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interlude: non-class stuff
I discovered tonight (when trying to install a mouse driver
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hakamadare clued me in about) that I don't know the
root password for my machine. Err, oops. I wonder how I can fix
that. (Maybe I'm lucky and the person I got the machine from
remembers.)
Wednesday night I joined Andrew and his family (sorry Andrew; I can
never get the user name right on the first try), mabfan,
and gnomi for dinner, conversation, and ice cream.
I had a good time. How can you not, when in a single evening you
can geek about halacha, science fiction, comics (that was mostly
mabfan, TV, and music? :-) Mabfan or Andrew, please
remind me of the name of that TV show you were so excited about
getting on DVD?
Much time was spent trying to find a way, within halacha, for someone (I won't out you here) to read the new Harry Potter book on Shabbat. (Some of my suggestions were rejected because they would involve waiting until morning; apparently solutions that don't involve starting by quarter past midnight aren't interesting.) I hope you find a solution, but if not, I suspect a 22-hour delay isn't fatal... :-)
Erik (one of my cats) is staying with a friend while I'm here, and
apparently he's very comfortable in her house. She can offer him
avian theatre (we don't get many birds visible from cat-accessible
windows), and he quickly established his place in the household.
Good, as he'll be going back for Pennsic in a couple weeks. :-)
I miss the cats, but knowing they're in good hands helps.
Never mind the academic stuff: I'm beginning to wonder if I would
have the physical stamina to attend this school if I lived in this
city. That's one steep hill! I'm staying in a dorm at the top of
the hill for this program (so no biggie), but the houses up here
are all in the multi-million-dollar range, so ordinary people don't
live here. (Actually, I wonder about the people who live in some
of the humongous houses up here. Are they insanely rich, or large
families or other groups? Some of these places look like they'd
easily be 10,000 square feet.)
There appear to be no vending machines on Hebrew College's campus. How odd.
I've had a few instances of an odd style of encounter here, and I
wonder if it's a Boston thing or if I'm just unlucky. I have
asked people on the street (or in the T) what should be simple
questions (e.g. "which of these intersecting streets is Center?"
when there's no sign), and people who seem to be from around here
don't know. In the example I just gave, it was a group of students
who'd just gotten off a city bus. On the T, I asked someone who
seemed to be a regular T rider (based on overheard conversation)
"does this train go to Government Center" (a big stop), she said
she didn't know, and then she got on my train (after I got the
answer elsewhere) and rode it past that stop. There have
been a couple other cases, too. Is this a "don't wanna talk to
strangers" thing, or what?
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It could be a combination. I think a lot of people get used to riding the T in such a way as that they know where they are, they know how to get to where they're going, but they don't know much about the in-between.
The Green Line is particularly troublesome, as noted above. Outbound to the west, you've got four different lines that go to four different places, and the first branches off while you're still in the heart of the city. Outbound to the east, some go to the end and some don't.
My guess is that your mystery rider knows where she gets on, knows where she gets off, but doesn't think a bit about what stops are between the two.
The one piece of good news to you about the Green Line going to Government Center is this: the trains either go there and stop, or they go beyond it, but so far as I know none of them stop short of Government Center.
But then, adding to all that...no, from my experience New Englanders aren't the warmest people on earth. They don't exactly go out of their way to help, and the lack of streetsigns is pretty much a point of pride with an attitude of "Hey, if you don't know where you are, you shouldn't be out traveling anyway." The best explanation I've heard for this is that the lack of street signs stems back to the Revolution, when Patriots pulled down street signs in order to confuse the Redcoats.
Going back to the mystery rider on the T, if it had been me and I wasn't sure I would have said "I'm not sure...let's check the map..." and gotten an answer for you.
But then, I'm originally from New Jersey, so what do I know about local traditions and helping strangers?
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Unless it's pulled out of service at Park Street...
In any case, that end of the Green Line is a single line, so you can always take any train in that direction, and if it doesn't go all the way to your destination, likely one of the next ones along after that will. (I still have no clue which ones go all the way to Lechmere and which ones don't, and I've been T commuting for years...)
About the huge houses up there: I'm not familiar with that part of Newton, but given that it's Newton, it could be insanely rich people, or the houses could have been subdivided into apartments. I check out the front doorbell(s) and/or mailbox(es) to try to figure out which. (Also driveway options, out there; that's not so useful in the city when there's no affiliated parking.)