Ponder: The Reading List

The Reading List ©2021 is the debut novel of Sara Nisha Adams. It is most definitely appropriate for bibliophiles who have likely read the majority of the novels scribed on the list. I have read most, and those that I have not red, I am inspired to do so soon. A 17 year old girl Aleisha lives with her 25 year old brother Aiden and their mother Leila. Their father has left the family, reason undisclosed, and lives with his second wife and a second set of children. Aleisha works in a small town library at a job inherited from her brother, and becomes fascinated with a list of books left in a text she is about to reshelve. Mukesh is an elderly widower, lonely and grieving from the loss of his wife of fifty years, who died less than two years ago. He does have three caring grown daughters but strikes up a friendship with Aleisha as she recommends books for him to read and they share their thoughts and impressions.

The plot line is straightforward and not very convoluted. The action is too slow for my taste so I rate this book 3 stars, less than the 4.4 stars of Amazon. I found driving forward through the text was a function of my desire to see what happens to the plethora of characters within and how their relationship with each other morph. Curiosity about plot progress definitely took a back seat since the pace was so slow. The front flap of The Reading List describes it as “A love letter to some of our most cherished novels…”. 

Admittedly, pseudo-love letter that the book is, I am inspired to read or revisit many of the eight novels on the list. I would like to read To Kill A Mockingbird and Rebecca again. I would like to avoid reading Pride and Prejudice again; I watched the movie and found that dull enough. I was not fond of the movie Life of Pi but now I am curious if the book is better – books usually are. I am willing to skip Little Woman but will definitely seek out The Kite Runner, even though The Reading List  repeatedly references how sad it is. Add Beloved and A Suitable Boy and I certainly have my reading future scoped out for me! I have never even heard of those final two but I plan to seek them out.

The author adds a personal reading list of her own after the final pages of her novel. I will research these a bit more before adding them to my to-read list. Since I was only moderately pleased with this Adams' debut novel, I am not going to commit to other books of her taste without a bit of prior exploration. The final entry by Ali Smith did rouse my interest. The title is as stated; there is no noun after the "the".

Because of a lagging plot but strong emotional character involvement with a sprinkling of drama, I rate The Reading List

★★★☆☆ Better than average; not a waste of time

Ponder: the Soul of an Octopus

The Soul of an Octopus ©2015 by Sy Montgomery was on my daughter-in-law Carrie's book club list as their April selection. I did not make that April goal but I checked it out of my Livermore Library mid-May, and renewed it once. Still not finished, I was not allowed to renew it a second time because there was a waiting list for the book. Nevertheless I was determined enough to complete it, that I took it with me to Oklahoma, even though it was due two days before I returned. I was willing to pay the accrued fine for those two days so I could finish the book instead of returning it and being on a waiting list to check it out again. I reasoned that as a captive audience on a plane, I would be more inclined to progress beyond the first two chapters I had read (and re-read) up to that point. Unfortunately I was more inclined to do nothing but sleep on the plane instead (or try to sleep). That was true of the return flights, also. This book has miles on it!

But I did complete this book in late June within the two days immediately after my return from travel, sitting cozily in the comfort of my blue leather chair-and-a half in the corner of my family room. So was this book bad? No. If it were, I would have quit. The facts and information in it were fascinating and it was written in first person so I did become engaged. 

Despite the title, the Soul of an Octopus is non-fiction. Although there are mini-stories throughout, it lacks a strong page-turning plot. The characters are both mollusks and humans and it was engaging to learn about the personalities of each  unique creature in a tank or about each caring person on the dedicated team of the New England Aquarium in Boston where most, but not all, of the story enfolds. The parts in the New England Aquarium brought back strong feelings for me. The aquarium opened in June of 1969 right around the time of the first landing on the moon by the crew of Apollo 11. Our country was exploring in space and under the ocean and I was about to begin my undergraduate college years 1971-1975 of learning at MIT in Cambridge, adjacent to Boston. I remember strolling up that spiral ramp for the GOT Giant Ocean Tank. The crew in this octopus book referred to it often in their daily routines.

The first two chapters were about two octopuses in particular, Athena and Octavia. (Yes, the plural of octopus is octopuses and not octopi.) The text is crammed with technical details about the nervous system and anatomy of an octopus. Most animal bodies are ordered with head (where the brain is housed), torso, then limbs; octopuses are ordered with the head (and brain) sandwiched between the limbs and the body with extensions of the brain reaching into the limbs. Biological facts were marvelous but so also was the behavior of the octopuses.  The author would extend her arms into the tank toward them and they would embrace her by curling their tentacles around her forearms and pseudo kissing her with the suction cups. (In the acknowledgements section at the end of the book, the author thanks her husband for putting up with her "octopus hickies".) Octopuses are curious, clever creatures and need to be challenged mentally with puzzles and dexterity tasks such as unscrewing the lids on jars and putting the lids back on. 

The first chapters in the book are titled with the name of three distinct octopuses and so I was lead to believe each chapter would be about an octopus. I was wrong.  Perhaps this misconception is what caused the temporary stall in my reading beyond Chapter Two. Even though a book promotion text cites "gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma", there is more content than these four mollusk personalities. Subsequent chapters addressed mating habits, care for eggs, and visiting octopuses in their wild habitat. The female octopus is capable of housing the sperms of the male for long periods until she produces eggs and is ready to fertilize them herself. My biology teacher friend Sue who lives in the Boston area would love this book both for the creature detail and the locale where the story(ies) unfold. I myself grew attached (no pun intended) to each of the octopuses. I was aware that they have a limited life span but my involvement was strong enough I still shed a few tears when a life ended.

The author Sy Montgomery is brutally honest in her struggles to learn scuba diving, so intense was her desire to see these creatures in their natural environs. My son's wife Carrie would empathize. From what she told me about a tethered companion dive on their honeymoon in Bora Bora, she clung to her scuba instructor's arm so tightly she probably restricted his circulation. These experiences made me think of my son Dan who wanted to learn to scuba dive and so we enrolled him in classes at the youngest age allowed, thirteen. He would most likely be able to relate to those chapters of the book revealing the author's feelings, challenges, and determination. The next photos are from his qualifying dives, four of them, on Mother's Day weekend 1996 in Monterey, CA. The water was cold and murky but he surmounted the difficulties and became certified. There is no comparable mom experience like standing on a pier and watching those bubbles come up to the surface, holding your own breath and ready to panic if they should stop coming.

This book is not for everybody but for the right audience it is amazing. It was given 4.5 stars on Amazon. I hesitated to give it 4 stars only because that rating conflicts with how long it took me to get truly engaged in reading it. But it is indeed worth 4 stars. I only wish I could recall more of all those amazing facts!

Toodle-oo Tuesday in Boston

Dan and Carrie would be leaving on a mid afternoon flight to return to California but we still had Tuesday morning for a final Boston activity with them. The agenda included a guided tour of Fenway Park. The tour began in the team store, a strategy representing entrepreneurial planning at its finest. Dan, Carrie, and I browsed the store while Frank sat in a comfortable seat to wait for the tour to begin. I bought a Boston Red Sox rubber duckie for Autumn. Then we were off! Cue organ music... Take me out to the ball game...

Frank prefers waiting to spending money.
This tends to be his fiscal philosophy in general so we complement each other well.

Autumn thought this little duckie was yummy.
Upon my giving it to her, she shoved it straight into her  mouth, baseball cap first.

The exit to the store directed us across the street to historic Fenway Park.

The tour started by a taking a peek into the visitors' locker room. Then the guide led us single file up into the stands to get an overview of the stadium. Each party in the line paused in front of a photographer, who posed them for a souvenir picture, another fine example of entrepreneurial excellence. Dan took a photo of Frank and me as we passed along one of the upper walkways. Frank asked how the intricate pattern in the playing field was made. We could understand how a mowing pattern could make the striped or checkerboard design but how about the "B Strong"? We learned that the pattern is created by angling a hose directing a stream of high pressure water to lay the grass down in different directions, providing the two tones of color. I thought to myself, "This is just like the nap of velvet, corduroy, or fur fabric." The fabricaholic in me never dies.

Frank and I paused to admire the playing field from up high.
I was fascinated with the technique for patterning the green.

Behind our backs in the "B Strong" photo is the Green Monster. The scoreboard is in that tall green wall. The corridor behind the scoreboard is unheated, icy cold in chilly weather, and swelteringly hot in warm weather, and yet two men worked faithfully within those non-ideal conditions updating the scores during every game. Well, almost every game.  They only missed one game collectively within over twenty years of service. That was the day one of them got married and the other was his best man. Our tour guide thought the wedding should have been scheduled during the off-season. Our tour then walked to the seating area above the Green Monster and we were allowed to sit there a bit and admire the ball field from that vantage point within Fenway Park.

Here are Carrie, Frank, and Dan in the seats above the Green Monster.
Note the sign at the lower left corner. There is a close-up of it next.

I don't quite know why, but I was bemused by this sign at the Green Monster seating area.
Do the seats spring up and fire the offending fan into the air?

Our tour continued among the various pavilion levels of the stadium. We entered and paused for a bit in the pressroom, where the sports writers and sports reporters watch the games. We learned there is assigned seating and a pecking order. Along the way we passed no other than Micky Mouse. As a Disney fan I could not pass up a photo-op with Red Sox Mickey. I also could not miss the opportunity for another father/son photo during our saunter around Fenway Park.

As a Disney fan I could not pass up this photo-op!

This photo does not have the same prestige as the "Men of Boston" photo from my previous post
but it gets across the same point.  We were all having a fun time bonding while horsing around.

We also saw the Citgo sign, an iconic part of the Boston skyline. One well-known baseball player whose name I have forgotten (sorry, but, no sports figure is well-known to me) got his inspiration to hit home runs from the sign. He would spur himself on by envisioning the ball launched off his bat with the words,  "Cee - it - go"! The CITGO sign is also a nostalgic image for Frank and me from our MIT days. During the majority of his graduate student years, Frank lived on the 11th floor of Tang Hall, a graduate student dorm.  Frank's room 11B-4, had a great close-up view of the CITGO sign right outside his window.

The final bullet of the CITGO sign facts points out that anytime a home run ball is hit
over left field in Fenway Park, the CITGO sign is in the image.

At the end of the tour we walked through the Red Sox and Fenway Park memorabilia room. One gentleman there proudly showed me his world series rings.

This gentleman was not a Boston Red Sox player but sported two rings.
The team had voted that support members got rings as well.

This is a closeup view of the World Champion rings for 2007 and 2004.

After the Fenway Park Tour we had enough time for a light lunch before Dan and Carrie had to catch their ~3:00 flight. A restaurant just outside and across the street from the park was Sweet Caroline's. Carrie, technical writer that she is with a strong eye for detail, immediately spotted the mangled reference on their advertising chalkboard. Dan and Carrie were married in San Juan Capistrano.

Can you spot the phrase? Were those flocking fish intentional?
Maybe the beer does flow like wine within.

Although I did not know it at the time, I now know that the phrase is a quote from the 1994 movie Dumb and Dumber.  I guess my taste in movies back then did not sway me to rush right out and see that one. Or, if my younger tastes did woo me into watching it, then there is mercy in getting older, and I've forgotten I'd seen it. Here is the phrase in context.

Quote from the 1994 movie Dumb and Dumber

As I was writing about this I found out that those salmon have their own web site, too.  Check it out at http://salmonofcapistrano.com/. Although "the Salmon of Capastrano" was a bit of a slight to their wedding venue in a weird way, it was also funny. We laughed it off and ate there! We sat at a booth where the wall behind us was a vertical bank of dirt planted with real foliage. I wondered how the restaurant owners watered it? Although the bar was extensive, the wall gave the room a very atrium-like feel and the abundance of wood tones lent a luxe feel.

We had our final lunch with Dan and Carrie at Sweet Caroline's, across the street from Fenway Park.

We made our way back to the town home on Appleton street where Dan and Carrie picked up their luggage and set off for Logan Airport. It was great to have been able to spend such concentrated time with them. It was even more special to have had the opportunity and circumstances to share with them snippets of our lives when we were just a few years younger than they are now, back just before and just after Frank and I were married.

Dan and Carrie posed for one last picture in our 83 Appleton rental before departing for the airport.
This downstairs area was where Frank and I stayed while their bedroom was upstairs.

We had the rental on the town home for one more night since our flight to Oklahoma was not until Wednesday. As timing worked out, we were able Tuesday evening to re-connect with our friends John and Sue for a quiet evening of dinner and conversation. John works in nearby Cambridge and Sue drove into the city after she left work. We relaxed in the town home for a bit and then meandered to the Metropolis Cafe on Tremont Street for dinner. It truly was Toodle-oo Tuesday since we said good-bye to them also that day. Wednesday morning we took "the T" out to Logan airport.

In the background behind Frank, the train of the first leg of our subway route to the airport is approaching.

We were off to Oklahoma to celebrate our first granddaughter's first birthday and her mommy's over thirtieth. I took the following picture at Boston's Logan airport because it just seemed to capture the role of the modern grandparent - getting out of their rocking chairs to fly off and see the kids and grandkids.

The modern vs. the old. Jet plane vs. rocking chair.

A "Dry" Monday in Boston

The rain from Sunday stopped. It was to be a dry Monday. We peeked outside the front door of our brownstone home-away-from-home to check out the weather.

We were in the first and basement floor portions of 83 Appleton and it was really quite roomy.
Frank just had to duck his head to get in there!

The reason "dry" is in quotes is because we started the day with the Samuel Adams Brewery Tour, possibly Dan's most anticipated event of the trip. We took mass transit to the brewery, signed up for the noon tour, and were given Grumpy Monk labels as our tickets. While in the waiting room we tasted some spices that can be added to beer. The ones I remember were rose hips, nutmeg, and coriander.  I learned that coriander is the seed for cilantro. I never knew that!

Our ticket for the tour was a beer label.  Different tour times had different labels.

Since grain is the primary ingredient of beer (except for water, of course) the tour begins with sampling from three barrels of grains of different degrees of darkness. We were instructed to place a few grains in our mouth and chew them. The guide tells you how one has a fruity flavor, another a caramel toffee taste, another almost a coffee flavor and how each is the major component of either an ale or a lager, the two main beer types. Fruity and caramel were a large stretch of the imagination for me. The grain that went into the darker type beers actually tasted burnt to me even though it was described as espresso-like. I do not drink coffee so maybe espresso and burnt are one and the same. I am a fruit and caramel fan, though, and I was still skeptical of his flavor descriptions.

This is the grain tasting beginning of the brewery tour.

The Samuel Adams Brewery in Boston is a research facility and not a mass production plant. The brewing process was quite complicated to me with the tour guide throwing around a whole slew of chemistry terms. The time that the yeast is allowed to work is critical to too-sweet or just-right a flavor since it generates sugars. Exactly when the water is drained off has an effect on what components have been allowed to fall out of the mash solution as a sediment. Temperature is important too. It was all too much information too fast and I did not follow nor can I repeat most of it. Maybe I should have taken notes? Nah! But I can simply report with certainty that the copper vessels were pretty and impressively large. We also learned that the brewery workers are allowed to drink beer while on the job, in moderation, of course. Personally I think the bulk of the tour was just a pretense to get to the tasting room.

This room houses the brewing vessels.

Here we are in the tasting room. Pitchers of three different kinds of beer were passed around and we could fill our plastic cups to the brim. We were asked to notice the smell, the clarity, the foam head, and the flavor nuances of each. Dan seemed the happiest of us four. After I'd taken a sip from the partially filled cup I'd so gingerly poured myself, I hid my face so the tour guide would not see my grimace and then discretely poured my sample into Dan's cup. The guide asked for a show of hands of those who were tasting Sam Adams Beer for the first time. Dan insisted I raise my hand and he added that I had never tasted any beer before, ever. The tour guide declared "Yay. We popped her beer cherry!" With all that beer in abundance the mood was very informal.

In the tasting room, at last. For many, this is the climax of the tour.

The tour guide asked what I thought. I replied, "It's...," pausing to find a good non-insulting word to describe the fruits of this man's chosen profession, "it's... different." He quipped back, "Hey, that would make a great Sam Adams commercial". Then he deadpanned a guy pointing to a bottle of beer in his hand, stating in a monotone. "Buy Sam Adams Beer. It's different."

Sam Adam's Beer. It's different.

After the tour we went to the gift shop where Dan got a shirt and jacket with subtle Sam Adams references. The brewery actually offered an unlimited number of free post cards you could write to your friends and they would also cover the postage. I thought this was a generous gesture. Then we boarded the Party Bus and were off to a lunch at famous Doyle's Cafe. Doyle's is within walking distance of the brewery, but taking the Party Bus would be another experience. Packed with people who have just happily imbibed several plastic cups of beer, outfitted with a sparkling disco ball, and boisterously pumping Sweet Caroline out the speakers, the bus merrily trundles along the streets of Boston and its riders gaily sing along in full voice. Pedestrians along the way often chimed in. Why Sweet Caroline? The song is a Boston tradition. Sweet Caroline has been played in the middle of the 8th inning at every Fenway Park game since 2002.

Frank is ready to board the Party Bus to Doyle's. 

Dan and Carrie sat before us in the Party Bus. Frank and I were in the rear row,
just like we were in the Fenway Fanny Duck. Hmmmm. Is there a trend here?

Doyle's was a typical Boston pub with typical pub food. Dan turned in his Grumpy Monk label for a free glass of Sam Adams beer. He had to buy the beer, just the glass was free. But it is a special glass with a shape specially designed to keep the beer cold since you hold it at the relatively narrow base. The base also is molded with bumps to cause nucleation sites for the bubbles in the beer. The glass broadens upward from the base and then tapers inward to funnel the aroma to your nasal passages. And lastly, the flared rim holds just the right amount of foam.

There is a lot of science in the design of this glass.
And to think, Dan got it for free!

After lunch we set out for Boston Common and Boston Gardens. It was in Boston Commons during the holidays in our college days that I asked Frank where all the Christmas lights were plugged in. I remember fondly how we embarked on the adventure of tracing the path of the wires back to their source. Little did we know then we would be revisiting decades later with our son and his wife.

History is repeating itself a generation later as we visit the commons with Dan and Carrie.

We headed over the the Boston Gardens next. We only had to go to three out of the four corners to finally find the Make Way for Ducklings bronze statues modeled from the classic Robert McCloskey children's book of the same title.

Here I am with Mama Duck. The names of her eight babies are
Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack 

Frank and I sat on a nearby bench and enjoyed watching kids scrambling all over the statues. I looked down at our feet and noticed we were sitting on the Grandparents Bench. How fitting this was since within four days we would be in Oklahoma celebrating the first birthday of our first grandchild.

Frank are going toe to toe in this grandparent business!

The Swan Boats had be put away for the season and were not available for riding.

No, Frank, no! You really cannot get to those swan boats that way!

It was still fun seeing my two men posed under the Men of Boston monument.

Dan and Frank are admiring each other in front of
this monument dedicated to the Men of Boston.

It was getting late and the sun was setting but we had one more destination before nightfall. We set out to take the "T" to the end of the Green Line at the Lechmere stop. Just a few blocks from here was where Frank and I lived just after were married in 1975. The address of the house was 60 Otis Street, Cambridge, MA.

This was our nearest street corner. Many buildings have sprouted up around the area in the last 38 years.

At night from our apartment you could  hear the squeal of the trolly wheels on the rails as they made the tight turn. Dan and Carrie rode a similar trolley with Frank and me to view our first apartment.

The turn radius at this end of the line is reputed to be the smallest on the MBTA
and thus limits the car sizes that can go there.

We lived on the first floor in a one bedroom apartment with a living room, small office area, kitchen, and one bathroom, just off the kitchen. That bay window at street level in the front was our master bedroom. The bathroom was all the way at the back and you had to walk through the office area, the living room, and the kitchen to get to it. The rent was $200 a month and we brought home $250 a month. We would put a candle underneath the pipe that fed the toilet to keep it from freezing when it got really cold since the bathroom was in the corner of the building and thus had two outdoor walls. Our friends John and Sue lived on the third floor. In fact it was they who let us know of the vacancy in the building when we were searching for a place to live. We lived here in Cambridge for only one year before moving out to California. It was fun to revisit it and even more fun to share it with Dan and Carrie.

Frank and I spent our honeymoon year here at 60 Otis Street, Cambridge, MA.

It was a long day and so this was a very long post. Congratulations if you have read this far. We went back to our Appleton Street abode and rested a bit. We later topped off the evening by having a simple dinner at the Upper Crust pizzeria before going home and collapsing.

Once again the restaurant selection on Tremont Street did not fail us.
The pizza here was great and the atmosphere was quaint and fun.

A Wet Sunday in Boston

Frank, Dan, Carrie and I started Sunday with a 9:30 am Boston Duck Tour. The Boston Duck Tours have a fleet of amphibious vehicles that not only take you on a tour of the sites of Boston along the city streets, but also plunge into the Charles River and give you a view of the skyline and scenery along the river banks. This is the fleet, each with its own Captain and unique color scheme. We rode in Fenway Fanny shown in the third row, last column of the following picture.

Our Fenway Fanny Captain was well informed, very entertaining, and displayed
a pride in the City of Boston that was so evident it could not have been anything but genuine.

These amphibious vehicles have a history that goes back to World War II. I felt we were transported on a tour of Boston history while riding IN a piece of history.

These refurbished vehicles transport visitors on a tour of Boston history
 while riding IN a piece of history.

Sunday was a misty, rainy day which, I think, only added to the ambience of the tour. We had seats in the last row with a panoramic view of the riverbanks and the boat interior. There were clear plastic windows that could be rolled down and zipped closed in inclement weather but we did not really need to close ours until the very end of the tour so we had great views, not dotted with raindroplets on the windshield. We really enjoyed the experience. Captain Mack's narration was not only an information-packed, lively talk on historical monuments/sites, colleges, and hospitals of Boston, but his banter was also germane to current events and up-to-date sports statistics. Our captain told us the requirements and process to earn the job of Duck Boat Tour Guide/Captain. Each candidate must not only be certified as a boat captain but must have large vehicle driving training and experience and must love, absolutely love, to talk, for 2.5+ hours per tour. 

The captain of our Duck was very entertaining, well read, and skillful.
His great pride in the city of Boston and his fierce loyalty to his Boston sports teams was very evident.

Once we had ventured into the Charles River, the Captain asked if anyone wanted to drive the Duck. I raised my hand and I was called up front to pilot with the captain by my side.  I wanted to find out how the boat steered. Was it like a car where you turn the way you want to go or like some boats where you orient the tiller the opposite direction of where you want to go? I conducted my experiment weaving back and forth across the Charles. The caption teased me that I would have made a great submarine pilot because my path was a great serpentine pattern.

I was the first brave soul that raised my hand to drive.
Other followed but I have to boast a bit that mine was the longest time.

Captain Mac answered several questions on the basic facts of the Duck. One rear drive axis of wheels continues to rotate even though the boat is under propeller power. The brakes are special so that when the vehicle leaves the water the brakes are not so wet as to be ineffective. I maneuvered Fenway Fanny toward this stonework and aimed her to pass under the middle of one of those arches of the Longfellow bridge.

Our Fenway Fanny took us under one of the arches of the Longfellow Bridge,
also familiarly called the Salt and Pepper Bridge.

Here we all are after the tour posed alongside the now land vehicle Fenway Fanny.

Captain Mack, Frank, Dan in back with me and Carrie in front.
Note the DUKW is not a boat on a trailer but is supported on wheels of its own.

After a lovely brunch, we then continued our journey via the mass transit system and walking to our next wet activity of the day, the New England Bay Aquarium. Along the way we walked past the site of the Boston Massacre.

Yup. That is Frank's foot and my foot to prove we were there.

It was a drizzling hard on our way. The aquarium was not as crowded as we would have expected for a rainy Sunday. I remember visiting it on several times on dates with Frank during our days at MIT. The huge round focal point tank in the center was a very big deal when the aquarium was built in 1969. As I recall, the thick glass required to withstand the water pressure of the great height of water was a great technological advancement of the time. Our closer to home Monterey Bay Acquarium did not open until 1984 and by then the glass technology was pretty much industry standard.

The penguin exhibit at the New England Bay Aquarium was very extensive with several species of penguins and not all were of the cold weather variety.  It was fascinating to watch the staff feed each bird and note which bird had been fed, logging in just how much each had eaten. I was curious to see how some birds had to actually be coaxed to eat.  Carrie pointed out that some acted like finicky cats!

These Rockhopper penguins were particular persnickety about what they ate and
how they accepted a fish from a feeder.

Aquariums today seem to have an ecological theme that focuses on the environment and extends beyond just a look at the sea life. The idea of "living blue" has joined the ranks of "living green". The New England Bay Aquarium did not seem to practice what they preach however. We had a group photo taken at the beginning of our visit. When it came time to pick up the photo, the aquarium staff printed the pictures first to show us and see if we liked them prior to purchase. The pictures were on a computer screen but "due to privacy laws in Massachusetts" they could not rotate the monitor to show us. If we had said no to the pictures they would have trashed (alright, recycled) them. How much effort would it have taken to install a privacy curtain in the area or a directional privacy screen on the monitor? I pointed this out but I am sure I was viewed as a grumpy old lady. The first and foremost way to reduce waste is to not generate it in the first place rather than creating and recycling. Aargh! The stupidity of it all! Imagine the waste from all those folks who do not purchase the photos. I bought the photos (the gullibility of that act is another topic that will remain undiscussed) and did my ecological duty.

At first I thought it was a sea otter's arm or that Dan had a hairy arm wrapped around Carrie.
At second look I realized it was the fur on the hood of her jacket.

Frank and I could not help comparing the New England Bay Aquarium with our larger aquarium in Monterey, so close to our home. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has more interactive animal exhibits and huge kelp forest central feature. I guess others have also made that comparison. Here is a link to a site comparing the two aquariums. The west coast aquarium has guided tours and the history of John Steinbeck and his laboratories and the mystery of the peak/fall of the local sardine industry along Cannery Row but it also costs half again as much.

After the New England Aquarium we went back to our home base at 83 Appleton Street and rested a bit.  Frank and Dan watched some Sunday football. Later that evening we walked the 0.2 miles to the Metropolis Cafe on Tremont Street. The location of the lodgings Carrie picked was really great. It was close to the "T" stops and walking distance to good restaurants.

Our lodging "A" at 83 Appleton Street was just a few blocks walk from the restaurants on Tremont Street.
We had dinner at Stephi's, Metropolitan Cafe "B" ,and cappuccino from the Aquitaine.

We had a great meal here. There was one small detail. Carrie had a yen for a nice, warm cappuccino after dinner while the rest of us had dessert. The restaurant's cappuccino machine was broken. Frank and Dan walked to the Aquitane, a  sister restaurant located diagonally across the street, and ordered one to-go. The restaurant had no to-go containers and dispensed it in a soup container. Hearing the story behind the request, the Aquitane also did not charge for it. I enjoyed my Creme Brulée, Frank his Butterscotch Pie, and Dan his Chocolate Pudding Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream, while Carrie relished curling her hands around her warm Cappuccino and sipping away.

We liked the Metropolis so much we had dinner again there Tuesday night after Dan and Carrie's departure.
It was not in any way related to the Metropolis of Superman or Monsters, Inc.

After dinner, with full tummies, we strolled back to 83 Appleton. We talked a bit, read some, and had no difficulty drifting off to sleep.