Mid-Summer Festivities

Last Wednesday, I went to Logan Airport to see Camilo off on his two-week vacation to Europe and around 6:30 found myself faced with almost two completely free weeks! In honor of officially moving in to my apartment one year ago, I decided to do a top-to-bottom cleaning of all five rooms, one room per day. The lady doing my manicure on Friday looked at me like I had three eyes when I told her my Friday night plans were to organize, dust, and vacuum my living room. I must have sounded like the most lame client she ever had, and it stopped pretty much all conversation between us for the entire hour long appointment. I didn't feel like explaining to her that the week before, I had left for work at 8am with the intention of having a couple of drinks after work before heading home, and instead found myself leaving a club at 2am that night. I also didn't think I should mention to her that it was my "annual" cleaning, and that usually I don't have time or energy to do a thorough cleaning of my apartment.

I got done with my bedroom and my living room, and by Saturday I was bored with my plan, so I drove home to visit my parents for the day. This past weekend was the Old Home Day town fair in East Hampton. East Hampton has a population of about 14,000: about 1/3 of the population moved there sometime in the past twenty years, and 2/3 probably had their great great grandparents living there. The town fair is generally populated by the recent 1/3 and their children on Thursday night, middle and high school students on Friday night, and the latter 2/3 of the population on Saturday. When my family stopped by to get some lunch on Saturday afternoon, it was almost scary to realize that this was where I had grown up. I actually have a lot of pride in and love for my hometown, but it's not necessarily the most exciting place in the world. Therefore, I was surprised that one of Connecticut's Senators, Senator Richard Blumenthal, was at our small town fair speaking about how great East Hampton is and how we need to work together to rebuild the bell factory that burnt down last month. He must have been trying to win votes for November. His speech was followed by a town councilman (councilwoman?), who claimed that East Hampton would "once again" be the jewel of the state and the nation. Just to be clear, I'm pretty sure that in order to be the jewel "once again," it had to have been the jewel of the nation before, and I can guarantee that most of the country has never heard of my town before. 

After eating fried and greasy fair food, we left to spend the day on the boat. It was so hot out that all of us jumped in the water. Though I love living in Boston most of the time, I miss having summer at home where I can take the boat on the lake or down the river on any nice day, and drive an hour to the beach whenever I want. At least having my car in Boston allows me to go home or to the beach from time to time to pretend I still have that freedom.

Saturday night I had to get back to Boston to celebrate Erin's birthday! I met Erin the first day I got to BC. We were both in marching band together and so arrived on campus two weeks before classes began. We were also assigned to be freshmen roommates. Except when I studied abroad, we lived together all 4 years at BC. With our birthdays being in the summer, this was the first year we could celebrate together and I was definitely not going to miss it. We went out with four other friends from BC, Deb, Andrew, Mikey, and Brian, to a bar with a dance floor. Deb and Mikey turned 21 this year, so it was the first time the 6 of us went out dancing together and it was such an amazing night! I know Erin had fun, which is most important, but I also had a lot of fun and am glad I was able to go. I even ran into a group of friends from law school who I had not expected to see that night.

Now that the weekend is over it is back to cleaning and cooking. My discovery of the week is that the recipe for chocolate chip cookies on the back of the chocolate chip bag yields about 4 dozen cookies. I had all the ingredients at home and just wanted to bake something: now I have 4 dozen cookies in my kitchen that I really don't want to eat (so if anyone wants them, please tell me!). I love cooking and baking and trying new recipes, but if I eat everything I make I will probably gain 50 pounds. My apartment is too small for a dinner party or I would just invite a ton of people over and serve a 10 course meal, French style. I need to find people or occasions to cook and make food for so that I can continue to pursue my passion of trying new, fun, and exotic recipes while avoiding the inevitable weight gain in the process.