Chipotle is a choose your own burrito bowl place. You go to the counter and tell the server what you want in your burrito as they're making it, so you can peer over (or down if you are tall) at the ingredients that will be going into your burrito and decide what you would like. There are lots of other places like this in Boston, and maybe when I get a little braver I'll got there, but for now I am sticking to something I know I like (I am the BRAVE EXPLORER!). I have been to four different Chipotles in Boston since I got here (Harvard, Davis, Fenway and Alewife). I think I went to Chipotle 4 times in the first 8 days or something ridiculous. When I was last in San Francisco I dragged Mat all over the city in search of a Chipotle (it turns out that the easiest to find SF one is at the bottom of the Westfield centre). The problem with writing a blog post about Chipotle is that I always get the same thing, so there are really very limited options for photos. Sorry! Here - have a link to the Willie Nelson Coldplay cover Chipotle advert:
Like I said, I always get the same thing at Chipotle - a burrito bowl with brown cilantro (coriander) lime rice, fajita veggies, pinto beans (they have bacon in, I think that's why they're tasty), mild and corn salsa, cheese, lettuce and guacamole. Plus a small soda and smoked tabasco sauce (yum, such find memories of huevos rancheros in Giraffe in Cambridge. As a total aside I booked my next sets of UK flights and they are all with BA out of terminal 5. I got all excited about eating Mexican breakfast in Giraffe, one of the great things about flying out of terminal 5 or terminal 1, and then I remembered that I had booked the BA flights because they are evening ones, so no giraffe breakfasts for me). Anyway, a burrito bowl and a soda is $8.61 in Chipotle and I reckon it is the cheapest way to get a varied and tasty burrito bowl for one, relative to making it for myself anyway. I often drag my friends there when we need a quick dinner. Or when we're going somewhere else for dessert. Or when I haven't been to Chipotle for a while. Or when I went the day before. Basically whenever I get the chance to suggest Chipotle for dinner I will. Maybe I will go tonight!
Sometimes I even make a special trip to Harvard Square at 9 o'clock on a Sunday because a Chipotle burrito bowl with lots of guacamole is my happy food. It seems better to pop out and get something with actual veggie content than eat a bowl of cereal or make some instant mac 'n' cheese.
There are two Chipotles in London, I've never been, but I will recommend them all the same. I really do like Chipotle a lot. If you come and visit me here there is a good chance I will suggest it as a place to eat, even though it is fast food. They have a really comprehensive allergy guide on their website and the food has the allergens in that you would expect. If we go to Chipotle in Harvard Square then we will go to Pinkberry and get frozen yoghurt for pudding (not like American pudding goo, I mean pudding like dessert).
OK, so it's agreed? You're all going to come and visit me and we'll go to Chipotle. Excellent.
I have broken all the things. Not cleaned them. Broken them.
This was made using the cheezburger meme generator, which I found via knowyourmeme.com.
And I obviously totally adore hyperboleandahalf.com and the magnificent Allie Brosh, who drew the fantabulous original comic here and has also done alot of other funny things. Just scroll through the "Best of" comics on the right. And then the entire website. It will make you laugh.
I don't know if moving country has given me a very precise list of what I own (there is a word, what is the word? Like manifest, but not for passengers, for stuff? Update: INVENTORY!!!! Yes! It has taken me an hour to remember "inventory"). Or if I just know exactly when I moved here, so I know that in the last 5 and a half weeks I have destroyed n things, where n is a distressingly large number...
Whatever the reason, I seem to be destroying my stuff at an unusually high rate.
Here is the casualty list:
New navy ribbon wellies (new) Over-zealous removal ripped the boot away from te sole, rendering them not even slightly waterproof. No longer suitable for Boston puddles
Replacement navy wellies (different make, but also new!) have failed in the same way. This is something to do with how I wear/remove wellies isn't it? Or maybe the colour navy? Perhaps navy is a notoriously weak rubber? Fortunately I am left with one right and one left boot, so I still have a mismatched navy pair of wellies....
iPod Touch is clearly about to join its 6(!) departed iPod brethren, as it can now only take 3Gb of music, instead of 64Gb of stuff it is meant to be able to hold. When the iPod is storing all of my music it becomes unable to play ANY music, suggesting a lack of iPod functionality that may be a sign of an impending complete failure. Maybe I will get the sad iPod face again, like when that one met the giant magnet in my handbag.
Comforter(new) now stained and burnt. Firstly it met my leaky fabric softener (the one that leaked all over my dorm, leading to the headphone destruction). The leaky fabric softener left a stain on the beautiful turquoise side. So I decided to wash the oversized comforter. Error. Very bubbly/5ud5-y error. Then a scorchy error when I put it in the drier on the lowest setting (as per instructions!). It came out of the drier still stained from the fabric softener and now with some contrasting scorch marks. I am not a comforter person clearly. I am just too messy and comforters are impossible to clean, even in big dorm machines.
iPhone headphones. I knelt on these when I was wiping up the leaky fabric softener from the first comforter disaster. The fabric softener had basically leaked all over the building, so I was kneeling in the elevator at the time of headphone destruction. They now have only one earbud, as the other was threatening to drop bits of plastic into my ear/brain.
Laptop battery (but not the trackpad! Could have been worse. As the old battery broke it became all swollen and interfered with the trackpad so I thought I might have to replace both. Eep.)
Laptop microphone connector. This is particularly annoying as my laptop fan is going crazy at the moment. Nobody can hear me on skype.
Umbrella blew inside out on first day it was used here. Now the whole umbrella is kind of feeble. It will not collapse properly and has one broken spoke.
Cold cup (new) I dropped it on first day I used it. Now a vase and an uninsulated cold cup.
Cosy tights (new) now laddered, despite seeming so fleecy as to be magically unladderable. No letter from Hogwarts this year.
3 socks are MIA they were definitely part of pairs in January!
1 incredible glove with conducting fingertipps for iPod/phone use in the cold has been lost. Replacements are not as comfortable
Pink earmuffs snapped as I was putting them on.
Mascara just vanished
Lip balm has also vanished
1 pink mitten glove, I even realised I had lost it nearly straightaway, but still couldn't find it!
Selected broken things. Note the pair of wellies which are not actually a pair.
Near misses:
Buttons have come off both my kindle case and my coat, fortunately the buttons have all been recovered.
Nearly left my half functioning headphones *and* case *and* cable winder in the supermarket after they fell off my keyring. Only saved by 3 people yelling at me and 1 chasing me.
Water bottle left in gym. Fortunately still there the next day.
2 cardigans already need mending. I should not have brought clothes with me that I had already had to mend!
If you belonged to me you would be shaking in your boots, particularly if you were a pair of boots.....
I am giving up, or at least severely cutting back on the Dunkin' Donuts. Mainly because they are bad for my waistline, my wallet and my midmorning mood (Hello, Sugar crash!). So having decided to give up the donuts on anything but a special occasion (e.g. fancy white kreme filled heart shaped Valentine's donuts), my only reason for going to Dunkin' Donuts was to buy my nice iced coffee morning treat. However, I was basically unable to go into Dunkin' Donuts to get an iced coffee and not buy a donut or two. They have those big signs that you get in fast food joints advertising "combos" (1 bagel and a coffee $4!, 2 donuts and a coffee, $3.50!). I think I have spent too much time playing/watching people play computer games as when I see words like "combo" I kind of feel like I get more points when I get the combo. Even though clearly Dunkin' Donuts is the winner, as they get my coins, not the other way around.
Given that I do not have the will power to go to Dunkin' Donuts and just buy a coffee I needed to find a way to satisfy my need for caffeine in the morning. I have a nice pink cafetière that I use to make hot coffee on very cold days, but I tend to prefer iced coffee first thing in the morning. So I bought a special iced coffee making french press from Bodum. I like it, it's purple. I'll explain how it works properly at some later point, but the important point here is that I no longer have any excuse to go to Dunkin' Donuts (except for when there might be special edition donuts, like around St. Patrick's Day!). Thank you for the memories Dunkin'....
Note the homemade ice coffee on the left! Victory is mine!
What are you drinkin'? Not Dunkin' anymore. I should go back and buy some coffee for brewing there. Everyone who works in there was very friendly to me, I really appreciated it when I first arrived and I would show up at Dunkin' really early in the morning because of the jetlag!
On Valentine's Day last week I woke up in my special, dancing Snoopy, Valentine's Day pyjamas.
I enjoyed looking at flowers in my new vase/old cold cup.
I ate my last heart shaped, kreme filled donut. In fact, I ate two (only 30 cents more than one).
I painted my nails to be pink and red. They matched my replacement cold cup. I thought pink and red nails would cheer me up whilst I was typing at work. They didn't.
It was all a bit depressing. My Valentine is far away.
So I was pleased to see this in the lift in the department.
Nerdy and not really romantic. But still sweet. Very MIT.
It made me laugh in the elevator at work on a day which felt a bit sad (which wasn't helped by the crazy donut sugar rush). Fortunately there wasn't anyone else in the elevator with me, although I imagine they would have laughed too.
A mere 12 days after the actual event and 11 days after I mentioned that I would write something soon, I bring you my Superbowl 46 post.... yeah, I am totally on top of this blogging malarky... Look! I've written a ridiculously long post to make up for it (?)
So, the Superbowl! A totally American thing to experience, made all the more exciting for the fact the the New England Patriots, Boston's home team, were in the Superbowl! Boston actually seem to be quite good at sport - all of the big American sports (American football, ice hockey, basketball and baseball) have teams that have won their championships recently. I'm not sure the rest of America particularly likes any Boston team except for the Red Sox (a proper old baseball team playing in a proper old stadium who won their first World Series for the best part of a century in 2004). The Patriots have won three Superbowls, all since 2001, and two of which were with their current quarterback Tom Brady (Mr. Gisele Bundchen). However, the Patriots lost the last Superbowl they were in (4 years ago) to the other team in Superbowl 46 - the New York Giants.
From top left, clockwise: Patriots rings sold in local supermarket, reduced Superbowl hours at local hardware store, on-offer chips from grocery store, football cookie with Patriot's red accents from my beloved flour
The rest of America may have wanted New York to win but Boston were totally supporting their home team. Ever since I arrived there have been "Go Pats" signs everywhere as they progressed through the playoffs, and lots of offers on snacks and sodas in my local supermarket, with signs reminding people to stock up for the big game. On the actual day of the superbowl I did stock up and toddled over with my British friend Ann to my American friend Rita's apartment. Rita had promised to patiently explain everything important about the Superbowl to us, and it was amazing, by the end of the game I kind of understood what was happening.
So, as I understand it, the Superbowl has four major elements:
Food
Commercials
Halftime show
The actual game
And plenty of people will watch the Superbowl who will not have seen an American football game all year, just because they want to see the ridiculously expensive commercials and the halftime show (people like me!). I think over 100 million people watched Superbowl 46.
Let me break down how we approached the four elements of Superbowl success:
Food
I went grocery shopping and bought miscellaneous American items, including tortilla chips shaped like a spoon, so that you can scoop up dip. They are called "scoops" and they are totally in my top ten favourite things about America. You can see one in the picture above...isn't it the greatest idea ever!
Rita made a delicious chili, which is apparently a superbowl tradition. I am in favour of delicious traditions. Particularly ones which are so delicious that I forget to take a photo. Another superbowl tradition is chicken wings. A friend of mine ate 6lbs of chicken wings with his 4 friends for superbowl 46 (the internet suggest one chicken wing is one ounce, so that would be 48 chickens worth of wings?!?! That cannot be right).
Ann made an incredible pear tart, which was so delicious it should also be a Superbowl tradition.
Photos not taken during the superbowl, as too distracted by the deliciousness of the tart.
I know bringing chips now seems kind of lame, but may I remind you that they are like EDIBLE SPOONS!! We used them to eat the chili. I also bought beer, although it was raspberry ginger ale, which is probably less of a superbowl tradition than the regular alcoholic kind of ale. Next year, I'll step up to the plate (and try not to use the wrong sport's metaphors).
Commercials
For such expensive things they were kind of disappointing. Some of the big ones had even been available online for a week before, like the Ferris Bueller one. My favourite bit in the commercial breaks was when the very expensive Superbowl commercials would suddenly become local ones with substantially lower production values. They would be advertising Superbowl sales in some random Massachusetts card dealer or something and have a lot of brightly coloured text. My least favourite of all the ads was the murderous mobster dog who keep buying his owner's silence with Doritos (no link, it is really terrible). I quite liked the one with the exercising dog below, but I am sad that it is for a car.
The strangest and most awesome commercial aired at half time. It was funded by a bunch of car companies and featured Clint Eastwood.
"It's halftime in America, and our second half is about to begin"
Isn't that just perfect? But doesn't it also sound like a total Obama endorsement? There have been lots of statements that it was not meant to be an ad endorsing a particular person, but we are entering election time in the US. All the news coverage is about the Republican primaries, which decide who will be their candidate, so it kind of feels like everything is about the election already. I genuinely thought the Clint Eastwood Detroit car makers advert was an Obama campaign ad for almost all of its duration. I do totally love the advert though. I hope you can see it outside of the US.
Let's hear those engines roar America! Vroom!
Halftime show - Madonna
Madonna being dragged by shiny gladiator men! Obscenity that I didn't even notice! LMFAO! And, most amazingly, a guy who could jump and bounce around on a tightrope!
Woo!
The GAME
OK, so I didn't understand anything that was going on in the first half other than:
American football players are really big.
The padding they wear just seems to let them run into each other harder.
Tom Brady is often expressionless, and has a robot arm!
Eli Manning (Giants quarterback) is not expressionless. He probably also has a robot arm. The quarterbacks use the robot arm to communicate with the bench.
The teams keep being swapped around! As in, when a team is attacking, it is made up of completely different players to when that same team is defending. Therefore if the defence intercepts a pass and some guy scores a touchdown, that is unlikely to be something that happens to him often. He is not meant to be scoring touchdowns.
The man who kicks the ball is only ever on the field to kick the ball!!! So the playoffs have hinged on kicking points, and when you mess up as a kicker, you cannot console yourself with playing a good game generally, as your entire game is trotting on the field to kick the ball! Poor weedy kicking men, they seem like children compared to the oversized football players....
However, I did understand what was going on enough in the last 5 minutes to find it incredibly tense! It was AMAZING. The Giants were losing, but had the possession and a field goal was all they needed to win. So the Giants were trying to keep advancing enough to keep possession, whilst playing slowly enough to nearly run down the clock, so the Patriots wouldn't have much of a chance of scoring again. Conversely the Patriots were so desperate for a chance to score again that they let the guy who scored for the Giants go, just so they would have a chance to attack again. Sadly for Boston the Patriots didn't score in the last 55 seconds of the game, despite some sort of chances (in their play before they had had real chances to score but people could not successfully catch the passes, leading to a Butterfingers prank in Boston). However, on the bright side this must surely be the funniest winning touchdown of any Superbowl....
New York did deserve to win. They played well in the first half and didn't really make lots of mistakes Plus, look at this AMAZING catch.
So, if you made it to the end of this ultra rambly post well done.
In conclusion, a close Superbowl is amazing to watch! American football can be incredibly tense. I totally hid behind a cushion for the last 5 minutes of the game.
Thank you so much for explaining the game, Rita! I had so much fun watching with you guys!
PS Let me know if the videos break, they're pretty likely too I think. Also let me know if you cant see them outside of the US and I'll try and fix that too.
PPS In the post game trophy awarding stuff "winning the Superbowl" suddenly started being called "being World Champions"
Here is how I made dinner. I couldn't be bothered to spend 12 minutes making real pasta. SPOILER ALERT! That wasn't an especially smart decision.
1. Buy pot of Kraft instant mac 'n' cheese from your local grocery store for $1 (normal price ~$1.50 - score!)
2. Stare at pot incredulously, do not read ingredients before attempting to eat. Feel happier because the pot has a smiley macaroni face on.
3. Peel off yellow lid. Fill pot with water up the line, microwave for 3 minutes.
4. Whilst microwaving, begin to feel anxious about nutritional value in dinner and chop up pepper and mushrooms for real food.
5. Take pot from microwave. Worry about amount of water left in pot.
6. Add luminous powder. Stir. Decide powder could have been more luminous. Try and relax.
7. Leave sauce to thicken (aka congeal) as per instructions on happy pasta pot.
Step by step instant mac 'n' cheese guide
8. Enjoy whilst hot. Do not allow to cool to tasting temperature under any circumstances!
9. Abandon mac 'n' cheese pot once it is no longer napalm hot. Eat backup veggies. Feel smug about not buying 10 pots of mac 'n' cheese, then remember that you were going to, but wise friend who happened to be accompanying you to superarket suggested caution (Thanks Ann!)
Furrowed brow says it all.
Total calories in one pot: 220 (probably only ate 150 though)
Number of yellow colours required: 3 (yellow 5, 6 and apocaratenol)
High fructose corn syrup? No, just regular corn syrup!
Forest destroying palm oil? Check!
Worst sounding ingredient: Medium chain triglycerides, which appear twice!
Review: Get the mac 'n' cheese soup from Au Bon Pain on the way home instead. No ingredients list, so could even be made with real cheese. Do not buy this again, Lizzie!
PS The Superbowl was very exciting, I'll talk about it in the future. Dinner malaise is apparently a generic Monday malaise.
I know turquoise being my favourite colour isn't exactly news. But I emptied some bits from my handbag onto my bed yesterday, and I just had to arrange things in a slightly less higgledy piggledy way and take a picture.
Let's look at the items in the picture. Centre: headphone case, headphones and headphone swirler. Then clockwise from 12 o'clock: eyeliner; iPod; mints; hand with turquoise nails, enamel ring and turquoise watch on wrist (my hand and wrist, obviously, look at the stubby fingers. Do not pity me, I can buy VAT free children's gloves); diary; sparkly ear muffs; "powermint" tictacs (bought for the colour). All items on top of the surprisingly polyester-y turquoise comforter, also chosen because of it's colour.
It is undeniable that I have a favourite colour, and turquoise-y teal-y blue is it. I suppose I actually have a favorite color now. When it came to choosing stuff for my new room I made most decisions based on colour, which how I ended up with dangerously unusable aqua oven gloves from Target, that now act as semi-heat proof mats. Please forgive the Photobooth. I look worried on this photo because it was taken to demonstrate how useless the oven gloves are as oven gloves (thanks for the safe British ones, lovely parents! They are far superior.)
I even have reusable turquoise decals all over my room. As well as all the other turquoise stuff. I would like to note that there are pink accents though, like my pillow, my laptop, and my french press.
At least the turquoise comforter is reversible - the other side is green. I never have the green side showing, even though my fabric softener leaked all over the blue side. I haven't figured out how to wash a comforter yet, but don't worry! It's not unhygienic because there is a sheet between me and the comforter. I had to wash my beautiful quilt here though, because I got dark chocolate mint m&ms all over it. Terrible times, but it's hard to stay mad at mint m&ms because:
a) Mint m&ms are the most delicious candy in the history of mankind. They make all other m&ms taste like dirt, because you know how good the mint ones are (coconut m&ms are particularly discouraged; dark chocolate, peanut butter or pretzel ones are just about tolerable. In a pinch).
b) They come in such a pretty turquoise-y coloured packet.
PS I've decided that because I put some pictures of my room in this post, then you guys are the explorers. So even though this is just pictures of blue things that I own, it almost fits the premise of this whole blog thing. Maybe.
What I don't get is, have the soldiers always been in the department? Maybe I just haven't been looking.... and now that I've seen some I see them everywhere? Am I not very observant? In which case, "scientist" might not be the best career choice... is there a job where a lack of attention to detail is an asset? Certainly I am not cut out for a military career if I can't keep track of troop movements..
Caught in my Instagr.am spotlight!
The alternative to permanent solider occupation is that there is an actual war game going on in my department, and because this is MIT that is a real possibility. The only way to find out is keep taking photos of the known soldiers and keep scouting for other troops. I can report that they haven't taken the floor with the administrators and head of department yet, but they only have to go up a few more flights of stairs.... I suppose that it's likely that the home of the people who actually run the department will be the last floor to fall to the invaders right? I imagine they are relatively vigilant about toy soldiers in the nerve centre of the department.
The ones above are right outside my office! They all seem to be on the green side, so I don't think I'm going to have to tend to any wounded as they shouldn't be fighting each other. A relief to everyone involved as I'm just not the right kind of doctor for that. I can't believe I'm going to have to creep around my department taking photos of toy soldiers to figure out if they are moving about. I am going to end up traversing every floor to try and track them.
Maybe I should just ask on of my colleagues - "Hey, what's with the toy soldiers?" - I'll report back once I've psyched myself up to it.
PS In other news, "car thief" was back to "tech fair" this morning.
I like MIT a lot; my department is very nice and everyone I speak to is pretty much normal and very friendly (Hi Employers! Don't worry, I'm being nice about you on the internet - please don't fire me! Plus it's true, MIT is great. Go Beavers!). But every so often, or rather, most days, when I'm walking to work I'll see something and just think to myself "Wow! MIT is really MIT-y". By which I mean it's charmingly nerdy. Nerds are King! You can even buy "Nerd Pride" stickers and shirts in the Coop.
Today's nerdiest moment was seeing this in the lobby of building 7, which is the building you can see behind me in my current profile picture, up there on the right.
Yep, MIT has already decided whose side it is on when the human/robot war comes, and it is standing with Skynet. Hell, someone in MIT is probably building Skynet right now. Maybe they have already built Skynet! Just because they wanted to see if they could, and they thought to themselves "It'll be a cool project, robots are cool".
In fact, stuff like this is ALL OVER campus. Every day I walk from the lobby of building 7 to my building through the infinite corridor, which traverses most of campus and is lined with poster boards and has little seating areas. There are always nerdy posters advertising nerdy events, like a recital from the singing group "The Asymptones", or another recital, from another nerdily named singing group, "The Logarhythms". Yesterday I saw a girl in an amazing unicorn hat. If the corridor wasn't so busy I would probably stop to take a photo of a cool poster every 10 metres. Even today there wasn't just one thing that I thought was worth taking a photo of on campus:
So, admittedly this isn't as good as the robot overlord thing, which really made me chuckle and stop dead in my tracks, but the sign did still made me laugh out loud (LOL IRL). I saw this in front of the student center (by Dunkin' Donuts). Yesterday morning this sign said "tech fair" - this morning "car thief". There are just low-level hacks happening everywhere. MIT has a big tradition of "hacks" (a wikipedia article is proof of real, legitimate thing, people). According this site - "The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!)".There are even posters all over campus explaining the best hacks, my favourites are this, this and this.
The first day I arrived here I came across a hack. I walked straight through the lobby of building 7, very jet lagged, and the entire lobby was covered in xkcd comics. The comics were marking the 1000th xkcd (now that I think about it, I'm surprised MIT didn't wait for 1024 to celebrate). There was a big banner and everything. I totally didn't realise it was a hack (which it was, because it's featured on the hack website). I thought that MIT was doing something nice for xkcd, because it is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and it is nerdy, and xkcd is nerdy too. Boy, is MIT nerdy. On my first weekend there was a giant puzzle game happening all over campus. Last weekend there was a cardboard boat regatta in the Zesiger pool, which I did not realise was for boats that should carry people until I saw that photo on the front of the Tech. The regatta is called the "Head of the Zesiger".
It's not just the big hacks all over campus that make me smile, this is what the fire alarm looks like on the floor above mine at work.
Little nerdy moments are everywhere. It certainly makes walking to work more interesting.
I can't wait until Pi day - I have been assured it will be good. I hope there's pie........
