On the way home from work today Jeremy and I passed a new restaurant on Harvard Street that we hadn't noticed before. It was the B Good real fast food place. Thinking we could try something new I pulled a u-turn, got a nasty look from an elderly pedestrian who didn't seem to believe that I was turning around and not attempting to murder her, and pulled into a full lot at the store. I had been reading the Metro in the morning and among the information in it was an interview with William Gibson. The discussion in the interview centered around how he was able to successfully predict certain developments in his science fiction like cyberspace and robotic sex daemons. So as I reviewed the menu I realized that I had thought a similar idea a few years ago about how the world was ready to accept a more family friendly health conscious fast food. Folks who I talked to about it including Yuval and Peter can testify that I was thinking something similar although not identical to the B Good concept. I don't want credit since it's the environment that creates the trends. I just was interested in the concept. Another chain that seems to be benefitting from this trend is Panera Bread. After reading about the founder in Brookline magazine I am likely to buy some stock in the company.

What I discovered upon arrival at the B Good store was a sign that said "Our dream house will be opening tomorrow." It was interesting enough since Sarah and I are closing on our new home tomorrow as well. But having invested in a Brookline U-turn Jeremy and I weren't about to come up empty handed and not eat a freshly ground healthy burger with non-fried french fries. At B Good these are called real fries which still doesn't make sense given that the French part isn't the issue in describing the product using the word fries. BTW - Their web site is www.bgood.com. So we poked in the window and asked whether the busy crew inside was open or not. The answer that came back was that they were opening tonight at 7PM and giving away free burgers.

JACKPOT!

Since it was 6:40 we had somehow inadvertently stumbled upon a free burger scenario. So to kill time we parked in the TJ Max lot, wandered inside TJ Max to find they have great deals on dress shirts for men but didn't purchase one because the line was too long, and then returned to the growing scene building at the B Good dream house. Things were beginning to buzz with a band setting-up shop inside, roller derby people with matching shirts skating around, and a crowd building. We realized we needed to focus on being near the door for the 7PM opening and managed to be among the first 20 people to get our free burger and a seat. I vowed to blog about it as a return for the free burger.

The burger I got was a guapo and had a piece of bacon, onions, and some sauces in it. I was surprised that it came in a whole wheat bun since that never happens with burgers but it was quite agreeable. They offer some odd combos like removing your bun and replacing it with veggies for 25 cents extra that I thought were noble for those weight reduction times in my life. I'll need to make a run of such things after the business passes by. I rate the food as quite good and probably fast in a different situation where we wouldn't be in a mob queued for a free burger. I liked their "style" which includes some 50's styled logos, a car with fire painted on it, a clean internal look, and odd references to weird family members who probably don't exist. They suggest they don't need a fry cutter because there is some guy who does it and have his picture in it. The web site gives some evidence of the style as well. I'm not sure if they will succeed, have succeeded or what and Jeremy cited Boston Market as a failure in the healthy food fast market. But they are certainly a welcome tenant of Brookline and fit with the local culture well. But I won't be living in Brookline for long.

Today is the big day for the closing on the purchase of our house. It was easy enough to put the concept of moving into the future tense until recently but now things have moved into full gear. The money is ready for the down payment to be put into one big scary check, the arrangements have been made for executing the mortgage and purchase and sale including co-ordinating the lawyer, insurance company, mortgage broker, buyer's broker, and seller's broker. All of these people have been very nice and helpful but it is hard to have them all know what is going on. Mostly I feel like mixed messages get passed around between all of these folks and it would be better if there was a secure site where all of the information could be consolidated amongst the parties with utilties to co-ordinate the closing time, upload the insurance binder, post the P&S, etc. and different views depending on role. Maybe the Redfin's of the world can build such a thing. It likely isn't anyone's priority but as an example of collaboration it seems like there is a lack of simple tools.

Sarah worked with some local high school students to pack a lot of stuff in boxes. I cancelled the monthly subscription to Hollywood Video rentals. We got the gas and electric set to be assigned to our name when we arrive. We had Nick and his team move a swing set/play structure that the seller's agent offered us for free if we could move it from a more posh home near Brae Burn. I haven't even seen it but I heard from Nick that they need another day to move it because it is so big and complex. An HVAC company is coming on the 16th to install the central air conditioning. We are moving with a moving company on the 25th. Lisa and Dave are going to move into the condo in Brookline in October giving us time to move out. Things are happening all around. I'm thinking as I walk around the condo... I'm going to miss this place.

Posted by Dan Housman at 03:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the dream I was trying to return to my car with Jeremy. The car was parked in a dark garage up a number of flights of stairs. I kept having trouble figuring out how the stairs in the garage were oriented and kept needing to look backwards as I walked up them and it was almost as if my whole nervous system had switched me my left and right or up and down to the point that I was completely disoriented. Jeremy kept trying to explain the right way to go through the garage but I was still wandering in circles up and down a staircase that could have come from an Escher painting. On one floor I got off on near the top I saw a small thin child scurry past me but the child faded in and out of my vision because of the darkness. I was frightened by the sight in the same way I might be startled by a leaf on the ground that for a moment looks like a severed body part, or to find I was about to step on a dead animal on the ground only to find I was stepping on a stone or log. The child wasn’t as scary as the Chucky animatronics but kept moving past me and appeared and disappeared until finally I become so agitated and freaked out that I suddenly awoke.

I thought about the dream and realized that I had gone to sleep without having moved my car from the space in front of the condo to the parking spot down at 2 St. Paul Street. I had parked in front because Madeline had been crying and sweating heavily on the ride home from Bedford fighting through the rush hour traffic. When I had pulled her out of the new Britax car seat that we finally installed she was soaked in sweat and her hair was as wet as if she had come from a bath tub. Sarah and I discussed how we should post an ad on craigslist to see if we could find childcare for Thursdays and Mondays to try to avoid some of the crazy driving that needs to occur to make sure Madeline has around the clock care.

I had gotten further bad news on the parking front at 9:15 when my cell phone had ominously rang. It is the call I am ready for at all times but I dread. The Bar—ch family from 2 St. Paul Street was giving me the 20 days notice until June 1st to leave the space and find a new one.

So after parking the PT Cruiser at 1 AM wearing dress shoes, sweat pants, and no socks I returned home in a bit of shock only to slam the door just loud enough to awake Madeline to the point where she was unable to get back to sleep without being brought into bed with Sarah. Sarah was about as pleased at my door slamming antics as I was about having to get up in the middle of the night to move my car.

So I posted two ads on craigslist, one for a new parking space, and the other for a two day a week baby sitter. I’ll probably need to poster around the neighborhood since it is the most productive way to find parking in the past. There is always something within some distance and I may end-up like last year in a space that is half a mile away and requires a bicycle to reach. With a baby that won’t be acceptable or possible though.

Sarah and I say we are well adjusted and prefer city living but on a night like this the advantages of a little bit of your own pavement becomes apparent as the lack of it reaches into my subconscious in scary dreams. One thought I had was a vision of what will happen if gas (or equivalents) prices reached so high that it was cost prohibitive for people to have personal transportation (cars). People would all move to citys and urban sprawl would become ghost sprawl. More people would telecommute whenever possible. Partnerships would become more geographical in nature as people from Burlington would have trouble meeting people in Cambridge. Public transportation would become more extensively used and services like Zip cars would become the way to acquire personal transport only when necessary. These car seat manufacturers would go out of business. Bicycles and self-propelled vehicles would come into style as the ideal way to travel. Roads would become optimized for self-propelled travel including long time periods when traffic would be unavailable to cars. People would become thinner and get diabetes and other chronic diseases that are tied to obesity at lower rates. Wars over oil and energy might become unnecessary and peace will fill the planets and love will fill the sun.

Well maybe I just need to find a new parking space.

Posted by Dan Housman at 02:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sarah and I decided to escape Madeline's tyranny and go out to dinner for an evening. We did take Madeline with us despite her many attempts to sabotage our exiting the apartment including the destruction via milk spit-up of the I love sushi outfit that had been specifically been selected for a night out of raw fish. We decided to go to Tsunami in Coolidge Corner. We have grown fond of Tsunami for one major reason - It is BYOB. The BYOB scenario is perfect for us because it cuts down on the crowds of people who want to overpay for alcohol to impress their internet dates (Fugakyu) and allows us to enjoy a meal where the main cost is the important stuff - the sushi. We stopped at the liquor store around the corner and grabbed two 22 oz. Asahis and were nice and early for dinner. On the way to the restaurant we noticed that the chinese seafood restaurant near Boca Grande was going to be replaced. Plastered on the many walls were advertisements for the new intended tenant that will likely be opening in a few months. Finale, the high end dessert place that was originally downtown and then added a location in Harvard Square is now going to have an outpost in our locality. I am very positive towards this new addition despite my general boycott of decadent sweets. The main benefit is variety and options when wandering about on a walk. Our meal was great and I had to grab another beer before the sushi arrived because we had already downed the original two Asahis. Madeline wasn't too pleased with being awake past 7:30 in an unfamiliar venue so we negotiated with the very nice petite asian female waitstaff for a half of a banana to distract our baby while we ate. Madeline ate banana off of chopsticks and we had a meal replete with a super dragon roll, a one up on the caterpillar roll because it has a sweet potatoe inside of a roll with eel and avocado.

Posted by Dan Housman at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am not a tidy person. I have always strived to justify my general lack of interest in the order of things around me as a symptom associated with being a forgetful professor who is always locked into big ideas but can’t see the piles of garbage that get in the way. But I decided not to become a professor when I left college so I have little to use as an excuse save that I have realized over time that I am mostly a lazy person. Among the odd compensations for this in my life is to have a wife who is much neater than me who keeps my world in order as I try to increase the general chaos in my world. It is a good match for us in the regard that she is more obsessive compulsive and I take a laissez faire approach to living. Sarah worries and I keep her calm. I forget to take out the garbage and she lets me know when it is garbage day.

This weekend we started our search for a new location to habitate with some of the first realistic thoughts being put into where we might live if we were to grow out of this location in Brookline. We are not thinking that we need to migrate immediately given that Madeline still can’t do a full roll over and she has no siblings. But we know that once baby number two or three is born it is going to be impossible to roam about in two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen that is 50% occupied by a washer and dryer. The baby seating and rocking items that are growing out of the floor like mushrooms including a bouncy seat, swing, gyminee, car seat, high chair, rocking chairs, and a little foam seat will only increase in their coverage until we are in a fungal forest of jr. seating objects. So for now we figure it is only a matter of time somewhere between two years and eight before we will feel like we are old folks living in a shoe.

So we went to a private viewing of a condo on Saturday morning that as previously mentioned costs way more than we would ever have considered spending. Sarah’s initial rationale for this was to see what lots of money would get you and whether it would be worth it. Our sincere hope was to find that rich people live poor loveless miserable lives epitomized by their miserly living quarters that are so rank with the stain of opulence that it would cast a dark pall over the lives of any one to move into such a space. We also thought maybe that a more expensive location would be just another sham where people have figured out how to get your money by installing a bigger refrigerator or painting the walls with a secret green the color of wintergreen leaves.

So we went for our private viewing with a hope that we would be disappointed with the parking, the home, the view, the street noise, the neighbors, or the nasty restrictive condo rules. The expensive place we looked at unfortunately had a layout that looked the way a condo that I would like to live in would. It was about 2500 square feet on one floor laid out with a large kitchen, two open rooms in the front. The children’s bedrooms were perfectly children sized. A room to watch television in was cozy looking. They had a small room for a guest, a nanny, or a visiting parent sleeping the night. The dining room was just the right size for a dining room table and next to the kitchen where one belongs. The floors were a nice quality wood and I felt very at home looking at the closet in the entranceway hiding games like Monopoly, Scrabble, and Sorry. The master bedroom had an attached bathroom with a whirlpool tub with jets. They had a tandem parking space deeded with the location.

This condo that we were looking at looked like the kind of place that adults live in and I was struck afterwards about how the place we are living in today still has the feel of a place that a young sloppy bachelor might live in with his girlfriend. I believe that this feeling is the main reason for not going out to look at other people’s homes.

Beyond just being laid out well it was decked out in all of the glory of a home that is looking to be sold. The realtors have special staging activities that they do to move perfect looking furniture, nice paintings, thoughtful books, and decorate things to look like you would want to live there. For the home, the private viewing is the first impression, the first date, the immaculate ideal coming out party where the home can show how beautiful she really could be if someone let her look that good. And it had these teasing qualities like that it was marked down 20% from the initial offering because it hadn’t sold at the higher price that always makes me interested even if the marked down price is as astronomical as the original price.

So we had trouble sleeping last night and spent time looking at the site Zillow, a map system that shows the price of your neighbors properties with good accuracy. It is almost as amazing as looking at Google Earth to see aerial views of neighborhoods with price tags on each property. We discovered things like – It is really more expensive to buy anything in Brookline than in Newton and Bedford. So we have gotten nice and confused about what we are looking for.

Today we went out and looked at two more locations, both more in the price range of someone who isn’t a robber baron, and our general reaction was that they both were inferior to the place we saw on Saturday. We couldn’t imagine how anyone could live in these other poorly laid out hovels in comparison to this one really nice looking place that we saw yesterday. The place where every item was in the right spot including the girls bunk beds in their room painted pink and the curtains nicely matching the wallpaper or paint in each room.

So as I was about to go to play with a computer or two as I am apt to do I looked around at the piles of junk that have accumulated on the dresser by the bed, clothing on the floor, the papers and magazines on the coffee table, computer desk, and started compulsively neatening and cleaning things up to try to at least make the best of where we are and try to live a little more like the imaginary people living in that condo yesterday who had everything looking just perfect.

Posted by Dan Housman at 10:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)