Okay, here I am!

I decided I didn't like MSN's blogs. You couldn't really change the layout and it looked like Hotmail. So here's the new blog location! :-)

Testing...

Just trying to figure this whole blogger thing out...

Wild Willy's Grilled Cheese...

Thumbs down to the grilled cheese sandwiches at Wild Willy's in Watertown Square. Wild Willy's has above average burgers and fries. However, their grilled cheese is not great. They don't use real bread! They use a hamburger bun, and put the pieces of the bun upside down. Then they don't even cut it in half. And it's $2.50! Rip off! I should have just gotten a burger.

The ice cream they use there, Gifford's, is tasty ice cream, but in my scoop of what would have been yummy chocolate ice cream, there were chunks of ice and freezer burn. Not cool.

Get some normal bread for your grilled cheese, Willy! And do something about that abundance of freezer burn!

Mmmm...produce

Russo's at 560 Pleasant St in Watertown is the best. I love that place. They have reasonably priced produce, a great bakery section, yummy premade foods, and all sorts of Italian foods. I'm going to go there in a little bit to buy some stuff for lunch!

Donahue's

I really like Donahue's in h20-town. My sister and her boyfriend are in town from California, and they wanted to go to an Irish-type pub...so we took them there.

It's a cute place, with an extensive menu...their shepherd's pie is really tasty. They also have pretty good deals for lunch and weekday nights. Good stuff, and a decent beer selection as well. I believe they also have karaoke some nights...might have to try that out, but my heart still belongs to the Tin Alley Grill for Wednesday night karaoke.

How do I love thee, DTD?

Deluxe Town Diner, you continue to be DA BOMB!

My friend Bev and I went to DTD to grab some quick dinner. It was slightly mobbed for a Sunday evening, and the waitress took forever to take our order. And when she came with our food, she forgot my potato salad. However, she was really kind and apologetic...she did not charge me for the potato salad.

AND...we were given two free cupcakes! I assume these were Cosmo's Cupcakes (the folks at DTD also have an ice cream/cupcake shop down the street) and they were not only the cutest little cupcakes ever, but very tasty!

I'll continue to be a customer at DTD, and now I am eager to go to Cosmo's to try some more cupcakes. Not enough places make cupcakes these days.

Mmm...those cupcakes made me tired though. Time to veg out while in my carb coma.

Three fun bands playing on Thursday...

Custom Deluxe -- jazzy type stuff
Confucius Says... -- Grateful Dead covers + more
Wyld Type Hybrid -- acoustic rock

The Reel Bar 477 Cambridge St. in Allston @ 8PM

US Air Guitar Championship

Alas, I'll be out of town when this occurs...but check out the air guitar championships at Harper's Ferry on June 4th. It sounds like a blast.

More trivia..

The Beantown Pub in Boston, Mass is the only place where a person can drink a cold Sam Adams beer, while looking at a cold Sam Adams. The cemetary in which Sam Adams is buried lies right across the street from the pub. Also in this cemetary are John Winthrop, Ben Franklin's family (minus him), Elizabeth Goose (more commonly known as Mother Goose), the five victims from the Boston Massacre, and basically anybody who was anybody from Boston in the 18th century.

Most of Boston lies on landfill. Only a small percentage is original land from when it was once a peninsula. If it is hilly, it is original, if it is wide and flat, it is new.

So far in the $14.6 billion "Big Dig" enough steel has been used to create a one inch think rod that would fit around the equator.

Enough cement has been used to create a sidewalk from Boston to San Fransisco and back...30 times.

It's not a cookie, it's a Fig Newton!

Sorry to all the folks who read my livejournal...because you saw this posted there the other day.

Anyway, I'm moving to Newton in about a month, and I looked Newton, up on Wikipedia. Lots of interesting tidbits about Newton...

-The Fig Newton cookie is named after the city.

-The Stanley Steamer automobile was manufactured in Newton.

-Based on statistics reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Newton was the nation's safest city during 2003 and 2004.

-The Jackson Homestead, now The Newton History Museum at the Jackson Homestead, was once a farmhouse in the Federal style built in Newton in 1809. It is now a museum with paintings, costumes, photographs, manuscripts, maps and historical artifacts. It was also a stop on the underground railroad.

* Russell Banks, prolific writer, was born in Newton in 1940.
* Edward W. Brooke, Massachusetts attorney general (1962-1966) and U.S.
Senator (1966-1978), was the first black senator to be elected by popular vote and lived in Newton for many years.
* Thomas Bulfinch, bank clerk and author of the famous Age of Fable, was born in Newton in 1796.
* Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, was born in Newton in 1941.
* Jack Lemmon, Oscar-winning actor, was born in Newton in 1925.
* Matt LeBlanc, of the sitcom Friends, was born in Newton in 1967.
* Robert Morse, actor, was born in Newton in 1931.
* Anne Sexton, poet and writer, was born in Newton in 1928.
* Ephraim Williams, Colonel in the colonial militia during the French and Indian War and benefactor of Williams College was born in Newton in 1715.
* Howard Zinn, radical historian and author of A People's History of the United States, lives in Newton.
* Seiji Ozawa, retired director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, lived in Newton.
* Julie Taymor, director of the acclaimed Broadway adaptation of *The Lion King was born in Newton.
* Mark Sandman, (1952-1999) singer/songwriter/poet and member of the alternative rock band Morphine was born in Newton.

Velvet Elvis

Hey Bostonians! Come to Harper's Ferry this Friday to see Velvet Elvis! They're an Elvis Presley cover band and my friend Jeff is the drummer. So come see 'em if you can. :-) They are lots of fun and Harper's Ferry is a cool venue.

And now for another night of karaoke at The Tin Alley Grill!

Always a good time at the Cantab Lounge

Last night at the Cantab Lounge was great, as it always is on Monday evenings. For those into acoustic music, it's definitely a fun place to be. It's a mix of old and young folkies...Matt and our dear friend Brian perform there regularly. There's usually an amazing amount of talent, and some people use it to promote other music projects, so it's a great way to learn about other local bands and musicians. And much to the excitement of my hot dog lovin' boyfriend, two bucks will get you a hot dog with fries. Three bucks will upgrade that hot dog to a chili dog.

Pizza & Pasta

Back from one of our regular trips to the tri-state area to visit old friends!

If anyone is in Central Jersey and wants some good thin-crust brick oven pizza, I recommend Pizza & Pasta on South Main Street in Manville. So yummy and reasonably priced!

New Jersey gets a really bad rap. There are so many parts of Jersey that are really beautiful. But all in all, the Jerz is boring and from where I lived, getting to Manhattan was a truly difficult feat. I'm glad to be back in Boston. :-)

We hit a deer in New Hope, PA yesterday though...in my friend's Paul's car. Yikes. :-[

Okay, I need to rest. I'm exhausted!

Custom Deluxe tonight!

Bah! I didn't realize that in order for someone to comment on my blog, they need a .net passport thing. Silliness. I might have to get a real blog.

Anyway, tonight: Matt's band, Custom Deluxe, plays the Reel Bar. (477 Cambridge Street, Allston) They come on at 9. Cover should only be a few buckaroos.

Enjoy today's cold front today, fellow New Englanders! Brrr......

Diners in Watertown

I'm a Jersey girl...NJ has got to be the diner capitol of the world. When living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was constantly in search of a decent diner. Most were kitschy 50s retro diners with overpriced menu items. I once recall paying $9 for grilled cheese. Alameda had two good diners, and the only genuine diners in the area. There was Tillie's which was inexpensive and only a block from my apartment, and Jim's which was expensive for diner fare, but quality food.

The Boston area lacks diners. And the diners that exist aren't true diners to me, because they are generally only open for breakfast and lunch.

Most of the area diners seem to be in Watertown.

My favorite diner is Deluxe Town Diner, or simply "DTD" as Matt and I affectionately call it. It's a cozy little diner in a trailer and it often gets packed on weekends. This diner is actually open for dinner too...I think it closes at eleven. Anyway, this place is great. They have a huge menu and lots of great stuff for breakfast and lunch. They also offer a $10 hamburger made of free range beef. (Awesome) It's a little more expensive than the diners I'll list below (a bagel and lox platter is $9.99, but worth it -- they use good lox!)

On Friday and Saturday nights, The New York Diner opens back up at 11 PM and stays open until 4 AM. I've only made use of this once, after a night out with friends. I had the grilled cheese. (Which wasn't $9!) The food is okay, but it's cheap. And I like the fact that it's open so late. It's the only place in the area that does something like that...the Brighton IHOP is open 24 hours, but...yuck.

Then there's The Talk of the Town Diner at 11 N Beacon St. A sign outside boasts that it was voted best breakfast in Boston. I went there once and I might try it again, but I would certainly never order an omelette there again. It was burnt, thin...and gross. At first I thought it was a pancake. My OMELETTE looked like a PANCAKE. So wrong.

Also in Watertown Square, there is Tresca's Eating Place. I've gone there a handful of times. It's right across a parking lot from my bank, so a few times I've even ordered a sandwich to go. Their food is decent, but a serious turn-off is that if you order something with syrup they just plop a container of Stop & Shop brand syrup on the table. I rarely order things that need syrup unless I bring my own (preferably from Vermont!), but still...can't they put it in a better container? The waitstaff is sometimes surly. But it's inexpensive. It's very green inside too.

Hmmm...there's another cool diner on North Beacon. Can't remember the name. It's more like a luncheonette, but I guess so is Tresca's Eating Place. OH! It's Victor's Diner and it's located at 214 N Beacon St. I like this place...it's cozy, inexpensive, and all of their coffee mugs are mismatched. Cute.

Mmm, now I'm hungry for diner food!

"Hello, world!"

Here we go!

My name is Kristine. I live in Watertown, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. I have a livejournal, but this blog is going to be quite a bit different. One day I hope to get a domain for it, but alas I am cheap. So MSN will have to suffice.

This blog is going to be largely about the Greater Boston Area. It will be about places to go eat, venues to see cool bands, places I've visited...all in all, just fun stuff to do in Boston!

My boyfriend, Matt, and I also enjoy doing some localish traveling on the weekends. So my blog will not only be about Boston, but sometimes about the Northeast in general. I'm a tri-state area gal at heart, so we do make trips down there fairly often...so I'll write about places to go in NY, NJ, Connecticut, and Eastern Pennsylvania...and because I love New England, I'll write about places I've gone to throughout the New England vicinity.

So, let's get down to the nitty gritty...here are some places I frequent.

-The Reel Bar for Jimmy Nation Nite: one of Matt's bands, Custom Deluxe (a jazzy type band), plays there monthly. 477 Cambridge Street, Allston. It gets packed in there, but they have inexpensive beer, good music, and they let you bring in food from other places.

-The Tin Alley Grill for karaoke. We're there every Wednesday. I've tried a handful of places to karaoke in the area, and this is my favorite. It doesn't turn out to be filled with scantily clad blondes doing obnoxiously drunken renditions of "Baby Got Back", the song selection is good, and everybody who works there is really nice. Come join us for karaoke! 555 Concord Avenue, Cambridge -- by Alewife and the Fresh Pond Rotaries (used to be the Ground Round). No cover charge, either, which is awesome for a cheapskate like me.

-The Cantab Lounge! This place is very cool. I love Central Square and I love live music, so this is a great place to be. Matt and our friend Brian perform at open mic nights on Mondays. It's one of the best open mic nights I've been to (although Club Passim is good the Cantab's is more laid-back). They also have fun blues jams!! AND there's often no cover charge.

Those are some places I frequent; nightlife-wise. My next entry might be about Watertown diners...we'll see. :-)