My Summer

So it has been nearly four months since my last post, which probably explains why I have only two followers, neither of whom is my mother, so that's pretty bad. However, I know she reads it because she asked me a couple of months ago when I was going to post again. Then again, she may have been using those annoying maternal powers of revelation--the very same that told her I was playing nintendo when I should have been doing yard work during summer vacation as a kid, thus prompting her to call from work and check on me--to trick me into thinking that I have a third follower, albeit unofficial.

Unapologetically, I have consumed the entire summer without so much as a quickie on this blog of mine, simply because not too many events of a significant nature have occurred, at least nothing significant in my life or here in Boston. I don't intend to bore you with my vacation exploits, unless something spectacular occurred in the process, such as finding myself at the beach like my friend Chris Alexander...seriously, I saw the photos on his blog, and he met a kid at the beach who looked exactly like he did 15 or 20 years ago! The closest I've ever come to that was three years ago, when my friend Ruthann set me up with a girl in her ward who looked more like me than my own sister. But I digress.

Some important things did happen since my last post. First, in early April, my friend Rob Briggs and I performed in the LP2 Ward Talent Show. We performed in it last year as well, singing Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive". We received high accolades then, and this year was no different. We performed Sister Hazel's "All for You", one of my favorites from high school. I still wonder if the end started to deteriorate in quality, as I could feel both hands start to weaken as they pressed and strummed the strings during the last verse. No matter, because Rob's lead part came in soon after and stayed dominant for the rest of the song. Rob is a gifted guitarist, and since I started playing with him when I first came to Boston, he has helped me become a better musician just by example.

Sadly, he has left me for Rexburg, Idaho. He actually left the day after the talent show, so we had a going away party for him at someone's house in Allston. He drove all the way out there, and it seems to have paid off for him. He has since joined some sort of guitarist publicity organization at BYU Idaho, and he has made it into every talent show he has auditioned for. Since he left, I haven't really found anybody to jam with, though I have been busy anyway.

I moved. I finally left the Back Bay. Thanks to the ugly parking situation in Downtown Boston, I decided I could live without having a Radio Shack, a Boston Market, a pharmacy, and a Post Office right across my street. I actually moved a total of three times. I first stayed with the Briggs' in Lexington for a couple of weeks because the original place I had found didn't work out, and I had already found a replacement. It was a fabulous two weeks, stocked with cooked meals, easy parking, and cable TV. I then moved into an apartment in Brighton with one other roommate, Andrew Hansen from the Charles River Ward -- the 31 and older ward. I was replacing my former "hometeachee", Devin Mackay, who had just gotten married. I was taking the tail end of his lease and was prepared to renew the lease when it expired at the end of July. The place was roomy, boasting the coveted living room that had eluded me during my months in the Back Bay, as well as a kitchen big enough for me to turn on the stove and then turn around without bumping into the refrigerator. Andrew is also a minimalist and is very clean. Besides, we had the spiritual benefit of living above the sister missionaries. And of course, I was living less than a mile away from Stephanie and Jan Marie. What could be better?

But it was not to be. Shortly after moving into Brighton, I was searching the LDS housing website for the Boston area just for kicks and giggles. Scrolling down the Gentleman section, the entries of which are curiously almost always expired by the time I read them, I came across an entry with a familiar address: 580 High Street, Medford, Massachusetts. Why was this address familiar? I am not ashamed to say that not only were there sisters in the singles wards living there at the moment (that's not the 'not ashamed to say' part), but I had also been there on three different occasions because I had been on dates with two of the sisters that lived there (that's the 'not ashamed to say' part).

Trent Ostler, a former LP2 member who had been going to law school at BYU, was looking for three guys to move with him into the place. I remembered what the place looked like, so I was immediately interested. I then called Anna, one of the sisters I knew there, to inquire about the place. I assumed the girls were all moving out, but while that was true, she told me that Trent was advertising for the downstairs unit. A week later, I went out to look at the place and almost immediately fell in love. It had a hardwood main floor and a carpeted, finished basement level, a kitchen and bathroom on each level, and tons of spacious rooms. Most importantly, it was a house! I had wanted to live in a house ever since I had left the Briggs' house last year, and the dream was finally coming true. Not only that, the rent was super cheap. I immediately decided that I would not be renewing my lease in Brighton. Even though I would be leaving LP1 to return to LP2, it wasn't that big of a deal. I have learned my way around Boston over the past year and feel like I can get around no matter where I'm living. I don't need to live close to a T or even close to my friends to have easy access to the social scene. In fact, Trent and I have already agreed that our place in Medford will be the social scene!

Long story short, I have since moved into Medford, and I love it! After figuring out some logistics and buying supplies for the place, I'm pretty much loving life. There aren't as many grocery stores or restaurants close by like there were in Brighton, but I definitely have sufficient for my needs. I also have easy access to a freeway that will get me to church in just 15 minutes at the new Stake Center in East Cambridge. If I want to spend the evening in downtown Boston, I have only to take the 94 bus into Davis Square and take the Red Line right into Park Street, or I can simply park my car at the meters close to the church in East Cambridge--meters which are free after 6:00 p.m. as opposed to the rest of Cambridge, where the hours have recently been extended to 8:00 p.m.--and make a quick jaunt over to Central Square, from where I can also take the Red Line. As for my friends in Brighton, these days a 20-minute drive doesn't seem so long.

Interestingly enough, one of the primary factors in my decision to move into Medford was that it would be closer to work. Indeed, since it is right by I-93, it would be just a 30-minute drive up to Tewksbury. In Brighton, I was currently driving 40-45 minutes, so of course Medford was the better deal. Ironically, just a week after deciding to move to Medford, I was transferred to the Raytheon facility in Sudbury, about 20 miles west of Boston, and more importantly, 20 miles southwest of Medford. Who knew? Technically I did, but they had been talking about sending me to Sudbury for months, and it just wasn't happening. I suppose, however, that it was a good thing I hadn't decided to move to Andover, a town right next to Tewksbury, like I had briefly considered while still in the Back Bay. It just goes to show that things rarely go as planned, at least not perfectly.

Just to be clear, Sudbury is geographically closer to Medford than Tewksbury is, as it is to Brighton as well. But no matter where in the greater Boston area you're coming from, you can count on a peaceful, leisurely 40 mph drive down Rt. 20 during the last nine miles of your commute. This is because the closest freeways are I-95--which runs north-south and has an exit onto Rt. 20 in Weston, still nine miles east of Sudbury--and I-90, which is three miles south of Rt. 20 by the time you get that far west. Therefore, your commute will always be however long it takes to get to Weston, plus 15-20 minutes depending on traffic. Medford is a good 10 or 11 miles from Weston, so I wasn't counting on making it there in 10 minutes.

I spent six weeks driving from Brighton to Sudbury, and that drive wasn't ideal. True, Rt. 20 goes right through Brighton, but the stretch that runs through Watertown and Newton can be kind of tumultuous. Mind you, you're still in Greater Boston, so you're subject to crazy intersections of the worst kind. Besides the place in Newtown where they randomly placed a stoplight for pedestrians (no intersection, just a crosswalk accompanied by a stoplight), there were at least two crooked intersections--you know, intersections where the road on the right doesn't align with the road on the left. We had one back in Logan, and the remedy was simple: Make it a four-way stop. Here in Boston, the solution was to add two separate stoplights. You can imagine the traffic congestion that tends to cause, especially since once you're through one stoplight, you're already facing another. Translation: A 40-minute commute. I suppose it could have been worse. Once you get to Weston, the traffic coming into Boston is much, much worse. The traffic is almost always bumper-to-bumper. The opposite is true at the end of the day. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

Medford has proven to be different. Despite adding five miles to my commute, if I leave no later than 7:00, I can get to I-95 within 10-15 minutes, after which it takes me just five minutes or so to get to the Weston exit. Translation: I can easily make it to work within 30-35 minutes! For once, GoogleMap got it right and my GPS can take a hike. And I should point out that included in my transfer was a switch in positions. I am no longer writing, but editing. This has since broadened my exposure to the different projects Raytheon is working on, as I perform quality reviews on manuals from several different programs. Both my former Team Lead and my former Supervisor felt this would be a nice fit for me, and it has. At first there was some confusion determining process when it comes to quality reviews, but that has since been cleared up, and I feel like I have been doing this job for years.

So why am I telling you all this? Probably because in retrospect I feel like my decision to move to Medford was inspired. One might attach simple logic to the equation, as the rent is cheaper, the parking is easier, and at the time, the commute to work was shorter. But why do logic and inspiration have to be mutually exclusive? I feel God doesn't expect us to make inspired decisions that are illogical. Sometimes the logic just takes a while to present itself. I should point out that I left Lexington last year for the same considerations that I disregarded when I moved to Medford. I wanted to be closer to a T, I wanted to be closer to my friends, I wanted to be closer to Boston. Those all seemed like logical considerations at the time, and yet they led me into a very illogical situation in the Back Bay. Logic on its own seems to have failed me in the past from time to time.

Besides, I ended up getting transferred, and things have still worked out in better ways than logic could have conjured up. My previous concerns seem so petty and unimportant, and I feel happier--perhaps because I am starting to focus on the more important things in the eternal perspective and less on those temporal things that have often left me feeling empty and disappointed. Medford life is much calmer than the Back Bay anyway--so calm that when I went out to my vehicle this morning and found that someone had broken my sideview mirror (just the glass), I felt very little frustration. Of course that means I'm going to start parking in our driveway--rather than on the side of the busy street in front of our house, but that's probably why I'm calm. Frustration arises when bad things happen that we don't feel we can control, and in the Back Bay I didn't feel in control of very much at all. It was a last-second choice after the deal in Somerville fell through, and it was a choice I didn't feel good about. But I felt good about Medford, and I feel that because I acted on those feelings, I have more control, more choices. Honestly, God gives us what we can handle, and I can handle what I have been given.