Goodbye Marta and the Day After the SNOW

Yesterday and last night, we got 10 inches of snow! It was beautiful. We made the trek in the snow down to Davis Square to say farewell to Marta. She returns to Spain today. :(
This afternoon, Evan and I took a study/work break to build a snowman!

First BIG snowfall!

A snow emergency is in effect right now! All this snow fell in the last hour! Yay for sledding!

Snow!

Well, the first snow arrived a few weeks ago. Brrrr! It's precarious getting to school on the slippery ice. I've already had a fall all the way down our front steps!

Turkey!

Nikki and I drove down to NYC to visit my Aunt Bayla and cousin Christian for Thanksgiving. We carpooled with our friend Jeff who was visiting friends in Brooklyn. My Aunt has a great place in Jersey City and cooked a very tasty meal (who would have thought that brussel sprouts could be so delicious?). Not only is the interior of Aunt Bayla's place great (and well decorated!), but there's roof access where you can see New York, the Statue of Liberty, and of course the chromium dumps of Newark! After getting our bearings on the roof, we were off to the city to see if we could catch the end of the Macy's parade. We didn't see much of the parade, but Chris took us on a great tour of the city, including Union Square, the central post office, Madison Square Garden, the New York Public Library, FAO Schwartz, and plenty of cool windows on 6th ave. See Nikki doing the robot with the animatronics below! Feeling the x-mas mood, we went to check out the tree at Rockefeller Center too. While it definitely felt like the holidays in NY, mother nature must have missed the memo - we had a beautiful, warm day as we cruised around the city and thoroughly enjoyed the lack of heavy jackets. While we restrained Nikki from shopping madness on this trip, I think that we'll be returning to NY soon for a shopping/theatre trip! Maybe our good weather luck will continue?

Jesse's Visit

My brother Jesse was up in Boston this weekend for a water polo tournament (he goes to the Johns Hopkins). We got to take Jesse out for some candlepin bowling, around boston, and out for a couple meals. We went out with Jesse's team one night to a steak house outside of Boston with some pretty over the top cowboy decor. The best part were the fat cow statues out front - we have quite a few pictures with these. The best part of the trip, of course, was making fun of Jesse in a speedo...

Vermont and Montreal

On a long weekend Nikki and I decided to head north before it gets too cold. First, we drove to Vermont to add to our winter fat layers at the Ben and Jerrys factory. The factory tour was fun and since we were there during the week we got to see the machines running. We also got to hear about the new flavor: "Steven Colbert's Americone Dream." We stayed in Stowe, Vermont for the night and got to have a preview of what this ski town will look like in the winter.

Then it was off to Montreal. Wow, it really felt like we were in Europe! We got to see some sights, like the narrow streets of old montreal, the view from the top of Parc du Mont Royal, the "biodome," and the Olympic Park from the 1976 summer olympics, but the real attraction was the food! I don't know if I have ever eaten as well as here. We had awesome salads, sausages, "flamms" (like Pizza), venison, and of course - dessert!!! Pastries, fondue, some chocolate molten cake thing - wow! I have a feeling that we'll be heading back when things warm up....

Birthday!

This year we celebrated Nov 6 in great style - at a pub! For my (Evan's) birthday, we got a bunch of people together and headed down to our local bar for pub trivia, where you get to enter a team and compete with other bar goers by answering random trivia questions. We had two teams, one that got 4th place (Nikki's team) and one that got second to last place (Evan's team). We had a great turnout and I think everyone had a good time - thanks everyone for coming out!! (Jeff, I posted this picture because you are featured prominently in the center).

For lunch, I went out to lunch with two friends, Scott and David, for beers and all you can eat meat at Red Bones, which is near our house. I think my digestive system is still recovering....

Halloween

We finally got trick or treaters!!!! For the last two years, Nikki and I have dressed up, carved pumpkins, bought candy..... and nobody showed up. This year there were tons of kids and we felt justified in buying three big bags of candy (1 for the kids and 2 for us of course). On Sat we went out to our friend Jeff's party and one put on by Nikki's classmates. We were lucky enough to have my sister Darcy staying with us and we had a blast cruising around - Darcy was Zelda, Nikki was Amelia Earhart, and I was Hermes. The best costumes of the night were by far our friends Marta and Alex, who were Castro and Che. Jeff was a close second with "Amish Prom Date" though...

Hanging around Boston

Man, watching the Red Sox is tough work! The last couple weeks have been great and it seems we picked a good time to move here. I went down to Fenway to have dinner and hang around before one of the World Series games; what a scene! Now that the Sox are world champs we can rest for a little while. We took Flat Stanley (from Nikki's Aunt Geri) around Boston a few weeks back - out to Boston Public Garden and even out for a drink. Been enjoying the leaves changing - I never though that it would be so cool! Road my bike out to Walden Pond and felt like I was in a movie or something. Went with Annie to the head of the charles a week or two ago. The races were ok, but the real attraction was sitting by the river with a tasty beverage. Now, we gotta get ready for the cold....

New York, New York

A couple weekends ago Nikki and I headed to New York hang out with my cousin Christian. It was Nikki's first time in NYC, so we had a good time showing her the various touristy sites - broadway play, ground zero, Empire State, Statue of Liberty, and of course, Canal Street! (note that all bags and/or purses that you see Nikki with are 100% real). We had great fun cruising around the city and Chris was a great host! Even got to have dinner with my Aunt Bayla.

We have fish!

Nikki and I have entered the world of responsibility and decided to get a couple of fish. Unfortunately, we don't seem to be very good at keeping them alive! We currently have 7 fish (bought 3 yesterday) in our 20 gallon tank and have lost about 4. I think we're getting better though and have been getting some great advice from the guy that works at "Big fish, little fish" - our petstore down the street. The fish are named: Leonard, Ryu, Big Tuna, Neo, Merman, Omelette, and Hapa.

Renaissance Fair

Don't let anyone tell you that Renaissance Fairs are dorky and lame. We just went to one in Connecticut and it was dorky and super fun!! Jason scouted one out for us and Annie, Nikki, Jason and I piled in the car to check it out. They had all kinds of great weapon-related activities, including knife and ax throwing, archery, and sword fighting, as well as some pretty unique food - see the huge turkey legs below! (why is mine so much smaller?) There's also a shot of Nikki and Annie trying on some apparel - I personally would have gone with the studded leather sheath for my bo staff. After drinking a couple bucket-sized cups of lemonade and annoying small children with our acorn-playing abilities, Jason and I were ready to take on a local knight in a swordfighting area called "Smite the Knight." Jason got it started and quickly embarrassed the poor guy in a first to five contest. Then it was my turn. Though I did almost as well as Jason, I did manage to totally destroy my slipper (why do these things happen to me?) and render it unusable. So, I had to walk back though the fair with one shoe, carefully avoiding piles of horse droppings and spilled mead, until we could get back to the car and hit up a TJ max in the area, where I found a pair of women's slippers that would get me home (not too many options on a Sunday afternoon). On the way back, we stopped by a Red Lobster (possibly the only one in the northeast) for some tasty biscuits and all you can eat shrimp. Mmmmm, shrimp and turkey legs, what a day!