Greylock

Greylock. The very name inspires awe and wonderment. Towering above Massachusetts at a height of 3,491 feet, Mount Greylock, the highest point in the Bay State has beckoned the intrepidest of the intrepid to attempt scaling its lofty heights for eons. Many have tried. Most have succeeded.

We left the oxygen-rich safety of Boston early on the morning of Saturday, May 23nd. We bid farewell to Phoebe, the cat. Knowing that we might never return, we left an extra dish of food out. We drove west on the Mass turnpike, using those precious three hours to produce the extra red blood cells we would need for the travails ahead. We took the Corolla as far as it could take us, loaded our meager provisions into backpacks, and began the arduous 1.5 mile trek to base camp.

It was nice, they had toilets, water, and free firewood. We pitched camp.

We then took another equally arduous hike to Stony Ledge, elev. 2560 ft., from which we got our first glimpse of the imposing figure of Greylock. Intimidating to the extreme, we searched our souls for the strength we'd need to drag our fragile bodies up its sheer, jagged face.

Then we went to a pretty waterfall.

The trek back down was quiet and introspective, the trials tomorrow would bring looming heavily on our minds. But tomorrow would come soon enough. We pushed thoughts of our fragile mortality aside, for tonight we would have s'mores made with Peeps. Yummy.

Dawn broke early after a surprisingly restful night of sleep. Zero hour. Time to test our mettle against Greylock's cold, dizzying heights. The ascent began smoothly enough. Suddenly, at about 3,300 feet, our Sherpa was stricken with high altitude cerebral edema and went mad, babbling incoherently about Transformers and having to get back to his scout troupe. Or was it cerebral eczema? It's impossible to say since my oxygen deprived brain could only recall the most rudimentary of medical terminology such as "Charley horse" and "Wiener." In any event, having no oxygen canisters with which to save his life, we did the only humane thing and ran him through with his pocket knife. After pinning a note of explanation to his neckerchief, we somberly pushed on to the summit where we ate Nature Valley Sweet and Salty granola bars with almonds, Laughing Cow pasteurized cheese spread, and Triscuits (original recipe). It's what our brave, fallen Sherpa, Steven K., would have wanted. Atop the summit, past the parking lot and near the interpretive center, we saw another cruel site. A stone obelisk, presumably hewn from the virgin rock by the gods themselves would need to be scaled if we truly wanted to say we'd been to the highest point in the state.

Drawing on reserves of strength I didn't know I had, I climbed the stairs to the top of the tower. Alas, mist obscured views of the Green Mountains of New Hampshire, Albany, NY, and the entire Tibetan plateau. Exhausted, humbled, but triumphant, we descended from the death zone and bid farewell to Mount Gaycock, as it's known in the language of Steven K's. people. We returned to Boston damp but elated. Then we had pizza. You know who loved Pizza? Steven K.

Steven K.

1998-2009

Friend, Sherpa, Pizza Lover

Liz here. Thank you Rick for the rich description of our travels to the Berkshires. Yes, we indeed traveled to Mount Greylock State Park in the Berkshires for a couple days of hiking and camping. My number one goal of the whole trip was not to summit Mount Greylock, but to slowly roast my Easter Peeps (that's right, my mom still sends me an Easter basket) over some red hot coals. I had heard that the outer layer of granulated suger crisps up really nice. An important side note about s'mores, I learned many years ago from Rick's mom to use canned chocolate frosting instead of a Hershey's bar, one of the best pieces of cooking/baking advice I've ever gotten. Needless to say, the peep s'mores (which I deemed s'meeps) were delish!

Phoebe was over joyed upon our return home. We had left her a small pile of catnip on a plate in the kitchen. When we got home the plate was at the other end of the kitchen and the catnip was strewn everywhere, seems that someone got a little crazy while her parents were out of town.

Bands

We went to the Shins last night at The Orpheum (Boston has one too). It was sorta OK. I hate it when bands play live and change every song to the point where it's barely recognizable as the version on the album. The Counting Crows were the worst example of this I've ever heard. But on the flipside, I like to know I'm hearing a live performance. You could have gotten last night's Orpheum Shins experience by sitting in a hot, musty smelling room, closing your eyes, and putting the Shins section of your ipod on random on an average to slightly above average sound system. You would also need an girl/woman with a huge pony tail to squeeze into the row in front of you where she didn't have an assigned seat and swing her head back and forth as she simultaneously danced and talked to her friend, making your field of vision oscillate between stage and ponytail in an annoying hair strobe effect. Oh wait, I said your eyes would have to be be shut so actually you wouldn't need that girl. Nobody needs that girl. Hearing the whole crowd Ooooooh ooh Ooooooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh Oooooh along with the opening to New Slang was pretty cool.

Speaking of bands, I saw Stryper on TV for some reason the other day. I was thinking how Stryper is a perfect name for the first (only?) Christian hair metal band. I can picture their first band meeting...

First order of business, we need a name for the first ever Christian hair metal band. Something forceful. Something that invokes action while remaining totally innocuous and inoffensive.

How about Striper spelled with a "y"?

Perfect! It'll make people think of candy stripers, and volunteering to help the sick is totally in line with the band's message. And the "y" gives the whole thing a meaningless edginess. Side benefit: it gives us a built in theme for our spandex jumpsuits. Meeting adjourned. Brad, get to work on those jumpsuits. Kenny, break out the fruit punch and lemon bars. Gentlemen, we are gonna be so famous.

To learn more about Stryper, including the real story of how the band got its name, go to Wikipedia.

Dogzilla

I passed another milestone of true Bostonianality yesterday. I ate "the best" "hot dog" in "the world" from Speed's Hot Dogs. I say "the best" because it wasn't, "hot dog" because it was more like three hot dogs, and "the world" because it was purchased from a kiosk in a wholesale food service industrial park and furthermore, "the world" may just be, like, all in our heads man. First, the positives. The dog was massive. We're talking jumbo dome dog size if not larger. Here is a picture of said dog.



It's hard to tell the scale of that thing without a frame of reference so I've included a picture of common object by which to compare its TMJ-inducing girth and Ronjeremsonian length.


Second, it was perfectly cooked. Speed (not his real name) simmers them in a solution of apple cider and brown sugar all morning, then grills them until they caramelize and split when you order them. In addition to crisping up the skin, the splitting allows your mouth to divide and conquer since very few human beings could get their mouth around the whole thing, none of whom work in the wholesale food industry.

Now, on to the minuses. First, no kraut, which is strike one and two in my wienerverse. I originally ordered it with only mustard and onions but was talked into getting it "loaded" by the coworker who took me there. Loaded, I discovered, basically meant loaded with sugar. The extra toppings included a sweet BBQ sauce, sweet relish, and a chili whose sweetness could not be independently determined due to it's intermingling with said BBQ sauce. The toppings, combined with the sweet, caramelized exterior produced by its sugar/cider bath, produced a cloying (gmail word of the day a few weeks ago) sugar bomb. Even the onions were described as "The sweetest anywhere." If you want to get the Speed's experience without coming to Boston, take three regular sized hot dogs, cram them all into a nicely grilled french roll, and then dump a half a cup of honey and half a cup of molasses over the whole hot mess. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a big fan of mixing my sweets and my savories, I hate kettle corn, sweet and sour sauce, and sloppy joes. But this was just excessive. After a few bites I went back up to the counter to grab the bottle of Frank's hot sauce in order to get some other areas of my tongue involved in the party. Speed stopped me and told me that "Dirty Dick's" hot sauce was much better. I took his advice, dumped on a healthy amount, and took a bite. Somehow the sweetness factor was #$%@* increased! Then I looked at the bottle and saw that it was a Caribbean inspired, fruit-based hot sauce with brown sugar and bananas as primary ingredients. Speed, you diabetic SOB, I'm sorry but I think your true calling was in the pastry business. Will I go back? Yes. Will I order a dog with anything but onions, mustard, and Frank's? No. Will I bring my own kraut? Possibly.

Our cat would never lower herself to trifle with base meat products such as hot dogs, instead using her hypnotic eye lasers to compel weak minded humans into feeding her fresh Maine lobster.



Oh, and happy 32nd birthday to Liz. And happy zeroeth birthday (two days ago) to Nathan Tsatsos. I will practice my avuncular pull-my-finger joke delivery so it's ready to go when he is.

Friends in High Places

My dad and Laurel were out last week, giving us a reason to knock a few more things off our Boston to-do list. We went to the top of the Prudential Center (on the left) which afforded nice views of the surrounding area. You can see Cape Cod on a clear day, according to the wise-cracking guy with the thick Boston accent on the audio tour. I'm not sure if the dark smudge I saw on the horizon was the cape or my imagination, but since nobody can prove different I'm going with cape.
Since it was Patriots Day, the totally necessary vacation day Bostoners get to commemorate the battles of Lexington and Concorde, we headed out to Concorde and saw the bridge where our ancestors finally stood up to the king's minions and said "No More." The insurgents were stockpiling cannons and guns at some guy's farm out there so the Redcoats went out there to confiscate them. Our boys got wind of it and were waiting for them, trading a few volleys of musket balls and then chasing them all the way back to the city. Then everyone was all like "Oh, it is so on." So they went under cover of darkness and set up some defenses on this hill next to Bunker Hill and the British were all like "Tsk Tsk, poor form, can't have that now, up the hill then chaps, stiff upper lip and all, we'll be home in time for tea. Cheerio." And the Americans we're all like, "Oh no they didn't, are those eye whites? Pew! Pew! Pew! Ack-Ack-Ack!" Although our guys were ultimately routed after they ran out of ammo, they did some major damage, killing 50% of all the British officers who died during the whole war in that single battle. The British officers were all like "Ooh dear me, I fear these bright red coats and fancy hats are attracting sniper fire," and the colonials were all like, "Ha ha, we didn't even want that hill," and retreated via zip line to Cheers, where Sam Adams was passed around, Samuel Adams having been notorious for his willingness to do almost anything in the name of troop morale.

Later, we walked up 294 steps to the top of the obelisk and were treated to this view:













Someone also hauled the sister cannon to the one the Britts were after in Concorde to the top. It was apparently designed to shoot around corners. Liz could barely contain her excitement over having walked up 294 stairs.







Our Twins didn't fare much better in their two-part battle against today's Boston residents, although good times were had by all in attendance despite some early rain and the fact that licking the green monster would probably have tasted better than Fenway's hot dogs and nachos.

Graft Update

It became clear last week why the grad student felt he needed to grease the academic wheels with things remembered. The kid did his coursework here in Boston, but returned to his home in Houston to work on his thesis. On Tuesday, he sent me the first and only draft of his paper that I'd seen with sincerest apologies for the time I was taking to be his reader. Aware that his deadline was Friday, I asked him how soon he needed my revisions. He ignored that question and informed me that his final draft was in the mail, arriving here Thursday, and would it not be too much trouble for me to drop it off at the registrar for him. So he was essentially asking me to sign off on his project no questions asked. The best part was his resume was attached to the paper which stated that he possessed "excellent time management skills." It also said he was a concert flautist and had experience analyzing semen but who am I to judge. My boss told me he'd probably deny the kid graduation, but also said that most kids in this program do a library thesis, essentially a report, whereas this kid had done actual genetic sequencing lab work. Also, he'd have to pay another semester of student fees and his other committee member, a genetic epidemiologist whose stature in the field dwarfs mine, had already signed off on it. So I told him he'd basically shown bad form but I'd sign anyways. I went to the registrar to drop off his stuff, the women there took a look at the name on the envelope and said, "Oh, this kid isn't graduating because he failed physiology last semester." "Did he know that," I asked? "Yes."

As my boss succinctly put it, "What a dumbass." Turns out the program he was in is a basically a masters program for people who need a little extra ammo in order to get into med school. So who knows how many lives were potentially saved.

I saw a guy biking today with a homemade scrolling, flashing LED sign on his back saying "See Me." He was heading towards MIT.

Last Few Weeks

It's been a while since we updated and for that, to the seven or so people who read this, I apologize. It's not that we haven't been doing anything interesting, just not anything particularly interesting to people who do not happen to be us, which most of you are not. So, starting back and working forwards, we had our MN peeps over for Sunday dinner a few Sundays ago. They brought their 1.5 year old over for some crab risotto and cupcakes. The last time we'd seen him he was wearing a spider costume and begging for candy in laughably poor English. His grammar and diction have improved considerably since Oct. We were especially impressed with his ability to differentiate between his height-disparate moms. To their chagrin and the delight of everybody but the hardest of the hard hearted social conservatives, he calls the taller mommy "Big Mama" and the shorter mommy "Baby Mama." It's doubly funny since Baby Mama is also the biological Mama so Big Mama also calls her baby mama Baby Mama. The cupcakes were universally lauded.

I sit in on a meeting for an Alzheimer's disease grant being submitted by some higher ups my department. My coworker and I are not directly involved in the grant, but the boss likes us to sit in since we will probably be involved with it at some point down the road. Since we don't have any explicit responsibilities at this point, we usually sit there and crack wise about aspects of the research and a certain eccentric member of the grant team. To wit, I have a love hate relationship with zombies. I hate them because I generally have about 3-4 nightmares a year in which I am being chased by them. I'm sure a second year psychoanalysis student could tell me what that means about by deepest darkest fears but I probably wouldn't want to know. On the other hand, I love zombies because they are awesome and it is fun to discuss strategy for surviving the coming zombie apocalypse with others who know the mythology. Anyways, back to the grant committee--part of the project involves obtaining brain samples from people who died of Alzheimer's disease from the Boston University Brain Bank. It's like a sperm bank but for brains. My coworker and fellow zombie enthusiast and I discussed whether a very enterprising zombie might have the mental capacity to climb the ranks of academia with its zombieness undetected and eventually land the holy grail zombie jobs--brain bank curator. I mean, the usual zombie M.O. for brain acquisition is to just lumber about in a large group and overwhelm victims with sheer numbers. Surely at least one zombie from the right tail of the zombie intelligence bell curve might have thought:

"What am I doing? I wander around 24-7 with all these other decaying shlubs, attracting the attention of the shotgun wielding living and for what?! MAYBE one bite of brains if I'm lucky enough to be one of the first on the scene of a fresh kill? F-that, I'm gonna enroll in night school and get my degree in neurology. Five years, I'll be swimming in brains."

Flash forward five years...
Boss: "Johnson, where are those new samples? You said you'd have them cataloged by Tuesday!"
Johnson, wiping mouth: "New samples?"


The issue also arose as to whether the available brains were frozen or preserved in formalin. This begged the question as to whether a zombie brain bank worker would have a preference. Most zombies probably wouldn't care, but remember that this zombie is the smartest and presumably most sophisticated zombie in the world and might be a true connoisseur of brains. "Ah yes, 70, no wait, 71 year old female...above average intelligence...and I'm getting just a hint of vascular dementia on the finish." Then we realized it was a pointless discussion since zombies only crave the flesh of the living.

I also was given what I believe to be my first bribe from a master's student whose thesis I'm grading.
It is from Things Remembered.

We went to the Museum of Fine Art last Saturday. The art was considerably better then the art in the Museum of Bad Art we visited earlier. Paintings of chubby naked 18th century broads abounded.

Which brings us to last night, it wasn't exactly like being at the dome but it wasn't exactly all that bad neither. Liz insists that I add the disclaimer that this picture was taken after a vigorous workout and there's absolutely no way she'd be caught dead, much less photographed, scarfing hot dogs and swilling beer on a Monday otherwise. If the Twins fail to win the world series I blame Morneau getting called out at first on that rocket off the pitcher's glove in the first inning of the first game of the season. Just sayin'.

Gardening and Grilling

It's been a while since I've posted. I've had a busy couple weeks. Last week I attended the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association yearly conference. I received a scholarship to attend one day of the conference through a new organization that I just joined, New England Women in Energy and the Environment. I met tons of successful women at the group's launch and went to three great sessions of the conference. I won't bore you with the nerdy stuff that I learned, I already bored Rick! I was all pumped up after the conference. It's so great to see the advances that our region of the U.S. is making when it comes to energy efficiency and our carbon cap and trade program.

I've also taken on a few more tutoring students. Algebra 2 is kicking my butt! I forgot that word problems about gravity and trajectory using the quadratic equation are hard. My 8th grade student is reading To Kill A Mockingbird. I've been saying for years that I should really reread the book. Since I am responsible for discussing the plot and concepts of it with him, I picked up the book from the library yesterday. I've become a bit of a book junkie during my unemployment. I've even dipped my toe into a couple self-help books. Not like "I'm crazy" self-help books but "working on my career strengths" type of stuff. And a little Suze Orman, I've got to have a plan for the money I'll start raking in one of these days when I get a full time job.

We purchased a grill Tuesday night from the Sears a couple miles from our house. We were very excited to get it home and put it together as soon as possible since we had heard the weekend was going to be nice. The sales person who helped us thought it would fit in our car, mind you we drive a Toyota Corolla. Not a chance. He suggested that I come back the next day, since it was almost closing, and take the pieces out of the box and load them into the car. So Wednesday afternoon I went back to Sears. Two of the guys in the pick up area took the very large pieces out of the box. Still no chance. Arrrggg. It's a problem when you live somewhere were you don't know anyone who drives a truck or SUV. I had to go next door to Lowe's and rent one of their trucks. When I was filling out the paperwork to rent the truck, the sales associated informed me that I had to transport a Lowe's purchase in order to rent the truck. I batted a few eyelashes and he told me I could buy a bottle of water and then I technically would be transporting the water. Nice. Off to Sears where the guys loaded it onto the truck. Luckily, the neighbor and his son were home when I got to our house and they carried it up our gazzillion steps to our deck. Wonderful! I returned the truck and was thrilled I had accomplished the mission at hand. Rick was pleased that we had a grill at our house when he got home.

Here are a couple pics of us putting it together...

So we thought we were pretty smart. We left the side burner and the other side off until we moved the grill outside to install.
Saturday was sunny and beautiful outside. Rick and I picked up some steaks from Costco and accomplished purchasing a propane tank and propane. We worked in the yard a bit and the attempted to put the rest of the grill together. The instructions told us to loosen a screw, slide on the side, and then retighten the screw. Sounds easy, right? Not if the screw is completely stuck into the side of the grill. Three calls to Sears later and no one had an answer for us.
We called it a day and made our way down to the Omni Parker House for a cocktail with some of our friends who were in town. We then went to dinner at one of Rick's co-worker's who had made a traditional New England Boiled Dinner in honor of St. Patrick's Day. It was delicious! Sunday was gorgeous again, near 65. We were determined that we would grill steaks for dinner come hell or high water. I decided if we wanted to get this grill situation taken care of we had to go to Sears ourselves. They can't hang up on you or transfer you to an answering machine if you are standing right in front of them. The manager on duty was great and got us a replacement screw from a model. Rick had to get handy when we got home and drilled out the stuck screw. A few more steps in the assembly and a few broken drill bits and we were done!
We knew we were inheriting quite a few gardens with the house but we really had no clue how much was planted out there. We didn't do any yard work besides bag some leaves this past fall. We had been busy painting and unpacking. Last week we began noticing little green shoots poking through the soil and the masses of dead plants from last season. Sunday we bagged leaves and tore up old plants and pruned. Here are a couple pics of what's coming up around our yard:

Even Phoebe enjoyed the day!

We also made a new friend:

The weekend ended just as we had planned...