blogtigue

I haven't felt much like blogging lately and I'm sensing the same blog fatigue in fellow bloggers. Must be a summer thing. Or rather a summer-nearing-its-end thing. I've had a productive enough summer. Various family and good friends visited, we saw a little more of Boston and the surrounding area, worked at two jobs, got all sorts of domestic projects done, read three books all related to what I think my thesis might look like, scribbled various ideas in my sketchbook from time to time...And yet as I approach the last couple of weeks of summer I feel overwhelmed by all the stuff I didn't get around to and probably won't finish in time for September and the start of another school year. Exhibition opportunities will call for work still living in my head somewhere and I'll be "brushing up" on technical skills I haven't yet acquired. Not to mention the fact that I still haven't made it to the Cape.

Sigh.

Neal and I had Sunday off together so we made a small effort at doing something outdoors (the weather, aside from increased humidity yesterday, has been unusually mild and dry for about a week now), driving to South Boston's Pleasure Bay and Castle Island. The drive there was easy and we managed to find parking despite a late start. We walked around Fort Independence but decided not to join the tour, which was free (a shock after our week of tourist fees back in late May), but lasted a little over an hour.

There's just one place to eat on the "island" - Sullivan's, a hot dog and hamburger joint that looks like a pub from the outside. This is probably unwise, but I had my heart set on a lobster roll so we decided to "scope out" South Boston instead, consulting our Not For Tourists guide for local eateries. We passed by a couple of promising joints we'll try to remember to check out later, trying instead to make it to the Barking Crab (a place with a name like that ought to have lobster rolls, right?). At just one of many crazy intersections where construction is ongoing and street signs lacking we turned onto a road that, according to my map, should've taken us pretty much right there but instead quickly turned into a limited access quasi-military gate of some sort. This kind of thing happens to us all the time. Which, perhaps, helps to explain how quickly we admitted defeat, turned around, and headed back to make an early dinner at home. Enjoying life in Boston takes an awful lot of determination and tenacity.