The past week

I'm currently at Daniela's apartment in Cambridge. I've always loved this area. Harvard Square has everything you could want: over-priced restaurants, punks hanging around the station, beggars, and pretentious students blocking the sidewalk. There's also a grocery store on Broadway, a movie theater nearby, Pinocchio's, and plenty of used bookstores. I was just reading 'Bend Sinister' on Daniela's broken couch while she took a post-breakfast nap in the other room. The couch should have spring-laden supports under the cushions, but the furthest one back has snapped in half, so you sink into the couch when you sit on it. It seems more like a rectangular bean bag chair now than an actual couch.

Why have I been in Cambridge for a week and how did I get here? Good question. Daniela had reserved Zipcars for my birthday and for the following Friday, unsure of which day she would actually drive out to see me. She wound up driving out to Greenfield on the 28th, the day before my birthday, but then forgot to cancel the Zipcar she had reserved for the weekend. If you try to cancel your Zipcar reservation within 24 hours they charge you the full cost anyway, so she drove out to Greenfield a second time, twice within 3 days. We hung out in Greenfield on Friday night and Saturday afternoon -- playing a little guitar hero, watching some Arrested Development, probably blazing although I can't remember, and waiting for a guy to buy some of our old furniture from the North End. I decided to come back with her to Cambridge and to stay until Monday morning (the 3rd). That was almost a week ago.

Daniela is still working at Dana Farber (although her last day is at the end of December) so I've had to keep myself busy during the day. On Monday I went to the Museum of Fine Arts to see the ukiyo-e paintings currently on display. As always, I was able to get in for free using my Brandeis student ID. That was key in deciding how I would spend my day by the way. Not receiving a regular paycheck makes doing things for free all the more appealing. I spent Tuesday reading 'The Time-Traveler's Wife' because Daniela was hosting a book club meeting that night and I wanted to participate. I only got through the first 100 pages (it wasn't a great book), but meeting Daniela's friends was cool and Daniela had bought a ton of food. There may have been 10 of us, but I was the only guy in attendance. I forced everyone in the room to agree with me by challenging them to arm-wrestling matches.

On Thursday I returned to the MFA and spent most of my time looking at Roman and Greek art. Thursday was the third night of Hannukah and Dave and Kelly decided to throw a party at their place in Brookline. Daniela brought matzoh ball soup, Vanessa made rugulah, and we made latkes. Add wine and dreidels for best results.

Based on my own experience, Jews simply cannot win at dreidel when goyim are playing. When we played during college, the only two non-Jews playing (Conor and I) easily dominated. Wait... was Santosh playing with us that time? I can't remember now. Anyway. This year, the first two people to be eliminated were Daniela and Dave. The only two Jews. Maybe it's some kind of cosmic lesson about humility. The lessons learned from playing dreidel are reserved for Jews only. I take pride in the fact that I was the third person out though. I guess after ACTUAL Jews, I was the next most-Jewish. God's people? Count me in. Or close anyway.

Last night Dana Farber held a holiday party at some hotel downtown. I had already met a few of Daniela's friends from work (Michaela, Katie, and Mara) but it was still intimidating. It shouldn't have been. All of her co-workers are great. It's actually kind of weird. Not a jackass in the bunch. I was drinking whiskey on the rocks all night. Now, that sounds like a manly drink (or so I was told several times throughout the night) but that's not at all why whiskey is my drink. In Japan, it was the most cost-efficient thing you could drink at a bar. Beer was usually expensive (or at least more so than liquor or sake) but there were quite a few cheap domestic whiskeys. So I've carried it back with me, and now I give off that man's man vibe (the beard helps) a little bit better. Dancing like a butterfly doesn't help that image, but I do like to dance. After D and I lost our buzzes and got tired and sweaty enough for one night, we turned in.

Actually, I just thought of an anecdote. Daniela's co-worker has a friend that said a lot of really nice things about me before we even met. "Oh, Benn looks really funny and clever, and you can just tell he's a great guy. The kind of guy I would like to marry. Do you think he would marry me?" Or something like that. It was like, funny and creepy only because she had never actually met me before. So, Daniela got a rape whistle from work, and I decided to wear it to the party in case this girl cornered me. It feels kind of mean now, but everyone who saw the whistle and asked about it thought it was pretty funny.

We'll probably finish the rest of this ficus (Seriously, this is great stuff) and catch a movie tonight. Expect me back in Greenfield on Monday.

Technorati tags: Hannukah, Cambridge, Dana Farber, Book Club