bear

Having just gotten back from Puerto Rico two days before Thanksgiving, we kept Thanksgiving dinner very simple this year:

- cheese plate: Bûcheron and L'Amuse Gouda
- simple green salad with mandarins
- roast duck with cranberry-ginger sauce (we did think about just ordering Peking duck from somewhere! Maybe next year ...)
- cider-roasted vegetables
- best ever quinoa cornbread (cream top wins)
- pecan pie, thank you Petsi's!

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It was overcast and rainy most of the time we were in Puerto Rico, and I had a cold the entire time, but it was still nice to be away somewhere totally new.

Coming home was irritating, though. Had a Flying While Ambiguous-Enough-To-Be-Mistaken-For-Latina-Therefore-Illegal moment while boarding the plane ;P Um, no hablo mucho de Espanol, so surprise-demanding-my-passport-and-citizenship-en-Espanol when I'm walking down the jetway to board our flight back to Boston and showing my Mass ID was enough to get me on the plane and into Puerto Rico? is going to: a) confuse me; b) irritate me; c) bring the entire line of an already-three-hours-late flight to a halt while I start dumping out my entire carry-on to access the previously-unused passport case.

hyounpark, right next to me, apparently got the questions in English first. (Which was good for him because while I speak very little Spanish, he speaks none. I was too busy trying to comprehend the Spanish to hear what he was being asked.) Advantages of looking clearly East Asian/"Chinese"!

happy belated birthday, chrisg! (and at the rate i'm posting these days, might as well say happy early birthday, noghri!)

it's finally gotten warm enough again here that i'm not minding walking. it's downright gorgeous out tonight, and i'm half-debating walking to choir, except i dislike the construction zone of lower mass ave. maybe i'll compromise; walk down to central and take the 1 across the river instead, then walk to choir from hynes. i forgot to get my t-pass this month, so for the most part, i've been trying to walk places where normally i would've been trying to figure out some complex route to maximize the use of my t-pass and minimize the freezing of my ears and fingers.

i keep forgetting that yes, davis and central squares really are within normal walking distance once the temperature's reasonably above freezing. so i end up at someday cafe with my laptop and live the cliche my way - nestled into a cozy corner, laptop open to IRC, peoplewatching the hipsters with my accomplice the mint italian soda. i cut corners and realize that the harvard bookstore is a 15-minute walk from my front door when there's no ice to slip on. i stroll down to the new branch of petsi pies to meet up with nolrak and alissa as they meander up mass ave.

my choir friend polina and i rarely see each other outside of choir, despite living mere blocks away from each other. (this happens with elements and berkman, too, and should change!) but in the past week, i've run into her three separate times just walking down the street. i like this community feel.

i'm counting down to the farmers' markets opening again in the last week of may. i'm looking at weekends to host that first summer barbecue to sort-of celebrate my half birthday (june 4 i have a concert; june 11 i'll either be singing in fenway park or driving up the california coast; june 18 is a little too close to hyounpark's birthday and our anniversary. so i'm debating either moving it back to memorial day weekend or forward to the fourth of july.)

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( baseball! )