Frozen Tundra

I know I don't exactly live in a frozen tundra. But man it sure feels like it today. 12 degrees, windy. I just want to stay indoors all day!

I was in Boston last week. I would've normally enjoyed flying out to somewhere that I'd never been before, but freezing outside when it's 20 degrees really doesn't inspire me to explore. I did manage to make it to Bunker Hill and the USS Constitution one evening. But it's really hard to do much when the sun sets at 4:30. Lets just say that I got a lot of "night" shots. Without a tripod, I don't know if I'll get many usable pictures.

Zagat.com isn't really as useful as you'd think either. It seems that they only rate places well if they have a $20/entree or higher price tag. And when you have $40/day for all your food including tax and tip, that really makes it hard to find a "good" place to eat dinner! Nonetheless, I made the best of it! Blue Ribbon BBQ in Arlington, MA was fantastic. Their ribs fell right off the bone, and their pulled pork was delicious (it was called Kansas city burnt ends though)

The Sam Adams brewery tour was probably the best I've been on to-date. It is their smallest brewery, because it was their first, but that makes it all the better. A lot more things are done by hand and all the R&D happens there. How'd you like to taste beer for a living? Well... it sounds better than it probably is, but still! My favorite part of the tour was when they let us take dried hops and dissect them. Then we were told to rub them between our hands and take a good sniff! MMM beer smell! The tour was free. We got a free glass to take home as well. And we also got a voucher to get a full sized pint glass for free with beer purchase at Doyle's (the first bar that served Sam Adams) Since I hadn't eaten lunch that day, I went to Doyle's and ordered a Bison burger with a Sam Adams Cherry Wheat beer. That beer was a very good wheat beer. It didn't taste sweet, and it actually didn't have much of a hops flavor either. The best way I could describe it was having a "rich" flavor with cherry essence. It is an easy drinking beer with much more flavor than MGD or Bud. I'll probably try to find some of that beer in the future, because I think a lot of people would like it, even non beer drinkers!

So I guess even though it is freezing outside you can still enjoy life a little bit. Just a little though!

Ski Jump!

Today I went to the ski jump event at the Norge ski jump and took a bunch of pictures. I only made it in time to see the last 3 jumpers. But I'm glad I got to see it seeing as they only do this twice a year! It was a lot of fun. I wish I had gotten more time to play around with my camera, but I took the shots that I could in the limited amount of time that I had. I am surprised with the image quality that I got from my 70-200mm kit lens this time. It was a lot better than I remember it being in the past. Maybe my lens is useful after all!

They fixed the draft!

Yeah I had this huge draft in my apartment but I called the office and they put some of that 3M plastic window draft sealing magic saran wrap stuff on all my windows and I swear it feels nice to have a floor that is the same temperature as the rest of the apartment. And my heater doesn't turn on every 3 minutes after the temperature dropped 5 degrees! I bet my energy bills will be cut in half now, seriously. Go 3M!