A few more boxes to go

It has been a while since either of us has posted. We will put up some pictures of the new place soon. We were too busy this past weekend trying to buy things like salt to melt the ice in the driveway and chopping away at the ice in the driveway. Last week brought a few inches of snow followed by rain followed by freezing temperatures. I looked at the car frozen into the driveway on Thursday and said to Jason we just would not drive until the weekend when it was supposed to warm up. After a short stint of winter, it is getting warmer again-- 43 degrees at 9:40 PM as I type this. It will be a good day for my big, rubber, puddle-resistant boots tomorrow.

We are still blissfully happy in our new home. Each morning I ride the T to work. It is underground on both this side and the Boston side of the Charles River, but it comes above ground to cross the river. I make a point of sitting on the side of the train so I can see the Boston skyline when the train goes across the river. (We are the second to last stop at this end of the line, so there is rarely a problem with getting a "good seat.") I look out the window and think to myself "I LIVE here. I actually live HERE."

We are finding more and more interesting places to eat and shop. Christina's in East Cambridge is a spice shop on one side and an ice cream shop on the other (and the pistacio ice cream is sublime). Now we have a source of reasonably priced dried chilis and any of a number of other spices. Unfortunately as there were no legal parking spaces that we could find, we did not have time to enjoy the store as much as we would have liked, but we will be back. We also found the best Japanese noodle place. The Super 88 Chinese grocery store (a smaller version of Ranch 99) has a number of places to get food attached to it. Jason and I decided to give the ramen place a go as it looked reasonably good. We went in and sat down at the counter and were impressed to see the army of people, each with a specific job, who would be preparing our noodles. There was one person who just made the noodles. As each order came up, he placed noodles in strainer baskets that he put sequentially into each of two pots of boiling liquid. One water, one stock? We have no idea. The noodles were perfectly cooked though. The next person mixed the broth into which the noodles were put and carefully arranged all of the other items on top of the noodles with some very long cooking chopsticks. I do not know who made the stocks or the various types of pork in the soup, but they were also quite accomplished individuals. Another person presented us with our noodles. It was outstanding. The rest of the day we commented intermittently about how good the noodles had been. We went back again last week, and they were just as tasty.

We have been having people over to the house which always makes it seem more like home. The night that we moved in we had about 10 people over for soup and other tasties. We met the neighbors who could not believe that we were having people over for food the night we moved in. Friends who were more aware of our cooking habits enjoyed and simply expected that we would do such a thing. For Chinese New Year we had some friends over for hot pot. Between then we have just been doing a lot of cooking for ourselves. It is a treat to be in a kitchen that we can both cook in at the same time. I am happy to be eating my own food most of the time rather than picking up whatever at one end of the commute or the other.

We do take advantage of the wonderful pasta shop that is up the street. They have about 8 kinds of lazagne and even more kinds of filled pasta. Always good to have something tasty and easy in the fridge. The Italian grocery store in Davis Square has also become a favorite. The cold cuts and olives are so tasty. Maybe I will get brave one of these days and make something with the dried cod.

i had forgotten (blocked?) some of the strange things about Massachusetts, or maybe my parents just dealt with all of the bureaucracyso I do not remeber. There are always more loopholes to jump through in Massachusetts. For example, Jason and I still have yet to get Massachusetts drivers licenses because we have yet to gather all of the proper documentation. You need four pieces of identification,

1. SS card or passport
2. Out of state license
3. Proof of signature
4. Proof of birthdate

One document cannot serve more than one purpose, for example, you cannot use your passport or out of state drivers license as proof of signature, and I do not know if they accept a credit card. It would not be a big deal if we did not want to get a resident parking sticker so that we could park on the street some day other than Sunday outside of the commercial areas in the town of Somerville. To do that, we need to register the car at the address that we are, which requires proof of insurance at the address where we are. We also need to have a bill addressed to us at the same address. I think that there might be one more document as well, but I am not sure.

Jason is somewhat confused by the bottle return policies here, and I am certain that it was never this cumbersome at my parents. In California, you pay a nickel for each bottle or can, but the homeless return them to the recycling center. Here, you pay a nickel when you buy, and then you bring the cans and bottles back and you get a nickel. Seems easy enough, but stores are only required to take back what they sell, and there are very few grocery stores that sell beer, so you have to bring them to a different store. And if you buy the store brand of soda, you have to bring the bottles back to the same store. I think that we might just start throwing them in the recycle bin like we did in California.