Kooooooz, as in San Diego Padres infielder Kevin Kousmanov, certainly had a good day in the park, Petco Park in Sandy Eggo that is this past Tuesday night. On my last night in my new favorite town on the Pacific side of things, my friend Mat Leese and I attended a game between the hometown Padres and the visiting Colorado Rockies (you know the guys we (the Red Sox) beat last year in the World Series) - courtesy of the conference organizers. Actually I think everyone who attended the conference was in the ballpark that night, and I wonder how empty the place would have been, had we not been there.
The game started off slowly, and Padres pitcher Randy Wolf kept zipping those fastballs across the plate for some stellar strike-outs, keeping the Rockies at bay, but the action started mid-game, and mostly due to Mr. Kousmanov's excellent baseball skills, the home team scored six runs in one inning, and the Rockies never recovered from that. It was a lovely evening, a "chilly" 60 degrees out there - amazing how quickly I got spoiled by the first 80-degree weather I encountered, and moped about the fact that it was "quite nippy" that night. Meanwhile folks in Boston were hiding under comforters on account of 40-degree weather. I am such a wimp.
You know what was great about this trip and this conference? Everything was walking distance - the conference center a short block and a half from the hotel, which in turn was located right in the historic gas lamp district, and the ball park literally 25 steps away from my hotel's front entrance. In addition, San Diego and the Gaslamp District offer some very nice meals - nothing topped the Persian meal at Bandar I wrote to you about last week, however, my dish of seared and peppered tuna in ponzu sauce with asparagus at the Ocean Room Oyster Bar (http://www.oceanroomsandiego.com/) looked so good, I had to take a photo of it. Even the garnish, an orchid, was edible and I know some friends of the orchid who would shiver at the thought that I eat precious flora such as this, but I just had to try. Another meal at Aqua Blu, also located on one of the Gaslamp's main drags, 4th Street (http://www.aquabluseafood.com/) was also high on the list of places to recommend for future SD visitors - even though the cod I ordered did not remind (or taste) at all of the state fish of Massachusetts, but as I was educated today in the seafood store across the street from my house in Cambridge, it may have been so-called black cod. Wikipedia confirmed it by saying it is "unrelated to the true cod and gets its name from the fact that it is a food fish. It is tasty to eat and is commercially fished". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_cod)
What did I not like about this trip? Standing on concrete floors in a conference centers all day - most of my work centers around the poster sessions and in the exhibit halls, I do have to talk to tons of people, and that means standing A LOT. The carpet is pretty much the thickness of a sheet of paper and I had to ice my feet every night, just to make sure that my heels would not get inflamed, and it did seem to do the trick.
The trip back, of course, did not go smoothly, since I seem to have acquired the ability to break planes. Remember the last conference I attended, when the plane did not even leave Logan Airport before it broke down? Well, this time it happened in Denver where I had to switch planes on my way to Boston and wouldn't you know it, same thing. We sat in the plane, and it never worked, we waited for a while until a new plane came in from Seattle and with a nice 4-hour delay I arrived in Boston, tired and most cranky. I have a gift, I tell you. If you see me on the same plane with you, be prepared.
That was Wednesday and Thursday my friend Birgit from Germany flew into town for a conference and joined Oscar and me at Casa Petra. We went for a meal at the King and I, one of my favorite Thai places in Boston, even though they did have an off night, and we needed to send a dish back (http://www.kingandi-boston.com/). After that it was off to Watertown to pick up Oscar at his vacation home with the Cooley family, and I almost did not make it there. I was so out of it from lack of sleep that I was halfway to Route 2 before I realized that that was not where I wanted to go.
Friday must have been one of the busiest days I have had in a long time, and I did not get to eat lunch until about 3 PM. It was nonstop all day, and I was glad to leave around 7 PM to join Birgit and her fellow conference attendees for some nice food and drink at the Parish Cafe on Boylston Street. Downtown Boston was a zoo, and no matter where you went, it was packed to the gills - the marathon is on Monday and there are conferences going on left and right, which means that there are probably an additional 30,000 people running around the city. We split up in two groups, got (as expected) excellent food and beer and everyone was happy (http://www.parishcafe.com/index2.html). All the sandwiches at the Parish Cafe are designed by chefs from renowned Boston restaurants, and that coupled with their beer selection is worth a try any day.
Today, after a very nice breakfast at Z Square (at Harvard Square in Cambridge - http://www.z-square.com/) - we toured Harvard Yard (http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Harvard+Yard&gbv=2) for a bit before hoofing it up to New Hampshire, in particular Franconia. We arrived here early afternoon, and after resting on the porch with the greatest view ever, we headed down back toward Franconia Notch and The Basin - http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&q=Franconia+Notch+The+Basin. We had a nice little hike planned, and whereas everywhere else it was sunny and hot (yes, spring has sprung everywhere and in Boston the magnolia trees are heading into full bloom), we needed our stabilicers (http://www.32north.com/prod_stab.htm) to walk on lots of snow. There was tons of postholing going on (sinking into the snow knee-deep) and the snow melt was so strong that we had to readjust our hiking plans. Cascade Brook was so powerful and out of control, that we would have not been able to cross it at all (which is what the hike required) For those of you who do whitewater rafting, these were class 5 rapids! It was stunningly beautiful though, and we did have a nice hike, which was celebrated later with a nice home-cooked meal (organic salmon with roasted fingerling potatoes and zucchini, snap peas, and a prime salad with a made-from scratch vinaigrette courtesy of Birgit).
Time to go to sleep now, I am pretty tired and we want to head over to see the Presidentials tomorrow. We learned that the Cog Railway up Mt Washington runs all year around, and maybe we'll take a little trip. I am a member of the observatory and maybe we'll even get a tour. Stay tuned for further updates.
Ready for some zzzzs.
pet:)
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