Boston, Thanksgiving, JoshuAID II

Well, it has been an eventful couple of weeks.

This post must begin with a debrief of the Boston trip that was much touted by Emily Goo- I mean me, of course- in my last post. I personally enjoy flying, so I had a blast on the plane with Ben and Kelsey on the way up. Kelsey was not such a huge fan of the flying, but she was a trooper and only insinuated that she was probably going to die three or four times during our hour-long flight. 

We had a layover in Newark and I had some passes to Club United that I gave to Kelsey and Ben while I worked on a paper in the airport Starbucks. While working on my paper I inadvertently played with Natalie Portman's child while completely failing to realize that Natalie Portman was sitting next to me at Starbucks. I slowly put the pieces together after she left with her family but by that time it was too late. Kelsey was upset that I did not alert her to come stargazing. I was impressed with Ms. Portman's ability to go incognito as someone who looks vaguely like Natalie Portman but oh-wait-she's-wearing-mom-jeans-so-she-couldn't-be. 

When we arrived in Boston Kelsey immediately fell in love with our taxi driver's accent and forgot all about the joys of small commuter propeller-planes. Goo's apartment building was beautiful and had an amazing view of the Boston skyline, and once we got there (at 2AM) she provided us with hot spiced cider and cannoli. 

In the morning Kels and I went into Boston to meet up with Brandon, Luke, and Mary for lunch near Harvard. I hadn't seen any of them in a long time, but they were my rocks of competence and authority during the run of Tragedy! in NYC. We reminisced, Kelsey interrupted me far too many times while I was trying to tell the story of how we met (replacing it with revisionist history), and we experienced the best malted chocolate shake that I have ever consumed (I write consumed because I am not sure whether one eats or drinks a milkshake, nor do I care enough to find out). A delightful time was had by all.

Afterwards, we went to Kendall Square to visit with Auntie Deb and Uncle Bob. We drank tea, talked about networking, and compared dark chocolate. How very Bostonian of us?

Then it was off to Goo's to get dressed for The Hunger Games. Goo is sort of into The Hunger Games, in the way that circles are sort of into being round, and so she got costumes for all of us to wear. Since I was Caesar Flickerman when we did a Goo-written stage play of The Hunger Games last year (or two years ago, I forget), I obviously got to play that role again. Kelsey went all out as Effie Trinket, Josh was Haymitch, and Ben was Peeta. Jeff and Sara were nice enough to just go to the Hunger Games when it was Jeff's birthday and their anniversary, so they were not required to wear costumes (though Sara did have a wig). Goo was a perfect Katniss, as always. People were taking pictures with her in the theater.

Watching The Mikado with Emily's mom as Katisha

The next day we went to Emily's childhood hometown and snooped around her childhood home and ate Chinese food from her childhood Chinese food place. Now we are officially her real friends. After that we went to see her mother as Katisha in The Mikado! Ms. Gouillart's interpretation of the role was much more vulnerable and empathetic than Emily's dragon-lady performance from last year, but one could still very clearly see that the two actresses were closely related. After the performance Goo rushed us to the airport and we made our flight without any problem. 

Something like three days later, it was time for Thanksgiving break. Kelsey and I hopped in the car and drove down to Warrenton, Virginia to have thanksgiving with her family. I got to hang out with her sister's boyfriend and new baby, and had a very relaxing time. 

I also got to hang out with Kelsey's step-sister's daughters. I tried to teach her about rocketry and crypto-currencies but she just wanted to play board games. Kids these days.

On the way back from Thanksgiving we met up with my mom and sister for lunch!

The next day, Saturday, was JoshuAid 2. You may recall that Josh moved last year....

Remember?

Well, Josh is a jerk so he moved again. 

Thanks, Josh.

He also moved to the third floor of a building with no elevator, so we had to bucket-brigade much of the stuff.

An excellent concept, but probably just as tiring as taking things up one at a time.

Josh is now moved in, and I have one week until exams. I had my last day interning at the superior court today, and I went to sit in on a pro se (defendant defends himself) murder trial. Things did not seem to be going well for the defendant, especially after he asked the arresting officer to point out footage of the defendant throwing a punch and the officer simply pointed at a screen, hit play, and said "there" as the defendant threw a punch in full view of a security camera. Rule #1 of cross-examination: never ask a question if you aren't 100% sure of the answer.