WELL WELL WELL. It’s been a long-ass time since I last wrote an entry with actual large photos instead of small mobile phone photos. The simple reason for this was that my digital camera batteries
were dead. My rechargable batteries had been dying for a while, so that they lasted not very long at all on
a charge. I decided it was time to pony up and buy some new rechargable batteries. I paid 30 bucks or so and
got a really nice set of 2200mah batteries with new charger. I took them home, charged them up, and dropped
them in my camera.
And nothing happened. The camera didn’t turn on. I have since tried the batteries in other devices, and
they work fine. But for some reason my camera just refuses to acknowledge their existence. I don’t get it at
all. I thought perhaps it had something to do with the voltage of the rechargables, which is 1.2v, whereas
normal AA batteries are 1.5v. But my old rechargable batteries were 1.2 volt too.
So, I had spent a ton of money on batteries that didn’t work, and I still had no batteries for my camera. And
that’s how I’ve left it since December 6th. It’s amazing how frustration over nonfunctional batteries has
kept my nice digital camera in its bag for four months, a third of a year. Eventually I decided I had to get
new batteries, and I picked up some heavy-duty CR-V3 batteries at a local shop. We’ll see how long they last
So last night Char and I hung out with Mike, Char’s friend that she met on an airplane from Chicago; Jesi and Ragnar, two of Mike’s friends; and Marissa, our roommate. Mike, Jesi, Ragnar and I started the night off by playing some bridge (not photographed, except maybe Ragnar has a picture). Ragnar was apparently on the Icelandic national bridge team, so he’s a much better tutor to us than I was to my friends at school. While we were nerding it up, Char and Marissa went to a local bar/club/bowling alley for salsa night. They came back quite quickly, saying it was lame. Apparently the club was overrun with strange guys that weren’t worth picking up, or something.
After a few more hands of bridge, someone got the idea that we should all go back to the club and go bowling.
But let’s not jump ahead! On the way to the bowling alley, we saw the most nerdy graffiti ever.
WGBH is the local public television station in Boston, if you didn’t know. Why anyone would scrawl
their callsign on a bus seat is a mystery to me, although the other marks may be a clue. I can’t read them.
So we went bowling! Here’s me:
I spent the first 7 frames of the night trying to figure out how to bowl straight, and in the last
two I finally felt like I had figured it out. Unfortunately by then it was too late. Marissa, with her
classic between-the-legs consistancy style, had bowled her way to a close victory over Jesi.
I should mention that bowling was not cheap. There was a ten dollar cover at the door, and it was twenty-five dollars an hour to bowl. So it came out to about 75$ for six people for one hour of bowling. Of
course there was more in the club than just bowling. It was salsa night! Everyone (minus me) danced a bit,
and when it was over, the DJ mentioned that it wasn’t 1:30, it was actually 2:30. Ho ho daylight savings! (Astute readers will note that daylight savings doesn’t really come into effect until 2:00am, but whatever.)
So we left the club, and walked back to the bus stop. We waited for the bus, wondering if the bus was running as if it were 1:45 or 2:45. We waited a while. We were getting bored, and everyone was talking about how they
were’nt tired, and then Ragnar mentioned there was a Japanese restaurant in Chinatown that is open til 3:30 or
later. We got the number thanks to my little phone, and called them up. Thanks to daylight savings, they were
staying open to 4:30 that night. Score!
We did some gymnastics involving my taking a cab home to get a map and the car and packing everyone into my
tiny acura, and then we were off to Ginza in chinatown. I made many amazing maneuvers avoiding potholes and
cutting people off necessarily. We got a great parking space.
And so, we had Sushi in Boston at four in the morning
I also took some stupid movies with my camera. They are about 4 megs each, and use some form of quicktime.
They work on linux (Fedora is what I have), so if they don’t work for you you have no excuse.
We had an awesome time, and even though it was expensive and I didn’t get to bed until around six it was
totally worth it. I have photos around my room of my old group of friends, like Nick and Grant and Alex and
Meaghan, and I was looking at them the other day wistfully. I don’t know if we’ll ever be all together like
that again. Probably not. That group had its moment, and its unlikely it will ever be reformed. I look at the group photo I took last night, and I see that although my friends from college have
spread out, I have a new group of buddies to play bridge with and eat sushi with — at least for now. College students will graduate, people will move on, but at least right now I have mike and jesi and ragnar and marissa. Thanks guys.