Goodnight, you princes of Maine. You kings of New England.

From where I left off... It is now Thursday in Boston. I ventured downtown with no real agenda and paked ma ca not too fa from a ba. I got lunch at some bar and asked the twenty-something female bartender what I should check out. She pointed me in the direction of the Granary Burial Ground which is where the parents of Benjamin Franklin as well as Paul Revere are buried. One interesting thing about the cemetery, which is probably not unique, is that a bunch of the tombstones have skulls carved on them. I spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering around the streets of Boston.

That evening Visco and I got all pumped up for Thursday Night Football, the defending Superbowl Champions Pittsburgh Steelers vs. the Dazed and Confused Cleveland Browns. Visco must have fallen down as a child because he is a Steelers fan so he threw on a jersey of some football player that played for the Steelers while I put on my #80 Winslow jersey and we went out to watch the game at the Sports Depot.

Well, the Browns got crushed in one of their worst performances of the year. I felt sick to my stomach as we left the bar. And where did all of these Steelers fans come from in Boston?

Friday was my day to go for a drive. While in this area of the country, I figured "why not make my way further north". So I went to Maine. My family used to go there for reunions while I was in elementary school, so I was looking to see some of the sights that I might remember from my childhood. My first stop was Kennebunkport. I didn't remember the snow from my childhood, but once I got my barrings, I started to remember some of the stores and stuff like the Ben & Jerry's in the house across the street from the strip of stores. The town was very nicely decorated for the holidays, they even had a tree with little bobbies hanging on it.

My next stop in Maine was Freeport, where L.L. Bean has it's 24 hour retail store as well as an outlet store. The town has been turned into one big outlet mall including stores from Ann Klein to the Yankee Candle Company. I did not spend a lot of time in the stores.

Before heading back to Boston, I decided to stop and grab some dinner in Portland. I looked online to see if Rachael Ray had stopped in Maine for one of her shows. She had, and she had gone to a place called the Pepperclub. So, that was where I decided to have dinner myself. The food was excellent.

To finish up the evening, I meet up with Visco and his buddies at Jillian's in downtown Boston. It was a crazy place, it had 4 stories with bowling on the 3rd. Good times were had.

Boss town

Well, it has been a while since I have gotten around to posting... but I will try to continue where I left off.

Tuesday evening I got into Visco's in Boston and we had a pretty chill night of sitting around not doing much. That continued right into the next day for me. Visco lives in a house with four other guys whom he was in the same fraternity with at MIT. The thing is they have all been graduated for 10+ years. Visco said of his household that, "We have an actual 'Real World' house". I think that was mostly in reference to one of his roommates homosexuality. Later in the week, after getting to know the guys a bit better, I stated that "The house would surely make one interesting sit-com".

Wednesday evening, Visco and I got dinner at a BBQ joint called Red Bones. We sat at a counter right in front of the kitchen where we were able to chat with the cooks for a while. We ordered fried catfish and buffalo shrimp as appetizers and the the BBQ sampler to share for dinner. While waiting for apps one of the cooks passed us some catfish and sausage just for being cool I guess. Visco was in the process of kicking a cold so we just went home that evening and chilled.

More to come soon... I promise.

There were many roads, but no island

On Monday the 4th I left Cleveland for part 2 of my east coast trip. This time I am mixing work and play. The work I am doing during this part of my trip is going to be to check out some graduate schools on the east coast. I have been putting some serious thought into continuing my education. On top of delving further into design research, I would like to eventually teach at the college level.

The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence was first on my list. they were having an open house at 8:45am on the 5th. I felt with an early start like that, I would have to get myself to Providence the night before. That meant a full day of driving from Cleveland, 11 hours to be exact. I had Pricelined a hotel for $75 and it turned out to be a fancy $250 room. After driving all day I got a pretty good nights sleep in the fancy room.

The open house/tour turned out to be very informative. It sounds like most grad students get teaching assistantships and there is even an opportunity to get certified at Brown (a neighboring school) through a program which includes teaching lectures. The graphic design department seemed very inclusive and there appeared to be a nice dynamic between the grad and undergrad students. The departments facilities appeared to be rather nice, if not at least adequate. It was nice to see that most to all thesis project were presented in book form. That is not to say that all of the thesis projects were a book, but the information and images were gathered into book form.

After all of the planed activities were done, I felt as though this could be a place that I could see myself spending two years advancing my level of education. I then felt a hunger in my stomach. My buddy James, who went to Brown suggested a place called Geoff's for lunch. The sandwich I got there was rather superb and they also had free pickles, rather nice of them. From there I checked out some of Brown's campus on my way to RISD's art museum. The museum had a rather interesting exhibit on rock posters from Providence from the past three decades (or a similar time frame). I finished up my day by stopping by RISD's letterpress room that there was apparently no time to go to during our tour of the facilities.

I left Providence and mad my way up to Boston where I will be staying for the next week. Grad schools will continue with Yale (13th) and then the School of Visual Arts in NYC (15th) and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (19th) before heading back to Cleveland for the holidays.

Doing my part for the environment

On Thursday Nov. 30th, I picked up my new car. For the past month and a half, I had been waiting for my new Prius to arrive at the dealership and it finally came. Beside the gas savings, one of the things that I am most excited about is the Intelligent Key System. I no longer have to pull out my keys to unlock the doors or even to push a button that unlocks the doors. At the same time my keys can just rest in my pocket while I push the Start button to get the car going. When I finally decide to leave my car, again no keys are needed to lock my baby up. I just make sure they are still with me and then hit the button on the handle and my car is all locked up again. All of that along with navigation (to tell me where I am going), Bluetooth (so I no longer have to fiddle with my phone or headsets while driving), and a Hybrid engine (so that the car manufactures can get the message that Americans really do want more fuel efficient cars). This lucky car is going to get to see whole bunch of the country.