Catching Alice

Clare Naylor. Ballantine Books 2000, Paperback, 336 pages, $13.95

Thirtynothing

Lisa Jewell. Plume 2001, Paperback, 336 pages, $13.00

My Life on a Plate

India Knight. Houghton Mifflin 2000, Hardcover, 224 pages, $21.00

Bachelor Brothers’ Bed & Breakfast

Bill Richardson. St. Martin’s Griffin 1997, Paperback, 160 pages, $13.95

Mr

Mike Gayle. Doubleday 2000, Hardcover, 320 pages, $22.95

Bad Boy

Olivia Goldsmith. Dutton Adult 2001, Hardcover, 336 pages, $24.95

Amanda’s Wedding

Jenny Colgan. Warner Books 2001, Hardcover, 275 pages, $23.95

The Saving Graces

Patricia Gaffney. HarperTorch 2000, Mass Market Paperback, 528 pages, $7.99

Vapor

Amanda Filipacchi. Carroll & Graf 1999, Hardcover, 320 pages, $22.95

The Love Hexagon

William Sutcliffe. Penguin (Non-Classics) 2000, Paperback, 224 pages, $12.00

Os Cem Melhores Contos Brasileiros do Século

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As Mentiras que os Homens Contam
Luis Fernando Verissimo

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O Demônio e a Srta. Prym
Paulo Coelho

Let’s see… I got back from Boston Thursday night. The conference was ok, half of the talks were very useful and the other half was crap. Pretty typical for conferences. I did meet some great people from the Bay Area so that made it much better. We went out every night and got to try out some great restaurants and bars. We hung out in Harvard Square for the most part. On Wednesday night, Smitty took us to the Italian neighborhood in Boston. It looked surreal, almost like a movie set. I could almost see myself moving to Boston just so I could hang out at the North End.

Here’s a guide to the places we tried:

Casablanca Restaurant
The food was delicious, one of the best meals we had in Cambridge. The bar was also nice.

Legal Sea foods
This was just around the corner from the hotel. I’m a vegetarian so I had the greek salad both time we ate there. It was ok. They had this awesome onion strings thing which was delicious.

Fire & Ice
They call themselves an “improvisational grill”. You pick out the ingredients and they stir fry it. They had caipirinhas so that alone made it a great place.

Mamma Maria
This was a bit expensive but the food was simply amazing and you can’t beat the view from the upstairs window.

Caffe Vittoria
We went there for dessert and everything was so yummy it was hard to pick just one.

Wonder Bar
Live jazz and a menu with mostly cheese dishes. You can’t beat that!

John Harvard’s Brew House
Our hangout of choice at Harvard Square.

Shay’s
Total dive. My kind of place. =)

There were a couple other bars but I can’t remember what they were called.

airplanes
Flying wasn’t scary at all. I was actually pretty surprised at how unafraid I was. On our flight to Boston, we spotted the air marshal right away. He was this studly looking guy and all the flight attendants were openly flirting with the guy. They would start giggling as soon as they walked into a ten feet radius of the guy. His gun was pretty visible too. I guess that’s good since it helps the bad guys figure out whom to take out first and where they can find a gun.

back to reality
Since I’ve been back, I’ve been feeling a little blah. It’s difficult to come back to real life after you spend a whole week going out every night and meeting all kinds of new people. Today, Su, Nathan and I went to see Serendipity. It was cute in a predictable-and-overtly-romantic-chick-flick sort of way.

Serendipity

John DeBorman (Cinematographer). Miramax Home Entertainment 2001, DVD, $14.99

Fed Heidi’s cats in the morning.

Went shopping near Heidi’s house.

Saw a spider at Macys jewelry department. Saleswoman freaked out: “Our jewelry comes from overseas. The spider could be poisonous”. Saleswoman was clearly from overseas herself.

Headed to Los Gatos for a barbecue at Nathan’s. Thermometer in my car went from 93 to 103 as I approached Los Gatos.

Nathan’s barbecue was great. There was tons of food. We played Cranium. The girls beat the guys. We ate pop rock Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. It didn’t work as well as plain pop rocks.

I came home around 6 pm and rented four movies: Anti-trust (horrible), Don’t Drink the Water (typical Woody Allen), The Wedding Planner (cheesy but worth it for Matthew M.), and The House of Mirth (very good though it looked like Gillian Anderson was about to cry the whole time).

Cranium

Cranium, Toy, $24.99

Antitrust

Ryan Phillippe (Primary Contributor). MGM (Video & DVD) 2001, DVD, $14.95

Don’t Drink the Water

Julie Kavner (Primary Contributor). Walt Disney Video 1994, DVD, $9.99

The House of Mirth

Remi Adefarasin (Cinematographer). Sony Pictures 2000, DVD, $14.94

The Wedding Planner

Julio Macat (Cinematographer). Sony Pictures 2001, DVD, $14.94

I got some great CDs the other day: Hooverphonic, REM, Goldfrapp, Mazzy Star, Cowboy Junkies, Radiohead, and Morcheeba.

Amnesiac

Capitol 2001, Audio CD, $17.98

So Tonight That I Might See

Capitol 1993, Audio CD, $16.98

Big Calm

Rhino / Wea 1998, Audio CD, $13.98

Studio

Bmg Int’l 1998, Audio CD, $19.99

The Magnificent Tree

Sony 2000, Audio CD, $9.98

Reveal

Warner Bros / Wea 2001, Audio CD, $11.98

Felt Mountain

Mute U.S. 2000, Audio CD, $11.98

It’s funny but I hardly bought any CDs in the past year. Blame it on MP3s!
So some of these CDs were actually released a long time ago, I just hadn’t thought of buying them.

I watched two movies this weekend: The Tao of Steve and The Broken Hearts Club.

The Tao of Steve was very disappointing, I had read some really good reviews but I personally didn’t find anything special about it.

The Broken Hearts Club

Sony Pictures 2000, DVD, $19.94

The Broken Hearts Club, on the other hand, was great and a lot more than what I had expected.

I especially liked the screens where they put up the definition for gay lingo:

B.A.T.S.
Better-looking Across The Street

Retail Therapy
Shopping, especially after a bad day at the office or a breakup, oh what the heck….shopping period.

Guy
My favorite! A modifier used among gay men to characterize and title a person by his most obvious attribute, as in the J. Crew Guy or the Blue Shirt Guy (who may not be wearing a blue shirt the next time you see him but will still be known as “the blue shirt guy” among your friends).

The Tao of Steve

Sony Pictures 2000, DVD, $24.95

A cop showed up at my door last night again! This time my apartment was a mess and the cop was incredibly good looking, he reminded me of Rob Estes. After he left, I realized that the 911 calls are coming from my DSL line. Chad asked me if I have been mistreating it thus causing it to call 911.

Last night, I watched Advice from a Caterpillar and I thought the movie was pretty good. Cynthia Nixon plays a cynical NY artist who falls in love with her gay friend’s bisexual fling.

Advice From a Caterpillar

Ventura Distribution 1999, DVD, $9.98

Saturday night, Jason came down to MV and we went our for dinner and then went bar-hopping in Palo Alto (woo-hoo! lots of cybergeeks everywhere). For some reason, all the bars were doing last call at 1:15am and not letting anyone in after 1:30am. The next morning, I realized I’m getting way too old to go out drinking all night!