Commutative properties

Oddly, the perfect accompaniment to a cold, dark, rainy autumn bus ride through downtown Boston is Bruce Springsteen's Philadelphia. I think that says more about Philadelphia than about Boston, buses, or the Boss.

My public transiting has been filled with crushing near-misses and exhilarating victories lately. Either I'm hopping onto the T just as the doors are closing, or I'm pelting down the sidewalk for a bus that pulls out just before I get there. Three times of the last four, I've stepped out my front door and seen the 57 come and go in the time it takes me to walk the half-block to the stop. It's all more dramatic than I really want my commuting to be.

adfamiliares has been unusually busy this week — she's attending a Boston Patristic Society meeting tonight, and on Tuesday she went to some sort of BC honor student lecture — so I've been forced to entertain myself. Resident Evil 4, while bad-ass, only goes so far. Seeking socialization, I tried to do my copyediting in Diesel on Tuesday, only to find myself instead surrounded by a horde of people I know from Arisia (and elsewhere) — it was good to see elusiveat, rigel, ayalanya, and currentlee, and to meet new people named Susan and Kate, who probably have LJ monikers I don't know about.

Happily, my sweetie-meter was replenished yesterday, when I came home after a wearying, discouraging commute to find adfamiliares waiting with home-cooked comfort food: grilled cheese sandwiches, made with whole-seed mustard, and thick pea soup with big chunks of ham and carrots to dip them in. We snuggled up on the couch for the Project Runway premiere, and were quite contentedly domestic.

The other item of note: the third-floor lights had been flickering ominously for quite some time, and on Tuesday the electrician and the landlord came by to take a look. The electrician poked at things, unscrewed things, tightened things, and declared the problem to be quite mysterious; he would have to come back and disassemble all the outlets and switches to root it out.

Nothing has flickered since he left. Kudos, inadvertently competent electrician!

In my day, we called it a long-john flap

My submission for the Goofiest Patent Award: Garment having a buttocks cleavage revealing feature. Be sure to read the purple technical prose, and six enumerated variations, below the fold.