Saturday, August 18, 2007

first day - time with poppy

clearly, this blog all about how i'm new to boston. i was born and grew up in san francisco, then moved to portland, or for school and lived there for six years, and now i'm in boston for grad school. aside from summers on the cape with my grandparents, i really haven't spent much time on the east coast, so i guess essentially, this blog is about the transition from west coast to east coast and the observations of someone who is terrified of not wearing sneakers all the time (do they call them tennis shoes here? maybe they do).

the trip here was awesome. NOT! i brought my cat with me on the redeye, and after he became the darling of airport security everything pretty much went downhill. jet blue doesn't check pets, so i stayed up all night with one eye on the cosby show and the other monitoring my fellow passengers for signs of annoyance. he cried anytime there was turbulence, which was pretty much all the time, and in addition to that, a bunch of people got really sick and bumped into me on their way to the bathroom. then we had a layover at JFK, which was pretty dirty and didn't have enough seats for everyone who was waiting for their plane and also one water was five bucks. but he was a champ from new york to boston, and no one even knew he was there.

my grandpa picked me up at the airport, and after telling me straight off he wasn't a cat person, he proceeded to be really curious and concerned about the cat. then we went to check out bc - drove around, looked for the building where i'll have my classes, ate in the dining room, etc. i gained a lot of respect that day for the fact that he just doesn't care what other people think. we were driving around brighton looking for my apartment, and he did a lot of stopping in intersections to look at street signs and slowing down to look at addresses - at first i thought he just didn't know he was really pissing off the people behind him, but it being boston, there was a lot of honking, and when i piped up that they were probably honking at him he cracked up and said they could just "deal with it." when we got home the cat had found a place to hide, and after my grandpa was reassured that he was fine where he was and would eat when he wanted to, we went out to dinner and then i watched some more cosby show and then i went to bed. so, that was my first day in boston. the plane ride was a little miserable, although i do love the cosby show, but i had a great time with my grandpa and now i'm on the cape reading the new harry potter, i sold my car, i had homemade pie for dinner, and the cat didn't throw up today. things are pretty good so far.