Birthday Bashful

Oh man. Sorry for not posting anything in so many days!! I've been ultra busy with school work and figuring out what major I should pursue and which T lines I should take, etc. ANYWAY! Today is the extra-special birthday edition of BTEB, so my pictures are birthday themed, mostly. :)

I woke up this morning to find my room completely decorated with streamers and a present next to my bed thanks to my wonderful roomie. The present consisted of mostly "Happy Birthday" garb such as a crown, pin, beads, etc. The room was another matter altogether...

The decorations everywhere were wonderful, though maybe a little bit hindering to my daily routine. For example, this banner that was strung from one corner of my dresser to the other which made opening the drawers rather difficult, and the "Happy 1st Birthday!!" streamers covering the entire mirror on the back of the door made it hard to make sure I didn't look like a hobo before I left :P (Apparently my roommate didn't know that the streamers said "1" until she hung them up, but that's okay. It was a nice surprise, if not a few years off :)

Since I forgot to take pictures at my birthday dinner at Chipotle, I took some pictures of the sweet decorations the roomie and I have in our dorm room.

I LOVE my star lamp, which, paired with my roommate's 'tree-light' gives our room a wonderful glow that is much more favorable than the stark white fluorescent light from the ceiling. It makes our room quite zen, which I love.

These Victorian frame wall stickers have been, in fact, not very sticky and have been taped up multiple times. Our room has switched from humid to freezing so many times from the broken window, it's no wonder we can't hang up those darn Command hooks!! Sorry again for this post being both so long after the last and so late at night.

Same Route, New Things :)

So I've decided that, starting tomorrow, I'm taking a different route home from class. I've taken pictures of almost everything on Bay State at this point, and unless anything remarkable comes along, that's it for that neighborhood. Until the leaves start changing! :)

Fence halfway to CAS

This fence, outside what I think is a residence for BU, marks the halfway point between my dorm and my classes. It's also probably the most easily recognizable fence on Bay State, so it's nice to have as a landmark :) There are all sorts of vine-like details to the fence at the posts that jut out more than the rest, and it looks pretty cool.

Wonderfully colorful bike

Sorry to put another bike up on here for the second day in a row, but I just thought it was so cute! Most bikes in Boston are this style, rather than the mountain bikes that people would have at home.

Unique brownstone

I love this brownstone. It looks so different than the other brownstones, and I don't know why, but it just looks really cool to me. I think it's especially because of the sweet roof bit that sticks out. All of the other brownstones have a basically flat façade. 

On a brownstone house

This brownstone is so cool. Obviously it's not brown, but that's okay. It's the house of some doctor, and not really a BU residence. There's a zen-like outdoor area with this sweet plaque thingy on the outside of the house, and I wish I knew what it stood for...

Well, that's it for today! Halfway through the week :)

¡Gracias, el Tiempo!

Thunderstorms last night, and rain apparently until right before I got out of class! Lucky day. Today is after-sickness housekeeping day, so I'll be throwing everything in the washing machine :)
Oh! I got you that picture of the façade that I promised:

202 Bay State Rd. 

Creepy, eh? Especially so because the rain made dark lines like tear-tracks down the faces. We-eird! 

Today the weather has been funky. When I went to sleep it was raining, when I woke up it was sunny, and then when I got out of class it looked like it had just rained, and the sky was fairly dark. Oh, Boston. At least it isn't as hot anymore as the past few weeks. It was around 50 degrees the other day, though, and everyone was complaining. Just can't have happy city folk, I suppose. 

The side of a building on Bay State and Granby

I knew BU was a green university, but this just about takes the cake for the greenest building on campus. So many of the buildings are covered with ivy on at least one side, and the effect is really cool when the wind is blowing. The wall appears to shift or wiggle; it's awesome. 

BU's very own Castle!

Known simply as "the Castle", this very strange building is attached to the old Hillel center, and across Granby St. from the new one. It's on the northwest corner of Granby and Bay State. I think people (perhaps students) actually live inside, because there is an entrance on the Granby side of the building with a red plaque like all the BU buildings have. There is also a "Back Patio Grill" or something like that behind the Castle, which always seems to advertise as open, that I definitely need to check out at some point. This is also very very spooky to walk past in the middle of the night on the way back from the George Sherman Student Union (GSU). 

Outside another residence

The trees are taking over!! I have walked by this brownstone every day and didn't notice this strange friendship until two days ago. It looks pretty darn cool and reminds me of the Loading screen for an old Clue game for PC that I got out of a cereal box. I wish I lived there! :(

Poor, poor bicycle :(

This guy has just been beaten to a pulp. I'm sure this bike has been there for a very long time, since the wheels are rusted; what's left of them, anyway. Every day I walk by, and it seems that whoever put it there didn't think it was worth it to bring back the damaged bike. Shame, shame. Enjoy the end-of-summer weather :)

Freshhh

Brand new week! One hour of class and off into the wonderful world of office assistant jobbing. Not a bad first day, made literally 500 copies of an 8-page test which took like a bazillion reams of paper. Anywho! There's supposed to be rain today, but it hasn't happened yet, so I have some pictures of gloomy ol' Boston from about 10 minutes ago...

Right next to Shelton. Rain is coming!

Belated picture of the Citgo sign

So I haven't put up a picture of the Citgo sign until now. This beaut is about a block away from my dorm and GIGANTIC. Seriously. Unfortunately, so far this year it hasn't been lit up at night, but I'm assuming that the renovations being done on it are to make it more energy efficient, so that's good. This is my #1 landmark as a University student. I can see it from a good distance away, and it's especially helpful if I'm in an area where the only thing around are brownstones and I don't know how far away my dorm is. Soon, apparently, it'll be 'bright as ever', which is really magnificent, for those who haven't seen it. I'll definitely post some pictures when that happens :)

"Explosion" statue outside CAS Chemistry building

Right outside where I work is this fantastic statue. I'm not sure whether I love or absolutely hate it. Either way, it's there and it's the only way that I know which building to go in :)

Behind it is the Morse Auditorium, which is pretty fancy and holds large lectures as well as the "Boston University Experience", whatever that is. 

Outside of the Chemistry building - Art project

There's an art project outside the CAS Chemistry building that features prominent Chemists, Biologists, and Physicists from all through history. These portraits are composed of iron flakings attached to fabric which is then rubbed with salt (?) and somehow the impression ends up on the concrete and is supposed to last for a while. Pretty cool idea :)

Sassafrass McGee

Pigeons are not afraid of humans. At all. Sassafrass McGee over here walked RIGHT next to me on Deerfield St, without even flapping his wings or running away. I was actually a little bit scared of him, so I walked quickly away immediately after taking this picture. There were about seven pigeons right in the middle of the road that didn't seem to care that traffic was coming, so I suppose that's a good Darwinian reinforcement method. Or something. 

Aanywayy... That's what I saw today, minus a really really really cool brownstone façade that I'll post the next day that I end up walking past it (aka tomorrow probs) Bon semaine!

The Lamest Saturday in the History of College

Woke up in the morning feelin' like P. Diddy... if P. Diddy had a head cold and had just slept for 11 hours. Since I am trying to fully recuperate before my three a cappella auditions tomorrow, I will not be going out and about today. This means pictures from the dorm room! (and left-overs from yesterday)

The view from my window

I'm lucky enough to be on the north side of the building, so my view is of the Charles River, some MIT buildings, and Storrow Drive. Unfortunately, for those of you who don't know, Storrow Drive is essentially a highway, that I have generously excluded from this picture. However, the fact that the Charles is right there makes up for the loud traffic at night. 

This afternoon when I woke up I went down to the dining hall and made a waffle, which ended up having the Boston University Terrier logo in the middle of it! Snazzy! I ate that plate-o-carbs and grabbed two apples for later.

Aforementioned apples hanging out on my bedspread

I figure I might as well load up on some Vitamin-whatever while I'm sick as a dog. I suppose I'll share with you some pictures from yesterday that didn't make it into the blog post since I won't be taking any newbies today.

The brownstone whose pillar I showed yesterday

Seriously, there will be so many more pictures of brownstones, simply because they're so cool and most of them have some unique feature about them that I see something new every time I walk down Bay State. 

Brownstones and the Pru piercing the sky in the distance

The Prudential Center is GIGANTIC. Seriously. You can see it from virtually everywhere on campus. It's several blocks from BU, but it has definitely helped me figure out what direction I need to go in to get home on more than one occasion. The Citgo sign, though it is currently not turned on for renovations (bummer!), is also an excellent landmark because it sits on top of the Barnes & Noble at Boston University, which is about one block south of my dorm. I took this picture because the sky looked so menacing and the Pru was just sticking into the middle of the dark clouds, infallible as ever.

Trying out my UV lens

The weather in Boston changes over the course of a day more times than I can count. Wednesday morning my roommate and I were woken up at about 6 am by extremely loud thunder that shook our nearly century-old building. Rain was pounding the roof of the dining hall below and the sky was extremely dark, so we dressed for classes as if we were going to face the Great Flood. Turns out, by 9:30 am, the ground was completely dry and not a single cloud was in the sky, so I looked like a huge idiot with my giant rain boots and umbrella. Chalk one up for Boston!

Today the weather is beautiful but all I want to do is take a nap, so I think that's what I'm going to do. More exciting things than this tomorrow! Promise :)

Opportunities Abound!

Mornin'! 

After just about zero sleep, my cold isn't much better, and so the onslaught of tea continues. Today I had only one class, which gives me more time to explore (and/or sleep) for the rest of the day :)

The front of a brownstone on Bay State Rd. 

I pass so many brownstones on my way to and from the center of BU, where my classes are, that I figured I'd share an awesome architectural feature of one of the brownies on my side of the street. Each of the brownstones has an awesome entryway, and no two next to each other are the same. 

The Admissions building

The Admissions building, just about a half a mile from my dorm, is almost completely covered in ivy and generally has prospective students and their families milling around outside of it. Today the walkway was empty, so I decided to take the opportunity :)

The Sheraton! (aka Shelton Hall) 91 Bay State Road

Shelton, my home for this year, was built in 1923 as a Sheraton Hotel. The dining room is now obviously the dining hall, and the rooms are in a suite style that probably haven't changed much since they were hotel suites. The ninth floor, however, has panoramic windows that allow you to see a TON of Boston and Cambridge (pictures to eventually follow) including (but not limited to) MIT, the Citgo sign, Fenway, the Prudential Building (aka the Pru), and excellent views of Bay State brownstones! Hooray!

One other thing. When Shelton was the Sheraton, Eugene O'Neill, a rather famous playwright, I'm told, lived on the fourth floor until he died of some illness. Eugene haunts the fourth floor, which is, you guessed it!, my floor. I can certainly see where stories of hauntings come from, though. The lights are considerably dimmer on my floor than any other, and the elevator (which I can hear through the paper-thin wall of my room) stops at my floor frequently when no one is in it and no one has pushed the button... 

So! With that lovely tale aside, I welcome you to Boston, through the eyes of me, BeeSweezy!

Hey there, broski!

So I decided to start a project. One that would show my friends, family, and anyone who was interested what it looks like to be living in the city. I like to find things that are unusual or beautiful that may not be seen by the average passer-by or vacationer. It takes a while to get used to the hustle and bustle of city and University life, but I think that you'll like what I found when I finally took the time to look around. :)