Greetings from the Arboretum

I had a fairly quiet Tuesday doing computer work. Our plan was to pick up some shelving for the garage from someone to whom we gave a lot of our moving boxes who can't take the ones he has with him, but it turned out that they couldn't be disassembled sufficiently to fit into our RAV4, so we're going to have to order some from Home Depot or someplace. I got to chat with Chris after lunch, and I got to see bunnies on this warm day while walking in the neighborhood. 

After tacos for dinner, my DS9 group watched "Life Support" -- a sad but quite good episode, though we were missing one person -- then I watched the end of the Orioles-Mariners game (I root for the Os but it's hard for me to root against, for instance, Randy Arozarena hitting a long ball, and since Seattle is leading the west I was conflicted). Now we're watching more second season Discovery, which is, well, no DS9. From the rhododendron garden at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston:

Poem for Tuesday and Tower Hill Botanic Garden

Orchids Are Sprouting From the Floorboards 

By Kaveh Akbar 

Orchids are sprouting from the floorboards. 

Orchids are gushing out from the faucets. 

The cat mews orchids from his mouth. 

His whiskers are also orchids.

The grass is sprouting orchids. 

It is becoming mostly orchids. 

The trees are filled with orchids. 

The tire swing is twirling with orchids. 

The sunlight on the wet cement is a white orchid.

The car’s tires leave a trail of orchids. 

A bouquet of orchids lifts from its tailpipe.

Teenagers are texting each other pictures 

of orchids on their phones, which are also orchids. 

Old men in orchid penny loafers 

furiously trade orchids. 

Mothers fill bottles with warm orchids 

to feed their infants, who are orchids themselves. 

Their coos are a kind of orchid. 

The clouds are all orchids. 

They are raining orchids. 

The walls are all orchids, 

the teapot is an orchid, 

the blank easel is an orchid, 

and this cold is an orchid. Oh,

Lydia, we miss you terribly.    

-------- 

We had to take our car to be inspected to get a Massachusetts safety sticker, so after doing house stuff in the morning, we took the car to Gordie's in Holden for the inspection. The repair shop is right on Chaffin Pond and it was 70 degrees and gorgeous, so when we were finished, we went to the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, which we had visited with Adam and Haley last spring. Despite the temperature, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, so we only saw a few crocuses and snowdrops outside, but there was an orchid exhibit in the greenhouses with big decorative sculptures, so that was lovely as well. 

 

We stopped at Shaw's on the way home for food for the week and the various pantry staples we keep realizing we need to replace -- vinegar, soy sauce, everything in a glass bottle that we couldn't pack -- then I did some rearranging of our gazillion empty boxes in the garage before dinner, after which my DS9 group watched "The Search, Part 2" (one of the many great Kira/Odo episodes as well as an important Dominion storyline). One of my group members said she was enjoying Bookish, so now we're watching that, and it has Mark Gatiss, Polly Walker, historic booksellers, and British mystery drama, so it's all very enjoyable.

Greetings from the RMV

We have Massachusetts license plates! That was our major accomplishment for the day that was not unpacking or furniture-moving related, unless soloing a Charizard while waiting at the RMV counts. The living room bookshelves are underway, and it's like a puzzle taking things carefully fit into boxes out and carefully fitting them on shelves in slightly different configurations to maximize the use of space. 

We realized that Watson returned this week and we missed the episode, so we watched that and concluded that The Pitt may have ruined us for medical dramas. But not for Sherlock Holmes adaptations, since Watson isn't particularly more a distortion of Conan Doyle than the more period-and-location correct Young Sherlock, which we're watching now (good actors, nice scenery). We had ice-coated branches today: 

Greetings from Giant Mirrors

Quick post watching this week's Starfleet Academy after The Pitt following Thursday night chat, to which only three of us made it this week. We tried again to transfer our car registration to Massachusetts today, but apparently you need an appointment just to make the appointment; you have to prove you have the right paperwork. So we're going again tomorrow. 

My biggest unpacking accomplishment today was getting my desktop computer set up, though the desk itself is a disaster area since I couldn't find all the books and papers and dice sets that belong there. I also got most of the photo albums on shelves. Here are a few photos from the furniture store next door to the RMV, possibly the brightest, loudest furniture store I have ever seen:

Greetings from Winter

We had plans to take our temporary licenses and go register our car in Massachusetts on Tuesday, but it started snowing around lunchtime and got harder all afternoon, so instead we did more unpacking! We're nearly up to the books, which are by far the biggest item by volume, though there are also some boxes in the basement and garage that we haven't sorted. I found my long-missing sunglasses among random pantry items, but where is my body wash? 

We had tacos for Tuesday dinner, then my DS9 group watched "The Search, Part One" -- the first episode of the third season. After that and some more unpacking, we watched the rest of The Night Agent, pretty ridiculous plot-wise but I enjoyed the characters and Jennifer Morrison. In addition to floral arrangements based on art, Flora in Winter at the Worcester Art Museum had displays by local designers decorating the upper corridors around the courtyard: 

Greetings from the Double R Diner

My excitement for Saturday was getting a Massachusetts driver's license, though at the moment I only have a temporary one since they mail the Real IDs. We were hoping to change the car registration too, but they only do that on weekdays, so we'll have to go back for that. It was a gorgeous day, nearly 50 degrees and sunny, so we also managed a walk in between trying to figure out which boxes meant to be in the bedroom ended up in the living room, the basement, or the garage. 

We watched the first couple of episodes of the new season of The Night Agent, which is a little convoluted and they may just have fridged my favorite character. Now we're watching Connor Storrie on SNL (loved seeing the Olympic hockey players, that was a nice shift in the conversation). I'm sure you're sick of my snow and home pics, so here are a few of Double R Diner a.k.a. Twede's Cafe in Twin Peaks a.k.a. North Bend (and yes, I meant to post this on February 24th but I was a little distracted):

Greetings from Holden

Our car arrived from Seattle at 6 a.m., so we had an early morning, but now the RAV4 lives here too! We took it later in the morning to try The Bagel Inn in Holden (pretty good sesame bagels, not quite New York level but similar to Blazing Bagels) and to stop at Shaw's for some groceries because of the great and terrible snow forecast. That arrived in the afternoon, and we ended up getting over three inches, which was lovely to watch falling. 

We did some computer work while watching the men's halfpipe and the US hockey victory, with cats who decided to snuggle us, probably to keep warm. I also built them a new little stand for upstairs and we're trying to move the litterbox down the basement. Since the evening Olympic coverage reran what was earlier, we watched Blue Moon, which made up nonsense about Lorenz Hart being a lot less gay than he really was, but had fabulous music and performances. 

Greetings from Archstone

We're out of the apartment bright and early tomorrow, so today was all about last minute move-related chores -- dropping off the car to be driven to Boston, picking up a rental car, going to one branch of the bank, being sent to another branch of the bank (on Microsoft's massive Redmond campus with intimidating robot security), remembering that no one had packed the bird feeders on the back porch or taken down the photo hangers in the bedroom and doing that. 

The eagle pair was kind enough to sit in the tree above our deck a lot of the day, so we got to see them as well as the red-winged blackbirds, juncos, chickadees, flickers, downy woodpeckers, and other visitors to our seed bell, which kept the cats occasionally distracted from their absolute misery about the current state of things. The next few days are going to be pretty crazy for them and us both -- Valentine's Day dinner for instance may be the last of the leftovers!