to the land of snows

i left san francisco for iceland by way of boston on april fools night, having spent the day collecting the last provisions on my list (a large fra'mani salami, a wedge of argentine parmesan, beef jerky in several flavours, power inverter, digital SLR, gigapan robot replacement bits, gloves, waterproofing compound, and the like). arriving in logan at daybreak, i made my way into cambridge weighed down heavily and bulkily. after finding them (and being betrayed by google maps), worked for a few hours in our new cambridge center offices, then left the small mountain of bags behind and walked about a mile down broadway to the darwin's outpost on cambridge street to have lunch with sabeel. the city smelled of melted snow. a roast turkey and cheddar sandwich restored my faith in the well-made simple sandwich, a restoration cruelly and repeatedly denied at the darwin's on mount auburn street. in the evening, i picked up two handsaws at dickson bros, bought books for the plane from the harvard bookstore (robertson davies's the cunning man and the lyre of orpheus, and peter matthiessen's the snow leopard), then walked down to toscanini's in central square with magali before meeting aly at the broad institute right next door to the office. they're developing platforms for basic research, which i think is a great approach. after we saw the new robotic high-throughput assay rooms (all equipment inside made by high resolution biosystems), i got my stuff and left for the airport.