Sunday
Sunday was mostly sitting around on my ass while my sister cleaned the house. I finished Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. It was a decent mystery story, but I would have liked it much more if I were a young girl going through her horse phase. The writing style would appeal to a less critical reader, and the story is charming and compelling without requiring too much thought. I left it behind at my sister’s.
After I finished that book, I moved on to the $3 scifi paperback I picked up at the used book store, The Atom Conspiracy – it is dated, sexist, and people get shot. I am enjoying it very much.
Monday
I slept in a bit on Monday, and then walked down to the Boston Museum of Science because they are having a Star Wars special exhibit in the same space where they had the Lord of the Rings exhibit. I was very glad that I was there on a weekday because I actually got to have some time to play with the legos and computer games instead of being mobbed by excited children… though there were still plenty around. They had the real speeder from the first movie and the old Darth Vader costume. There was Leia’s white dress and the C-3PO costume. Those actors were all incredibly skinny. They had a cute video section on some of the ships – I especially recommend seeing the Imperial Cruiser construction.
If you go, there’s not really much need for the audio tour. I ended up not listening to mine most of the time because almost every station had some for of audio available already – and I had a limited amount of time to get through it all before my IMAX ticket because they weren’t allowing re-entry even on a slow weekday.
So, yeah… there was a Fighter Pilot IMAX movie. And I figured that this would surely take advantage of the IMAX medium better than many of the nature documentaries… because there’d be more swooshing through the air. And my interested had absolutely nothing to do with my new fandom with lots of military flyboys… nope, not at all. The human interest component of the narrative grated on my nerves a bit, but it was a fun movie with lots of fast flying and things blowing up.
Immediately afterward, I had a ticket for another component of the Star Wars exhibit: the Millennium Falcon simulation. I am not sure it was worth the money.
That night, the three of us went out to eat at Elephant Walk, a French/Cambodian restaurant. Everything was amazing and tasty, but I think the winner for the evening was my sister’s grilled trout that had been marinated in garlic, lime, and jalapeno peppers. They have a special celiac menu printed up as well, though most of their food would accommodate it very well.
Tuesday
I had randomly run into a mawrtyr earlier in the week, and we arranged to meet for lunch in Harvard Square.
So that morning, my brother-in-law was kind enough to drop me in Central Square again that morning. This time, I headed a bit away from Harvard Square for breakfast, and I ended up at La Luna Cafe for a bagel and hot tea. Then I went about looking for the sex toy shop that my sister had recommended in Central Square, but it was raining and I couldn’t make breakfast last much past 10am, so I didn’t see it and it might still have been closed at that hour.
So I hopped on the T to go one stop and went to Harvard to explore the Harvard museums.
There were some pretty paintings in the Sert Gallery, but they mostly seemed to lack personality. The most interesting ones were a pair of paintings of telephone wires and scenery that were full of urban decay, desolation, and beauty.
The Fogg Museum was much better then their website would indicate. Mainly because the architecture of the building was wonderful all by itself – stone arches surrounding an interior courtyard and all the exhibition space on the periphery facing in. On the first floor there were some Dutch Masters and religious pieces… the most interesting of which were exhibited in such a way as to show the construction techniques of medieval painters.
Upstairs had a wonderfully diverse collection including Rodin, Gaugin, Picasso (some really nice Picasso pieces showing his range, but not so much the stuff that shows up in art books)… eh, well – here is a link to the catalog of the permanent collections. Good stuff.
Then I met up with the Mawrtyr for lunch. We went to Darwi’s Cafe. Oddly, I think this was the first only place I’d seen with a pride flag on the door. Did I miss the queer-friendly businesses? Or does it just go without saying that everyone is queer-friendly? Anyway, tasty sandwich,good soup, and hot apple cider. Then we went to the Busch-Reisinger galleries behind the Fogg museum – because there used to be an exhibition of Bryn Mawr College dorm furniture (and when I was googling for the image, I found this auction – look at item number 390!).
My friend then got me into the Harvard Natural History museum for free. It’s an old fashioned museum that has densely packed collections instead of sparse galleries that are full of interactive bells and whistles. And they have some amazing things in their mineral collections and assembled fossil skeletons. And they also had a tremendous number of taxidermied birds.
The museum I didn’t have time to see was the Sackler and their big Degas exhibition… no matter – I’m not really all that fond of Degas.
Then it was making my way back home, changing into dry clothing… and sleep.
