Honoring Allen Smith, and cheering for the Sox!

On Friday I drove up to Boston from John and Jill's house and got into town around 10:30am. I hadn't slept very well and decided to leave very early to avoid any rush hour traffic, so I was showered and out the door before 6:30am. It was too early to meet Lee for lunch, so I decided to take a nap at Sylvie and Miriam's apartment, and it was much needed and much appreciated. I slept so hard for over an hour that when I woke up I thought I was still in NJ and was late for everything. I was in such a panic, and then I remembered what the heck was going on. I went to lunch with Lee at Petsi Pies in Cambridge and had an amazing veggie panini with smoked mozzarella. We also shared a Whoopie Pie cupcake since part of the plan for the weekend was to enjoy (endulge in?) as many cupcakes as we could find. It was a good start to the cupcake quest, a rich, dark chocolate cake with whipped cream filling (not enough in my opinion) and topped with chocolate ganache. I forgot to bring my camera to lunch, so the only photo we have is from Lee's cell phone:

After lunch I headed over to Simmons to participate in Alumni Day and a toast to honor the life of Allen Smith, one of my favorite professors from graduate school. The speaker talked about the Future of Reference, which was one of Allen's favorite topics. After the lecture there was a toast to Allen which was delivered by an old friend of his, and it was very moving and made the crowd both laugh and tear up. He was a pillar of the program, having taught at Simmons for over 30 years, and will be sorely missed.

While I was on campus, I thought I might try to run into one of my favorite professors, Martha Mahard, and I found her working hard in the computer lab at the library school. It was great to catch up with her, and while I was there I also saw my good friend Peet who was just getting out of class. He and I decided to walk over to the Main College Building together where I had to attend the induction ceremony for Beta Phi Mu, which is the library school honor society. Peet was on his way out of town, so we just got to chat for a second (and snap this photo):

The induction ceremony featured a cocktail hour with good food, a little bit of pomp and circumstance and a chance to catch up with people I haven't seen since graduation. It was great to be back on campus and run into all kinds of people. It was also amazing to see how the new quad and Business school turned out:

All of this was under construction the entire 2 years I was at Simmons. It's so great to see the finished product.

After leaving Simmons, I fought through some Red Sox traffic to head back to Lee's apartment (where I stayed in his guest room, lovingly referred to as the Urban Orphan Refuge). We unloaded my car and then headed over to the Thirsty Scholar to meet up with some folks and watch the Red Sox game. It was again, a great opportunity to catch up with folks and ended up being a fun game to watch because the Red Sox won! Here's the crew: Stephen, Bill, Me, Josh (we all worked at Harvard together), Matt, Lee and Anders (who was my neighbor in Princeton and moved to Somerville!). Thanks to Stephen's partner Barbara (appropriately pronounced with a heavy Boston accent) for taking the photo:

It was a perfect evening, and ended with Lee and I staying up until almost 1:30am playing guitar and chatting. You can tell we both live alone right now because I think we were both excited just to have someone around to talk to (and let's face it, we're both Chatty Kathys when we want to be).