Good morning! Hello. How are you? I am good. Greetings from sunny Somerville, MA. What a weekend, what a weekend. I have easily seen more people in person in the last two days than I have in the last two years, and that includes my previous short trips to Boston, New York and Alaska. I have had a 50th birthday party, I went to the memorial of a friend who passed away, in a square named after another friend who passed away, whom I met through another friend that passed away. Lotta heavy feelings on that front. I have one more friend to see today, at Jane’s playground, and a few more friends to say goodbye to, then Emma and I are headed home sometime around 7PM tonight, for the 12-hour overnight drive back to North Carolina. I am so, so ready for home, but I will also miss having friends so close nearby. I will miss being able to walk places. Though it seems like every place I walk is an hour from this particular spot in Somerville. Harvard Square? An hour’s walk. Kendall? An hour’s walk. Central? An hour’s walk. But I did all three this weekend, and it was lovely.
We’ve COVID testing every day, still all three of us our negative. Like half of Boston, Emma and Jane have terrible allergies, bad post-nasal drip. My four allergy medicines and filtered nighttime breathing apparatus seem to have spared me from the worst of it. Emma and I can’t shake the feeling this house is filled with black mould. When we got here, the second floor ceiling was leaking. Later, I noticed that right below where it was leaking, in the kitchen, was a half-assed patch job, cosmetic only, which means, a) this Airbnb landlord knows their house is leaking and just keeps renting it, and b) there is totally some gross shit in that ceiling.
Friday I walked to Kendall to see Kristen, my friend of 20 years and coworker whom I have not seen in person in two years. She was the last person I saw before the pandemic, having seen her the evening of my last trip to New York on March 7, 2020. We walk and talked for two hours and it was fantastic to catch up in person, there are limits to Slack and text messages.
Kendall is radically different, even from ten years ago, when it was radically different from the 90’s and all the fields had been replaced with tech buildings. The loft where Ben, Tony and I all worked at Nintendo Cube Club in 2002 is still there here is a picture of it:
Saturday I had my 50th birthday party, which I shared with Sean and Jussi and Al and Ivelisse, at the American Legion hall on the Charles River in Cambridge. I walked there as well, another hour, took me through all the posh houses around Harvard Square, found myself on Craigie Street, so I took a one-block detour to Craigie Circle to visit 8 Craigie Circle, Vladamir Nabokov’s home of many years while he was at Harvard. I used to visit it on occasion back when I lived in Cambridge. I did not, alas, take a picture. I have been terrible about photos (if you have any from any of the events this weekend, send em my way!) I did take a photo of this Polestar 2, though, which is lovely in person, but once you see the unneeded transmission tunnel inside, you can’t unsee it:
All these walks around liberal Cambridge et al really was great for my EV shopping.
The party was wonderful. So many people, so many people I hadn’t seen in so long. I was good, stayed outside all night, and lots of other people did too so I didn’t feel lonely, that meant a lot to me. All in all Boston has proven pretty friendly to being a neurotic mask wearer when most people are done. There are just enough people still wearing masks that it isn’t considered weird. You still routinely see people walking on the street, outdoors, alone in a mask.
Anyway, just amazing. So many people. Here are all the people we could easily find who were all born in in 1972.
Man. I only got to talk to Kevin for a second! There was one guy inside I was great friends with 25 years ago and I saw him for two seconds. Feast or famine, too many people to catch up with after so many months of not seeing anyone.
But there were plenty of more intimate times. Every day we hit the playground by Sean and Jussi’s house and people would come visit. We caught up with Ashley and George, Nick, Meghan and Henry, Ryan, Dinelle, Carl and Lamont, Jared, Kristen, Craig, Jane and Ada. So many people. It was lovely.
And last night we all held a memorial for Mike Gill at the Middle East Upstairs. I have 400 mutual friends with Mike Gill on Facebook and I knew maybe 30% of the crowd, tops. That guy had a lot of friends. I kept looking at people and thinking “I think I played a show with that dude’s band 20 years ago.” People had name tags but the name tags did not, alas, include their band names.
I missed the speeches, which is sad. Mike’s girlfriend Jess a good friend, and is COVID careful and was going to stay outside, so I elected to keep her company, and also be COVID careful since, you know, the CO2 count in the Middle East Upstairs at that point was well over 3,000. A lovely gentleman named Scott, whom I had met the night before, who was Mike’s collaborator and former roommate, filmed all the speeches, people are sending them to Jess, Jess said she’d send them to me. She also gave me a book from Mike and.. ugh I am going to cry. Will save that for the day I watch the speeches. That is going to be a sad day. I can tell they were phenomenal just by the radical change in emotions between when people went in the room and came out.
I desperately didn’t want to leave, but I was monumentally exhausted by this point, trying not to drink, hung over, still had to wake up this morning to write this GMHHAY to you lovelies and to get Jane out of bed soon and do breakfast, I stupidly did not take today after work, and I have to drive for hours tonight. It was a rational decision, and I was exhausted and over-stimulated by friends, but I still didn’t want to go. I’m so, so looking forward to home, but I know it’s going to be hard to leave everyone and I’m going to miss them all so much.
Emma and I walked around Central Square my god it is so much nicer than when we lived here, and all the amazing outdoor patios are fantastic and the bike paths are great and not suicidal any more and the Phoenix Landing even had a giant TV and sports playing on the patio and I hope they keep all of that at least through the summer and maybe forever. I miss Hi Fi and the Wendy’s and the Burger King but that is because I am unhealthy but I am trying to get better, honest. And, of course, hope springs eternal in Central Square, and we had to stop by and take a peek at this huge bout of good news:
Cannot wait. Maybe we’ll do another 12-hour drive each way in a month or so lol lol jk. Or not. Maybe.
So. Tomorrow. Get home at 7-8 AM. Will not be writing a GMHHAY, obviously. Have the day off. If I can get a nap in, get the car unpacked, and get a first, cursory look at the garden, I will be happy. We will resume our GMHHAY standard schedule by Thursday, and the latest edition of the Webb Chatham Report, only 3 weeks late, should be out this weekend and, god willing, a garden video by Monday the 13th. It is a lot easier to run the Webb media micro-empire when I don’t have a social life. But the social life is the best. I missed everyone so much. And it was lovely chatting with so many people about GMHHAY that was fun. This thing really has kept me sane the last two years.
Moody and quiet mix for today. New Angel Olsen is just fantastic spent a lot of time listening to it walking around Cambridge and Somerville. Strong recommend. And I see now there are two Tomberlin songs on this mix but oh well too late now, just pretend I’m sixteen and I reaally like Tomberlin and so I put two songs on the mix because I don’t know Playlist Law and I really want you to like them too it is very important to me that you like this band so I put them on twice. Might actually be an official exemption to Playlist Law.