home again

Before leaving the Burlington con, Jag and Antony took us back into Boston to look at a prospective apartment for next semester.

It's very strange and gorgeous.  A huge loft in a converted warehouse, home to a European couple who want to go back to Milan for the same period we'll be teaching at MIT.  He's a painter, and his canvases are all over the big place.  Two desks and a drawing table under a ceiling that must be fifteen feet high.  Double bed on a platform about five feet high.

It's the Fort Point area, which I've visited a couple of times during "artists' open house" weekends. There's a neat wine bar just across the street, the Ooh La La or something, and it's just a ten-minute walk from South Station.

The big picture windows look out over water, a barge canal, to the Institute of Contemporary Art – and the Barking Crab, one of my favorite places to eat in the whole world.  It has an outdoor annex under a tent for when the weather's good, picnic tables and paper plates, with fish and chips to die for.  (So don't inhale the bones.)

We hung around the almost-deserted hotel until the next morning, after going out to a good steak dinner with Ellen Klages and a couple of her friends.

Very exciting limo ride through late rush-hour traffic to Logan airport.  Fixed-price $65 spin; thrills and chills for free.

(For reading on the flight I indulged my love of chemistry with The Disappearing Spoon, which I picked up in the Dealers' Room – an anecdotal history of chemical elements.  [The title refers to gallium, which has a melting point just above human body temperature – you mold a spoon out of gallium and watch someone's face as they dip it in a cup of tea.])

Joe