Bumming Around

Weather: Hard to tell, since I haven't actually been outside today...
Sports Thought: So I really hate when people look to far ahead in sports, because it really is a volatile entity, but imagine this. I don't think its too out of line to suggest a scenario where SC and Texas go undefeated (or at least clinch title berths) in 2009 (esp if Bradford and Tebow go out), setting up a National Title rematch which would be, conveniently, in the Rose Bowl. The media would perhaps explode in ecstasy.
Accomplishment: The coolest thing about this hotel is you can go to the grocery store, two malls, and two other hotels without going outside. So I went food shopping without having to deal with the ridiculous winds and temperature in the teens.
Currently: Am about twelve hours away from being very temporarily homeless. I have to check out of the hotel around 11, but Katie (the next leg of this trip) doesn't get in until noon-ish. I could go somewhere and do something, but will of course have a suitcase with me.

So the last few days have been a cool combination of vacation (not doing anything all day) and vacation (visiting somewhere cool). The last formal day of the convention was Tuesday, which all we had on the schedule was legislating, and then a banquet later that night. The legislative session was mostly just more note passing to UCLA and crossword puzzling, the highlight being that we got to vote on where the 2010 convention will be (Atlanta won over Dallas). The 2012 convention is probably going to be hosted by the west coast schools, so I'm helping out with crafting a bid for whatever city we choose (looking at Salt Lake City), to present in 2010.

As for the banquet...well Eman and I weren't exactly riveted by the opening banquet, so we decided to uh...exchange our tickets. As a result, this freed up some finances for us to go out to a fancy dinner. We went to this restaurant called Legal Seafood--apparently a Boston institution--which was pretty awesome. Eman got virtually every edible aquatic animal deep-fried, and I got this huge grilled tuna steak with seaweed (!!) salad and jalapeno polenta (?!). We were going to get lobster, but even with a pocket full of cash, they started at $30 and went up from there. Dangggggg.

Snowed at least two inches yesterday, and was intensely blustery. Note to west coast/southerners: the thing they don't tell you about snow is that, although cool initially, once it melts it just leaves big piles of gray slush everywhere. It's like having puddles around, but they're gross and melty and you can't walk anywhere because there they are. We braved the mush piles yesterday to do some more sightseeing, essentially hitting up some old places (Boston Common, Newbury Street) again, but this time with snow.

We were going to celebrate New Year at the Wharf or Boston Common, but since it was indescribably windy (one of the UCLA girls had her flight canceled yesterday morning) and they weren't shooting off fireworks, we didn't really see the point of going to windy, open spaces. Instead, we did a big countdown in front of the Boston Public Library, with hundreds of hot bodies, so at least a little more manageable. Something Eman kept noting was the sense of city identity here, versus LA. Essentially, he felt that LA would never put together a big outdoor celebration, with lots of people coming and chilling out (and chanting "Yankees suck" which seemed a little out of place in January...), all put on by the city. Even on the subway, people were always talking to us, giving us suggestions about what to do on New Years and what was going on everywhere else.

Apart from that, I've been sleeping in, watching bad movies on TV (remember Jumanji? Ritchie Rich?) and football. Which is how a vacation should be.