Beantown*:

contains just the regular amount of beans, you guys.

So I spent this past Wednesday through Sunday in the wicked-cool city of Boston. If you didn't know that, one of two things is true:
A. You didn't read my last post.
-OR-
2. You read my last post but didn't get the photo references (in which case, I'll have Tommy come hit you on the head with a tack hammer because...well, you know). (by the way, the first - and best - photo shows up now on that post)

The AMI conference was held at the Cambridge Marriott - right next to MIT and all that good stuff. Pricey, sure. But these rooms were aMAYzing. I had a king sized bed all to myself. Every night I slept in a big X, just because I could. Here is a picture of me sitting on my gi-freaking-normous bed, studying for my certification exam whilst simultaneously watching the Simpsons on my widescreen, flat-panel tv. I'm not a fancy person - my family are Super 8, Holiday Inn Express, share-a-two-person-tile-floored-room-in-Florence-between-four-people-so-you-all-have-to-sleep-crosswise-on-the-full-sized-bed kind of people. It was an experience.



The view from my room. Yowza.



I got into Boston around 6am on Wednesday morning. I spent that whole day walking the Freedom Trail in the sweltering heat. It was 104 with crazy-high humidity. After a red-eye flight and six hours of walking around in that, I was not a pretty sight. It was really interesting though. You follow this red line on the sidewalk for like 2 1/2 miles and you see all these Revolutionary War sites. In the picture below you can kinda see the red line I followed (on the right). Directly behind me (so, not in the picture) is the church made famous by Paul Revere - where they flashed the "One if by land, Two if by sea" lanterns.



Old Ironsides (USS Constitution)



The conference itself was really good. Lots of discussions and workshops and idea sharing. One of my illustrations won an award in the Salon - kind of a big deal, so that was exciting. I also got to see some of my classmates and friends, which was nice after six weeks of relative solitude.

So anyway. Boston gets high marks in Kristen's Grande Tome of Top Notch Cities. Verily.

Oh, and I thought the Borders in Phoenix was fancy. Check THIS one out.
Ho. Lee. Cre-ap.





*Beantown refers to early Bostonian merchants' habit for making baked beans with imported molasses. Thank you, Wikipedia.

Where In The World

am I going to be until Sunday?
(2 points if you're singing, humming, and/or fondly recalling the "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" theme song.)







I am willing to bet that, out of all of you, only Pat knows how the last one fits in.

Parts That Define The Edges Of Things

You know. Borders.

I went to Borders today for the first time in exactly six weeks. The one closest to my apartment is no ordinary Borders - it's like the super-deluxe, fancy version. I was a little disappointed the first time I saw it because I was hoping it would be just like my beloved Borders in Augusta and it turned out to be this two-story, sandwiched-between-Macy's-and-The Cheesecake-Factory, palm-tree-landscaped, upscale Borders. Maybe that's why it took me over a month to go.

Anyway, so I went in, had a shufti to see where things were located, and climbed their uppity (ha...ha...) curving staircase to the cafe. Five minutes later, I took stock:
Refreshing iced chai? Check.
Comfy leather chair? Check.
Oversized medical textbook? Check.
Witty, comic-book-reading, ipod/portable-cd-player-swapping, flip-flop-and-funky-glasses-wearing, guitar-and-drums-playing, music-and-entertainment-loving, Borders-addiction-initiating friend? Absent.

Moving 2000 miles away from all your friends is no picnic. Unless we're talking about a picnic where you get rained on and attacked by ants and later get food poisoning because your poultry wasn't properly refrigerated.

Anyway, long story short, while sitting there studying for my CMI exam, I ended up meeting and talking with a guy who, turns out, works at the same place I do, moved to Phoenix and started work the same week I did, and lives in the same area I do. Plus, his girlfriend is originally from Boston and he gave me some tips on places to go and things to see while I'm there this week. Small world.

Then I went to Target and found an awesome pair of shoes that cost me a very reasonable amount of cheddar.

Love.

When CD's Make You Think

I went a little nutso the other day (you know, more so than usual...) and ordered 5 cd's off of Amazon. A couple were ones I've wanted to get for awhile:
Counting Crows - August and Everything After
Muse - Black Holes and Revelations Limited Edition CD/DVD

and the other three are ones I've stumbled onto over the past few weeks of spending copious amounts of time by myself:
Athlete - Tourist
Rachael Yamagata - Happenstance
Ray LaMontagne - Trouble

Inside the front cover of the Ray LaMontagne album, there's this translated quote from The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kaztantzakis that really struck me when I read it. So I'll share.

"And you, liar, teller of tall
tales: you trample all the Lord's commandments
underfoot, you murder, steal,
commit adultery, and afterward break
into tears, beat your breast,
take down your guitar and
turn the sin into
a song. Shrewd devil, you know
very well that God pardons singers no
matter what they do,
because he can simply
die for a song..."

I read that and said "...wow." Anyway, this guy has a great...I don't know what to call it...I guess "earthy" voice and sound and his lyrics are amazing. And Sarah Watkins from Nickel Creek plays fiddle and sings on a couple of his songs. Great cd.

Missing you guys.

Weird Arizona Mystery #1

What's up with the creepy cactus sprouts?

The first of what I am sure will be several installments in the "Weird Arizona Mystery" category.

The first weekend after I moved to Phoenix, my mom, sister and I went to Ikea. Towards the end of our mammoth trek, we discovered these tiny cacti (cactuses?) for sale. I thought it would be cute and humorously kitschy to have a little pot of cacti in my apartment now that I live in Arizona, so my sister and I bought an assortment of the teensy succulents. Not ten minutes later, I had 20 or 30 teensy needle-like spines stuck in the fingers of my right hand; a bad omen if ever I saw one.

Wikipedia claims that the prickly pear (or Opuntia ficus-indica) is "armed with two kinds of spines; large, smooth, fixed spines and small, almost hairlike spines called glochids that easily penetrate skin and detach from the plant." No kidding. I, however, have evidence to the fact that the prickly pear may in fact be armed with another kind of weapon. A weapon no one ever talks about.

I hadn't really thought about my cactus since I bought it. It simply sat on the shelf next to my couch where, I would later discover, it was spawning its evil progeny. Not until my sister mentioned in passing that her cactus had begun to sprout strange green things did I look closely at my cactus. Sure enough, three alien-looking stalks had emerged from my cheery little prickly pear.

As I mentioned, I have evidence of this fact. Unfortunately, due to not knowing up front that I had purchased a cactus destined to produce sinister offshoots, I do not have a documentary image of the dormant plant. However, please find below an artist's rendering of the appearance of the cactus before the unfortunate sproutings:



And here is what it looks like now, with a close-up inset of one of the malevolent buds.



Is it just coincidence that both my plant and my sister's should sprout these degenerate shoots? Is it some sort of genetic mutation common to the genus Opuntia? Or is it something darker, some great desert mystery shrouded in secrets and intrigue?

Or maybe it's normal.

Strange Wikipedia Fact: prickly pear fruit is called "tuna." Uh, ok.

Do youKEA?

IKEA. I sooooo KEA.

...wow. Sorry, I had to take a minute to get over the sheer awfulness of my pun and ponder my overwhelming nerdiness. Notice I'm not utilizing the Backspace key right now. I'm not entirely sure why. Anyway.

So I went to IKEA today and remembered why I like that store so darn much. They have cool, cheap, mass-produced stuff that I can mix and match with my other not-so-mass-produced stuff, thus transforming my apartment into a homey (like cozy, not like, you know, ghetto buddy) little living space. Today I found drapes for 50% off. Neato.

I'm still looking for artwork to add a little color to my very, very blank walls. You'd think that being an artist, I would have lots of my own, free artwork to choose from. Sadly, I don't really fancy hanging a framed step-by-step illustration of a cholecystectomy on my living room wall (although, the red of the new drapes I bought really would nicely complement the crimson sheen of the human liver). I'll keep looking.

I saw the movie Hero tonight. Beautiful, amazing movie. See it.

Fact: Chuck Norris puts the laughter in manslaughter.

Top 5 Reasons This Week Kicks Last Week's Ass.

In no particular order.

1. Chinese food
2. Payday
3. Chair massage
4. Blog response
5. Chuck Norris

I'll elaborate:

1. One of the neurosurgeons felt bad that we are putting in so much work on his upcoming surgical atlas so he bought lunch for my whole office. Yesterday, he had his secretary give each of us a photocopy of the menu from the nearby Chinese restaurant, we circled what we wanted, and it was delivered to us, hot and plentiful, at noon today. Awesomeness.

2. Duh.

3. So apparently my job has some nice perks...like this one. On Tuesday they told me it was time for our free monthly chair massages. "Um, what?" I replied. Turns out we get a free 15 minute massage each month from a professional masseuse (not named Ikea, unfortunately). Sign up for a time, go downstairs, get massaged, go back to work. Uh, NICE.

4. You guys are great. :) Especially if your nickname is Beatrice.

5. Chuck Norris’ hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush.

Hugs for you all.