This weekend Joe has Saturday-Monday off so we are able to have a normal Memorial Day Weekend, well normal in my world. Saturday morning he and I are heading to Summit Hill Campground in Washington MA to camp until at least Sunday with Steph, Dan, Andrea, Jason and some other people. Then the plan as of right now is for Joe and I to do an overnight backpacking trip at Mt. Greylock, it could turn into a day hike, still not 100% sure. I need some time this week to look into the route we will take, was going to pick up a 50 Massachusetts Hike book at EMS yesterday when we ran to grab a few things but I didn’t. So very much looking forward a weekend in the woods, a little bit of car camping with friends and maybe some backpacking in the Berkshires.

I did a double up and over at Wachusett this weekend and my knees hated me, each day they are getting better. I have been going to the Cascade Trails a few times a week to run/walk and go up as much as I can for Worcester hiking trails. I will get back into prime hiking shape if it kills me.

Anyways after a lot of debating we have decided to stay in Worcester for the time being and more because I would like to move to Vermont, NH or hell out to the Pacific Northwest in the next couple years. While I am a gypsy, Joe is not so much and I know some drastic move will happen once he completes school so I can stay put for the most part right now. So back to looking for places in Worcester because I can not stay where I am at, I am sort of tired of a landlord that doesn’t do as they say and bitches about the noise of shutting doors, there is a reason she has had a different tenant each year. Hell look at the foot high grass in the yard right now. Lazy Landlords.

So if anyone knows of a place:

• 1-2 bedroom
• Hardwood Floors
• W/D Hookups or W/D in Unit
• Good sized modern Kitchen, we cook A LOT
• Modern (meaning no Wood Panels, Yellow or Green Appliances or tiles) Clean, Spacious and Bright, I need light.
• Accepts two grown male cats
• Has storage or at least a place for all my stupid outdoor gear, including Kayak
• In Worcester
• Between $800-1100 a month, would be nice if it included some utilities
• Not too far from 290/Mass Pike, currently take Van Pool out of Auburn and may drive again at some point.

What does Worcester still have for me except the promise of friends and cheaper rent. I think I am over it all. I don’t frequent all the spots I did for so long, things are changing but not growing. I’m bored with what the city offers, this is big for me as I have always been the #1 Cheerleader of Worcester and all the greatness. But I have ate all the places, I have dug my feet deep into the scene that is Worcester. It is a just a very large small town, and I am over it.

Worcester I don’t love you anymore, I will make due but other places are calling my name. The funny part is it isn’t Boston, which is still very much a moving possibility, but the worries I have about overly expensive rents makes me not want to move there, I am sorry but NO place under 600 sq feet is worth $1,500 in my mind. I want to be up north or out west, but I am just not feeling it anymore.

I moved to Worcester in December of 2006, about 6 1/2 years ago, in this time so much has occurred in my life, so much. But I stay for all the wrong reasons, because for once I have this amazing social network and I am scared to walk away from it, because at 33 it is really hard to start all over in the friend department. My unhappiness with Worcester will at some point start to creep into my unhappiness with life, been there, done that.

Worcester it isn’t you, it’s me, well maybe it is you.

So last night Joe was trying to dig into my psyche, find greater meaning to what I do. Why I use Foursquare (it is a game, I want to be Mayor of all the places) why I tweet and use Facebook so much, well not anymore than the general population. But he wanted to see what would happen if I just gave up my blog, as if he uncovered some greater reasoning for me writing other than I have written my whole life. It is part of me, it is my own personal journey, at this point I am not sure I have more than a dozen people who read my post, because it turned from a Real Estate-Political-Life Journey blog to this, somewhere I come back to when the words need to come out.

I do it for me, it has always been for me. I have been journaling for most of my life. I am all about the collection of data, in every aspect of my life. I have 20+ years of journals in a tote back, I have almost 8 years of entries here that to me are a journey. I barely remember things from being 14 but when I pick up an old journal and start reading I am 14 again.

So being asked to “give up my documenting of my life” will never happen, if it isn’t here it will be somewhere else, some other medium. It brings me contentment to write, it centers me, it puts life in perspective. All very important attributes to a “hobby”. What do I have left that is MINE, that can’t be taken away. I have had so little time for knitting, friends, hiking, free time or writing as of late and holding onto these things that make me…me.

I am Crystal Anson, and this is what I do! I refuse to become rusty, old, unable to find a creative outlet. I never want to be the level of jaded to think as an adult I can’t express myself the way I find fit.

In little over a week I will have 16 weeks free from school work and I imagine it will be a good time for catching up with myself. I am not ready to give this up just yet, it may start to make a transformation soon but it will not go away.

Last Monday when the bombs that went off at Copley Sq at the Boston Marathon occurred I was at home working on endless school work, friends checking in on Facebook that they were at the finish line and they were in fact okay. Imagine if this would have been available at the September 11th 2001, WTC attack. Thru the means of social media I was able to follow my friends to make sure they were able to get out of the city without much trouble. Most it took until late hours of the evening. I remember thinking how glad I was that I was not at work that day or I may have been stuck. My assistant was having a hard time getting back to Quincy due to the trains being shut down, I almost wanted to drive into the city to give her a ride.

I suppose the rest of the week was a blur, maybe in the sense that finding who did this heinous act of terror occupied the minds of everyone. It was all we could talk about, speculation about random pictures people had seen from the marathon circled sites like 4Chan and Reddit. The Green line was running but passing by Copley Station in the dark. Thursday day the President addressed Boston at the service here in Boston, Thursday night they released pictures of the suspects, roughly at 5:30pm. Within 5 hours said suspects were identified in Watertown and then began a 20+ hours chase, where the first suspect was brought to BIDMC, and died and the second had darted off. Friday morning I awoke to what had been a very active 7 hours of news, friends who had not slept because they were following what was happening. I came into work, despite all officials saying stay put, the trains were halted  taxi’s were taken off the road. Boston looked like a very clean post apocalyptic scene.  I sat at work more occupied with the chase and stuck on Twitter & Facebook unable to concentrate on anything else. Ended up leaving around 2pm when it was said all those at work no longer needed to “Shelter in Place” there and could head home. So I wasn’t the only asshole on the road.

A full city lock-down  plus that of 5 or so suburbs was unprecedented, but it is as if all the citizens were like “Here I am going to stay out of the way so all the officials can do their jobs”. Still amazed at the community that is Boston.

Friday evening I had plans with Becca, we were going to look at REI and then Whole Foods. During this time in the late evening the reports came through that suspect #2 Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been located in a boat located in a Watertown residents yard. He was brought to BIDMC in serious condition and he is still there now in fair condition.

I shared some thoughts on Friday that some agreed with and some didn’t. I stated that I wanted him brought in alive not just for an explanation  because in my own mind I believe the older brother was the ring leader, that the cultural norms of other ethnicity’s is that family trumps law. Your older sibling says jump and you say how high. It may seem outrageous to us American’s but this is the way much of the world works. I did not excuse his actions, but knowing he had gone thru the Cambridge school system, had many friends and was a “regular” college student made me believe that he may have been pushed to some degree. Also I believe in the rule of law, I also believe in doctors doing their job without bias. I wanted to see him go through the court system, I wanted to see that doctors would still save his life because that it the oath they took.

In the days since he has been communicating with investigators via written responses, due to a self inflected gun shot wound to his neck/jaw. They have decided to charge him with the use of weapons of mass destruction, in Federal Criminal court and not as an enemy combatant. Also a lot more of his older brothers past has come to light but much more is to be learned I am sure.

Either way this made for a very interesting week. The Onion posted this yesterday: “I guess when my older brother said…” which seems to me what his real defense may be, not that it would work but seems pretty close to what he may say.

Either way I am sure justice will be served for the 4 lives taken and the around 200 individuals who were injured, some to the point of amputations.

Well looks like Joe and I will be moving to the Boston area if not right in Boston in June. Currently we have Rich’s apartment in Medford if we want it, good price but the apartment has a few things that I am iffy about such as carpeting, wood paneling on the walls, a very 70′s bathroom and drop ceiling. So we are continuing to keep an eye out for a couple weeks, I have contacted a few places and hope to hear back. Ideally we would like to stay centrally located near a train station/stop. The idea of walking home from work also appeals to me a great deal, I have started walking most if not all the way from work to Government Center about 3.8 miles after work. Need to be active!

As much as I am excited about moving, I am still worried that my friends will forget me or I will feel isolated, funny how you can feel alone when you live in a city. I have worked hard to have the life I have in Worcester, to develop relationships and so much more. But the commute is becoming too much, I finally got the cost down with the Vanpool but now my day is so long, I am gone from the house 12-13 hours a day and only 8 of those am I working. So moving close will give me a little bit of my life back, which I need at this point.

Lets see if I go through with it this time, moving again…

Been over 2 weeks since I have posted which more and more is becoming the norm, well St Patrick’s Day weekend we went out that Friday night with the gang to celebrate Julie’s B-Day, I had one too many cocktails but somehow survived. We went to Nick’s and had a great night which I haven’t been going out much as of late so it was needed/warranted. That Saturday Joe and I grabbed breakfast and he had to work that night, I hit the gym and somehow hung-over was able to get a good workout in. St Patrick’s Day Sunday we had to try to escape the West Side, but due to parade and race traffic on Park Ave that was almost impossible. We went across town to brunch at Mezcal and happened to meet up with Renee and Justin, which post my parents house for dinner we ended up at The Lucky Dog with them for drinks.

The following weekend was PaxEast which I posted some pics but not all of them. Had Rich’s place for the weekend to stay although getting from Brighton (close to Chestnut Hill) to the BCEC is not easy no matter where you are coming from, but it was a place to stay. Thursday night Joe and I had dinner with Jen, chatted to her about what we were looking for in an apartment in the Boston area etc. We were going to meet some of his friends but they were hoping around Boston so instead we grabbed drinks at Deep Ellum and then headed to the house to sleep. Friday morning we got home, I had a dentist appointment back in Marlborough. Then we grabbed food, ran to the bank and so on to make it to the BCEC for PAX around noon, we met up with Ben who had a pass for us in exchange for helping him out to promote his new game.  The day was handing out flyers, talking up Ben’s “12 Bit Game”, 8-Bit music, and games, oh and a lot of walking. Friday night incident #1 happened, my old debit card was stolen and someone had a field day with my card at Walmart in Connecticut and my bank account was drained. YAY for limited money for the rest of the weekend.  So Saturday morning we headed to the bank to put in the dispute and get myself a new debit card. While walking to the car I tripped and cracked the screen on my phone #2, YAY. So this set some moods in me for the weekend, no cash and a broken phone. Saturday then involved a lot more walking, then out and about at night with Joe’s friends for drinks and good times. Sunday was a tough one, getting out of bed at least, Ben had used the couch that night and we needed to get him up early so he could get back to the BCEC. We made it there around noon; we took the train/bus to the BCEC, which ended the Pax weekend at Atlantic Beer Company with his friends. Lots of walking, playing games, and Sunday we finally were able to play some board games, which had it so we came home and I ordered 3 off of Amazon. It was a fun weekend even with no money and a broken phone.

This past week was a lot of school work, I can’t even think why Statistics is taking me so long, oh well on Week 4 now, and the next 4 weeks should fly by. This weekend I ended up spending about 6 hours in the ER in Marlborough due to lower abdominal pain, they did test, and exams and still was inconclusive. Could be a cyst or some other issue but they sent me with care instructions, directions to follow up with my MD and some pain meds, great time and yeah all those hours there screwed up most of my weekend. Yesterday was a day of grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, baking for the Game of Thrones night at Mike’s house and a quick stop at Joe’s family’s house. Needless to say I am tired and need another day off, but need to save PTO for summer.

next weekend…

So heading to the weekend of board games and video games, fun times. Lucky to have Rich’s house to stay at in the city for the weekend, even though it is a 45 minute trip on the T to get to the BCEC. I already started a schedule on Guidebook of what I want to check out, and I will be helping out with Joe’s friend Ben’s booth for Barnyard Intelligence for his new indie game he is releasing. I am kind of excited to see the t-shirt as it has a big red barn in the logo. Well here is to going to my first PaxEast event. 

This winter has been a time of not enough physical activity and moving from a job I ran around all the time with and then would hit the gym or trails afterwards to sitting for much of 12 hours a day between working at a desk and sitting in traffic, I am having a hard time with my weight loss, I have managed to gain 10 lbs back from fall til now, I am sure most and more will come off in the spring but looking at myself I am disgusted. I am still down 10 lbs from last winter but I was doing so awesome, it really isn’t even the weight that bothers me. Honestly it is the fact that I feel like jell-o or fluffy as my mother said about herself the other day. I was pushing hard, getting 4-5 workouts in a week and hiking every weekend, this winter not so much. My limited time home has been an issue, I have school around being gone for 12 hours a day and then I need to maintain my life the best I can from friends, Joe, or housework. I just have more things to do than I have time to do them. Which is my biggest stress as of right now.

Other than that things are stressful at work, no matter how much effort I put in I feel like it is not appreciated  because me coming in a changing things within the department changes things across the hospital and people are naturally reluctant to change.

Also having Joe move in recently while a great thing produces its own stress, I mean it is a large change in life. We also are figuring out where we may be living come September, Boston is now on the radar. As much as I would prefer to live in the city and be near work, it is a lot to think of picking up and moving where I can’t just go to my friends for dinner or meet up for coffee/knitting. I am trying not to think about that as much as I should because I also need to think about my finances and future. More on this at another point.  Meeting up with Jen next week and she works along with a rental agent here in Brookline, so we will see.

Hoping to get things straightened out soon, back on the trails regularly and hitting the gym.