Snow emergency!

Well, here I am in Boston, snowed up to the eyeballs. Almost literally. We had a snowstorm last night which dumped about two foot of snow over most of the eastern seaboard of America, including here in Boston. Once the snowploughs have been round, though, it piles up to four or five foot on the pavements, with a little channel carved out for you to walk along. (If you're lucky. If you're not, you have to wade.)
Chris and I met up with Wendy and Joey yesterday morning (my god, was it really only yesterday? Somehow it seems longer ago) and we went over to see Betsy and Frank for lunch. Betsy put on a lovely spread, and we had a great time chatting about the journalist vs. bloggers conference at Berkman and the advantages accruing to accordion players. Joey gave us a demonstration of the latter, with a wonderful rendition of Duran Duran's Rio, just for me, which should make my Durannie friends eat their hearts out. Got some video of a couple of other tunes that AccordionGuy performed for us – Hit Me One More Time (1.3mb) and Born to be Wild (2.5mb) which I will post as soon as I can.
Betsy also showed us Frank's Nobel Prize in Physics medal, which he won last year “for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction”. Cue lots of quark jokes and congratulations.
After a trip to the most amazing delicatessen, Formaggio's, Wendy, Joey, Chris and I drove out to Wendy's place in Watertown, stopping off at a garage to get her flat tire patched on the way. Good job we did – once the snow really started, driving conditions became icky to say the least.
That evening, Chris and I went to the most wonderful Japanese restaurant called Takemura on Eliot Street, Cambridge where we stuffed ourselves rotten with sushi, edamame and tuna teriyaki. Wonderful food – I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. We went from there round to Bombay Club where we met up with Betsy again, Chris' friend DKP and Dave Sifry of Technorati. It was a delight to finally meet Dave as I've blogged a lot about Technorati, not all of it unmitigated praise although I am actually a big fan of what they are doing there. In fact, Dave is a lovely guy and we had a great conversation about T'rati and tags and such, which I had to unfortunately cut short because Chris, DKP and I had to make our way over to Clery's for the evening do.
By the time we left the Bombay Club the snow was really set in. It made everything look like a Christmas card and the fairly lights on the trees outside the club just looked so pretty, but walking through it in insufficient clothing (although a huge thanks to Betsy for giving me a thick coat that she was going to give to the goodwill so that i didn't freeze quite as much as I would have otherwise) did sort of take the shine off it a bit.
Of course, one thing I'm not used to is the uptight American age/alcohol thing. I never thought to take my photo-ID, so when we got to Clery's some 21 year old doorman refused me entry without it. Despite the fact that I am 12 years older, and patently so. Eventually, the manager took pity on me and let me in. Had a great evening in Clery's whilst the snowstorm raged outside. Itamar turned up too, (we are staying with Itamar and his housemates this evening), so it was a really good evening.
Journey back to Wendy's was… interesting. Couldn't see any road markings, the snow was coming down thick and the roads were pretty slick. Still we made it ok.
Lazy morning this morning then a trek across town through two foot of snow. Actually, once we were on the bus it was kinda cool to sit back and watch all the weatherboard houses covered in snow passing by the bus windows. Americans often accuse the UK of being quaint, but these wide streets and huge, wooden houses just look so picturesque and, definitely, quaint.
Anyway, I'm really hoping that the airport, which was closed yesterday and was predicted to be reopening at least one runway tonight, has cleared everything by tomorrow evening. I am, though, prepared for a long wait, and I'm grateful that I'll be waiting in a newish airport with wifi and power outlets, not stuck on a train like crw will be.