Today I went to Boston to attend the monthly Cambridge Esperanto meeting. I left around 8am in the RAV4 with the sunroof taken off, so I could see the blue sky and feel the wind in my hair. It was a great day to drive in the country and visit the city.
Before the Esperanto meeting, I went to breakfast with 
Ishitori and her boyfriend Jared They were both students of mine who worked in the BCRC and took my Information Technology class. They graduated over the past couple of years and are both doing biology research now in labs around Boston. We had breakfast at the S and S restaurant. The food was great, but the directions on their website were lousy. I tried following the RT-2 directions and got lost. Then I tried following their RT-93S directions and got lost again. Eventually, I just got there by dead reckoning -- I said, "It's gotta be that way" and wound my way through the streets until I found it. It was wonderful to see them both. We talked about the good old days and what's happening now and what their plans are. I took Ishitori some chocolate sourdough bread from the farmer's market at Amherst. She was ecstatic and bounced with joy.
After breakfast, I went straight to lunch at the Royal East restaurant. There were about eight of us, all folks I've met before One fellow who comes to the Cambridge meetings seems to think it's his mission to correct everyone's grammar and provide little lectures about correct usage -- even while you're still trying to get your sentence out. I asked him if he'd ever read "La Vesperfusxulo" and described it to him a bit. He didn't get the clue, however. He got angry when we switched to English to discuss some ESNE business -- I decided a long time ago that it's important to take advantage of chances to practice Esperanto, but business should be conducted in English to improve efficiency and reduce the potential for errors and misunderstandings. For a while this guy would translate everything that anyone said in English (admittedly this was partly for his wife who is not a native English speaker). Eventually they just left.
The main point of the trip, from my perspective, was to meet with Jacob and work on the newsletter. After the meeting, we went off to MIT to get on the net and look over what we've got so far. We made a few decisions and talked about what we need to get accomplished -- I want the issue to get out the door by the end of August. If we can get motivated and work on it seriously, we can do it.
When I left MIT, there was construction near the entrance to highway and I believed the route I wanted to take was closed, so I missed the turn and ended up crossing the Charles River and heading into Boston itself. Rather than turning around (which is a royal PITA), I decided to just turn west on Beacon street and follow it out of town. Boston has terrible signage -- I assumed I'd see signs to the Masspike, but there were none -- not one. Eventually, after 40 minutes, I reached an expressway and then hit the Masspike. A long day, but good.