Mind over Matter: Stuff I cared about at the time

  • The Summer of Beer

    The Summer of Beer

    I will readily confess to enjoying beer, though I have always considered myself more of an aficionado than a connoisseur. I appreciate that the world of (readily available to me) beer has expanded from what was available when I was coming of age (see my previous post) to what we have today, and specifically the…

  • The King is Dead (Almost…)

    The King is Dead (Almost…)

    I can’t believe I’m having to write this. Cambridge Brewing Company opened in a run-down, post-industrial, pre-biotech part of Cambridge on the outskirts of Kendall Square in 1989. That was the year after I graduated college. I didn’t know about it initially, as I had moved out of the area (way out to Waltham), and…

  • Weekend Away

    Weekend Away

    We went away this weekend to spend time with two other couples, and log some good biking in Western Mass. We rented a house in Amherst that was near the Mass Central Rail Trail. Late on Saturday morning, we hopped on our bikes and rode 14 miles to the Williamsburg Snack Bar where we had…

  • That thing where the moon blots out the sun

    That thing where the moon blots out the sun

    Back in 2017, we travelled to Simpsonville, South Carolina to witness a total solar eclipse. It was awesome. It’s hard to plan for these things, given the vagaries of weather forecasting, but sometimes you just have to go for it. We went with friends who are simply amazing planners. The featured picture for this post…

  • Keep the Rubber Side Down

    Keep the Rubber Side Down

    This autumn, I’ve had three good friends suffer falls and injuries from their bike slipping on ice. Probably a decade ago, I had a similar incident, on the Minuteman Bike Trail, where I was turning to go around the gates they had setup at the time, and my front wheel slipped right out from under…

  • Pin That Post!

    Pin That Post!

    I’ve always had an interest in locks and locksmithing. A few years ago, I bought someone’s re-pinning kit on eBay. It was in pretty rough shape, so I removed all the pins, put them in teeny little ziploc bags, and imagined I would eventually get around to sanding and re-painting it. But I never did.…

  • Oliver!

    Oliver!

    For what you are about to receiveMay the lord make you truly thankful. from the lyrics of Oliver! from the musical Oliver! Last night, we went to see John Oliver perform standup comedy at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway. We used to watch The Daily Show pretty religiously back when Jon Stewart (cousin Jon,…

  • Ireland

    Ireland

    TL;DR — we vacationed in Belfast and Dublin for six days. The day after the tournament was over, we took a lovely express bus to a regional airport, and took a smallish plane, for a shortish time, to travel to Belfast. (When was the last time you got to walk out on the tarmac to…

  • The Ultimate Trip to England

    The Ultimate Trip to England

    You may be sensing a theme here in my titles. This time, we have followed Clara to Merry Olde England to watch her play in the WFDF World Under-24 Championships in Nottingham. Each (interested) country fields up to three teams — a Women’s (W) team, a Mixed (X) team, and an Open (O) team. The…

  • The Ultimate Road Trip

    The Ultimate Road Trip

    Well, we finally did it. Susan and I managed to get to watch Clara play in this year’s USA Ultimate Collegiate Championships. Her Northeastern University team, the Valkyries, have played at nationals 3 of the 5 years she’s been there, and of course, there were no nationals (or much of anything else) in 2020 and…