nehrlich

08:23 am: An excellent day
"You want to go where everybody knows your name...and they're always glad you came..."

I headed up to Boston yesterday on the bus. I was supposed to arrive at 1:20, but because of traffic, the bus didn't get there until 2pm. I was stressing out because I'd made a reservation for lunch for ten of us at 1:22pm at Brezhnev's, but I texted ahead to a couple people and figured my friends would be able to handle things without me.

I got off the bus, power walked over to Brezhnev's, bounded up the familiar steps, and opened the door, only to stop dumbfounded, as there were 22 people rather than 10, and they all looked up and yelled "Perlick!!" Definitely a Cheers moment.

An aside, for those of you unfamiliar with Brezhnev's. Brezhnev's is what we call King Fung Garden, a tiny restaurant in a converted gas station. It has six tables, and makes the best scallion pancakes in the world. I have been going there now for seventeen years - my freshman year at MIT, we went there once a week. It is a cultural touchpoint for me - even though other places may have better or less greasy food, Brezhnev's evokes a sense of home. So to walk in the door and see it filled with my friends was a great feeling.

In addition to the required scallion pancakes and worms (Shanghai chow mein) and slugs (lin gao rice cakes with Szechuan pickles), we had the Peking Duck which I've never had before because it requires 24 hours notice to prepare and I'd never been organized enough to do that. It was amazing. They roasted the duck, brought it out for pictures, then we got three courses out of it, with a moo shu pancake course for the skin and surface bits, a duck salad with the breast, and a duck soup out of everything left over.

After Brezhnev's, I arm twisted everybody into going back to TEP because Rush was happening. I always like visiting during Rush as an alum, because Rush is a time of renewal and rebirth - it's when the house gets new blood. There's a sense of potential and possibility in the air. Plus it's fun to be able to remember everybody as a freshman. Plus as an alum, it's not nearly so stressful because I can walk away when it's no longer fun.

The house looks to be in great shape, both physically and spiritually. It may have been the cleanest I've ever seen it. I enjoyed tagging along on a house tour and hearing new versions of stories. It was especially wacky hearing stories from when I was there, as those stories have been filtered through an inter-generational game of Telephone. I interruped once, and then realized I shouldn't let the facts get in the way of the story.

It was also fun to watch the brothers awkwardly hit on freshman girls. Some things never change.

After hanging out at TEP for several hours, a bunch of us headed over to CBC. Because it was a gorgeous day, we walked over the Harvard Bridge to campus, the way we did countless times as undergraduates. Stopping in the middle of the bridge to gaze back at the Boston skyline, forward at the MIT skyline, watching the sun set over the river, it brought back memories (fortunately not the memories of watching the sun rise over the river on my way home from the Tute). Then down the Infinite Corridor, pointing out things that had changed (I still haven't come to grips with the Fishbowl going away, and the lounge they had turned the Cashier's office into was kinda wacky), before going to CBC.

We got a table on the patio, and ordered two towers of beer plus food. It was lovely. People espoused expert opinions on everything from composting toilets to why Navy ships shouldn't run their control systems on Windows NT to diagnosing odd physical ailments.

Pretty much a perfect day. In fact, any of those pieces alone would have made the 4 hour bus trip worth it.