Monday afternoon, I went on a daring school night expidition to the land of New Haven, CT. There I had dinner with Mara and Sam from MIT Hillel, Alissa from Dean, and Rain. (Alas, Josh W of DFA-NH was unable to attend.) We went to Claire's for food, which, as a vegetarian and kosher restaurant, had something for everyone; the quality was, despite its reputation, surprisingly good.
Rain and I then went to a Dar Williams concert, which was the real reason for my trip. The opening act, Girlie Man, was surprisingly brilliant (given my previous negative experiences with openers). For the main event, we slithered our way to the front row; Dar was so close that we could practically touch her. She put on a fantastic show, playing most of the songs from her two recent CDs--Beauty of the Rain and My Better Self, as well as some of her past hits. (When she started to play "The Babysitter's Here" a young woman two rows back wistfully exclaimed "I learned to play guitar with this song!") "The Christians and the Pagans" received the biggest crowd reaction, with people jumping up and down during the chorus (and by people, I mean me and the girl next to me).
Needing to put Rain's 10 pounds of picked raspberries to good use, we made Peach-Raspberry Cobbler (straight out of the joy of cooking). While the cobbler was in the oven we enjoyed an episode of Firefly, in anticipation of the new movie Serenity. (Useless trivia: apparently Kaylee will be much skinnier in the movie.)
Last Saturday was The Game: a mini MIT mystery hunt style scavenger hunt. My team finished in the middle of the pack--we got much better as The Game went on. (It took us a while to get the style of the clues.) Some of the puzzles were fantastic: one included a laser set-up with half-mirrors. My two critiques were (1) the flavortext was misleading and unhelpful most of the time, and (2) the great, Back to the Future theme had no climax at the finish line.
In other news, I've started playing soccer most days with my neighbors' kids: two brothers (Gotham and Sidhar) and thier friends, two sisters (Anania and Samya). We play three against two, with my side being down one player. The kids always want to be on my team--they haven't figured out yet that my team somehow always loses...
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