Boston

before last monday, heading up to boston for this seminar on comparative effectiveness research was a good educational move for my work with the committee. but after an unexpected call from the senior senator from minnesota that afternoon, having the committee pay for my trip seemed a little selfish as i would no longer impart my knowledge for their benefit. but after making sure my office was still okay sending me (probably as a reward for the past year and half of health reform), i happily booked my tickets and hotel room for a few days outside the diamond confines of dc.

so under the guise of this seminar, i escaped dc for a few days to visit boston (where i have never been). and i'm glad i went. the conference itself was uneventful and i was definitely out of my comfort zone of policy and politics as this was a scientific methods discussion and i gave up my scientist-card the moment i barely passed o-chem. but the true purpose was simply to walk around a new town, eat some food, catch some sights, and enjoy a relaxing few days...and that i did.

as tempted as i was to stroll through boston common wearing my purple and gold, i fear that i would've been mugged in broad daylight and the police would've encouraged it. so i refrained from my gloating and just enjoyed the city on its own. and i must say, it is a beautiful city. walking down commonweath, you'd be hard pressed to find a more serene street anywhere else. with red brick row houses facing a park-like divider lined with plush green trees, with a george washington statue at its helm before opening up to the public garden and boston common.

staying in the south end, i was privy to the "new money boston" as it was put to me by a tour guide. i was definitely pleased to have been recommended some wonderful gastronomic pleasures and wish i could have taken advantage of all of them. but i will highlight my first non-conference dining experience at b&g oysters. nestled into a corner of tremont st, it definitely held its own amongst the numerous dining choices available to me on those stretch of blocks.

and of course, what would a trip to boston be without visiting harvard. as much grief as we give our cambridge friends, i was still anxious to stroll along the campus and hopefully soak up some ivy league intelligence. and i must say, the campus is exactly as you imagine it to be (though not necessarily full of tourists gawking about)...with its large brick buildings, large shaded quad, and historical influence exuding from its grounds. i made sure to sit there for a while and let osmosis do its work...i instantly felt my iq jump a few points.

overall, though my time was short, i truly enjoyed myself. and i thought about how close i was to having gone to school at boston university and how different my life would be if i had. it seems that i've been having a lot of those "grass is greener" moments recently...and at the end of the day, i just have to enjoy and focus on the patch of lawn that i am sitting on now.

Moving On

don't worry reader, this title does not represent my retirement from this blog, though i have noticed a severe drop off in posts (my bad). but what it means is my departure from the legislative, history-making senate finance committee. i have been offered the health legislative assistant position with the senior senator from minnesota, amy klobuchar, and today, i accepted.

i must say, it is very difficult to leave the prestige of the committee room, but this move to a personal office will be both a unique experience and a learning opportunity for me. at the same time, i worry that my penchant for acting smart will be called into question and everyone will realize that i really have no idea what i'm talking about. but even beyond personal fear or the risk of disappointing my new boss, i'm most afraid of the embarrassment i'd feel if my current colleagues were ashamed that i made such mistakes after sending almost two years under their tutelage.

but whatever i'm feeling, the wheels of progress are turning. come july 19th, i will not be strolling into the dirksen building, ride the elevator the two floors i could have easily walked, or enter 207 and walk down the hall to my desk as i spy who's already in the office. instead, i'll be entering hart, feeling better as i ride the elevator three stories, and walking toward an unknown cubicle. it is an odd feeling, but a good one, knowing that i am moving forward with my life. but at the same time...change is hard.

Ulcers

i'm not generally someone who is overwhelmed by pressure or lets things i can't control get to me...but when it comes to lakers playoff basketball, i am stressed, agitated, and rather irrational. after this disappointed game 5 loss tonight, if anyone tried to poke at me i wouldn't be surprised if i threw a punch.

but instead, i'm going to calmly picked up the remote that i threw across the room, pound two shots of jameson to numb the pain, close my door, and rant to the blogosphere where no physical harm can be done.

so tonight's game was the perfect example of why i hate the 2-3-2 format for the finals. the top-seeded team should be rewarded for their achievements in the regular season...and yes, the lakers do have home court and can take the last two games at home. however, when two great teams do what they're supposed to do and split the first four games by each winning one on the road, then the pivotal game 5 should be played at home for the top-seeded team. that is they're reward for having outperformed in the regular season. instead, they're faced with a difficult road game when it matters the most.

i'm not guaranteeing that lakers would have won game 5 if it had been in la, but i'm sure it would've made the supporting cast feel much more comfortable. instead, granted the celtics played great defense, no other player besides kobe's single handed efforts to keep the lakers in this game and gasol's meager 12 points were in double digit scoring...no one rebounded the ball...no one played with a championship desire. just because we won last year doesn't mean we can coast...play hard 12 minutes every quarter, 48 minutes every game, 82 games a year, and then win 16 games in the playoffs. that's what every coach has preached to a player ever since they stepped on a basketball court.

i know we're banged up and i don't underestimate how important having a healthy bynum is to the lakers...but the rest of the players need to step up as nate robinson and big baby has for the celtics. where's odom? where's artest? where's brown and farmer? kobe had 19 points of the lakers 26 in the 3rd quarter. i didn't need him to do that to show me he is one the greatest players ever. what i needed was for other players to play and for the lakers to want this, to prove that last year wasn't a fluke and that we can beat the greats.

so guys...for my sanity, for the avoidance of physical harm, for the two maine lobsters riding on this series...please, step up your game.

The Big Apple

after returning from a quick trip to the big city to the north, i again realized that i have a love/hate relationship with the city. well, i won't go so far as to say 'hate', but "can't see myself living there unless i had a lot of money" doesn't fit.

i was lucky this trip, visiting a friend who used to live in the city to take me off the beaten path, i was able to see a bit more of new york that isn't simply on postcards and movie cliches (though we did see the spot tom hanks and meg ryan had their romantic final embrace in you've got mail in riverside park). but beyond that, what always draws me to the city is the unending plethora of fooding/drinking/social experiences that can be had. it is a foodie's dream...with its 5-star establishments to its hole-in-the-wall joints, there are no bounds to the eating that can be done. and if i was rich, had the time, and didn't care about my appearance, i'd just take a year and eat my way around the entire city. but since i can't do that, it just gives me more of an excuse to come back and venture to other parts of town to dine on new cuisines and drink to my liver's content.

Business Trips

when i was younger, my dad was a frequent business traveler...hopping from city to city, jumping from plane to plane...and i always thought that would be cool. to be a man of the air and to visit so many places. obviously, his excursions were never puddle jumps...unless you consider the pacific ocean a puddle. and a constant 13 hour flight every few weeks can clearly cause a significant amount of stress...which i have always been grateful for my dad to have endured to provide for my spoiled ass.

but now that i'm older and taking business trips of my own (and granted, i only make these trips VERY rarely), i have a new found respect fo the work that he did. as for my experience, work has shipped me out to montana to help educated the locals about what we did in health reform. thus, i've spent the past few weeks setting up meetings, booking hotels, renting cars (yes, i can finally do that legally), and reserving seats on planes.

and now that i'm halfway done with my trip...i've run into a handleful of miseries common to the business traveler. the trip didn't start out great with a meager (but damaging) 30 minute delay out...which meant that, even with my furious race down the terminal, i still missed my connecting flight, stranding me in salt lake city for an extra couple of hours. and getting into my final destination later than expected, my luggage's travel time was not in sync with mine. (normally i would've tried to the 'up in the air' theory of only keeping one carry on, but i haven't mastered the packing needs yet).

travel issues aside, what really gets to you is the constant moving around...hopping from meeting to meeting, conference room to conference room, speaking the same canned response and answering the same common question. all the while finding a restaurant at the end of the day to have a meal alone and then return to a hotel room and sleep in a bed that isn't yours. i've always liked hotels...but after three nights in a strange bed without the mental comforts of home...you do start to feel a bit uncomfortable.

but at the end of the day, i really have no complaints. it is nice to get out of dc and to get out into the real world. and since i don't do this very often, the novelty of it still exists and i'm going to enjoy it while i can.