boston – Page 3

Back in the Boston Groove

August 17, 2015 by Taco

Hey all,

The boys were pretty happy to be reunited all together in their own home.

As a way of celebrating our return, we went out to Boston Beer Works, which is part of the “Beer Works” chain (such as the Salem Beer Works we visited while in Salem). Like when we visited at Salem, we had to go for the Watermelon Ale, but this time we also tried out their Bunker Hill Blueberry Ale.

1. Watermelon Ale – Beer Works

2. Bunker Hill Blueberry – Beer Works

The Watermelon Ale was just as good as I remember, and the Blueberry Ale was pretty good as well (bonus points for actually putting watermelon and blueberries in the beer!). The food was also tasty.

However, the service was lackluster and the place was pricey, so overall we won’t be in any rush to return (we liked the Salem location more), but the beers were good. As usual, I’ve also been trying out some new beers at home:

3. Fresh Slice – Otter Creek Brewing

I’m really liking the IPAs from Otter Creek, such as Fresh Slice (a white IPA) and the Backseat Berner I also had recently.)

I also found a squirrel beer. Yes, seriously.

4. Light – Mighty Squirrel Brewing

Sadly, it wasn’t very good. The “Mighty Squirrel” brewery, found right here in Massachusetts, focuses on making low carb, high protein beers. It’s an interesting concept. Because I’ve been having heartburn pretty bad lately, I opted for their “Light” version, which was a mistake. It was pretty low quality. I’ll have to try the regular version before I give a final verdict, because I really would like to like a squirrel beer.

5. Live – Southern Tier Brewing Company

Live, a session pale ale, is yet another strong showing from Southern Tier, I’m enjoying exploring their selection lately.

In addition to the fruit beers from Beer Works, SB saved me some strawberry lager she got while I was gone (yay SB!).

6. Strawberry Harvest Lager – Abita Brewing Co.

I wasn’t as big of a fan of this brew as the Beer Works fruit beers, something about the strawberry flavor tasted “fake.” It was hard to put my finger on it, but I’m not sure I’d seek this beer out again, at least not in a six pack, I’d probably give a single another try.

Beyond beer we’ve also kept busy, such as venturing out to Watertown for the first time ever.

The cool thing about Watertown is that it’s entirely submerged in the Charles River.

While in Watertown we went shopping at Target, which was packed and basically a Wal-Mart. We also tried to eat at place called Friendly’s (think DQ) that has adorable commercials. But we didn’t, because they completely ignored us and were in no hurry to you know, actually serve customers. So Friendly’s sucks and is blacklisted, sorry cute baby on the commercials. Overall the trip to Watertown did not please me.

What did please me was my “Welcome Back!” cake I made for myself. Well, it was supposed to be cake, it ended up looking like someone mashed cupcakes onto a plate and then put mayonnaise on them.

But it tasted good, which is what matters. It was loaded up with fresh blueberries too, much to Valentino’s enjoyment.

And as if cake wasn’t enough, we celebrated National S’mores Day (August 10th) with a S’mores bar from none other than Hammond’s Candies!

While of course not as a good as a real S’more, it was a nice stand-in. So far I’ve been fairly impressed by Hammond’s chocolate bars (I’ve had the S’mores and Red Velvet varieties).

This past week saw us eating even more food, as on Thursday we went out with one of SB’s friends to the North End to an Italian place called Al Dente.

The North End has a cool “old city” feel to it.

Long story short, I was not impressed by Al Dente, it was stupidly expensive, it was way too loud, the service was crappy, I got heartburn from my salad, and yeah, that’s really all I’ll say about that. Truth be told, I’ve realized I’m not a huge Italian restaurant fan anymore. It’s not that I don’t like the food, it’s that somewhere along the line someone decided that it was ok to charge 25$ for a plate of fucking noodles. Yeah, no thinks, it’s called Ramen and it costs like 50 cents.

The next day, we had a much better dinning experience when we went out with Aunt Train to an Irish Pub in the Back Bay called MJ O’Connors. On the way there we saw a castle, oddly placed in the middle of Boston.

It took all of 3.5 seconds for Tristen to claim it.

Aunt Train had originally given us two options, MJ O’Connors and another Irish Pub (notice a theme?) however, I decided on MJ O’Connors without even looking at their food menu. Know why?

This is why:

That dear friend, is a genuine on draft Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, my first Dogfish on draft, ever. It was glorious. It was all that was good and holy in the bottled version of the 60 Minute, which an extra touch of Baby Jesus magic. It was the best IPA I’ve had in a good bit and I’ve had a lot of IPAs lately. In addition to the Dogfish I had a Stella Artois, another Fresh Slice, and Wormtown Be Hoppy IPA, all of which were good, which isn’t hard when you’ve drank four beers. 🙂

Aunt Train was having them mix lemonade and Stella, for a makeshift shandy (or radler if you prefer the Deutch), which was actually pretty good!

The food was good too.

Mmm buffalo mac n’ cheese and a shepard’s pie.

Of course we don’t just eat out, sometimes we make things ourselves! (Ok almost all the time, but what fun is a cup of cereal to blog about).

That is a homemade, whole-wheat pizza with uncured pepperoni slices, goat cheese, and fresh squash. All of that is to say, it was yum!

We of course paired on pizza with beer, though the beer came later and wasn’t really paired with the pizza at all but pizza is an excuse to buy beer.

7. Take 5 Session IPA – Harpoon Brewery & Beer Hall

While I was quite sad to leave Odell behind, It was nice to get back into Harpoon territory. As usual, Harpoon didn’t fail to impress and this was a solid Session IPA that even SB enjoyed! We actually had some of it and some popcorn while starting a puzzle with the boys last night.

We finished it this afternoon, and it is actually the second time we’ve done this puzzle (those green grassy areas are a bitch).

And that pretty much closes out my first almost-two weeks back in Boston, it’s been a bit of fun, but a lot of work as well. I’m still in my Business School classes (final exam is on August 25th), I’m back in physical therapy, I have law school stuff piling up already (such as an ultimatum I was given to either “Accept a promotion [Increasing my work about three fold] or quit the journal.” I was not pleased), an I have a myriad of other appointments, tasks, and duties on top of that.. oh and I have to start applying to job for next summer, yes already. So I haven’t had as much video game time as I wanted, but c’est la vie. The cool thing is that we are taking a mini-vacation, partially with Aunt Train, out to Lexington and Concord next weekend, so that is pretty exciting!

Until next time,
-Taco

(Halfway) 1L Spring Break

March 19, 2015 by Taco

Well, my “Spring Break” is now more than half way over, boy the time sure does fly.

I’ve had a decently productive Spring Break thus far, I put in one entire day on my brief at the law school, wrote an essay, worked on my brief some more, and am about 80% done with the reading I need to have completed by Monday. I still have a big SPO project that hasn’t even been touched yet, and my brief partner is remaining just enough of a thorn in my side to remind me that the brief still needs a lot of work. So, I’m sort of coming to that point where I realize that I likely won’t get everything I wanted to get done on Spring Break accomplished. But that’s ok, my defense is that it is technically a “break,” even in in reality it isn’t. The main issue has been finding enough time to research summer housing, that is uh.. kind of important, and I’m not making much headway with it.

Outside of school stuff, the break goes well. I’ve been getting more sleep, which oddly isn’t making me feel much better, I think its partially because I haven’t been sleeping super well. My leg pain has been elevated lately, not entirely sure why. SB and I have also had more time to spend together, which is always nice. I haven’t got as much video game time in as I would likely, namely because my friends’ Spring Breaks didn’t line up with mine, for figure. But, some video game time is definitely better than no video game time.

This past Friday SB and I went out to b.Good again, which was just as tasty this time around.

SB went with the West-Side (avocado, cilantro, fresh salsa, chipotle puree, lime) with chicken this time, and I tried out El Guapo (Bacon, homemade jalapeno ranch, lettuce, tomato, onion) and we shared some sweet potato fries again. Since I highlighted how all the food is local last time, this time I wanted to focus on their sauces a bit more.

In addition to all the yummy, locally-sourced sauce that they actually put on the sandwiches, they also offer mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise. However, if you are looking for Heinz, you’re out of luck. These are all location-made condiments, and they are really good! I’m probably most fond of the mustard overall, but I’d take any of them over their mass-market counterparts any day. My guess is that there are no preservatives in them, so they wouldn’t sell well as a b.Good line outside the store.

After b.Good it was off for treats and beer. I got another Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA as well as some Bud Light Platinum. I loved the 90, so I figured why not get another bottle. The Platinum I got since it was cheap and helped me justify playing 3.50$ for a 90, but also because I tried it when it first came out and thought it was horrible. Well, I haven’t drank the 90 yet (but we know it will be good anyways) but the Platinum was nothing special. It wasn’t as bad as I remember it being, but its not really “unique” enough compared to regular Bud Light to justify its own special little beer blurb style format. If you were curious what Beer Advocate has to say though, click here (Spoiler: They don’t like it). However, not all was repetition in the beer world. During part of my then-failed hunt for the other Dogfish Head IPAs (more on that below) I decided to try a sour ale from the Wine and Cheese Cask. I have never had a sour ale before, and I saw this bottle (right on the heels of failing to find the 120) and was like “I must have this.” so I bought just that one bottle, which didn’t seem to please the cashier, or maybe he was just an asshat, probably a bit of both.

1. Monk’s Cafe Flemish Sour Ale – Brouwerij Van Steenberge N.V.

First up, this stuff packs a punch. No, its not that strong as far as ABV goes, only 5.5%. What I mean is that it packs a sour punch, with a refreshing fruity after-taste. I was very impressed by this beer (even SB liked it, after some initial “I-don’t-know-what-to-think” reservations). If you are curious “Flemish” is the Dutch language spoken in Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. So this is a Belgium ale, just from a specific region. The sour element though, is quite unlike anything I’ve had before. This isn’t just a fruity sour, this is also soured-type of taste. Which might make you think it sounds bad, but it really wasn’t (use SB as a baseline, since she is less eccentric than I when it comes to beers, by a long-shot). This beer is a Oud Bruin (a brown beer from Flanders) which has been through a souring process, which results from the kind of cultured yeast used. There is nothing dangerous about this beer, which might make you nervous since its technically “soured” (e.g. soured-milk) but in fact it opens up an entirely new element to the beer’s taste, smell, and mouth-feel. While not quite on the level of the Dogfish 90 I recently had, this is still one of the better beers I’ve had in awhile and I would definitely recommend it, don’t let the “sour” aspect scare you, its probably more sanitary than your chemical-laden drinking water. 😉

Moving on!

Oh, and yeah, we got more snow. Remember how I was just talking about snow? Well, we ended up breaking the record after all. On Sunday we had a short-lived, but quite intense, snow storm that sent us to infamy.

Now that its happened, I’m ok with it. But boy, talk about timing. They’ve been reliably recording snowfall in Boston since 1872. Which means this is the most it has snowed in at least 143 years. So put it another way, when SB and I moved out there, there was a .007% chance (or less) that this would be the record breaking year. Talk about (un)luck. Of course Spring is almost here, at least the date Spring begins on, we’ve been having some very un-Spring like temperatures (and snow) thus far though. Hopefully that turns around soon. This is the most snow I have ever seen in my life and I’m ready for a change. For my Indiana people, the most snow ever recorded anywhere in Indiana was 58.2″. So yeah.

[Post-Winter Update: Here is an update – Boston’s final snow total was 110.6″ for the year, which included a myriad of other record breaking stats, such as the fastest accumulation of 72″ of snow – 18 days.]

My Spring Break also encompassed St. Patrick’s day! While I am generally not into the Irish-mania we have here in the U.S. of A, where everyone and their mother claims to be 110% Irish, I do like excuses to drink good beer. Which brings us to the next stage of this blog post:

Taco’s Beer Adventure

Do not build this up in your head, it is not anything amazing. But it was an adventure in my book. And yes, we are back to talking about beer for the second time in the same post, I say again, deal with it. 😛

So remember how I’ve basically been raving about Dogfish Head throughout a myriad of blog posts lately? And how I started my quest to drink all four members of their legendary IPA quartet? Well, I’ve made progress AND I’ve learned something kind of big.

There are not four Dogfish Head IPAs, there are five.

If you remember correctly, here is the legendary Dogfish Head line-up as I believed it to be:

60 Minute IPA – 6% ABV
75 Minute IPA – 7.5% ABV
90 Minute IPA – 9% ABV
120 Minute IPA – 15-20% ABV

Well, it turns out that there is a “weird half-brother” to the quartet above, Dogfish Head Sixty-One. Yes, Sixty-One, not 61, but Sixty-One spelled out. I’ll explain why its spelled out later.

In addition to learning that the quadruplets were in fact quintuplets, I learned about more about the mythical “God Among Beers” the 120 Minute IPA. Turns out, that shit is as much as 13$ for ONE TWELVE OUNCE BOTTLE. Yes, 1300 PENNIES FOR 12OZ OF BEER. Now, this doesn’t mean I won’t have it, oh I shall. Beer is literally the only thing I treat myself to anymore besides a date night with SB. So its really the only “me me me” thing I have. [For disclosure, I haven’t paid money for a video game in years, I ask for gift cards at Christmas and buy so few video games that I don’t even use up all the card before the next Christmas, its a good system because it allows me to buy games I never would otherwise because of the money, same goes for comics, there is no way I can afford them right now, so I ask for them at Christmas!] So I will have the 120 minute IPA. But I’m going to wait until LRW is over. I’m not sure if I’ll have it that same night, or wait until that Friday (because I have another presentation worth 20% of my grade in another class due the day right after my final LRW project), but that is when I will have it. Until then I will “settle” for the other Dogfish Head IPAs. That said, if you’d like to donate to the Taco 120 Minute IPA Fund, please feel free, since its the most expensive beer I will have ever tried in my life. 🙂

Of course, here is the thing, micro-brews are not always easy to find. This is especially true when you are looking for a lesser-known variety of a line that is already not super common (Dogfish Head’s IPA series). Most people, or rather most people who drink more than Coors Lite, know about Dogfish Head’s 60 Minute IPA, and they’ve also seen the 90, even if they haven’t footed the bill for the pricey four pack. Once you get into Sixty-One, 75, and 120 territory, then things get a bit tricky. Case-in-point, I didn’t even know about Sixty-One until St. Patrick’s day. So when you set out to find these brews, its not as simple as going down to the corner store and picking up a six pack (of which only the 60 Minute exists in). In fact, many specialty stores won’t even carry anything outside of the 60 or the 90. So my initial search had failed.

Enter SB, who actually found that Dogfish Head has their own “Fish Finder.” To help you out, since, by their own admission, it can be hard to find a fair bit of their stuff outside of Delaware. Armed with my new tool I quickly realized that Sixty-One, 75, and 120 weren’t anywhere near where I regularly shop. Fun. The 120 Minute is nestled in a liquor store right in the middle of a HUMONGOUS homeless person civilization (Central Square in Cambridge – its really not that bad, but its a prime spot to get badgered by homeless people, ESPECIALLY if you have booze). Sixty-One was a bit further away still. And the 75? Only two places in the ENTIRE CITY had received a delivery in the past 60 days. Having decided that I wanted to save the 120 for after LRW, and since it was St. Patrick’s day, I wanted to give the 90 I had in the refrigerator some company, and thus my quest to get both Sixty-One and 75 was born.

The destination? A Shaw’s Star Market in the Back Bay of Boston. 3.8 miles of busy afternoon public transportation away. For Great Justice, For Great Beer.

I swung through the Harvard Square Starbucks where SB was working on a paper, took some drinks of her coffee and borrowed her transit pass and then I was on my way to the Red Line. From there it was on to the Green Line.

Luckily I was only go as far as Copley Square, so I didn’t have to take the Green Line to the point where it drives on the street with the cars, which is annoying since you have to obey the traffic lights. While you don’t ever have to look to hard to see Boston’s rich Irish heritage, it was especially easy on St. Patrick’s day. Pretty much my entire trip via the subway was accompanied by various musicians performing Irish music, most of them quite good. I obviously wasn’t there to see it, but the Dropkick Murphys even performed a free, extemporaneous concert out at Logan Airport on St. Patrick’s day prior to boarding their flight.

I had never been to Copley Square before, it is a nice contrast of old and new, like most of Boston actually.

That’s the Trinity Church and the John Hancock Tower, I’ll leave it up to you to guess which is which (the Boston Public library is right across the street, and when I went by there was a CRAZY GOOD beat-boxer performer out in front of it). From here on out it was just my feet and the streets. I impressed myself by not needing my phone, my brain must have absorbed the Google maps fairly decently.

Fortunately it was a gorgeous day, at one point it even hit 50 degrees. So not having to have my toboggan on was nice, heck on the way back I didn’t even need my gloves!

Eventually I made it to the store (seen on the left above), found my way to the alcohol section (tucked in the back and up a flight of stairs, which I thought to be quite dumb) and panicked as I tried to find Sixty-One and 75. I kept looking and looking, but couldn’t find them. I knew the Sixty-One would be a four pack (as the 90 is) and that the 75 was a big ole’ bottle. But I couldn’t find them. Just as I was about to curse the fish finder, there at the back of the (quite large) beer section was an end-cap devoted entirely to Dogfish Head, and sure enough, there were Sixty-One and 75. They didn’t have 120, but the fish finder didn’t say they would anyways (and I am ok with that, as I am not sure I could resist drinking it for so long). Before leaving I picked up some unsweetened Cashew Milk which SB and I had been wanting to try but hadn’t found up until that point, and looked for some green food coloring, but that was obviously entirely sold out.

Afterwards, it was back the way I came, just this time with beer and milk, which got heavy nice and quick. The return was fairly smooth, it took me a minute or two to find the Green Line station going inbound instead of outbound, since they were further apart than the station entrances normally are. But after that it was primarily just dealing with the afternoon crowds of people ready to go home and drink for St. Patrick’s day. When I came up out of the Red Line it was POURING RAIN and super windy. The weather forecast did not call for that, at all. So I sprinted into Starbucks to see SB and return her transit card and also to give myself time to get my umbrella out without getting drenched. She decided to just go ahead and come home with me since quite a bit of time had passed. Once we got back outside the rain had mostly turned into a drizzle, but the wind was still howling. I think our umbrellas inverted 4-5 times on the way home. But the beer survived, and thus all was well in the world.

I’ll be sure to take a full family quintet photo once I have a bottle of the 120 as well.

If you were anticipating me describing the beer (I doubt you were, but pretend) then you’ll need to wait for my next post. So far I’ve only had the Sixty-One, and I’d like to cover both the 75 and Sixty-One in the same post. I will go ahead and post my St. Patrick’s Day green Sixty-One, for the spirit of the season.

It was a productive St. Patrick’s day evening. SB was still working on her paper and I spent a fair bit of the night fixing our coffee maker. When we moved something happened to it and.. like.. crystals formed inside of it. No not meth, or if It was meth I want a refund because I didn’t lose any weight or feel magical. Vinegar wouldn’t fix it, and I couldn’t figure out how to get inside since its one of those single-cup varieties. Eventually we just gave up since the filters were catching (most) of the crystals and we weren’t dying. Well, the other day the crystals hit another high point and so I raged and launched a conquest against the coffee maker which resulted in it being in pieces and a disturbingly large amount of crystal-dirt-muck being removed from the coffee maker. It was really almost gag inducing. But its now clean as a whistle and the coffee tastes much less bitter, it also works without as much steam. The only downside is that the top part doesn’t hold itself open so you have to hold it up while you put the filter in. Those tiny little springs were not designed to ever be removed by a human.

It also got much, much colder. I’m talking a drop of about 30 degrees in one night. The wind was also crazy, throughout the night the 60mph gusts just keep coming and coming. Of course we still weren’t as bad as nearby Mt. Washington, where the temperature on the peek felt like -58 degrees and the wind was constantly around 98mph with gusts of up to 102mph. Yeah, that made our apartment sound much nicer.

But that is enough for now, I’ll keep you updated on the Dogfish Head situation, have no fear. My next check-in will probably be once my “Spring Break” is either over, or almost over, which sadly will come much sooner than I would like. Tomorrow I’m going to have lunch with SB, then go to a cafe to get a bit of reading done before my weekly physical therapy appointment. But for what remains of this evening, its aimlessly browsing the internet and beer, I was productive this afternoon and this blog post took away, so I’m done for today.

Until next time,
-Taco

P.S. – In the belated spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, I present the following note from my beer calendar:

The Spanish Inquistion

December 4, 2014 by Taco

A Victim of the Spanish Inquisition – I found multiple attributed artists, if you own the copyright don’t sue me, just tell me to take it down.

So I almost went with the Monty Python joke, but it was just too obvious, even for me.

Anyways, if you were expecting some big historical post about the Spanish Inquisition, then you will be disappointed. But my guess is that you weren’t, so you won’t, unless you are, then sorry-not-sorry. While the real inquisition has all sorts of fun nasty bits, I have my own fun nasty bit to share. I had to have another EMG. I’ll get to what that is in a moment, but for now I’ll say that is not something that you generally want to be having another one of.

Since moving out here I’ve continued seeking medical assistance for my legs (and also for the numb/painful spot on my upper back, an old symptom, but a recent addition to the medical pursuit). Due to some stupidity with obtaining my student ID before classes actually started it took me a bit to see my general doctor, who I ended up really liking. We talked for over an hour about things and she seemed genuinely interested. She wanted me to start with seeing one of the neurologists. So I went to schedule that, naturally the earliest I could get in was 2.5 months away. Fun. So I waited, like I have waited for 4 years. But the day finally came and I went to see Mr. Neurologist and… he turned out to be one of the biggest douchebags (if not the biggest) I have ever met in the medical profession. I absolutely cannot stand the guy. However, the flip side is that he actually did a few basic tests that no one had ever done in four years, not once. I’m talking stuff like testing my reflexes in my legs. Yeah, stuff that basic was never done. “SURE LETS CUT YOU OPEN AND TEAR YOUR MUSCLES IN HALF, BUT LETS NOT TEST YOUR REFLEXES FOR BASIC NERVE ISSUES, NOPE” To be fair, I don’t think I ever requested a basic reflex test, but I’m not the doctor. However, I did make the request for them to look at my spine, many, many times and no one ever would. It took me 1.5 years just to get them to do an MRI of my legs. And that only came after half a dozen other tests, some of them being done more than once. So anyways, this neurologist, who I’ve taken to calling Dr. Douchebag, has as Meem has put it, “No bedside manner,” but he seems medically competent. So he looked over my old EMG and didn’t like a few things about how the test was done, based on my specific symptoms. So he ordered another one, fun. However, he also agreed with me, by not agreeing with me, I know that doesn’t make much sense, but Dr. Douchebag has a way of being an asshole even when he is listening to you. Anyways, he thought a spinal MRI would be a good move. He also went even further and ordered a MRI of my brain as well. Uh, ok, I guess. I don’t have much objection since my cell phone poops radiation into me all day long anyways and MRIs don’t even use radiation, but the brain had never been mentioned before. So, end of appointment, Dr. Douchebad told me: “Go get this EMG on your legs, go get both these MRIs, each with contrast, also I have a tiny peen.”

So I was off to research my insurance. I have insurance through my school. My school pays for it because I am poor. When you pay 20,000$ a month for a 10×10 apartment with little income, you are poor. Point being, I really, really needed to know what my insurance would cover. The good news is that in-network, which was basically anything my school is a part of (which is a lot, like, a lot a lot), almost everything is covered 100%, including EMGs and MRIs. Out of network you are pretty much boned, but neither of the places I needed to go was out of network, so I kept the appointments.

The thing is, this is also my last week of classes before exams, and I had a myriad of other law school related appointments to deal with. I did NOT want to deal with this crap during exams, so I needed to bunch three tests into one week. The MRI came first. Turns out, I can’t do the MRIs all in one day. I have to have two different contrasts (The guy on the phone was oh-so-reassuring when he was like “I guess that shouldn’t be a problem, are you healthy?” – Why yes I am, I am just so healthy I like getting blasted with magnets and loud noises for 5 hours in a small tube). So I have to go sit in the machine for 2.5 hours, twice and get an IV each time. Those were scheduled for Thursday (the day of this post) and Friday consecutively, even at the same time. Next up was the EMG. This one would only work in the early morning and it was even further away than the MRI. Anyways, everything was scheduled and insurance was supposedly good (we’ll see, insurance companies are profoundly stupid).

EMG day arrives, more aptly titled “The Day Taco was a Moron and Returned to the Dungeon of Spanish Inquisition.” The good news was that SB took some time off from her placement to come with me. The last time I got this done I had some trouble walking afterwards. Which brings me to my next point. What is an EMG? While, it stands for Electromyography, but that doesn’t mean anything to you, or me. In plain English it means, 1. I will shock you with a taser 100+ times and then 2. After shocking you 100+ times I will stick electrified needles into your muscles and then smash them in deeper and ask you to flex that muscle. Oh yes dear friends, they move the needle around inside you.

So to recap: Electrocution, Needles with Electricity. Sign up sheet is on the table.

Now they don’t just do this on legs, they can do it on most areas of your body, including arms (as I would soon find out). But last time I had it done, it was just my legs.

But backing up a bit. We actually missed the first of the buses we were intending to take to the hospital, luckily the second bus was early, so while it didn’t move until it was on schedule, we at least got to sit in it instead of the cold, cold outdoor places. It was nice because the bus we took is actually the same bus I’ll take tomorrow and Friday, since it goes right by the MRI place. Anyways, we pushed it very close time wise, in fact we were just a little late, but late is still early for medical appointments.

That is not the actual part of the hospital I was in, but that is the original building that the rest of the hospital (which is massive) grew around. Anyways, once we got into the room (SB included). The test person, who I think was still in residency came in and we got started. She was very nice and willing to explain things a lot more clearly than my last EMG person. Of course she was also nice enough to tell me that EMGs are apparently way worse when you are young and healthy. The older you get the less and less they actually feel like torture. She also told me that Dr. Douchebag had requested an EMG on my right arm (for my back issue) as well.

Wat.

Yeah he never told me that, I never said “Ok, yeah lets shock my arm too!” It was not until I was half-naked in my stylish hospital gown that I was told that 3/4 of my appendages would be tazed repeatedly and then have a multitude of needless mashed in them. Sweet.

But I went with it. Because I was there, and I figured, why not. So the test gets underway and yeah, I really don’t need to go through the process. It should be fairly obvious it kind of sucks. I will say though, SB managed to not pass out during the needle part. But she was also burning holes in the stuff she was reading. She was actually planning on leaving when the attending doctor and the resident sort of just came in and started treating me like pin-cushion. But I survived and it turns out.. there is no big issue. Basically, there is some very mild slowing in my peroneal nerve on the left side. This is is sort of similar to what they found last time, except it was even less pronounced this time. They were pretty clear that this amount of slowing would likely not create symptoms, let alone symptoms of my level. Also, the right side was fine. My arm was also fine. In a nutshell, there is a little bitty issue in my left peroneal nerve, but there is no conceivable way that it would cause issues to my level. Plus, my right leg has no such issue. If this is a neural issue, its at the very least not something that an EMG is going to show.. or its coming from nerves that aren’t in my legs. My arm had no issues and she thought it (my back) sounded more like a muscular (myofascial) issue than a neural issue.

So another EMG down, similar results to last time, except even less pronounced. Answers: Nada – Story of my last four years.

After the EMG I ate a snack bar since I had foolishly not eaten a large enough breakfast. We then went and walked around the neighborhood (Mission Hill) towards the Longwood Medical Area.

..containing none other than Harvard’s Medical School (one of the University’s three Crown Jewels, any guesses on the other two?). I’ve been told its the best medical school in the world. A very quick look on Google seems to confirm that. Look at all that surprise no one has. In fact, the hospital I had just came from (which is literally right next to HMS) is one of the teaching hospitals for HMS. Speaking of the hospital, this is the back side of the old part of it, I thought the metal spiral staircases were really cool, made me think of my Pappy.

Immediately behind the back of the hospital.. confusing but that is the best way to say it. Was the back of the first (and oldest and most coo) building in the medical school complex. So in front of the back is the back of the front. Follow? Good. Its name is “Gordon Hall.”

Upon entry we realized there was a guard and you had to show a Harvard ID. My guess is because of the medical stuff, patients and things, and meeses. I had one, SB also sleekly used her Harvard library card (which also works to get Harvard student discounts – people don’t seem to notice the LIBRARY part written right on the front – good for us). I’m glad we went in, rather than going around. First it was a bajillion degrees warmer in there. Second, it was a gorgeous old building AND they had holiday decorations! (unlike the boring lawyers at the law school, which has equally nice facilities – if not nicer – but about as much spirit as a rock in a septic tank).

On the second floor next to some portraits of guys I don’t know they have a statue of Hermes who his rocking is naked self.

To be truthfully honest, I have no idea why they have a statute of Hermes.

[History Mode Engage]

Here is my guess. Hermes was a messenger for the Greek Gods. However, he also had the lesser known tasks of conducting souls into the afterlife, likely to Elysium (for awesome people), Asphodel (for normal mundane people) or maybe even the Blessed Isles (for ultra awesome people who were reborn three times and achieved Elysium all three times). Hermes was similar to Charon (or as you may know him “The Ferryman”, also from Greek Mythology but Charon is more associated with taking people across the Rivers Styx and Acheron to the Fields of Punishment (bad people) or possibly even Tartarus (think of it as a Hell within Hell, yeah it sucks that bad)). So, what I’m getting at, is that maybe they have a Hermes statute because he helped people cross over with John Edwards. But honestly that seems a little morbid for a medical school. It could also be that Hermes later came to be associated with Alchemy (and thus medicine), however, this is a tenuous connection at best since it involves Hermeticism which takes its name not from Hermes but rather Hermes Trismegistus, a loosely-defined ancient Greek dude-god-person who might have himself just have been based on an altered version of Hermes – thus bringing us to erroneous circular logic.

Also interesting, the statute did not have the Caduceus, which he is normally pictured with. Yes, the Caduceus is that “medical staff” you have seen before. Of course what great is that its not the right staff. Yeah, literally Caduceus represents trade, eloquence, trickery, and negotiation, things Hermes was known for, NOT medicine. So where does that staff come from? The Rod of Asclepius. This rod takes its name from Ascelpius, the Greek god of Medicine, and also the son of Apollo, the God of healing (among many other things). Yeah, see that makes a lot more sense. Thought to be fair, it is said that Apollo is the one who gave Caduceus to Hermes, so that might lend a tiny bit of credence to it being a healing item. You’ll notice that the two staffs/rods are fairly similar though, so you can’t fault people too much (aside from the fact that this mistake is hugely common in the United States, even among professionals). Oddly enough Motley Crew sort of combined them both, so in some ways they did a better job than a lot of hospitals.

Anyways, you’d think Harvard would know all this. My guess is that they do, since they didn’t order a Hermes with Caduceus, probably to avoid such misinterpretations. Or maybe they just didn’t want the staff and were fine with the peebob. Ultimately I have no idea, but if I had to guess, I’d rest on my “conductor of souls” theory (blended in a bit with Caduceus being given to Hermes by Apollo), since Hermes really had nothing to do with medicine, though he was known for helping mankind out in spite of what the other Gods (namely Zeus) said.

[History Mode Offline]

We then moved to the front of Gordon Hall, which is actually at the head of the complex.

Then the view looking back towards Gordon once we walked down towards the street.

It was a nice campus, I’m sure it looks better when everything isn’t dead. Except the grass, that must be some of that magical cold weather grass. Or maybe its Soylent Green grass style, I’d imagine HMS would have plenty of materials for that.

After seeing the main part of HMS, we decided we were hungry. We headed back down towards where we got off the bus to place called Penguin Pizza.

We had found it online the night before, and honestly we were drawn to it simply because of Valentino and his love of eating penguins. No really, that was pretty much the entire reason we went.

The problem was that it was still early for lunch and they hadn’t opened yet, additionally, around this time all my muscles decided it was time to start getting really stiff and sore. I guess that happens when you are repeatedly shocked and poked. But we were close enough to opening time that we just stuck it out in the cold, I’m glad we did.

As you can see the inside of the place was fairly eclectic. I loved all the beer signs that were all over the place, I mean literally, ALL over the place. Our table even had a nice view of the cold world outside.

We ended up going with some wraps instead of pizza, SB had the Turkey Club and I the Chicken Pesto, both were mighty fine.

About this time I really started to feel not well. My stomach was happy, but my legs and arms and really my whole body (my back was quite sore as well) decided it was time to not move. So we started the process of heading home, which involved waiting on the bus, but luckily the wait wasn’t terrible since my fingers and toes were starting to die as usual (in spite of my double socks and gloves).

After that we came home and pretty much ended up either being asleep, or half asleep on the couch for a large chunk of the afternoon. We still had stuff to do, of course, which made for a busy night, but by bedtime my body felt like I had been beaten up with crowbars. Today honestly wasn’t a whole lot better, I’m hoping tomorrow will see some improvement. I actually don’t remember hurting this much last time, but I also received more shocks and electrified pokes this time, and I also received them over a much larger surface area of my body. I’m also more stressed in general (exams are next week) which probably made my muscles tense up more which electrocuted (trust me, your limbs flail across like crazy during an EMG).

So anyways, that is all I have for now. This post ended up WAY longer than I was planning for it to be. When it gets posted tomorrow I should have (hopefully) just finished MRI one of two.

Until Next Time,
-Taco

P.S. On a lighter note, here is a decorated tree near the law school, the squirrels use the lights as quasi zip-lines, no really.

[Update 1: First MRI down. They did my Lower Spine and Brain today. Tomorrow is more spine and maybe more brain, I dunno, after four years you honestly stop caring as much about the details as long as you know the insurance and level-of-pain-involved situations. The worst part was that when they do your brain they lock your head into this little contraption so you can’t listen to music. That pretty much sucked. But the head lock did have a mirror to let you see out the tube, which was cool.The buses were also about 25 minutes behind schedule when I went to go home.

Update 2: Second MRI down. Today was Upper Spine and Neck. It was a bit more claustrophobic today because they used this thing that locks your neck in place but it does not have a mirror like the head lock. More importantly, I was on my stomach so I couldn’t really see anything. There was a bit of a panic attack during the first few minutes, but I calmed myself out of it and got it done. They placed the IV in the same arm and vein as yesterday since the machine is not setup for the other arm, so my left arm is now majorly sore, in addition to the rest of my body, which has been sore since the EMG. But I’m done. 1 EMG and 2 MRIs in 4 days, thanks you, (don’t) come again.]

Exploring a New Zoo

October 23, 2014 by Taco

So I like animals, that should sort have been fairly obvious by now. By extension I also like seeing animals, and when you live in a city one of the best places to see animals is a zoo. Its no secret that my all time favorite zoo so far is the Columbian Park Zoo. In fact I wrote pretty much an entire post about it. Columbian Park Zoo is not big, nor do they have a wide variety of animals, but there is just something special about it.

Boston has a zoo as well, the Franklin Park Zoo. However, like most things in Boston, its a little bit too steep for SB and I to afford (looking at you New England Aquarium). This time around I couldn’t cabbage onto some free tickets, but our tickets came from another source. Knowing our love of animals, MIL and FIL purchased our tickets for us. Pretty cool. It took us a bit to get out there, but I’m definitely happy that they purchased the tickets for us and that we went.

My overall opinions on the zoo were a bit mixed, but I’m going to walk you through our adventure before I talk about that.

As usual, I’ve omitted a lot of stuff for the sake of time and space.

—

We had been planing on going to the Zoo this past Saturday (9/13) for a little over a week. The weather was looking good so we were pretty stoked. As always happens the sunny sky forecast turns into rain right beforehand. I have never regretted how quickly I abandoned my plans to be a meteorologist. We had all but decided not to go, but SB decided to check the weather one more time (this is the day of) and it turns out they had pushed the rain back to the evening. Well, by this time were were about 2 hours behind where we should have been. But, not ones to miss animals, we took it upon ourselves to make it down to the zoo. It was gray skies, but animals are animals.

The trip itself was a bit of an adventure and took a fair chunk of time. There was no real straight shot to get there via public transportation, it was either a combination of bus/train or bus/bus. We opted for the bus/bus route and between waiting on the first bus, the layover at the bus station and then the second bus trip, it was a bit over 75 minutes before we got there. By this point it was almost 3pm and the zoo closes at 6pm. The good news is that it was not raining.

From where the bus dropped us off it was only a short walk to the zoo.

The main gate was sort of similar to the gate at the Berlin Zoo, I doubt that was intentional, but considering that they are both old zoos (Franklin: 1912, Berlin: 1844), who knows. This is actually the “Zebra Gate” entrance.

We went through, turned in our tickets then began looking for a place to eat. We had planned the day rather poorly I suppose and were both hungry. The plan was go eat, then explore, but we got pretty much instantaneously sidetracked by the animals.

The first up were some warthogs, which were running in big circles chasing each other, it was kind of funny. Next to them were some African Crested Porcupines, one of which was sleeping.

We pulled ourselves (read: me) away from those critters and took off for food. We thought we had found it, but ended up turning down the wrong path (or maybe I did it intentionally), which led us straight into a prairie dog kingdom.

I had never in my life seen so many prairie dogs in one place. It. Was. Awesome. I mean, I liked the prairie dogs at Columbian Park Zoo, but there were just so many here. I was getting all up and personal with them, then I noticed the sign that said to keep off the wall, whoops. Shortly after that we got back on track to find food, which took us through a barnyard area. Lots of zoos seem to have these, sure they aren’t very exotic, but I still like them. I especially liked the Nigerian Dwarf Goat, who was chilling out in the food bin.

After that we finally made it to the food place for noms. We didn’t stay long since time was ticking away and every once in awhile we felt a stray raindrop. One of our first stops as we made a big circle around the park was the tigers.

They also had a rare white tiger that wasn’t disfigured from inbreeding, but he (she?) was back towards the back and little difficult to see.

After that was the lion area. They had a cool thing one one wall where a safari jeep had “crashed” through the glass. You could go inside the jeep so that you were actually inside of the holding area, it was full of kids, but the lion wasn’t next to it anyways. It was a cool concept though. It reminded me of Jurassic Park for whatever reason.

The lion himself was sleeping, at least when we were there.

He definitely woke up later though, since we heard him roaring, which was pretty awesome (we were too far away to justify walking back though).

From the lion we went straight to the.. Camel?

Kind of an odd animal combo, except for the fact that this is a Bactrian Camel, which is from Asia. So his wooliness isn’t just because he is in cold ole’ Boston, in fact this is probably warm for him (Bactrians are primarily from Mongolia, for example). I always forget how huge camels are.

While watching the camel the train came by.

I’m honestly not sure if the train was free or cost money, but my guess is that it was free. The zoo covers a decent area and there is a large circular path (seen above) that sort of runs the gamut of the animals, the train takes you along the route if you are too lazy to walk (or unable).

We followed the train’s path which took us into one of the indoor areas. We actually came in the back door, which was totally fine and its even on the map, but it was not marked well. It looked like you were walking into a bunker or something. There were no soldiers inside the bunker though, just a big ole’ Tapir waiting for us.

There were a couple of birds in there with him and there was supposed to be a Capybara in there, but we seriously could not find it and oh did we try.

Near the Tapir was a Giant Anteater.

He did not cooperate and thus is sort of a giant blur. You can pretend he is Flash Anteater if you like. It was probably more to do with the low light and me not being good with cell phone cameras.

After this we came across a Potto, which I had never even heard of but was pretty awesome.

He apparently likes the dark too, which is why the pictures is hard to make out.

In the same building were some gorillas.

These are Western Lowland Gorillas. I learned something too. I always thought that “silverbacks” were an actual kind of gorilla, but it actually just refers to adult male gorillas of many different species. You can see what I mean in the above photo. They were playing with a stick, it was pretty funny.

Continuing on we found a Pygmy Hippopotamus, which are always awesome. He even had some duck friends.

In the next area was a Capybara.

That was about all I could see of him. Which is why I didn’t really explode with excitement when I mentioned it. He was just visible enough that you could tell he was a Capybara, but that was about it. This was actually the first of two disappointments I had. I won’t complain too much, though, since at least I did get to see one.

Near the elusive Capybara were some Tamarins, there was even a little bitty one that was just a couple of months old.

The baby is the one furthest right in the above photo.

About this time we crossed another viewing window for the gorillas, someone had decided it was sleepy time.

Just past the nap-nap gorilla was the Ring-Tailed Lemurs.

They are such cool creatures and they were really close to the glass. At one point a crowd of people with kids came in and the lemurs got very nervous, it was funny in its own kind of way.

We then excited the big building, through the main door this time. It was much nicer than the rear door.

Outside we saw one of my favorite creatures, which wasn’t actually an exhibit, the squirrel.

There were actually a ton of squirrels in the zoo, which isn’t really surprising since the zoo is park of the larger Franklin Park area, itself part of the (much) larger Emerald Necklace. Some of the squirrels were pulling ninja moves and running on walls and roofs.

By this time we had worked our way across the zoo and were near the “Giraffe Gate” entrance. There were supposed to be some Hyenas near that entrance, but they were either gone or not there yet, I’m not sure which (the map made it seem like they were there, but the sign said “Coming Soon.” The big “Bird World” was there and open though, they had a big dome you could walk through as the Condors and such flew around you.

Inside the Bird World building they had lots of little sections of birds, they seemed pretty happy, or maybe they were very angry and were screaming rather than singing.

They also had a Tawny Frogmouth. If you are like me, you have no idea what that is.

Its a bird, and yes, it looks like a frog. Its very, very weird. But I liked it regardless.

Outside were some Emus (SB’s ~~favorite~~ worst enemy), they had some Red Kangaroo buddies.

Near here was the COOLEST part of the entire day. They had a big netted hut-thing you could go in that was just FULL of Budgerigars (“Budgies”). It was AWESOME.

The zookeeper on duty gave us a little bit of food so that the Budgies (best name ever) swarmed us. It was cool because you normally have to pay 2$ to get the food, but since we the were only ones in there (the weather had kept the crowds away) I guess she decided to be extra nice. At one point I actually had 7-8 Budgies on my hand and arm, but neither SB or I had our phones accessible, so by the time I actually got my phone out several had left. The one furthest on my hand was my ULTRA BUDDY (Budgie) though, he stayed on there for a long time, best friends.

SB even got in the action and sometimes she is nervous about such things.

After exciting the Budgie house and seeing how far we could jump in comparison to an adult kangaroo (not far) the few pitter-patters of rain were increasing ever so slightly. We started making our way back towards the other side of the zoo, passing by the zebras.

And then the Masai Giraffes.

Technically it was “giraffe” only out of the three giraffes was actually out, I’m fairly sure it was due to the temperatures, which were unseasonably cold. One of their giraffes was massive (they had a sign up showing their height) and I mean massive, but it was one of the ones in their house.

We cut back through the barnyard area, there was a big cow in there that gave no cares about me sticking a camera up in its business.

Near here was the Red Panda house, but literally right as got there they were taking them in for the night. They have a camera where you can watch them inside, but with the door shut it was too dark (disappointment 2 of 2, Valentino was sad as well).

Things turned around quickly though, since after the Red Panda house we came to a building with sloths (two-toed). Commence SB freakout.

We then realized that the sloths had a baby, commence even bigger SB freakout.

Near the sloths was a turtle bro, getting him some noms.

Next to him was a smaller turtle bro, who was mad fascinated by SB and I, it was really cute.

Not everything was fun and games though, it was exercise times for the Degus.

The Skink wanted nothing to do with that though, he was chilling.

After that the rain was starting to come, but luckily we had pretty much made our rounds to we headed out. By this point I think we were one of like 5 visitors in the entire zoo, probably due to the weather and also they were closing (it was after 5:30). As soon as we left we found another squirrel.

We decided to take the bus to the train to get home this time, since it was a bit later. There was a bit of confusion about where the bus stop was (it was not marked) and I ended up having to sprint with my umbrella to make the bus, but I made it.

All in all, a good day with lots of animals buddies and Budgies.

—

So why the mixed opinion?

Well, it has to do with a few things.

First, while the zoo is in Boston, its in the neighborhood of Roxbury, which is a good ways down into south Boston. If you don’t know much about Boston geography, there are a lot of rough areas in south Boston. Granted, my ability to judge an area of a city as either “rough” or “not-rough” is rudimentary at best, but the “worst” areas of Boston are generally regarded as being in the south [I’m sure someone from Boston will read this and tear me to shreds, but I’m basing this on what I’ve heard so far]. Anyways, this is neither here nor there. My point is that the zoo was not in the best area of the city. This kind of diminished things as far as the trip as a whole goes. This was less important than the condition of the zoo itself though.

This is an old zoo, but more profoundly it is a zoo that has had a lot of financial trouble and has almost closed on more than one occasion. Back in the day and I mean way back (think 1910s and 1920s) when the zoo was free, it was quite popular, with over 2 million visitors per year. Its never recovered from becoming a pay zoo. In recent years admissions have been rising, but they are still only around 350,000. In light of this, the zoo apparently has a lot of financial issues, and it shows. The zoo as a whole seemed pretty worn down and some of the animal cages looked like they had not been updated in several decades. Only a few of the areas (namely the Flamingos) were what I would call full on bad, but I can’t say I was impressed with at least half of the areas. Some were pretty nice, it was pretty obvious which areas were new, or were at least renovated. But the zoo as a whole felt a bit dilapidated. The food was overpriced, limited, and just “meh” but you don’t really expect much from food at parks like that, so that isn’t much of an issue.

Tickets cost 17.95$ for adults, and similar to the New England Aquarium (which is 25$), I am not convinced that the zoo (or aquarium) justifies those prices. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy we went, but I’m not sure I could fully recommend the zoo at full price if someone asked. A reduced ticket or free admission (they have occasional free Fridays) would make it well worth the time though, and besides its not like the zoo can improve unless more people visit and spend money. The cool thing is that they give you a free admission if you fill out a survey, so both SB and I got two free tickets for filling out surveys, that is pretty cool. Additionally, all the employees (except for the food counter person, who was your typical apathetic food service person) were very friendly.

So, while Franklin Park Zoo did not supplant the Columbian Park Zoo for me, it was a fun day, even with the rather lackluster weather and the issues mentioned above. I’ll go back, especially since we have free tickets, but next time I’d like to go when the weather is a bit nicer and we can leave earlier in the day. I always loving seeing me some naminals.

Until next time,
-Taco

New England Aquarium

October 14, 2014 by Taco

[I’ve been meaning to write this post for literally one week, but just have not had the time thanks to school]

So I like animals, or naminals, or friends, whichever you prefer. This means I often go out of my way to see them.

In fact, just today [the day I write this post, 9/13] I actually got to pretend I was a chicken, of all things. There was a virtual reality thing at the law school where you go to be chicken, it was kind of neat. Of course it was put on by PETA so you got slaughtered at the end, but I still had fun. I think it was my first time ever doing virtual reality.

Anyways, I like naminals.

Here in Boston we have an aquarium, the New England Aquarium. While they get absolutely no points for originality of name, the aquarium itself was pretty boss.

However, its also very expensive. I’m talking, 25$ a person expensive. There is a small student discount, which brings the price down to 23$, but still, 46$ is just not something SB and I can really afford, even for friends. As such, we had pretty much written the aquarium off.

That is until my law school orientation came around. As part of orientation they were offering all sorts of little fun trips, all on the school’s dollar. These included things such as art museums, tours of Fenway park, trolley tours and most importantly, the aquarium. Heck, they even paid for your subway travel to and from the aquarium.

That is when Taco got an idea.

You see, orientation itself was four days long, and the trips were held on 2 of those four days, many of which were held on both days. So, I got a little sneaky. I went on the first day and got an aquarium ticket and a subway ticket. And then, you guessed it, didn’t go. After that.. you guessed it again, I came back the next day and did the exact same thing. This left me with 50$ worth of aquarium tickets, and 2 (there and back) trips into downtown Boston via the subway. A total value of about 60.60$ It might seem like I was being dastardly, but they never actually said you couldn’t go to a location more than once, nor did they say you actually had to go once you took the ticket. And since the tickets didn’t expire for over a year I figured SB and I could visit the aquarium when we had a chance. Lo’ and behold we went our very first Saturday.

(This was my first time using my new phone, which was my first ever smartphone, so some of the pictures aren’t all that great)

The building itself, which is rather odd looking, is located right down in Boston Harbor. In fact a lot of the water that the animals swim in (such as the penguins) is just filtered water straight out of the harbor, definitely efficient. Since we had special cool people tickets, SB and I got to avoid the MASSIVE line which was directly in the sweltering sun (it was about 90 degrees and humid that day). That was amazing, though I don’t think the people who watched us blow them by thought so.

Once you get inside you are pretty much immediately met with penguin friends (African Penguins).

The way the aquarium is laid out is actually pretty cool. The whole place is build around this large central column which is actually a huge tank. The penguins (all three varieties of them) surround the base of the big pillar. Pretty nifty.

Every once in awhile they turn on a sprinkler system for the penguins. I’m not sure if its just to keep the cool, wet, or to wash away the poop, but that guy above he was all about dat’ sprinkler.

They also had little itty bitty blue penguins (Little Blue Penguins), which I believe at the smallest kind of penguin (about 1/3 the size of an Emperor penguin).

SB was pretty much infatuated with them.

But so was I, so I can’t say much.

We also found Nemo.

And this guy…

..who was most definitely not Nemo, but I think he was awesome. I actually have no idea what kind of fish he was either, I couldn’t find him on the informational display.

This is one of the many angles you could look into that large central tank.

It was actually really pretty, especially since the top of the tank was open which allowed for some nice light rays to shine down through. There was also a diver in there cleaning things, but I didn’t get a good shot of him.

On the opposite side of the pillar was some crested (Rockhopper) penguins.

As we started to make our way up the spiral we encountered a gargantuan, straight out of hell lobster beast thing.

You can’t really tell it, but that thing was freaking huge.

As was this guy…

..because he was all up in my camera stealing my photo-space.

In the same tank was really cool polka-dot ray, I had never seen one of these before, not even on TV.

Near that tank were some sea dragons, which were really pretty and kind of like sea horses that have been mutated into super heroes/villains.

As we progressed higher we encountered an Eel.

He seemed buttmad about something, but the next person we saw:

Seemed very content with the world. I guess that happens when you are 120 years old.

Around this point we also encountered a dark room with some glowing jellyfish. I’ve always thought jellyfish were cool to look at, though I was horrified of being stung by them when I was younger.

Next up were some piranha buddies, who looked like they would have been more than happy to eat my face off for me.

Immediately adjacent to the piranhas were some jungle frogs, I actually played with one of them. Sadly I couldn’t touch them, but maybe they would have poisoned me and condemned me to a horrific death, so it might have been a good thing. But we played through the glass, he liked my finger.

Near the frogs was an electric Eel.

That sucker was huge. His tank was pretty cool. It had a meter hooked up to it that was measuring the voltage he was putting off and it changed from “Green” which was when he was just chilling and watching TV to “Red” where he was killing something. You could also put your hands on the panel and compare your output to his (Protip: You will lose).

Next up was the first of the “OMG YOU CAN TOUCH STUFF” rooms. Which allowed us to touch Star Fish, Urchins, a Flounder, and a small Horseshoe Crab.

They were all pretty nifty, (The Flounder was ultra slimy) but the urchins were weird. As soon as you got close to them they would grab your finger. They were sticky and poisonous. However, for whatever reason their poison doesn’t effect us at all. At least that is what the employee said. If I suddenly die, you know why. But yeah, they would grab you, since that is how they hunt fish. SB freaked out and scared a little kid next to her when she got grabbed, it was actually really funny.

We worked our way to the very top of the big central tank, which afforded us some good views looking down, including some sharks.

Of course by the time we made our way to the top, which took far far longer than it would for most people, it was time to go see the penguins get fed.

Of course the little blue penguins got fed as well, they were persnickety eaters though.

After that we headed outside for the Fur Seal, Sea Lion, and Harbor Seal training show.

By the time we got there it was really packed and we had a pretty distant seat. However the trainers made up for that by letting us get very up close and personal with the trainees.

Isac was a humongous guy (Northern Fur Seal).

The picture really doesn’t showcase how massive he was. I seriously thought it was a walrus at first, I am not joking. It was hilarious watching him waddle.

After the show everyone started getting a little sleepy.

Apparently this particular Sea Lion (I can’t remember her name, sadly) is known for sticking her tongue out when its nap-nap time.

As we made our way back inside for a snack (it was past lunchtime) we noticed one of the Rockhopper penguins had made himself King of the Hill, literally.

As we were eating lunch, we noticed a show being put on by the Harbor Seals. You can’t really tell it from this photo but they were painting pictures. I’m sure some rich animal activist in New York probably pays 20,000$ for them too. My phantom image hovers over the photo.

The last area of the aquarium was the larger “OMG YOU CAN TOUCH THINGS” area. It included rays and a few various kinds of sharks. Yep, sharks. There were even signs up warning you that you could get bitten, it was kind of funny. Of course I doubt people get bitten, at least not often. Naminals are more chill than most people realize if you go about existing with them in the proper ways.

As you can see from the photo above, it was pretty crowded. However SB and I were patient and managed to work our way up into a very good spot at the front of the line. You see what would happen is that the animals would start to swim towards you, then some kid (or adult) would start relentlessly thrashing and scare all of them away. So the key was to get in front of the plebs (as Tristen would say) so you could touch them before they got scared off.

That is me about to touch a ray.

And that is SB about to touch a little shark.

There were actually much bigger things in the tank, such as a massive whip-tail leopard ray which was just ginormous. There was also nurse sharks, full sized nurse sharks. We touched both things, but I didn’t get good pictures of them, so just believe me.

The rays felt like jelly blobs and the sharks felt like sand paper, it was pretty neat.

Under touchy room number two was another jellyfish exhibit. Some of them were really awesome, I got some cool pictures of them too.

And then some florescent ones:

And then some more glowing ones that were getting fed while we were watching them (all those particles are food):

They seemed very happy to get noms.

After that we had traversed the hole gamut. Like most of my posts I’ve left out several things, but it keeps the posts relatively short and also leaves some surprises should you ever go there yourself. (It also helps me go to bed earlier, since its about 1am as a I type this, haha.)

On our way back home it was still hot, which meant the subway stations were still hot, but overall I think it was actually a little better than it had been on the way down. In all, it was a really fun day, made even more so by the fact that my school had paid for literally everything except for lunch. I always love getting to see animals, especially when they are free (which is why I miss Columbian Park Zoo so much). On a similar note, MIL in FIL bought SB and I tickets to the Boston zoo, so you can expect a post on that sometime after we get a chance to go visit that bunch of friends. 🙂

Until next time,
-Taco

Back in the Boston Groove

(Halfway) 1L Spring Break

The Spanish Inquistion

Exploring a New Zoo

New England Aquarium

Search all of Dinosaur Bear

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