Lissie live: a star is born

Got to see Lissie live last night. I had found one of her live videos on Youtube randomly, and was pumped to see her in concert. We started the evening at a Thai restaurant near the venue, and lo and behold, Lissie comes right in and sits down at the table next to us. We wished her a good show, and I think she was a bit surprised to be recognized out and about.

Anyways, the show was awesome. Lissie is amazing - just sounded great - much better than on CD, completely left everything on stage, talked unabashedly about just about anything, jammed out with the really strong musicians in her band, belted every song, took shots that the crowd handed her - just wow. I hope she puts out a live CD, and comes back to Boston soon. Here's a clip I took with my iPhone:

The Arcade Fire are so good

I went to see the Arcade Fire last night after several years of trying to see them but tickets being completely sold out. They were amazing. So musically on top of things, and at the same time, just going crazy on stage. I was disappointed that the crazy guy and the red-haired guy didn't start head-butting each other with motorcycle helmets on this time, but even still, what a great concert. One of the biggest venues in Boston was completely sold out, and a lot of people left the seats to the sidelines to dance. Here's a vid of the encore below, not mine, but this guy had better seats:

Nasty Slush

Today brought a day full of wintry mix to Boston. Unfortunately, this amounted to a ton of slush all over the place.

Aside from the general slipperiness of it all, the slush all looks uniform, and you have no way of knowing if you're stepping into an inch of the stuff, or a sizable puddle.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be in the 60's and evaporate all this stuff (wishful thinking, I know).

Tropical Boston

Following 3 straight days of rain, steam is rising from the puddles across Boston. It feels like being back in Southeast Asia - though thankfully, not as horribly hot.

Soggy Boston

It's rained pretty heavily every day in Boston since we arrived in the middle of the night a week ago. Luckily, as I'm still setting up the apartment, this has made me feel better about the dashed illusions I had of playing tennis every day until pre-term.

Finally made it

The drive to Philly was uneventful, there was no one on the road. Assuming that the ride would be as effortless as my roommate driving his scooter up the U-Haul ramp (pictured on left), we even felt the luxury to drive out for cheese steaks. And then we discovered the traffic disaster that is the US eastern seaboard. 2 hours of traffic bypassing New York, and then another 2.5 hours in separate incidents in Connecticut got us into Cambridge at 12:30AM, when we were supposed to be in around 8.

Luckily, one of our classmates was open to helping us move in at that time, and help he did! We finished moving in at 3 (without him, we wouldn't have made it before day-break), dropped off the U-Haul by 4AM, and I finally hit the sack at 5AM. After a few hours of sleep, I was back up, working all day to unpack and set things up. We made a dent, but there's so much more to be done. This whole 48 hours feels like one long alien continuum.

Boston or bust (well, Cambridge actually)