Mestee Blogger

Interesting weekend. On Friday, my plan was to get my car back from Sarah, go to the gym, drive to Londonderry to get my passport, then return to Boston Ave around 11:00 pm. The plan failed on many levels. Instead of going to the gym, I went to the Outback Steakhouse -- possible polar opposite of the gym -- to have dinner with Jenn Hufton and Sarah. I drove to Londonderry afterwards, but got there late, had trouble finding my passport, and made an executive decision to stay at 22 Devonshire by myself for the night (parents in Vegas!). When I woke up in the morning I had work to do.

My passport expired a few years ago, so I needed to apply for a new one. I had all of the paperwork done, but still needed to go to get my picture taken to send in with everything else. Looking rather gruff, I made my way to Walgreens Pharmacy, former employer of both J. Carl Hufton, Irfan Rizvi, and Corinne Gaymeelicker. I wasn't sure where this whole picture-taking process was going to take place, since there didn't appear to be any photo studio sort of area in the store. After I told the guy behind the counter that I needed a passport photo, he pulled down a white screen, put a stool in front of it, grabbed a giant camera and -- voila! -- instant photo studio behind the counter. The cashier asked me to step behind the counter and take a seat on the stool. I was pretty self-conscious getting my picture taken behind the counter with all of the people in line looking at me and probably wondering what was going on. The picture turned out fairly normal, though the hooded sweatshirt and 2 day-old beard made me look like a bit of a hoodlum. Application: mailed. Mission complete.

I went back to Medford in the afternoon and took a little nap, then went to the gym...making a pit stop along the way to get ingredients for crabby canopies. I met Liz Cate at Kendall Square to see Sideways, which I thought was good, but not great. It may have suffered from every critic in the world writing about how amazing it was. It was funny, depressing, and went above and beyond the quota for male nudity...overall I'd give it a 7 out of 10.

The Super Bowl seemed to come and go in an instant. We spent much of the afternoon creating Bourgeois snacks, which came out nicely. This year, we didn't even make Brendan wear the "Bourgeois Snacks" name tag, and Ch-ch-ch-Changes wasn't there to critique our pronunciation of "Bourgeois". The game itself was actually close, but I was strangely calm through most of it. This was a far cry from, say, any Red Sox playoff game ever. Not that I was less excited about it, but I just don't have that feeling of "when is it going to go wrong for us?" kind of feeling I had all the way up until the last play of Game 4 in the World Series this year.

After the game, I drove S. Andy Bean and his Ladyfriend to Davis Square, sans power steering. I actually drove them about 80% of the way there before my car broke down. I told S.A.B and friend to walk while I waited for the tow truck. While sitting alone in my car, boredom set in almost immediately. I called Hufton to ask random questions about our trip, then I called Liz to complain that she was a no-show at our party. When that was done, I waited for another 5 minutes until the tow truck arrived. I had them drop it off at the auto shop around the corner from my house, with hopes that they could fix the problem by today or tomorrow (I think, and hope, it's the alternator). I had this email exchange with Liz Cate this morning:

...Anyway, just wondering how the car thing turned out last night.
Hopefully it's not too serious a problem.
Adios, Liz

Liz - I'm not sure how serious it is because I just got a call from my mechanic, informing me that I forgot to drop off the keys along with the car. Sweet.

-Brian

Incidents like that guarantee that you'll never run out of material
for the blog... Liz

So true, so true.

My favorite Super Bowl commercials were the FedEx Kinko's spot with the top Super Bowl commercial cliches and the one that had the chimps with whoopee cushions. Here is an article critiquing the ads.

For those in attendance at 23 Boston Ave last night, I would like to correct the statement by a certain guest that, in 11 years, the NFL will have Super Bowl D. "D" actually represents 500, not 50. In 11 years, it will be Super Bowl L, making next year Super Bowl XL. I'm sure they'll come up with some clever marketing scheme for that one. Thus ends the longest blog ever.

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