Taking Back Sunday

Meagan, Kevin and Christine...WOW, I HAVE A HUGE MOUTH!


This weekend there was a free concert at Downtown Crossing, and the band was called Taking Back Sunday. I am starting to feel really old, I have never heard of that band! They must be popular though cause there were tons of teenagers running around, singing a long and acting "tough". There was a huge crowd and it was a lot of fun even though we couldn't see anything. People were sitting in the trees, and Matt scared a little boy by grabbing his shoe and running off with it...he gave it back though, cause the boy looked extremely concerned!


We went with Matt's old high school friend from Eureka and his girlfriend. We went to a place called Sissy K's for dinner before the concert and it was good despite the fact that they covered my mussels with Parmesan cheese. I had thought it was a white wine sauce...oh well.

School!

I am in school again! This is a picture of me going to my Orientation. Yes, I have funny blue shoes on. My orientation was the day our stuff arrived to Boston, so I only had the clothes I wore in China and with my family this summer. SO, this was the best I could come up with...

Weirdly, I am totally intimidated by going back to school, even though I know it is silly and I have nothing to be worried about...I feel better now that I have been to my classes. I think it is going to be more work than I expected, but that is ok cause I am really excited to be in school and I love my classes. I am happy cause the fact that I love my classes so much means that I am doing the right thing by going back to school. All of my classes are interesting: epidemiology, occupational and environmental health, public health policy and nutrition. My favorite class so far is the public health policy course. I thought environmental health would be less interesting but I actually loved it...Nutrition is going to be interesting but a lot of it is going to be a review. My science background will definitely come in handy...maybe my year of organic chemistry will not go to waste.

I won't bore anyone with the details of my classes...the only problem is that I wish I could just be in school and not have to work. But, now that I am back in the US, there are no excuses for not working! I am going to wait until after our apartment is settled to start looking for work.

Still Unpacking...

My previous post about all of Dad's books was very melodramatic...but still, it IS a lot of work, and I do feel slightly overwhelmed since I am also starting school again. Things are getting better and Matt and I are strting to feel very at home in our apartment. It is going to look great! About the book issue...I am having someone come to appraise his books, and maybe buy some of them. At least then I will know if they are worth any thing or not...If he buys them that is great, I will sell the ones about subjects I am less interested in. If he doesn't, then I will give some to charity and keep the ones I like.

Matt painted the office. (It used to be the second bedroom but when our stuff arrived we realized that we had only put Dad's bed in storage, not our own! Sorry, any potential visitors out there!) We chose the color Straw...Hopefully it will help keep me cheerful in the long winter months. Matt did a great job painting and the room looks beautiful with the white trim and the wood furniture.

Ipswich

A couple of weekends ago Matt and I went to Crane Beach and Ipswich. It was sort of cold, but it was a lot of fun. We went into a little town near there that had lots of antique shops.





I discovered that I am not a person that likes to go "antique-ing". It was really fun though and cute though, despite my lack of interet in antiques. A great thing is that there were lots of places with clams and lobster. YUM! We didn't get to eat any though because we had to catch a train going back to Boston and we didn't have time for dinner.


Matt doesn't like his picture taken!

Things we have been doing in Boston

We went to the Museum of Science to see Body Worlds. It was so amazing! I highly recommend it to anyone...basically a doctor in Germany uses donated bodies create "muscle skeletons", if tht makes sense. He also had various cross sections of the body on display. It is sad to know what my arteries probably look like, with all of my cholesterol pumping through them building up plaque...The picture of the brain is not from the exhibit, that is my brain, complete with gaping hole.


We went on a tour of Harvard, or "Hahvahd" as our tour guides liked to say. The tour was led by two Harvard seniors trying to run an unofficial tour of Harvard and Harvard is not happy. It was pretty good but very long. We learned something interesting: 92% of Cambridge residents voted for Kerry in the last presidential election. Wow.


We went to Mike's Pastry in the North End. This cannolli was WAY TOO SWEET! It almost burned my taste buds off. I guess Italians like it like that?


We went to the Farmer's Market in Union Square. It was SO MUCH FUN! I love farmer's markets...this one had a band and lots of art for sale and, of course, produce. I like Union Square, it feels fun and funky...less upscale than Cambridge. This picture is of the gorgeous Paula apples for sale. I had never seen them before, and they looked beautiful, so I bought them. Unfortunately, to me they didn't taste as good as they looked! Very tart and the texture wasn't as crisp as I like. I prefer Granny Smith if I want a tart apple.


We went on a boat to the USS Constitution. The boat ride was fun, and going on the ship was free. I hate to say it, but Hong Kong definitely beats Boston in terms of the beauty of the harbor.

Too Many Books

This post is just an update...I had all sorts of things I wanted to blog about the things we have been doing...We have been having a great time in Boston and we love it! For the past couple of weeks we have been relaxing, seeing a few sights in Boston, and getting things set up here. We had our stuff shipped here from Hong Kong and had Dad's stuff shipped here from storage in LA. I knew it was going to be a lot of work to go through all of Dad's stuff, not to mention the emotional upheaval it would cause, so we got here two weeks before my school starts in hopes of having plenty of time to unload everything and get organized. However, the moving company was late, and it arrived a few days ago. Of course, it was the only day that Matt or I had any plans. I had my school orientation and Matt had a job interview. Matt rescheduled his job interview, and it was probably for the best the I wasn't around for the unloading. Moving men are always so surly and gruff, and I think the sight of them gives me post traumatic stress disorder of when they came to clear out Dad's house two years ago. They couldn't fit the piano OR the couch through the doorway to our house. This is a MAJOR bummer. The good news is that the rest of Dad's furniture fits perfectly and things had been going relatively smoothly...till today.

Today I have set the task for myself of going through all of Dad's books. There are 25 boxes of them. The boxes took up the entire living room. Believe it or not, two years ago, I got rid of half of Dad's book collection, so this is the better half of the original collection. There is no way that all of these books will fit in my house and they definitely don't fit in the bookshelves. So...I have been sorting through them and getting rid of ones that I want less than the others. This is a really draining job, much more than you would think. Part of me feels like I am being a traitor or a horrible daughter for getting rid of things that I know my Dad loved. He loved books! The other part of me feels really bitter and mad that I am a prisoner of Dad's stuff. A book collection is a really personal thing. It is a lot of information about things that the person who accumulated the books is interested in. I am not necessarily interested in the things Dad was interested in, and for things we are both interested in, I don't really need a lot of books about the subject. For instance, there were two full boxes of books about hiking trails in the Sierras. I love hiking in the Sierras but all that information is online or available at a Ranger Station. And, he had about a kajillion coffee table books. They are beautiful but heavy and probably wouldn't get much use. There is really no room for that in my small apartment.

I am not a prisoner of my own belongings...Matt and I travel pretty light and are too young to have accumulated so much stuff. Plus, I get rid of things of my own so that I can fit into the space I have. But I feel really guilty getting rid of stuff that is Dad's, especially cause he told me he wanted me to keep all his stuff after he died exactly the way it is. That is really unfair to me. I am sure he was joking, but still...I sold his condo, so I already messed that one up. Anyway, today for some reason I am getting all stressed out again like I was after Dad died and I was going through his stuff the first time. I hate it! Plus, this is really mean to say, but I am sick of thinking about him and doing stuff that he would have wanted it. I want to get on with my own life. I think I still have my own life...maybe I should never have left Hong Kong, you can easily avoid reality and unpleasant subjects there. Grandma made a photo album about Dad and when I was at her house this summer I didn't even want to look at it. It is so mean, but I am just so sick of memorializing him and thinking about his life.

Matt has been great though...he doesn't care about belongings, his own or anyone elses. He wanted to unpack Dad's antique Buddha from Myanmar. I was like, "NO! I am afraid it is broken, don't open it, ignorance is bliss!" Matt was like, "If it is broken, so what? We don't need a buddha anyway. It's heavy." So he opened it up and my heart was going a mile a minute cause I was afraid it would be broken and I would feel responsible. It was fine, and afterwards I was angry. It is not fair, it isn't even my Buddha, and I was almost having a heart attack about it, as if Dad would zoom down from wherever he is and be mad at me.

Whatever...these are just weird issues I have. I need to get over it and let go of his belongings because he is dead and holding on to them doesn't help.