachusettes State House. I'm pretty sure the sign says it all.
Magical lucky flying codfish at the Massachusettes State House. Apparently it's hanging high so that no one ever steals it again, because if it's stolen then... your bill won't pass? Something like that.
Still in the state House. In the Olden Days they couldn't decide whether they wanted the turkey or the eagle to be their state bird or something, so they invented the "Teagle". IDK whether Stephen Colbert wrote the script for this or not, but that's how the tour guide tells it anyway.
Boston Common
Boston Public Gardens (you can prepare for many many photos of ducks and other birds from now on.)
So many ducks ♥
Public Gardens. I could seriously have spent a whole week in those gardens, and they're not even that big.
I took this photo for the internet. TELL ME THERE IS NOT SOMETHING INAPPROPRIATE ABOUT THAT STATUE. Let me show you that again:
They are FIVE YEARS OLD. I am all for kinky statues in public, but can they at least be adolescents? /o\
I've been told this is a Very Important Bostonian Landmark. I tell ya.
Fenway Park! I am not an enormous Sox fan (mostly because I'm not a fan of any baseball team), but I was pretty excited. Boston is pretty lolarious when it comes to the Red Sox. Everywhere you look there's merchandise; every second sign you see proclaims the business establishment as The Official [Insert Service Provided] of the Boston Red Sox! They have official everythings, from a medical center to a florist.
Tomatoes at the farmers market! For the record in Israel there are only big red round tomatoes, so farmers markets all over the place were kind of flabbergasting.
Ducks! Back at the Public Gardens with fictionalaspect. We both have the same camera! It was the PERFECT OUTING. We both took awkward photos of random produce together! And ducks.
TINY BIRD
Grave of some of the people who died in the Boston Massacre.
ooooh historic graveyard. Seriously, these are the kind where you watch Buffy and you think to yourself, pffft, graveyards like that don't EXIST in America, except apparently they do? I'm still skeptical about California though.
Marine quite certain of his own badassery, LOL. (I think! Don't kill me if it's not actually a Marine.)
Graffiti by Chinatown.
Chinatown
Tea! Why don't they serve that at Chinese restaurants here?
I AM HILARIOUS
Hahaha, the only worthy photo I have from the next morning of walking around with
twtd and
cleo is the most EMBARRASSING PHOTO IN THE UNIVERSE which I only took to show my RL Bandom friends as a joke and I can't even bring myself to look at it. It is a photo of a store titled [(my first name) (Ross)]. If you don't know Bandom, good, and if you do, I CAN'T BELIEVE I ACTUALLY JUST ADMITTED I TOOK THAT PHOTO OUT LOUD. Let's just forget this paragraph ever happened, shall we? OH LOOK IT'S JESUS:
Stained glass at the First Church of Christian Science. Which, surprisingly, has absolutely nothing to do with actual science. This was at the First Church of Christian Science, next door to the Christian Science Monitor. Weird and interesting. (And yes,
nextian, I went to the Mapparium! It was nice, all in all. Very cool acoustics.)
Also next door.
Haaavard! Look at everyone on the lawn, being so smart.
Really pretty campus though.
Only one classroom hall was open to the public (as far as I could see), so I peeked in to see what classrooms looked like. Some of them were actually surprisingly stuffy and old fashioned (see: this one), but I guess because it's one of the oldest buildings there.
More classrooms
THIS, this thing is GENIUS. Why don't we have that here?
Cool outdoor spray fountain in/around the Harvard grounds.
jadelennox could tell you where it is.
Ducks in a row! Canadian Geese, to be exact. This is in the late afternoon, when
jadelennox and I strolled to the Charles and I agreed to have a really depressing conversation about Israel and in turn she agreed to let me pimp her Bandom. (Psst, if you are reading this, did it work?)
I really wanted to see the geese fly, but they just kept swimming in their perfect little column. And then we (or maybe it was just me? I probably roped her into it) decided to be really cruel and toss a rock into the water to get them to fly, just for my photo op, we should be arrested or something, ANYWAY. We threw the rock, and the genius geese just started swimming AT US instead of flying away. I think it was another rock or two before they started flying. WE DIDN'T HIT ANY OF THEM OKAY don't look at me like that. It was a pretty shot!
(If grew up in Israel in the 80s you might, like me, be thinking about this. Ooh, looked it up on wiki and it looks like this anime was also aired all over Europe but ahhhhhh none of the theme songs in the different languages have the same music! And for some reason the Hebrew one is twice as long as the others! What the what.)
CARVER! Or rather, Seth Gilliam from The Wire, aka, in this case, Othello. paper_tzipporah and I bought some Burger King and Dunkin' Donuts (local flavor!) and watched the show on the Common.
Next day again! I just loved how this tiny tiny truck was squeezing through the buildings.
BARTLETTS :D :D :D. :D?
Because when you're having a cup of coffee in the afternoon, you want to think positive.
I swear, sometimes it feels like everything in the US is fandom oriented. Writing a Merlin fic? No problem, head right over here, we sort our books by the fandom of the week.
(I don't think I can emphasize, actually, how big of a difference buying books is here and in the States. When I say the US is huge compared to here, I really, really mean it. Israeli bookstores are usually one room, which is generally about this big. Books are divided into a few general categories: gift, children, art, psychology, travel, religion, scifi/fantasy, non-fiction, English, fiction - translated, fiction - original, probably a few more, but that is it. Theater and poetry get about two shelves together. Biographies -- another shelf or two. You can't even compare the selection you have here to the selection you get in the US, because... there's no comparison. I've seen Borders and B&N in the US that have whole sections for genres like crime, thrillers, romance, whatever. We have those books here, but you know, they're just alphabetized along with all the rest of the fiction, because all in all fiction gets maybe 5 or 6 bookcases altogether.
This isn't a complaint, just me marveling at the variety that exists in the US. And books are just the tip of the iceberg.)
Hahahaha LOOK AT THIS. Apparently we have moved on from mere glasses to HUMONGOUS JARS in restaurants. BTW this is a full sized Tabasco bottle, it's not like miniature or anything. This is
thedeadparrot,
amazonziti and I going out for dinner at Red Bones. We shared ribs and a brisket, which was more than enough. (When asked to choose between a million different kinds of ribs we went with Arkansas style, because you know, might as well get some Kris Allen research done while we're eating.)
Walking to
thedeadparrot's place, an FNL moment! But with baseball.
Okay, so
thedeadparrot has one of the most amazing apartments ever it is SO AWESOME, and it has this VIEW of downtown Boston JUST LOOK AT IT. It is the apartment on a hill. I took photos of it in every single different lighting situation available. Night!
Sunrise!
More sunrise!
Morning after waking up after going back to sleep after waking up early for the sunrise!
...and then she and
amazonziti and I went to the farmers market and had some pie. And bought ingredients for excellent salad and pasta! But more importantly pie. Strawberry rhubarb. I cannot even put the flavor into words, it was divine. (We really need some rhubarb in Israel.)
Then we went back to the apartment and watched vids! It's like a fangirl's dream, okay, you would not believe the amount of technology there available for all your fannish needs. And we had my VVC DVD and Parrot's extensive collection. It was awesome. We lazed around all day watching vids and episodes and marathoning some Arrested Development.
AND HAVING MORE PIE. Peach raspberry, this time.
And finally the sun was setting...
Goodbye, Sun. Goodbye, Parrot, Goodbye, Zara. :(
It should be noted FOR THE RECORD that
amazonziti was, when it comes down to it, my only official Bandom full convert in the US (as far as I know), and I am SO PROUD I COULD CRY ♥♥♥♥♥.
In the evening I went to the harbor with my hosts. Seagull!
LOL, floating doghouse at the marina. I mean, that's a floating doghouse, right? I don't actually know but I have no other idea of what it might be.
It was pretty up in the docks. My hosts and I ate at Joe's American Bar & Grill.
And later happened to happen upon really great live Irish music at the Black Rose, so I also got to cross "Boston Irish pub" off my list.
The next day I continued walking along the Freedom Trail, which I'd been walking sections of, on and off, for the entire week. This is the part that goes through the Holocaust Memorial.
Frolicking! I also have another photo from there that's cute and lolsome but I kind of feel bad posting, but let's just say that I'm pretty sure that that day a few five year old girls discovered that it felt nice to stand over a steady stream of water directed right between their legs... It was kind of charming.
Boston's North End, which is not actually called Little Italy (but might as well be.)
To wit!
My friend, San Francisco. Having never been to Assisi myself, the two main contexts I have for that guy are Pasolini's Uccellacci e uccellini and, well, the Unholyverse :-) And history classes I guess, but that's not important.
Iraq War Memorial garden.
And here we skip past me having cannoli with paper_tzipporah and coffee with her and Parrot again and the esteemed Collins brother, because I guess I didn't take any postable photos, and we get to the next morning -- my last day in Boston. I began by visiting
rubynye at work, and then decided to walk instead of taking the train downtown. I ended up walking down Newbury street, which was one of the streets that reminded me most of Tel Aviv in certain ways -- the outdoor cafes, the stores and boutiques -- except that it was, you know, bigger. Less crowded. Greener. Et cetera.
Newbury Comics with bonus Edward! (buy one, get one free.) (Also Justin Beiber, LOL. I actually could have gone to his show if I'd gone to the Maryland State Fair a few days after I did. The loss, it burns.)
b. good burgers, the place I wrote about when I was there because it was so good. Really, really recommended if you're in MA and you're... not a vegetarian.
Sadly this was closed when I got there :(
Not really a clear picture so idk if you can see, but this girl is wearing a TAIL. Is this a new trend? Is this a hipster thing? Can someone explain this to me? The only other place I've seen it was -- weirdly -- at the Renaissance Faire. She didn't seem to be wearing it as any sort of costume, it's just... attached to her ass. I'm mostly stumped.
My boys ♥
Final photography spree at the Public Gardens. I stalked this guy for like 15 minutes. He flies! (I really wish this was focused, though.)
He was so cute nibbling on his but, but all I could think of while I was going over the photos was 'This is a boy squirrel'.
More flying squirrels :D
Bird bath
Clean bird! \o/
Where everybody knows your name....
LOL random Israeli flag in Boston, who DOES that
Aaaaand sunset, caught in the brief minute the subway goes above ground, on my way to
kass's.
The Berkshires
Not too many photos here, just a few I like that are sufficiently neutral:
Fresh berries! :D :D :D Thank you
lomedet for planting these years ago, BTW. They are awesome and delicious.
The very very very early beginning of changing leaves. New England foliage hunting is so on my list of things to see, oh my god.
kass's cat! LOOK AT HER. She is so beautiful. I feel pretty comfortable spamming you with photos, given that she is a cat and this is the internet. So:
Regal cat.
Judgmental cat.
Thoughtful cat.
Mourning cat. I AM NOT GOOD AT MACROS OKAY she is just pretttttty.
Though I have posted these before, man, just look at this sky.
Going for a hike in the woods. Berries!
Pond! ...
... that was actually created by a beaver dam! BEAVERS ARE REAL, GUYS. omg.
Northampton, MA. "Where the coffee is strong, and so are the women."
...as the merchandise proves.
(It's like Kings and vampire shows together! I LOLED.)
Connecticut
New Haven!
One of those bars where they give you peanuts and you drop the shells on the floor. I know of one of those in Israel. It's called "American style".
Hahaha, I seriously love fangirl apartments. There's always something comfortable about them, whether it's an SGA poster, or a fiberglass Brain who wants to take over the world, or Tim Drake and Draco Malfoy action figures. (Tim's wand is bigger, for the record.
lomedet and I never actually managed to figure out what the hell Tim Drake was doing with a staff.)
Yale! Gorgeous campus. All in all, the Berkshires + this (+ driving through Hartford on the bus) was basically getting the Gilmore Girls But For Real Tour.
So Yale looks like it's 500 years old when most of the buildings were actually built in the early 20th century. They actually poured acid over the bricks and smoked and buried the roof shingles underground for 6 months and broke and then repaired windows to give the place an ancient look and all sorts of stuff like that. Basically they're as genuine as Disneyland.
The Yale coat of arms! Urim Vetumim, baby, that's what it's all about.
Guttenberg Bible #498532 that I've seen on this trip, it feels like.
800,000 rare books and manuscripts available to all students. What is this, seriously.
WHITE EGGPLANT. !!!!!. What is this monstrosity. (Photo taken at Whole Foods right before I was asked to turn off my camera, because "You can't take photos in here, ma'am." Ooookay.)
More of the campus...
And finally, the train to NYC.
PART 1 DONE. Or part whatever this was.
Remaining photos to post: Oberlin (b) and DC (a), NYC, Baltimore, Ren Faire, and DC (b). Stay tuned for the... future. Sometime.
comments on Dreamwidth.
zulu said it was okay, and she's smart, so. Here goes. My summer in photos, part 1:
(Needless to say, this is image heavy. So caveat watcher!)
Vividcon:
Flying to VVC was awesome. It was this tiny little plane, and I had just had a conversation about silly bandz with a college dude at the terminal so I was in a friendly mood, and when I took my seat I discovered I was sitting next to this woman reading what looked like a YA fantasy book with tattoos all over her arms. The tats were a convenient conversation starter and we ended up talking almost the entire flight. She was a currently unemployed History teacher/PhD student on her way to Lollapalooza, and it was just one of those fleeting acquaintances where I had no problem telling her I knew a lot about MCR because I read fanfiction about them and she was perfectly cool with that, and it was just one of those getting to know strangers moments. For all that I spent 2 months traveling "alone", most of the people I met weren't actually strangers, and it's really fun, having that small connection.
Vividcon! I can't even. I'd never been at a con before, let alone a con with so many people I knew or knew of (yet only two I'd ever actually met), and seeing the table with everyone's marked plastic cups kind of made me flail.
Consuite snacks, most of them homemade! They were so good. I don't remember who baked them, but I love you whoever you are (and your daughter!). I munched on the bag I packed myself for like three days afterward.
The official premiere of sweetestdrain's Adam Lambert vid Tightrope.
I haven't actually written a con report because I suck, so I will write a very brief one here, which will at this point mostly be namesdropping but it's pretty clear that for me, at least, meeting people was the best part.
I arrived Thursday afternoon and met
bironic in our beautiful beautiful suite, and ate a sandwich because she is brilliant and went shopping for groceries earlier, and apparently putting grapes into cheese/tuna/lettuce/tomato sandwiches makes all the difference. Down in the second floor of the hotel I met
kass for the first time since two years ago, when she,
bironic and I all met in Jerusalem, so that was awesome. I also met
celli and
astolat and hapex_legomena and
ellen_fremedon and probably a few other people;
xenakis and
emef, maybe I met you then? -- IT'S ALL SO BLURRY NOW.
Basically over the next few days I, uh, met people. I had an Idol fangirl lunch with
butterfly, goseaward,
anoel and meeeep I've forgotten the other usernames. I bonded with
shinetheway over Bandom and MCR. I flailed over favorite authors (
dira!
frostfire!
seperis!
elynross! AND MORE), out loud as well as inside, and got music from
damned_colonial, and met and met
anatsuno and
deepad (though I missed her panel! /o\) and counteragent and
settiai (I'm pretty sure? GOD I SUCK) and
the_shoshanna and cappylicious and okay,
paraka,
hellpenguin, I definitely remember attempts at Bandom conversion there. (Basically if you were at the con and remember a girl with curly hair trying to pimp Bandom and still attempt to participate in Idol discussions, it was probably me. Also if you remember a girl walking around with a laptop with
marina's waving face on it, that was probably me too.)
Okay. I could namedrop a little more but I still have over 100 photos to go -- none of which will actually have this long an explanation -- so I am moving forward. Needless to say that in Vividcon I had a a GRAND OLD TIME x INFINITY.
Leaving Chicago. *waves goodbye* (it was tearful okay?)
Boston (& Suburbs):
[Note: from here on out it's just photos with captions, not narrative. Because that would take. Time. If a photo has no caption, it probably didn't need one.]
Flight to Boston! There is a sunset, kind of. You might note that taking off from Chicago it's kind of dark, but it got lighter once we rose above cloud level.
Grumpy MIT student under the MIT dome! AKA The Next Rodney McKay (=All MIT Students Ever in my mind) (Except Bibi) (By the way has anyone seen this bb!Bibi video? Don't watch unless you're really interested in Israeli politics, and even if you are you probably won't care, it was just amusing to see him so tiny and going as Ben Nitay. LOL.)
Frank Gehry's Stata Center at MIT, aka the building that would probably make Rodney really mad if he saw it.
Fire & Ice Grill
It is very important to notice the FLYING SLICES OF CHEESE that guy was tossing at the burgers. His aim was dead on. It was inspiring.
Subway doggie!
Faneuil Hall/Quincy market area. Spandex! :D
Visitors entrance to the New Massachusettes State House. I'm pretty sure the sign says it all.
Magical lucky flying codfish at the Massachusettes State House. Apparently it's hanging high so that no one ever steals it again, because if it's stolen then... your bill won't pass? Something like that.
Still in the state House. In the Olden Days they couldn't decide whether they wanted the turkey or the eagle to be their state bird or something, so they invented the "Teagle". IDK whether Stephen Colbert wrote the script for this or not, but that's how the tour guide tells it anyway.
Boston Common
Boston Public Gardens (you can prepare for many many photos of ducks and other birds from now on.)
So many ducks ♥
Public Gardens. I could seriously have spent a whole week in those gardens, and they're not even that big.
I took this photo for the internet. TELL ME THERE IS NOT SOMETHING INAPPROPRIATE ABOUT THAT STATUE. Let me show you that again:
They are FIVE YEARS OLD. I am all for kinky statues in public, but can they at least be adolescents? /o\
I've been told this is a Very Important Bostonian Landmark. I tell ya.
Fenway Park! I am not an enormous Sox fan (mostly because I'm not a fan of any baseball team), but I was pretty excited. Boston is pretty lolarious when it comes to the Red Sox. Everywhere you look there's merchandise; every second sign you see proclaims the business establishment as The Official [Insert Service Provided] of the Boston Red Sox! They have official everythings, from a medical center to a florist.
Tomatoes at the farmers market! For the record in Israel there are only big red round tomatoes, so farmers markets all over the place were kind of flabbergasting.
Ducks! Back at the Public Gardens with fictionalaspect. We both have the same camera! It was the PERFECT OUTING. We both took awkward photos of random produce together! And ducks.
TINY BIRD
Grave of some of the people who died in the Boston Massacre.
ooooh historic graveyard. Seriously, these are the kind where you watch Buffy and you think to yourself, pffft, graveyards like that don't EXIST in America, except apparently they do? I'm still skeptical about California though.
Marine quite certain of his own badassery, LOL. (I think! Don't kill me if it's not actually a Marine.)
Graffiti by Chinatown.
Chinatown
Tea! Why don't they serve that at Chinese restaurants here?
I AM HILARIOUS
Hahaha, the only worthy photo I have from the next morning of walking around with
twtd and
cleo is the most EMBARRASSING PHOTO IN THE UNIVERSE which I only took to show my RL Bandom friends as a joke and I can't even bring myself to look at it. It is a photo of a store titled [(my first name) (Ross)]. If you don't know Bandom, good, and if you do, I CAN'T BELIEVE I ACTUALLY JUST ADMITTED I TOOK THAT PHOTO OUT LOUD. Let's just forget this paragraph ever happened, shall we? OH LOOK IT'S JESUS:
Stained glass at the First Church of Christian Science. Which, surprisingly, has absolutely nothing to do with actual science. This was at the First Church of Christian Science, next door to the Christian Science Monitor. Weird and interesting. (And yes,
nextian, I went to the Mapparium! It was nice, all in all. Very cool acoustics.)
Also next door.
Haaavard! Look at everyone on the lawn, being so smart.
Really pretty campus though.
Only one classroom hall was open to the public (as far as I could see), so I peeked in to see what classrooms looked like. Some of them were actually surprisingly stuffy and old fashioned (see: this one), but I guess because it's one of the oldest buildings there.
More classrooms
THIS, this thing is GENIUS. Why don't we have that here?
Cool outdoor spray fountain in/around the Harvard grounds.
jadelennox could tell you where it is.
Ducks in a row! Canadian Geese, to be exact. This is in the late afternoon, when
jadelennox and I strolled to the Charles and I agreed to have a really depressing conversation about Israel and in turn she agreed to let me pimp her Bandom. (Psst, if you are reading this, did it work?)
I really wanted to see the geese fly, but they just kept swimming in their perfect little column. And then we (or maybe it was just me? I probably roped her into it) decided to be really cruel and toss a rock into the water to get them to fly, just for my photo op, we should be arrested or something, ANYWAY. We threw the rock, and the genius geese just started swimming AT US instead of flying away. I think it was another rock or two before they started flying. WE DIDN'T HIT ANY OF THEM OKAY don't look at me like that. It was a pretty shot!
(If grew up in Israel in the 80s you might, like me, be thinking about this. Ooh, looked it up on wiki and it looks like this anime was also aired all over Europe but ahhhhhh none of the theme songs in the different languages have the same music! And for some reason the Hebrew one is twice as long as the others! What the what.)
CARVER! Or rather, Seth Gilliam from The Wire, aka, in this case, Othello. paper_tzipporah and I bought some Burger King and Dunkin' Donuts (local flavor!) and watched the show on the Common.
Next day again! I just loved how this tiny tiny truck was squeezing through the buildings.
BARTLETTS :D :D :D. :D?
Because when you're having a cup of coffee in the afternoon, you want to think positive.
I swear, sometimes it feels like everything in the US is fandom oriented. Writing a Merlin fic? No problem, head right over here, we sort our books by the fandom of the week.
(I don't think I can emphasize, actually, how big of a difference buying books is here and in the States. When I say the US is huge compared to here, I really, really mean it. Israeli bookstores are usually one room, which is generally about this big. Books are divided into a few general categories: gift, children, art, psychology, travel, religion, scifi/fantasy, non-fiction, English, fiction - translated, fiction - original, probably a few more, but that is it. Theater and poetry get about two shelves together. Biographies -- another shelf or two. You can't even compare the selection you have here to the selection you get in the US, because... there's no comparison. I've seen Borders and B&N in the US that have whole sections for genres like crime, thrillers, romance, whatever. We have those books here, but you know, they're just alphabetized along with all the rest of the fiction, because all in all fiction gets maybe 5 or 6 bookcases altogether.
This isn't a complaint, just me marveling at the variety that exists in the US. And books are just the tip of the iceberg.)
Hahahaha LOOK AT THIS. Apparently we have moved on from mere glasses to HUMONGOUS JARS in restaurants. BTW this is a full sized Tabasco bottle, it's not like miniature or anything. This is
thedeadparrot,
amazonziti and I going out for dinner at Red Bones. We shared ribs and a brisket, which was more than enough. (When asked to choose between a million different kinds of ribs we went with Arkansas style, because you know, might as well get some Kris Allen research done while we're eating.)
Walking to
thedeadparrot's place, an FNL moment! But with baseball.
Okay, so
thedeadparrot has one of the most amazing apartments ever it is SO AWESOME, and it has this VIEW of downtown Boston JUST LOOK AT IT. It is the apartment on a hill. I took photos of it in every single different lighting situation available. Night!
Sunrise!
More sunrise!
Morning after waking up after going back to sleep after waking up early for the sunrise!
...and then she and
amazonziti and I went to the farmers market and had some pie. And bought ingredients for excellent salad and pasta! But more importantly pie. Strawberry rhubarb. I cannot even put the flavor into words, it was divine. (We really need some rhubarb in Israel.)
Then we went back to the apartment and watched vids! It's like a fangirl's dream, okay, you would not believe the amount of technology there available for all your fannish needs. And we had my VVC DVD and Parrot's extensive collection. It was awesome. We lazed around all day watching vids and episodes and marathoning some Arrested Development.
AND HAVING MORE PIE. Peach raspberry, this time.
And finally the sun was setting...
Goodbye, Sun. Goodbye, Parrot, Goodbye, Zara. :(
It should be noted FOR THE RECORD that
amazonziti was, when it comes down to it, my only official Bandom full convert in the US (as far as I know), and I am SO PROUD I COULD CRY ♥♥♥♥♥.
In the evening I went to the harbor with my hosts. Seagull!
LOL, floating doghouse at the marina. I mean, that's a floating doghouse, right? I don't actually know but I have no other idea of what it might be.
It was pretty up in the docks. My hosts and I ate at Joe's American Bar & Grill.
And later happened to happen upon really great live Irish music at the Black Rose, so I also got to cross "Boston Irish pub" off my list.
The next day I continued walking along the Freedom Trail, which I'd been walking sections of, on and off, for the entire week. This is the part that goes through the Holocaust Memorial.
Frolicking! I also have another photo from there that's cute and lolsome but I kind of feel bad posting, but let's just say that I'm pretty sure that that day a few five year old girls discovered that it felt nice to stand over a steady stream of water directed right between their legs... It was kind of charming.
Boston's North End, which is not actually called Little Italy (but might as well be.)
To wit!
My friend, San Francisco. Having never been to Assisi myself, the two main contexts I have for that guy are Pasolini's Uccellacci e uccellini and, well, the Unholyverse :-) And history classes I guess, but that's not important.
Iraq War Memorial garden.
And here we skip past me having cannoli with paper_tzipporah and coffee with her and Parrot again and the esteemed Collins brother, because I guess I didn't take any postable photos, and we get to the next morning -- my last day in Boston. I began by visiting
rubynye at work, and then decided to walk instead of taking the train downtown. I ended up walking down Newbury street, which was one of the streets that reminded me most of Tel Aviv in certain ways -- the outdoor cafes, the stores and boutiques -- except that it was, you know, bigger. Less crowded. Greener. Et cetera.
Newbury Comics with bonus Edward! (buy one, get one free.) (Also Justin Beiber, LOL. I actually could have gone to his show if I'd gone to the Maryland State Fair a few days after I did. The loss, it burns.)
b. good burgers, the place I wrote about when I was there because it was so good. Really, really recommended if you're in MA and you're... not a vegetarian.
Sadly this was closed when I got there :(
Not really a clear picture so idk if you can see, but this girl is wearing a TAIL. Is this a new trend? Is this a hipster thing? Can someone explain this to me? The only other place I've seen it was -- weirdly -- at the Renaissance Faire. She didn't seem to be wearing it as any sort of costume, it's just... attached to her ass. I'm mostly stumped.
My boys ♥
Final photography spree at the Public Gardens. I stalked this guy for like 15 minutes. He flies! (I really wish this was focused, though.)
He was so cute nibbling on his but, but all I could think of while I was going over the photos was 'This is a boy squirrel'.
More flying squirrels :D
Bird bath
Clean bird! \o/
Where everybody knows your name....
LOL random Israeli flag in Boston, who DOES that
Aaaaand sunset, caught in the brief minute the subway goes above ground, on my way to
kass's.
The Berkshires
Not too many photos here, just a few I like that are sufficiently neutral:
Fresh berries! :D :D :D Thank you
lomedet for planting these years ago, BTW. They are awesome and delicious.
The very very very early beginning of changing leaves. New England foliage hunting is so on my list of things to see, oh my god.
kass's cat! LOOK AT HER. She is so beautiful. I feel pretty comfortable spamming you with photos, given that she is a cat and this is the internet. So:
Regal cat.
Judgmental cat.
Thoughtful cat.
Mourning cat. I AM NOT GOOD AT MACROS OKAY she is just pretttttty.
Though I have posted these before, man, just look at this sky.
Going for a hike in the woods. Berries!
Pond! ...
... that was actually created by a beaver dam! BEAVERS ARE REAL, GUYS. omg.
Northampton, MA. "Where the coffee is strong, and so are the women."
...as the merchandise proves.
(It's like Kings and vampire shows together! I LOLED.)
Connecticut
New Haven!
One of those bars where they give you peanuts and you drop the shells on the floor. I know of one of those in Israel. It's called "American style".
Hahaha, I seriously love fangirl apartments. There's always something comfortable about them, whether it's an SGA poster, or a fiberglass Brain who wants to take over the world, or Tim Drake and Draco Malfoy action figures. (Tim's wand is bigger, for the record.
lomedet and I never actually managed to figure out what the hell Tim Drake was doing with a staff.)
Yale! Gorgeous campus. All in all, the Berkshires + this (+ driving through Hartford on the bus) was basically getting the Gilmore Girls But For Real Tour.
So Yale looks like it's 500 years old when most of the buildings were actually built in the early 20th century. They actually poured acid over the bricks and smoked and buried the roof shingles underground for 6 months and broke and then repaired windows to give the place an ancient look and all sorts of stuff like that. Basically they're as genuine as Disneyland.
The Yale coat of arms! Urim Vetumim, baby, that's what it's all about.
Guttenberg Bible #498532 that I've seen on this trip, it feels like.
800,000 rare books and manuscripts available to all students. What is this, seriously.
WHITE EGGPLANT. !!!!!. What is this monstrosity. (Photo taken at Whole Foods right before I was asked to turn off my camera, because "You can't take photos in here, ma'am." Ooookay.)
More of the campus...
And finally, the train to NYC.
PART 1 DONE. Or part whatever this was.
Remaining photos to post: Oberlin (b) and DC (a), NYC, Baltimore, Ren Faire, and DC (b). Stay tuned for the... future. Sometime.
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