November 7, 2012 – We headed downtown after work on a Wednesday night to go to our first Celtics game. A winter weather advisory happened to coincide with game night; getting downtown wasn’t too bad, but we did wind up walking through a bit of rain/slush/snow and driving winds to get to the arena. The Garden isn’t very flashy inside. People rush in from the subway and parking lot, hurrying to get out of the wind, then make their way up the escalators and find their seats. We were up in the nosebleeds, so we had a few more stairs to hike up. We were surprised at how good our seats were. The Garden is built so every seat has a good view of the court (no binoculars needed, even if you’re one row from the top) and the many championship banners hanging from the ceiling.

We were properly decked out for the game.

Tonight the Celtics were playing the Washington Wizards. It turned out to be a good game, and eventually went into overtime; Celtics won, which made it an even better evening. Random recollections from the evening:

1. The crowd is very good at getting their own “De-fense” and “Air – ball” chants going, but they also have a “Bull – sh**” (to the same tune as “Air – ball”) that they use once or so a game to protest calls that they think are particularly bad.
2. People are quick getting in and out of the arena, I’ve never seen such a large crowd move that quickly.
3. The Celtics weren’t expecting to almost lose that game, you could see a definite difference in body language (particularly from Garnett) with about 2 minutes to go in regulation.
4. The crowd loves Rondo.
5. The crowd also likes to dance to the random music they play during timeouts. The random music also happens to be pretty catchy.
6. The crowd didn’t like the little solar house that was walking around, dancing and passing out solar house fliers. I thought he was cute.
7. The history at the Garden is pretty cool, particularly all the championship banners hanging from the rafters. We couldn’t even see all of them from our seats.

Fall 2012 - Happy (belated) birthday to Tony!

We had a fun day of museum exploration.

We celebrated by taking the day off from our respective jobs and headed downtown. The trip got off to a bit of a rocky start with some bad traffic (at 9:15am) caused by a fender bender between a car and a dump truck. I think the dump truck won, since the car’s front headlight/left side of the bumper were effectively missing. Once we got through that we still had a bit more traffic and some construction to navigate, but we eventually and successfully arrived at the Boston Museum of Science. We had discount tickets through the library, and then we added on the Dolphin IMAX movie. With about an hour before the start of the show we knew we had to move quickly. This goal was slightly more challenging since there were many, many, very excited little kids running around looking at everything. One ran over Tony’s foot, and another ran into my elbow (with his head…. fortunately no injuries occurred).

There were a few ‘shocking’ developments at the museum.

Although we think this museum is geared more to kids, we did enjoy the optical illusion exhibit, the model boats, the small dino room, and the information on early horseless carriages. If we had more time we would like to see the exhibit on lightning, it seems they have a Faraday cage an several Tesla coils. We got a quick lunch at the food court and ate overlooking the river. We split a pizza and the special of the day, a meatball sub. We also got some garlic breadsticks with marinara sauce for an appetizer, and breadsticks with cinnamon and sugar for dessert. The food was surprisingly good, and the view was excellent. After lunch we headed over to the IMAX theater; it was fairly crowded when we got there and Louisa may have advised that we sit too high up, but we still had a fun experience. Afterwards we took a quick walk through the exhibit on the solar system, then headed over to Bully Boy Distillery.

It’s headed right for us!

We had read good things about this relatively new local distillery. Plus we’re big fans of any good, local mom and pop/ family business. The distillery is in a small, unmarked (except for the address) factory building. It is small, with the German still in pride of place. The layout is shaped like a U, with the aging barrels along one arm and the still along the other. Our tour guide was quite informative, giving us a good overview of the distilling and aging processes. We also enjoyed the small taste test at the end – vodka, unaged whiskey, and unaged rum. The vodka was our least favorite, though it was quite well made and actually tasteless. The rum had a nice hint of spice and banana to it and was Louisa’s favorite, while Tony enjoyed the smoothness and silkiness of the whiskey.

The Met isn’t the only museum with an Egypt exhibit.

Our whirlwind day downtown continued with a stop at the Museum of Fine Art, over by Northeastern University. The museum wasn’t very crowded, and we were easily able to find a parking spot in the lot. They don’t allow water of any kind (including Nalgene) so either leave it in the car or make sure you have a bag big enough to stash the bottle in. The museum has very nice exhibits, including Ancient Egyptian artifacts. However, the guards in each room have a tendency to creepily stare at and follow anyone who does not have on lots of makeup, big gold clip on earrings, a sweater around their shoulders, and a monochromatic black outfit. Maybe it was just the day we were there, but the vibe was the worst of all the stereotypical “art museum” environments you can imagine. Which is a shame, because the exhibits are actually quite nice.

We ended our time at the museums with some coffee and dessert.

After the museum we drove over to The Cheesecake Factory in Natick, where we enjoyed spring rolls, an Asian-inspired chicken dish, and an Italian-inspired chicken dish. We split Craig’s Crazy Carrot-cake Cheesecake (so good), and then headed home for birthday presents and cake (chocolate chip cake with cream cheese frosting).

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