It's about that time...
 
for updating again.  You know, that usual six-week window.  ;)  And I'll be darned if I can't even remember half the things I've done over that time.  And for once my hallowed datebook is almost no help whatsoever!  So we'll just move on to the highlights, shall we?
 
The pre-vacation, pre-moving era
 
I really meant to update before all the craziness, but I completely ran out of time between packing and dealing with my parents coming to town and all that.  Anyways, the weekend of June 11th I played softball with the Dartmouth peeps and then met up with Jens later and we drove out to this house he jointly owns with one of his friends, which was pretty cool.  Of course in Massachusetts, where property seems to appreciate at 10 percent a year, it's an as good or better investment than anything else.  It's a nice place too - at least two bedroom, and all very modernized inside.  Saturday I did some more packing and whatnot, and then met up with Jens for a loooong bike ride.  We did about 25 miles, and even managed to make it back before dark.  Sunday I hung out with my friend Jon - we played tennis and then I assissted him in some home improvement projects he was doing while his mom was away.  He's a very thoughtful guy.
 
The next week was not so good - Monday I was pretty sure I was coming down with something, and then Tuesday I knew I had because I had a bugger of a sore throat.  So I stayed home for part of the day, although I did end up going into work for a while.  I recovered pretty well for Wednesday, but then Wednesday night I thought I had some debris in my eye...well, that turned out to be pinkeye.  (Who knew it existed outside of college campuses???)  So medically speaking, this was a very low point.  So, a couple medications later, everything was cleared up enough and I went to Jose's birthday party on Friday the 18th, which was lots of fun.  A few of his friends were there that I hadn't seen in forever.  Jens came too, and somehow it came out that Jose's boyfriend Steve knows some German, so Steve started saying all these wacky things in German, and Jens would laugh uproariously while the rest of us had zero clue what the heck was going on.  It was quite funny, and of course Jose was only egging Steve on.  It was a great evening.
 
Saturday night Jens and I went to go see Dodgeball, and, of course, being the Ben Stiller fan that I am, I thought it was very funny.  We both liked it.  :)  It had just the right amount of wacky, and the supporting cast was perfect, especially Hank Azaria/Rip Torn as the dodgeball guy.  And the five D's of dodgeball...comedy gold.  Jens had told me to block off Tuesday night, because he got tickets through work to go see the Red Sox!  Now, I'm not necessarily a fan, but being in Boston, I can't exactly overtly root for any other team.  The insanity and fervor of Red Sox Nation is really a thing to behold.  And Fenway Park is pretty cool.  So, Jens, his brother Berndt and Jens's friend Megan all came along to watch.  The Red Sox crushed the Twins and all was right with the world (at least for the Bostonians - me, I was just miffed I didn't get to see Brad Radke pitch).  Jens's brother is pretty cool - he's a bit quiet but he's also a bit of a joker.
 
Aaaaand...on to the move/vacation segment...
 
So, my parents got into town on June 23rd, and of course I had only packed about half my stuff before they got there.  I actually had filled up my car and made a trip over to my new apartment the weekend before, so I had taken a few things already.  Not that it made that much of a dent.  Because, as we all know, I have quite a lot of stuff.  Who knows where it all comes from?  The fact that I can't explain it probably isn't such a good thing, but, it's my stuff!  So, my parents did the usual whinging about how much stuff I have, especially how many shoes I have.  *sigh*  Seriously though, there is a legitimate need for both high and low boots.  in multiple colors.  :)  Thursday afternoon I went and picked up the rental cargo van, and then, I got to drive it.  Woohoo!  Having never driven anything larger than my mom's Lincoln Continental, it was really cool to be up in this huge van.  It took a bit of getting used to, but I found I kinda liked it.  Not so much liking the getting 9 miles to the gallon, though.  You can't beat the smaller cars for the maneuvering, but it was fun to work around this huge van.  Friday I got Jon and his friend Josh to help out, and Jens came over too.  We all did a couple loads with the van and with my car, and we were able to pretty efficiently move everything to the new place.  My mom was a champ and helped finish the packing and then did the cleaning that we needed to do so that we didn't get docked on our security.  It was a loooong day.  The next morning I picked up my parents and we went off for our vacation!
 
The Cape Cod Vacation
 
So, my parents and I rented a condo on the beach in Dennisport, on Cape Cod, for a week.  It was rather odd, moving all of my stuff and then leaving to go on vacation, but, it just worked out that way.  I left every last one of my boxes and everything in my room in the new place, so I wouldn't inconvenience Amanda too much while I was gone.  The first thing we did on the Cape was go pick up my friend Lisa Neef, who I literally hadn't seen in six years.  Yes, a Fremd person!  I had lost touch with her during college, and then last year I happened to find her email, and we had been emailing ever since.  So, when I heard she was going to be doing a program on the Cape for the summer, I thought it would be awesome if she was able to hang out with us while we were down there.  We went and picked her up in Woods Hole, and then drove over to the condo.  It was really great to see her again - we've both changed a lot, but we were still somehow able to pick up the same rapport we had in high school.  Saturday we sort of spent trying to figure out where everything was - the grocery store, the mini golf, the Dairy Queen - all the important things.  :)  Sunday we tried to go to the beach, but it was so windy that the sand was more like sandpaper, so we gave up and sat out on our little patio that we had in front of the condo.  The condo itself was fairly nice - it was a one bedroom, and then there was a pull out couch in the main living area.  It was just enough more than a hotel room to be enough like a place to live.  Sunday we went to this really cool flea market down the road.  The neatest thing I saw, and subsequently bought, was a cool vintage beaded handbag.  The entire bag is hand beaded, both on the bag and the handle.  And the colors were really great - grey, black, white, and blue - so it'll go with almost anything.  It was just so unique and interesting that I thought it was totally worth it.  Later on Sunday we took Lisa back to Woods Hole.  We had a nice visit though - it's always interesting to see someone in person when you've just been doing email for so long.
 
Monday was also a very low-key day.  We made our plans to go to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, the two islands off the coast of the Cape.  We decided to do the somewhat fast ferry to Nantucket on Tuesday, and then my parents sprung for plane tickets to the Vineyard on Thursday.  Between the drive to the ferry and the ferry itself, it would have taken probably three times as long as it did for us to fly (flight time: 12 minutes!).  So, back to Monday.  We drove around and went to a couple used bookstores.  Then later I went by myself to drive back up towards the city to go to the Sting/Annie Lennox concert.  I wouldn't have missed this one for the world.  My seat, despite how much I paid for it, still ended up sucking, but I was just excited that I actually got to go.  Annie was pretty good, despite the fact that her set was much too short (fewer than 10 songs) and she only did one song from her new album.  Still, she has a great voice and she's so amazing for her age.  Much the same could be said about Sting - I definitely thought he looked even better than he did at the concert I went to four years ago.  His set was fantastic.  He did almost everything from his new album, as well as quite a number of older songs, including some Police numbers.  All my favorites.  :)
 
Tuesday we went to Nantucket, which was fairly interesting.  We saw some areas that I hadn't seen before, but the island is really small so there's really not a whole lot to see anyways.  We walked around the shops for most of the time.  After going to Martha's Vineyard, I have to say I prefer that much more over Nantucket.  I think it really is just too small and isolated.  There's pretty much exactly one of everything there!
 
Wednesday was the designated beach day.  My mom and I went to the beach for a couple hours, and even went into the water (sort of on the cold side!).  After than we did some minigolf and went for ice cream.  Yum!  I think we had Dairy Queen about four times over the course of the week...
 
Thursday was the Vineyard.  I really, really liked it.  I don't even know if I can elucidate why, but it was just an almost magical place.  Ok, so the shops were the best I saw on the whole vacation.  ;)  And the food was pretty good.  It was just so neat.  The whole island is still bikeable, but it's much larger than Nantucket, and there are a couple different distinct towns with different things to see and do in each one.  Their beaches looked really nice too.  Our flight out to the Vineyard was at 7:15 and we came back at 8:10, so we had tons of time there too.  It really needed the full day.  We took the buses around pretty much the entire island, from one end to the other.  There was a lot to see, and the whole island was ridiculously charming.  Anyways - highly recommended.  :)
 
Friday Jens came down, since he didn't have to work, although he ran into the always-lovely Cape traffic.  So by the time he got there, we didn't quite have time to do the bike ride that we had planned for that day.  (Not to mention that it was threatening rain the whole day, so it wasn't exactly the best idea anyways.)  So, Jens and my dad finally met, which was good, and then we all went out to lunch and then played a round of minigolf.  Once again, miraculously, everyone seemed to get along great.  It was really nice.  Saturday we packed up the condo and decided to go for the bike ride anyways, since the weather was fantastic - 75 and sunny.  Jens and I ended up doing another quarter century.  We rode on the Cape Cod RailTrail, which was a great trail - mostly flat and pretty well kept up.
 
And that was the vacation.  V. relaxing and v. fun.  We totally lucked out on the weather, too, because practically the entire week was 70s and mostly sunny.  Great Cape weather.
 
Saturday when we got back we preceeded with the beginning of the unpacking efforts (which are to this day, still ongoing!).  We did a lot more work on that on Sunday, and then since it was the 4th, my parents ended up going back to the hotel to watch the festivities, and Jens and I went over to Jose's where he and Steve were having a party on their roofdeck.  Of course the Prudential Center ended up being right in the way of some of the fireworks viewing, but it was still pretty cool.
 
The past, oh, week-and-a-half
 
Monday my parents were still working on helping me with the unpacking, although I had to go to work for most of the day.  Then later we went to dinner and they came to orchestra rehersal with me, since they weren't going to be here for the concert (which is actually tonight).  They left on Tuesday to go back to Chicago.  That night Jens and I hung out at his place and made pizza and watched The Amazing Race, a show which I cannot believe I had never watched until now.  I don't think I am quite as hooked as some people, but it is a quite amusing show.  I really like the traveling aspect and all the different countries they go to.
 
On Friday my friend Becky arrived for a weekend visit.  She was staying with Amanda and me, and was just in town to visit some people she hadn't seen in a while.  Friday she came to softball, and we crushed Yale by some fairly impressive score.  Saturday I went to my volunteer training for the Democratic National Convention.  I almost wanted to back out, but the area that I'm volunteering for is not at the actual convention, so I'm a bit more reassured about the potential danger involved.  Hopefully it'll be kind of interesting to be involved in that.  After I got done there, Jens met up with me downtown, because the weather was so nice it seemed like a good day to just walk around.  So we strolled, and then we went to lunch at PF Changs.  After that he took me home, and I spent a good few hours working on (what else?) unpacking.  Later we went out to go see Spiderman 2, which was really great.  It didn't even feel like a movie based on a comic book.  It was just everything a movie should be.  Also, Kirsten Dunst did not annoy me nearly as much as she did in the first movie.  Plus, I love the newspaper editor.  hee!  :)
 
Anyways...now I have to run or I'm going to be late for the call time for my orchestra concert (gee, what else is new?).  If we'd had it as originally planned on Tuesday, Jens would have come, but now he's out of town for the weekend, so not only is he not able to come, but I probably won't see him until Sunday at least.  :(  Tomorrow we're playing Cornell in softball, so at least I have to make sure we win so that I can tease him about that.  ;)  I'm just planning to get everything on my list done this weekend because I don't have any (ahem) distractions, and then next weekend I can relax, relax, relax.  =)