2015 People & Events

I used to keep a running record of cool stuff that happened during the year, people I met and events I attended, which is a nice way to look back and remember that I do, in fact, live in my favourite city in the country. I'll add more as I remember it.

People - Lectures, panels, etc.

Writers
Neil Gaiman - Boston Book Festival
Amanda Palmer - Boston Book Festival
Kelly Link - Boston Book Festival
Emily St. John Mandel - Boston Book Festival
Joyce Carol Oates - Harvard Book Store

Artists
Kate Beaton - Harvard Book Store

STEM
Neil De Grasse Tyson - Science in the Movies - Wilbur Theatre
Bill Nye - StarTalk - Citi Performing Arts Center
Everyone in this year's Ig Nobels (I was part of the stage crew), but especially Yoshiro Nakamatsu, aka Dr. NakaMats

Law/Social/Political
Mary Bonauto [1]
Jean Chatzky

Events - Concerts, panels, etc.

Music
Postmodern Jukebox - Wilbur Theatre
Joanna Newsom - Orpheum Theatre
Boston Pops - Nosferatu, a Symphony of Terror, with Berkleey School of Music - Symphony Hall [2]
A Shout Across Time - Celebrating Einstein - Cambridge Science Festival
The Harvard Christmas Revels (Wales) - Sanders Theatre

Radio/Podcast
Wait Wait Don't Tell Me - Wang Theatre
Post-Meridian Radio Players - Monster in the Mirror Halloween radio show [3]

Art
Strandbeests exhibition in the Boston garden
Open Studios - citywide art gallery open house events - Cambridge, Somerville, South End, Fort Point
Dutch masters exhibit (Rembrandt, Vermeer, others) - Museum of Fine Arts
Francisco Goya - Museum of Fine Arts
Arlene Shechet - Institute of Contemporary Art
Sonic Arboretum - Ian Schneller & Andrew Bird - Institute of Contemporary Art
Ragnar Kjartansson - "The Visitors" - Institute of Contemporary Art
Smithsonian's Hirshorn Modern Art Museum - Marvelous Objects: surrealism from Paris to New York [8]

STEM
Science By the Pint - open lectures by Harvard/MIT professors [4]
Harvard Engineering School's Science and Cooking lecture series
CafeSci lecture series- PBS Nova - [5]
Engadget [6]

Theatre
Shit-faced Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream - Davis Theatre
A Taste of Honey - Boston Centre for American Performance
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike - Huntington Theatre [7]
Picasso at the Lupin Agile - Arsenal For the Arts
My Fair Lady - Arsenal For the Arts
Is He Dead? - Vokes Theatre
The Slutcracker - Somerville Theatre

Musical Theatre
UFG winter Cabaret series - "Musical Theatre's Greatest Flops and Failures" - UFORGE Gallery
Beatiful: The Carole King Musical - Boston Opera House
Kinky Boots - Boston Opera House
Waitress - A.R.T, the American Repertory Theatre
Matilda - Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts

Misc
The Library of Congress [9]
( read the footnotes )

sanity saver vegetarian chili

Boston was kind of infamous in the country last winter for getting 108.6" (275.8 cm) of snow, which isn't a lot, compared to some places, but we have small narrow streets and cramped traffic patterns that are horrible to navigate on a good day, and we kept getting more and more snow to the point where we started running out of space to put it. I used to dump the snow in the yard, but then it started getting above my head and difficult to pile onto, so when I wasn't shovelling, I was levelling drifts so I had more room. I had wicked arms by the spring, let me tell you.


This is from February, so a decent-ish amount of snow. I think this is what my street looked like.


Literally this is what the snowpile next to my driveway looked like. (I wish I had a dog though)


As you can see, two way streets became 1 way streets so we came up with an unspoken system to designate the direction of particular routes.

Anyway, I got worried about my meat intake, especially with being inside more than I was used to, so I found this terrific chili recipe, which lasted me for 2 weeks, useful because I didn't want to hike the snow drifts to the grocery store. 2 weeks, lunch and dinner every day - this chili. Come inside from shovelling for an hour each afternoon - this chili. Back from work after being stuck on the train for 2 hours - this chili. Don't know what to eat, getting chilblains from the cold - this fucking chili. When the cornbread ran out, I would make a new loaf, but otherwise, I was good. Put some cheddar cheese on top, stellar.

And after all that, I wasn't actually sick of it! Actually, I have many fond memories of the taste! I'm definitely making it again this winter, but hopefully with less snow.

(Special shout out to the Sons of Liberty fandom, which had its share of stir-crazy New Englanders who watched the History Channel mini series for the hell of it, because what else were we gonna do? And then immediately took to tumblr with feelings. You guys helped me survive haunting my own house like a ghost on the days when I worked from home. Much love.)