Reflecting on last year’s resolutions

It’s that time of the year, with various “best of” lists and reviews. Since we’re hosting a small party in a couple of days, I’m going to be busy organizing and having friends over, so I need to start early

I only had a few simple resolutions for this year, and I think I made OK progress. It’s been a great and eventful year.

I resolved to be happy at work, to keep pushing my comfort zones, to stay challenged, and to not just stay with something comfortable or familiar. I think I did that pretty well: CarGurus was certainly fun and challenging, and HubSpot has a bunch of things outside my comfort zones and areas of expertise. So that’s good.

I resolved to lose some weight, and I did lose a few pounds, but not enough. Despite increasing my exercise, I didn’t meet this resolution. I need to do better next year, improving my eating habits, continuing to exercise, and paying more attention to this topic. If you see me in person during the year, please ask me how I’m doing in my resolution to lose weight. It will help keep me motivated.

I resolved to be more patient and nicer in general. I think I’ve been doing decently at that, though not perfect of course. I’m still a perfectionist in many areas, so when things aren’t up to my standards, sometimes I get pissed. I get pissed at myself as much as I do at anyone else. I think I control it better now, and I don’t know of anyone that I *really* pissed off or offended this year. But I did, let me know, I’ll continue working on it.

I wanted to learn more about Buddhism this year, and I have. I read a couple of books, a lot of online materials, and reflected on my religious views a bit. I like what I’ve seen so far. I’m not a Buddhist by any stretch of the imagination, or even a JewBu But I find a lot of the tenets of this religion intuitive, useful, and logical. More on that in the future, maybe.

I wanted to stay involved with my graduate school program at MIT as an alumnus, and I think I did a good job at that. I went to a bunch of information sessions, served on alumni discussion panels, helped judge this year’s thesis award candidates, went to the annual conference, presented the thesis award, and organized a few dinners for alumni and current students. I’ll pat myself on the back for this one I hope to do the same next year.

I wanted to clean house at home, getting rid of old and/or unused stuff. I also wanted to donate more to charity. These two goals go together nicely, and I’m glad we did well on both of them. We held a yard sale, and even after that sale we donated dozens of bags of goods to the Salvation Army. I hope some people benefit from these goods. Note to Hadassah thrift store dropoff locations: you gotta open on the weekend.

All in all, not bad. I feel pretty good about working on these resolutions and doing all of them to some extent. Plenty of work remains, but at least I didn’t slack or pull back on any of these.

Congratulations to Jim on O’Neill 2.1 ;)

Congrats and mazal tov to my friend and colleague, Jim O’Neill, who just had a second child! A son, George. I also want to have two kids down the road, but not quite yet Mazal tov to the O’Neill family!

Dinner with the neighbors

We moved into our current place a few months ago. It’s a condo building, one apartment per floor, and we live on the top floor. We’ve recently become better friends with the downstairs neighbors, Dave and Danielle. They’re really nice, and it turns out we’re socially connected in at least a couple of unexpected ways.

They’re also about our age, only a little older, so it feels natural to be friends. In the past we’ve had nice neighbors but they were way older, so the friendship never took off.

A couple of nights ago we had Dave and Danielle over for dinner, and we had a great time. Alli made some tasty Creole chicken, some rotini with mushrooms and onions, and tasty olive-themed appetizers. Everything was delicious.

I picked a 2004 Stolpman syrah to go along with the food, and it was a good match. A little under-powered for the Creole chicken, but you can’t nail them all I suppose Or at least I’m not good enough to nail them all yet. The wine did get 95 points from the Wine Advocate, so it was worth a shot.

Back to Rise (the club)

Rise is an after-hours dance club in Boston. A lot of people still have the perception that the whole city of Boston closes at 2am. That view is as obsolete as the Patriots being a bad football team

Rise is a dance club that opens around 1:30am in the morning and goes past sunrise, exactly what we need in this town. Especially now that there are some decent food options open 24 hours a day.

It’s also a members-only club, but becoming a member is not particularly hard if you’re just a little social in the club scene. Alli and I became members just about when the club started, and we enjoyed it.

But we hadn’t been in a really long time, until my friend Dan told me he was the DJ there last night. We wanted to go lend some support to him, and also check out the club again. We had a blast! He goes by the stage name DJ Daniel David, and his music was awesome. Upstairs they had another DJ, who was also excellent. It’s always a good crowd and a fun atmosphere.

We didn’t end up going to sleep until past 5am, so we just woke up a little while ago I feel like a college student again, and I love it!

Movie review: The Great Debaters

I’ll be short on this one, I have other work to do.

The Great Debaters: great story, decent acting, predictable plot, but still fun.

For sale: Patriots tickets for sale for this Saturday’s game

My relative has four awesome tickets to this Saturday’s Patriots – Giants NFL football game. It’s a chance to see history in the making, but it’s expensive. You can buy two tickets or all four. Contact me if you’re interested.

More reviews: Sunday brunch at Meritage, the movie Sublime

Yesterday Alli and I celebrated our monthly dating anniversary, as we almost always do, on the 23rd of each month. It’s a cute tradition that came to me as a random idea after our first month together. It has developed into something we both love and appreciate. I’ve also since read similar recommendations in various, shall we say, fitness-oriented publications. It’s a “date” once a month, that’s all, but it makes you put other stuff, like work, aside.

We usually go out to dinner or even travel, but yesterday we just took it easy and went to the awesome Sunday brunch at Meritage. That’s the Boston Harbor Hotel restaurant, I think I’ve written about it in the past. Dinner there is fantastic, highly recommend, and now I can say the same for brunch.

It’s expensive, but you get a ton of food, both buffet-style and with various amuses bouche from the kitchen. The service is excellent, and there are a number of nice little touches included. For example, the brunch price includes parking, which otherwise is a $25-$30 cost in that area. In fact, the price includes everything, and extras of it, above and beyond what’s listed on the menu. Just ask. The lobster omelette, especially, is worth requesting.

So brunch was sublime! Then last night we watched a movie called Sublime, and it sucked ;(

Bad story, strange acting, just a weird movie. And this is from someone who’s normally a fan of hospital- and surgery-related horror films. Sublime is weak, don’t even bother renting it.

Reviews: a nice syrah and The Kingdom movie

It was a busy but fun weekend. Knowing you have Monday and Tuesday off, for the Christmas holiday in this case, always makes the weekend better.

On Saturday, Alli went snowboarding up in new Hampshire, and I stayed at home. I wanted to start playing my new computer game, Hitman: Blood Money. It’s an amazing game, I love it. I’ve played all the games in that series, and this one is the best. But it’s worth its own blog post, so I won’t expand on it here.

When she came back we hung out at home, hosted our friend Francesco for a little bit, sharing a good bottle of wine. It’s a 2003 syrah from Jean-Luc Colombo, called La Violette. Soft and smooth, but packing a nice flavor combination and long finish. I really liked it, as did everyone else: the three of us finished that bottle very quickly. It’s a fairly cheap wine, too, so it’s a great value.

Afterweards Alli and I watched a rented movie, The Kingdom. It’s a fun little Hollywood action flick. I don’t know how realistic it is, but it was fun to watch nonetheless.

Google Chat bot translators

This is so cool, I can’t resist a one-line blog about it. Google now offers some live chat translators.

Two more wine reviews

Two other wines I’ve had this week. I write these reviews for my own record, as it’s nice to have the web worry about archiving, searching, and sorting them.

Early in the week we went through a bottle of 2004 Starry Night “Adara” vintage. It’s a Rhone-style red that does not over-promise. Unfortunately, it doesn’t over-deliver either. Too light with no compensation in flavor or texture, I didn’t like it much. The sales lady at the local Best Cellars talked it up a lot, so I got one bottle to round out the half-case I was buying at the time and get the half-case discount. It wasn’t a complete waste of money, but no rush to get that bottle again.

Just tonight we tried a Portoguese red from the region of Estremadura. We really got into Portuguese one when we traveled there in 2003. This wine is really good, although it’s young: a 2006 Cerejeiras. It can easily stay in your cellar for another 2-5 years probably, though I wouldn’t keep it any longer. Even now it’s got nice flavor and after taste, though I have a feeling another 1-2 years and it would develop some complexity also. It’s cheap, and it provides a good bang for the buck.