![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jul. 26th, 2023 10:08 amThis weekend I went up to Boston. It was a really fun trip!
The original impetus for the trip was the Boswords crossword tournament Sunday afternoon, but after last year's crazed one day trip I wanted to give myself more time, so I took off the Friday before and the Monday after. And then proceeded to make the weekend even more manically over-stuffed than last year. Eventually the trip ended up with three main impetii: crosswords, seeing CTY friends, and meeting someone I was set up with a few weeks ago.
I'm not going to say much about the shiduch, we spent Friday afternoon together in downtown Boston and then spent most of Shabbos together, and I had a really good time.
Sunday morning I went to Cambridge to meet up with Tal and bike around Cambridge and Somerville. Then we got ice cream. Then I went to West Roxbury to see Rivka and family, we caught up for a while and I admired her new house. Then six hours of puzzles. Then I had dinner with Diana in Allston. So it was a lot of running all over Boston, but Boston is great and all the people I saw were great and I don't see them often enough.
Puzzles were very good. I sat next to two Hunt teammates who are both faster than me, but while one of them solidly beat me as expected, the other one made a mistake that erased nearly all of his lead on me and he only pipped me by 5 points. I finished in 39th place out of about 80 contestants, roughly the same percentile as last year. I'll take it. Importantly, I didn't make a single mistake over the 5 puzzles, some of which were bruisingly difficult, and I'm very proud of that. I also enjoyed hanging out with other crossworders in between puzzles. I thanked Steve Mossberg for his Chanukah cryptic crossword set and we got into a conversation about other kinds of Jewish cryptic content people should make.
Monday morning I drove home, I was in no rush so I didn't check traffic or anything, and just drove the most brainless route I knew... and ended up stuck on I-95 in Connecticut for three hours because of construction related delays. All told the expected four hour drive took eight hours. Grah.
The original impetus for the trip was the Boswords crossword tournament Sunday afternoon, but after last year's crazed one day trip I wanted to give myself more time, so I took off the Friday before and the Monday after. And then proceeded to make the weekend even more manically over-stuffed than last year. Eventually the trip ended up with three main impetii: crosswords, seeing CTY friends, and meeting someone I was set up with a few weeks ago.
I'm not going to say much about the shiduch, we spent Friday afternoon together in downtown Boston and then spent most of Shabbos together, and I had a really good time.
Sunday morning I went to Cambridge to meet up with Tal and bike around Cambridge and Somerville. Then we got ice cream. Then I went to West Roxbury to see Rivka and family, we caught up for a while and I admired her new house. Then six hours of puzzles. Then I had dinner with Diana in Allston. So it was a lot of running all over Boston, but Boston is great and all the people I saw were great and I don't see them often enough.
Puzzles were very good. I sat next to two Hunt teammates who are both faster than me, but while one of them solidly beat me as expected, the other one made a mistake that erased nearly all of his lead on me and he only pipped me by 5 points. I finished in 39th place out of about 80 contestants, roughly the same percentile as last year. I'll take it. Importantly, I didn't make a single mistake over the 5 puzzles, some of which were bruisingly difficult, and I'm very proud of that. I also enjoyed hanging out with other crossworders in between puzzles. I thanked Steve Mossberg for his Chanukah cryptic crossword set and we got into a conversation about other kinds of Jewish cryptic content people should make.
Monday morning I drove home, I was in no rush so I didn't check traffic or anything, and just drove the most brainless route I knew... and ended up stuck on I-95 in Connecticut for three hours because of construction related delays. All told the expected four hour drive took eight hours. Grah.