Spamalot the Musical, and related excitement.
Last night I got four hours of sleep. Ed, Chris and I tried (and mostly succeeded) to fix a release critical bug that had to be done by this morning. We left Raytheon at 3am, and we were back by 10:30am.
We left work again about 6pm, and the pre-Spamalot company party started in downtown Boston at 6:30pm.
Since I enjoy driving (and singing, my car has the only CD player), I've become the default driver for carpooling. That meant we didn't have enough time to switch cars, so I got my first taste of driving in downtown Boston after we picked up blacktigr in Somerville.
I was very tired, and quite hungry, neither of which lead to clear thinking.
It all started with my new GPS phone getting confused by the signal-reflecting tall buildings and misdirecting us several times, after which we wandered around without looking at the GPS.
We decided to follow a taxi down a narrow cobblestone street. About halfway down the street we spotted a sign that said "Do not enter (except taxis and buses)". We knew we needed to turn left on Summer street, and we thought we could turn left onto a small street named Washington to get us there, so we rushed forward and turned left.
Sadly, Washington street in downtown Boston is one-way, and for pedestrians only, and we were going the wrong way. The street was far too narrow to allow me to turn around, so we tried to get down to the next crossing as speedily as possible. Just before we got to said crossing, a policeman on the upcoming side street turned his lights on and pulled out in front of us.
He was pretty upset at first, and I desperately played my "I'm from Alabama" bit as much as I could. Luckily he relented and told us to turn around and go back the way we came. As soon as we started turning around, *another* policeman stopped us and told us to pull over onto a different side street. He was even less happy than the previous policeman!
We pulled off into the designated area and waited a bit. The first policeman came over and spoke to the second policeman. A few seconds later the second policeman knocked on the window and said "Where are you from, Texas?"
I said "No, I'm from Alabama."
He looked incredulous, to say the least.
There was a bit of discussion as to where I was going and a rhetorical question on his part about how I usually dealt with one way streets in Alabama.
Then he said "This is your lucky day, I just had to deal with a crazy lady from New Jersey and I don't feel like ticketing a carload of people from Alabama. Go down this street, turn right on Kingston and left on Bedford."
The last thing he said was "I've been doing this a long time, and this is the FIRST time I've ever seen ANYONE drive down Washington street the wrong way!"
At this point we just wanted to get to the company party, and get off the streets of downtown Boston. As you can guess, a significant amount of repressed panic was happening in the car.
So we turned left into the first parking area we could find.
Oddly enough, the parking attendant had a nice suitcoat and tie, and one of those squiggly wire earpieces.
At first glance, I thought I'd pulled into a closed parking area because the entrance in front of me was blocked with a massive piece of metal and various upthrust concrete thingies.
The well dressed attendant looked at us suspiciously, and I said "Um, can we park here?"
The attendant smiled a smile that I translated as 'These people have no idea what they're doing.' and said "Yes, but I have to check your car first." He then pulled out a strange looking wand shaped thing and walked around my car and appeared to be painting the sides with the wand.
After he'd swiped around the entire circumference of my car, I asked him, "Um, what are you checking for?"
"Explosives." he said.
At this point either Amy or Chris in the back seat said, "Oh, the sign says it costs thirty dollars to park here."
The attendant smiled his little smile, the monstrous metal and concrete barrier crashed down flat and we drove into the parking deck.
It later turned out that we were parking underneath a federal building that's also a financial center of some type.
At the company party, I met a few people, and Ed got me some sort of strange drink.. a Jagerpop?
It was an interesting mix of Jagermeister and Red Bull.
The musical was great fun, the drive home was far less eventful than the drive there, and I'm totally exhausted. I acquired a small stuffed rabbit with big nasty fangs. I took a few pictures after the musical though I'm still not sure how to transfer them to my Linux virtual server, I'll put them up later. The parking deck only ended up being ten dollars instead of thirty, that was nice.
In any case, next time we go downtown, someone else gets to drive.
Hopefully blacktigr will fill the parts of this adventure that I missed!
We left work again about 6pm, and the pre-Spamalot company party started in downtown Boston at 6:30pm.
Since I enjoy driving (and singing, my car has the only CD player), I've become the default driver for carpooling. That meant we didn't have enough time to switch cars, so I got my first taste of driving in downtown Boston after we picked up blacktigr in Somerville.
I was very tired, and quite hungry, neither of which lead to clear thinking.
It all started with my new GPS phone getting confused by the signal-reflecting tall buildings and misdirecting us several times, after which we wandered around without looking at the GPS.
We decided to follow a taxi down a narrow cobblestone street. About halfway down the street we spotted a sign that said "Do not enter (except taxis and buses)". We knew we needed to turn left on Summer street, and we thought we could turn left onto a small street named Washington to get us there, so we rushed forward and turned left.
Sadly, Washington street in downtown Boston is one-way, and for pedestrians only, and we were going the wrong way. The street was far too narrow to allow me to turn around, so we tried to get down to the next crossing as speedily as possible. Just before we got to said crossing, a policeman on the upcoming side street turned his lights on and pulled out in front of us.
He was pretty upset at first, and I desperately played my "I'm from Alabama" bit as much as I could. Luckily he relented and told us to turn around and go back the way we came. As soon as we started turning around, *another* policeman stopped us and told us to pull over onto a different side street. He was even less happy than the previous policeman!
We pulled off into the designated area and waited a bit. The first policeman came over and spoke to the second policeman. A few seconds later the second policeman knocked on the window and said "Where are you from, Texas?"
I said "No, I'm from Alabama."
He looked incredulous, to say the least.
There was a bit of discussion as to where I was going and a rhetorical question on his part about how I usually dealt with one way streets in Alabama.
Then he said "This is your lucky day, I just had to deal with a crazy lady from New Jersey and I don't feel like ticketing a carload of people from Alabama. Go down this street, turn right on Kingston and left on Bedford."
The last thing he said was "I've been doing this a long time, and this is the FIRST time I've ever seen ANYONE drive down Washington street the wrong way!"
At this point we just wanted to get to the company party, and get off the streets of downtown Boston. As you can guess, a significant amount of repressed panic was happening in the car.
So we turned left into the first parking area we could find.
Oddly enough, the parking attendant had a nice suitcoat and tie, and one of those squiggly wire earpieces.
At first glance, I thought I'd pulled into a closed parking area because the entrance in front of me was blocked with a massive piece of metal and various upthrust concrete thingies.
The well dressed attendant looked at us suspiciously, and I said "Um, can we park here?"
The attendant smiled a smile that I translated as 'These people have no idea what they're doing.' and said "Yes, but I have to check your car first." He then pulled out a strange looking wand shaped thing and walked around my car and appeared to be painting the sides with the wand.
After he'd swiped around the entire circumference of my car, I asked him, "Um, what are you checking for?"
"Explosives." he said.
At this point either Amy or Chris in the back seat said, "Oh, the sign says it costs thirty dollars to park here."
The attendant smiled his little smile, the monstrous metal and concrete barrier crashed down flat and we drove into the parking deck.
It later turned out that we were parking underneath a federal building that's also a financial center of some type.
At the company party, I met a few people, and Ed got me some sort of strange drink.. a Jagerpop?
It was an interesting mix of Jagermeister and Red Bull.
The musical was great fun, the drive home was far less eventful than the drive there, and I'm totally exhausted. I acquired a small stuffed rabbit with big nasty fangs. I took a few pictures after the musical though I'm still not sure how to transfer them to my Linux virtual server, I'll put them up later. The parking deck only ended up being ten dollars instead of thirty, that was nice.
In any case, next time we go downtown, someone else gets to drive.
Hopefully blacktigr will fill the parts of this adventure that I missed!