update

Haven't posted here for several days so I figured I ought to post a mini-update of sorts. At this point it looks like I will be living in Holbrook, about six miles and 12-15 minutes from work. I'm not as close in to the city as I'd like to be, but being close enough to catch the subway ("T") right outside my front door would come with a steep cost in commute to work, especially given the traffic patterns here. They're unpredictable, so methinks my best bet is to sort out the traffic to and from the nearest T stop on weekends instead of to and from work every weekday.

The house should be a good arrangement with plenty of privacy. And it's very cheap, meaning I have a few hundred more bucks per month in my pocket. My landlord isn't around too often and generally spends her time on the upstairs half anyway, and so she figured she might as well rent the downstairs rooms and bath to someone who needs a place. So it's effectively two separate apartments with a shared entrance and common area. The place is very nice and well-kept, which isn't necessarily a good thing -- or at least not an easy thing -- for folks who aren't used to having to care much about their own living standards. Oh well, it'll bring back some habits from old that went by the wayside in my later college years.

That whole process has so far proven to be a real work of God I think. Over the past week and a half, I've stalled for time and passed up several opportunities to get settled in at various places, and had recently been getting quite concerned that I'd overplayed the odds a little and might end up having to go with my original plan of renting a much more expensive apartment due to my own indecision. And then this place comes along and appears to be a better deal than anything else I'd seen anyway, so as long as all goes through okay (don't see any reason it shouldn't; I plan to move in on Monday probably) then it will all have worked to my advantage anyway. Even if I decide later that I'd rather be closer to the city or whatever, it's an informal plan so I can just give a bit of move-out notice and start looking again. And as anyone who knows me can attest to, I'm all about freedom from pesky commitments. So I can't complain.

On a less positive note, this will, unfortunately, mark the second Saturday I've lived in this here hotel and had beautiful weather to work with, and yet still managed to not go into Boston. So I still haven't been downtown yet -- at least not in almost 20 years. I had hoped to go today but ended up dealing with too much other stuff (i.e., moving arrangements and standard chores) and took a nap for a bit too. Call it old age or whatever, but anymore it seems that if I only get 4-5 hours of sleep in a night then I just can't go about the usual the next day without wearing down later in the day. This getting old stuff sucks.

Anyway, time for dinner again. That means I need to go out and spend money. I've eaten in a total of four (I think) nights since I moved up, so the local restaurants are certainly happy I've moved to town. Hopefully I'll reel myself back in a little after I actually get settled in a bit. This of course renders the extra money I'm paying for the suite over a normal hotel room a waste. Moreover, I could have gotten a regular room and eaten out for every meal, and still saved money. Alas, it's a shame my extremely limited foresight rarely allows me to figure out this sort of thing before I start spending money. Oh well.

In the queue:
Visiting Boston and walking the Freedom Trail
Biking on Cape Cod National Seashore
Mariners at Red Sox, weekend of June 7th, if I can absorb the stratospheric cost of a Fenway ticket