he's got all kinds of time

Saturday night I went down to New Haven to hang out with Ali Rau, who I don't believe I've actually seen in the flesh since the era of high school graduation. Ali as it turns out is a potential fan of atrata's, which was a fun and humanizing fact to learn about her. We had a good time, ate some Thai food, had a couple drinks and generally played catch up. Her life since high school seems by comparison much richer and fuller than mine; I looked at pictures of her time abroad in Kenya and was just staggered. And yet I am not especially envious of her, because she went to school at Bowdoin and I would not trade Chicago for Maine for all the tea in China. She's finishing the first year in a two year program at Yale to get a Master's in Environmental Management, and then intends to go on to law school. I do envy her that sense of direction and passionate commitment, even if I can't possibly fathom being that fired up about environmental management.

Sunday I skipped out on syganzychick's weekly D&D game to visit Jon in Boston. We stayed up watching poker on television and not actually accomplishing much of anything. I stayed over, slept in while he went to work in the morning, and then got up around midday to head downtown and meet him for the Boston Marathon. We set up somewhere around the 24 or 25 mile mark and watched all of the sweaty people go bobbing by. The sheer number of people involved was impressive, let alone the fact that they were all running for three or four hours in the April sun. Boston comes out in force for Marathon Monday and does what Boston does best: get drunk and shout a lot. It was definitely a good time.

Post-Marathon Jon and I went to MJ O'Connor's and managed to rendezevous with my sister Sarah. I had never been to MJ's before and I have to say I was impressed; Jon often takes me to bars with an atmosphere I don't precisely mesh with, but MJ's was just an Irish-style pub and I was instantly enamored of it. We had drinks (I personally had many, many drinks while Sarah and Jon had a more socially acceptable number) and appetizers and eventually dinner and talked about life and love and why we were all moritified by the sex life of Dylan Rau (Ali's younger brother.) Eventually we threw money at the check and got back on the T. Jon and I stayed up until around 11 PM watching season 4 West Wing on Bravo, at which point he went to bed and I decided I was sober and awake enough to drive home, so I did.

Weekend wrap-up out of the way I have to say that rollick's books' first sentences meme has piqued my interest. Its not one I've seen before, and I find myself missing the books that are in storage as I am very much would like to try it. Those of you playing the home game may question how I can still have books in storage when I brought home three crates worth. Those were, uh, all gaming books and graphic novels, folks. I didn't get anywhere near the novels, which I'd kind of like to have to put my meme entry together. C'est la vie.