Crazy Weekend in Boston

Boy, it's hard to know where to start with a trip like this! Well, I guess I'll start at the beginning...

This year is the Chorallaries of MIT's 30th anniversary. Corinne and I collectively spent 9 years in the group (5 for me; 4 for her), and the memories from that group are some of the best of our MIT experience. So when we heard about the anniversary activities and concert - including performances by groups comprised of alumni - it was hard for us to say no. But initially we did. We knew we were going to be busy that time of year, and we had a hard time justifying the time, money and vacation from work just to travel all the way to the east coast for a concert.

And then the barrage began. More and more people from our era started chiming in, indicating that they were going. And then the "guilt" emails began. Eventually, in a moment of weakness, Corinne (who was really looking for an excuse) said "If you can get Tom to go, we'll think about it." This was quickly contorted into "if Tom goes, we'll go", and the next thing we knew, Tom was going. So we really had no choice.

We still know lots of people in Boston, so the trick with a short (4 day) trip is planning time to see as many people as we could, but not so many that it's too hectic and we end up needing a vacation from the vacation.

We spent an afternoon hanging out at Beantown Coffeeshop with Corinne's old Draper buddies, hearing about how some things never change. And Corinne finally got audio recordings of authentic Boston-natives saying appropriately profane things.

While in town, we stayed with the MasterWongs, aka Becky and Gordon and their daughter Lily. We spent quite a bit of time with the Aero/Astro crew, playing games, eating great food, etc. As luck would have it, Dennis and Sara delivered their second child while we were in town, so we even managed to visit them in the hospital and meet their newest family member!

And you just can't get good cold cuts on the West Coast. So we stopped in to Sessa's Italian Specialties in Davis Sq and picked up some incredible capicola, genoa salami and soppresata to bring back with us. Not all of it made it home... ;)

But the focus of the weekend was definitely Chorallaries. We hadn't seen some of these people in 10 years, but it was like no time had passed. We had over 40 alums arrive for the concert, and we put together two groups of alumni to perform at the concert. Rehearsals for the concert, however, were a challenge. Since everyone was distributed around the country, we had to get creative in order to find a way to practice before the show. We had one successful conference call rehearsal (thanks, Bank of America teleconference!), and one aborted Skype conference attempt. Beyond that, we spent several hours on the day of the show once most people had arrived. Considering all of that, the show actually went amazingly well. I don't have any photos of the actual performance, but the house was packed. Just like old times.

The current Chorallaries baked a cake to serve to everyone who came to the show. And when I say "a" cake, I mean they took over just about every oven on campus and baked many cakes, which they then pieced together and frosted as a single, massive cake. How many concerts have you been to where they serve everyone cake at the end? And there's nothing like cake before heading to an after-party...

The morning after the concert we reassembled for one final gathering, this time for lunch at The Royal East. And alas, it was time to go home.

We may have initially resisted going, but we had a great time and would have regretted it if we hadn't gone!

- Mike (& Corinne)