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Weeknotes 26-28: American Football, birding again

Wow, another week has happened, incredible. It’s the start of the new anime season and for the first time in a while I’m actually watching stuff!!!! Sayonara Lara, The Ghost in the Shell, catching up on Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk from last season, probably gonna watch that new kyoani show. I kinda fell off watching anime over the last few years, or I’d watch the first episode of something and not be super into it and not continue, but the first two episodes of Goodbye Lara were good enough where I cannot see myself dropping it. Like come on the OP has hand-painted cels, and a great soundtrack!

I saw American Football for the second time and Jejune for the first (which makes sense because this is their first tour in like 26 years lmao)

american football
american football
jejune
jejune

Both really fun shows, really fascinating crowd at each, like I expected both to be much older on average but I guess the teens love 90s emo. Though it was kinda crazy that Mike Kinsella was like “oh yeah we’re gonna play one more old one and then take a quick break and play some more new stuff” and then they played Never Meant and then 1/4 of the crowd left lmao???

Some of my coworkers have been taking bike riding classes run by the city of Boston, incredibly cool free service, my coworkers who have been doing it all say how much they love it and how motivating it is, and one of them was even like “I want to sign up for more so I can get better even faster, I don’t want to wait for the next class”. It’s sooooo nice to see people learn to bike, a thing anyone who knows me would not be surprised by since I’m the number one bike evangelist of anyone I know. They were going to have another class on Wednesday but they got an email about a “staff emergency” and they were like “ahhh dang we were so excited, well guess we’ll just sign up for the next one”

I woke up the next morning and checked instagram to see a story from the local bike shop I frequent, one of their teachers had been killed by a driver on her way to work that morning. Every day I wish that this city cared more about the lives and safety of the cyclists and pedestrians that live there more than the convenience of the cars that drive through it.

Tonal whiplash!!!!! I went birding again on Sunday, first at the Concord Great Meadows and then at the Fells. Great meadows was really nice, super pretty. Saw an egret and a great blue heron, but the big one was seeing the marsh wren. Pretty uncommon!!

Later in the day David wanted to go birding again at the Fells, but since I was the only one who wanted to go I biked there. 9ish miles each way, took about 50 minutes there and 45 back, had me really wishing I hadn’t gotten a single speed lmao. There was a huge hill climb for the last segment of the ride that was absolutely brutal and I haven’t been doing a ton of longer rides this year. Oh well, it’s a good feeling at least!

northern leopard frog
northern leopard frog

Once I got there we immediately started going down the trails and were hearing a ton of scarlet tanagers but we didn’t see a single one the whole time. We were doing laps for a solid 30-40 minutes and it felt like Pool Hill again where were just weren’t seeing anything, but then we started hearing a brown creeper and I spotted some movement in a tree and managed to see it!! Very cool!! Then afterwards as we were about to leave we heard some super loud bird calls that merlin wasn’t picking up, we walked closer to it and realized it was a cooper’s hawk and we saw two of them eating a chipmunk. Overall worth it!!!! Also the bike home was downhill the entire way which ruled, it felt so fast compared to the way there. Great way to end the week!!

Things I’ve been into this week!!!