bear

happy birthday, kelbelle and bubba!

i like this feeling i have of living in a neighborhood ever since i moved back to somerville. i guess that's not precisely the right word that i'm looking for, since it's a very different feel from when i lived in the fenway, which was quite a character. there, you had the awesome little restaurants on peterborough, a little bigbox mall close by with a movie theatre and an awesome art supply store, fenway park with all the cheers and jeers inherent to living four blocks away from america's most revered ballpark, and walking distance to back bay which meant many evenings rather than deal with fenway traffic on the bus or an overheated D train, i'd simply walk home from there.

it's not that i don't have amenities nearby in camberville - porter square a ten minute walk away, harvard square under twenty, all the restaurants of mass ave close by, the fifteen (fifteen!) independent bookstores within spitting distance, a supermarket three doors down, a pie shop four doors down, and kitty corner from some of the best deli sammiches and burgers in the area. but yesterday afternoon, i walked down to jen civ's for a barbecue. melissaagray walked; douglaslain walked; fes42 and stranger78 walked. (well, okay, from harvard square; i can't blame them for not wanting to walk from watertown!) and noghri commented to me, "i didn't realize how close everyone is once i hop on my bike." later that evening, hyounpark and i went down to the ljless jimmy's and ended up in a long game of puerto rico; it was almost 1 am when we left! but it was warm enough that i thought about walking home, though the timing just wasn't right.

it's a pretty miraculous concept to one who grew up where her nearest friends were at least a fifteen minute drive away. honestly, i think that was one of the things i loved best about boarding school and then college - people were suddenly so easily accessible.

i'm glad we have TV night every couple of weeks. we're geeks, so we trend towards things like mythbusters and good eats, though studio 60 is sure to feature prominently come next fall. but it's also an easy time for us to meander in and hang out with each other; catch up on each others' lives.

separately, both noghri and jimmy commented to me that not enough game nights happen, and i miss them too. so there should be one soonish, i say. locals, do you enjoy games like settlers, carcassonne, and puerto rico? are you a card shark in poker, or do you kick peoples' asses in cribbage or canasta? or are you more apples to apples? i know a fair number of you go to trivia nights at the local bars; would you be interested in a game night?