The bullet points in no particular order:

• All moved in at the Somerville house (a.k.a. the Grotto)
• +5 pts to Mass RMV for making the permit process a lot easier
• Interesting AANE reads
• CML update: the treatment is working!

For the sake of getting it all out, I’ll approach this in reverse-chronological order. I just capped off the day with a long conversation with my new roommate Maya, as we were taking out foodstuffs and dishware and looking at artwork to fill a missing spot on the mantelpiece. I think I may be the one missing her the most when she leaves in Sept, although these late night conversations are the longest (and among the relative few) that we’ve had since I met her in the earlier days of the Grotto. She brings a lot of different things to the table. Things for which, I fear, we will not find any sort of continuity with most of the people applying to replace her.

Maya’s a good foil to us weird-minded geek programmers – she loves and uses tech, but isn’t “of” it. She’s an artist and a musician and a baker and a consummate aesthete. Put new [music|art|food] things in her living space, and she will gleefully examine each one before weaving it into its most appropriate location in the fabric of the nest. She really appreciates that I have so much useful stuff to bring to the grotto; I’m glad somebody does. Ahem.

I explained to her the situation vis. my cancer and meds, because she asked, and that probably because I’d mentioned I have a drug regimen that limits personal use of my rather large liquor collection. It was an opportunity to try on some new lingo for size that I received at today’s appointment.

So far I’ve been talking a lot with people about “cellular response” or “hematologic response” when I discuss my cancer. This is how doctors look at the early months of CML treatment, when cellular imbalance is the main concern. Once the density of the various blood cell populations has been restored to approximately normal levels, long term monitoring of molecular response begins.

This means using more sophisticated and sensitive (and thus lenghthier and more expensive) tests to measure the prevalence of the cancer-causing mutation in blood cells. Known as reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (or RT-PCR if you don’t like pain) the test accurately charts treatment progress until the mutation is no longer detectable within margin of error (molecular remission).

On February 18th, I tested positive for CML with almost 100% initial prevalence of the Philadelphia chromosome. Now, five months later, that figure is down by 95%. I’m on track to be in molecular remission well before the 18-month mark doctors aim for.

I was kind of thinking the news might be even better, as Dr Friedman had talked about possibly needing to confirm a remission as of this month, with an additional test. But I’m also kind of glad it’s this way for the time being. The confirmation test is a bone marrow aspiration followed by cytogenetics. Not only is it expensive and lenghthy, it’s painful and unnerving. I rely on Atavan to get me through that shit.

So news is good, and on top of that I’m coming to terms now with being a Somervillian. Getting a resident permit for parking was a big step. Did you know: the RMV can change the address of residence/garaging associated with your driver’s license, online, in less than five minutes? That’s an e-government success story right there. Plus: All of my stuff’s now here and unpacked, and I managed to assemble a fully-working power cord once again at work Monday, so I’m back to typing away happily, not worrying that my machine will vomit and keel over from sudden lack of power. I still kind of want to find a cheap-o laptop to replace the dying D600 for home use.

Anybody want to point me at a good supplier for mid-range laptops that are not factory-installed with Windows? I think I heard EEEPc. That’s on the low end in terms of power, but might be acceptable.

Also: I read the AspBlogosphere blog from AANE. The feed’s activity is really erratic, but every once in a blue moon something interesting comes up. The Body Language of Machines is a really interesting analysis of something I, like most people, take for granted: the ability to read and react to other drivers’ intent when driving a car. I would posit that this is precisely the kind of capability that defines and validates the K/A boundary between Kanner syndrome and Asperger syndrome. A psychologist might disagree, I don’t know.

I, for one, have never had any trouble making the intuitive leap between expressions of the human body and expressions of a vehicle controlled by that body. At least, not that I remember. When someone’s hugging the lane boundary, you sense their impatience to move to the left. Same with tailgating. Things like driver eye contact and hesitation are seamlessly meshed with car signaling and positioning.

But suppose you never realized that? It’s sort of easy to imagine not being able to intuit (and quickly process) that kind of information, and what kinds of anxiety and paranoid behavior the deficiency would lead to. Maybe, if you can understand that particular failure to connect the dots, you can understand the dozens of subtler failures that characterize the autistic spectrum.

So basically, in summary, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

/me slumps over and falls asleep

First of all, can I just say how awesome it is to have clean water again? We weren’t even affected all that much by it here, in the two and a half days the incident lasted–we boiled water to drink, and bleached our dishes after washing. It just feels awfully nice to have it back.

Having said that… spring is here, and things are springing out of the ground. New business ventures mainly. Saturday night I was at the swinging little opener for Artisan’s Asylum, a Union Square collaborative supporting “creative people who like crafting things (as defined in the vaguest possible way)”. The “swinging” is literal in this case–Asylum wardens Gui and Jenn are blues dance instructors. I’m not really up on the social hacking scene in Boston (there was a contingent from Sprout), but I know it will be glad for another space like this. It should more than make up for its small size with the unbridled creative ambition of its backers, many of whom are my former classmates.

Another thing I stumbled onto recently was a sign for West Medford Open Studios, an annual showcase of local art that would be really cool to see if I wasn’t going out of town this weekend. Mother’s Day weekend here seems to be prime time for cultural events–there’s a performance of the Wellesley Symphony that also sounded pretty cool (as for me, I have a consult with mom’s tattoo artist in Albany).

On top of all that, there’s a new deli opening soon, just down the street from us. My standards for deli are decently high, so it remains to be seen whether that will bring more of my business to the strip. A good deli would go a long way toward rounding out our eating options–down the street we’ve got Ebisuya market, and a decent Korean restaurant.

Speaking of which, stomachs are rumbling here. Time to make us some pizza.

Thanks to Bolt, I’ve got about five hours with slow but working Internet, with nothing much to do other than get caught up on mail and sort out my thoughts.

I didn’t come here with any mission, or any questions in mind, just the thought of being away from work and responsibilities for a little while. And maybe of giving the City a fair, open-ended look now that I’ve acclimatized to living near a major city.

When I was younger I couldn’t imagine life anywhere other than a medium-sized suburb of a medium-sized city like Albany, with safe, quiet streets, and entertainment options within a half-hour drive. I don’t know to what to attribute that smallness of vision–complacency?–but I know it influenced me against applying to MIT and some of the California schools.

I’d been to NYC several times, of course, usually day trips, so my opinion of city life was largely informed by midtown Manhattan. Tourist-ey midtown Manhattan, awash in traffic noise, swarming with people and overlooked by the gigantic Macy’s and JCPenny and the towering office buildings beyond. That is no place for a child who gets vertigo standing in the state legislative chambers in Albany, who wants to flee the picnic table whenever honeybees take interest in his soda.

Subsequent impressions have been more favorable, though the circumstances have been strange: fumbling with maps en route to a Halo 2 preview event on FDR Drive, racing through the night in the company of a panicked classmate, meeting a professor outside her second home in midtown.

The most “normal” trips I’ve made there are probably the visits to my relatives in Brooklyn. These have always been short stays; the Park Slope brownstones may be roomy, but they’re not that roomy.

So it was good to find myself back there again, in an under-explored borough of the city with time to kill. I only wish the August heat could have eased up a little. Boston is spoiled on air-conditioning compared to NYC, and the more extensive New York subway routes are balanced by the extent of the city itself, and it’s a discouraging surprise to have to walk 1-3 miles a day in that.

I was reminded too of how freaking practical smart-phones are. Nikki has one, and I don’t. What she can do on the fly, on unfamiliar routes, requires me to spend a half hour planning at home or the Internet cafe, and can easily become a day-trip. TV commercials may prefer to highlight Twitter and games, but for navigating New York, Google Maps and Hopstop are indispensable. Not to mention mobile IM, so you can compare notes with friends wise in the ways of public transit.

That said, I’m happy with what I managed to accomplish this week, especially when you consider that we spent a couple nights partying (New Yorkers are crazy like that). I got to enjoy some of the local cooking and produce, hung out with Roy at his and Judy’s place, got in some work hours, did karaoke, visited the Stonewall Inn, and went clothes shopping in SoHo.

I saw some amusing things, including the weird graffiti for which Williamsburg is known (pics when I get the chance), and a magician in the subway platform. I took my breakfast at a place that makes vegan egg sandwiches a la Uncanny Valley. And I derived some amusement from the tragic hipness still abundant in New York advertising, particularly for movies and TV shows.

I leave knowing there’s a lot more that I might have made time for, if I wasn’t preoccupied with the sweaty heat or worried about worrying about how much time I should leave as cushioning. But that’s life, innit? So as a result I will think about my schedule back home, maybe think about donating the extra clothes that are keeping me from putting away all my laundry, start budgeting for new shoes and a new phone with a data plan.

And then put on my underarmour and my new sneaks and run all over the place

For every job, a tool. You want to live in the city that never sleeps, you have to know where your towel is. I now know I can holiday there, which is saying something. Beyond that, I dunno. I have unanswered anthropological questions about this city and its population. They seem awfully stressed. Olin’s “choose two” principle might apply here, with last call at 4AM and controlled substances easy enough to find, although some of the yuppies mitigate it by sleeping late and working late. For myself I’d worry about that. And it makes the residents a bit… tetchy sometimes.

But I see the charm that the place has, too. Stuffed in there somewhere between the misfunctioning AC that turned the 1 train into a sauna, the pervasive smoke of hand-rolled tobacco and the skeezy shop owners on Christopher St. It’s a sincere kind of place, in its way, where you can strike up conversations with passersby and not be treated with suspicion. Or content yourself with people-watching: there’s as many shapes and skin tones as people, many of them sporting cool body-art. It’s a place where you can feel alone, or not, as desired, as simply as if you were adjusting your sunglasses.

Just try not to think about the garbage, or about being covered in sweat, and you’ll be fine.

Found a better work spot today: http://www.brooklynboneshakers.com/

It’s a vegan coffee/sandwich shop that caters to cyclists. The food’s priced on par, which is to say it’s expensive, but the coffee is reasonable. I was able to access an electrical outlet, so I went back and fetched my power chord (unfortunately at the hottest hour of the day, so I came back dripping wet).

Last night we ate at King’s Feast, one of the many Polish restaurants in Greenpoint. I found out what real goulash is like (hint: it’s a stew, not a noodle casserole). The staff didn’t seem to know much about their selection of Polish beers, which was a shame. But the food was yummy and quite cheap.

Tonight I think maybe we’ll wander Manhattan a bit, if Nikki is feeling up to it. I’d like to find a cheap lawn chair for my room, so I don’t have to lie on the bed while using the laptop, and possibly some undershirts and a pair of headphones.

This is day two of five of my short summer vacation in Brooklyn, and I must say, the place is growing on me.

I still don’t know if I could live in such a place, but the possibility doesn’t seem as crazy as it used to. It definitely meets my needs of the moment. I had little idea how worn down I was before I passed out last night around 1. But I feel immensely better today.

The place where I’m staying is in Greenpoint, about halfway between McGolrick Park and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. It’s at least as warm and sticky as Boston was, and while I count myself very lucky to have a room with a window unit, I’m surprised to find the weather isn’t really that oppressive after spending a day in it. You’re just forced to acquiesce to walking around sweaty all day. And there’s a corner store with deli, sport drinks and an impressive beer selection.

Working out of the nearest wi-fi cafe was a failure, no thanks to my flaky wireless card, but it would have been extremely convenient for its proximity otherwise. I returned to the apartment, where the connection is stable, and found a seat in the common space.

New york is full of talkative, bright young people. I thought this was true of Boston, and maybe it is, but it’s very true here. The sheer variety of opportunities for work and leisure seems to more than offset the city’s quirks for them–the stink of garbage, which is put out daily rather than weekly; the complex and shifting behavior of subway routes, which despite their spread often leave you with many blocks to travel on foot. These oddities become nothing more than individual threads in the weave that shapes the city’s lifestyle.

Some make for interesting comparisons with other cities. For instance (and let me say in advance this is anecdotal and probably biased), New Yorkers still smoke like chimneys. I know few people in Boston who do, and of those, most either smoke cigars on occasion, or are in the process of quitting. New York and Massachusetts both had early bans on smoking in bars and restaurants (respectively in early 2003 and mid 2004), but modest differences in the laws and their enforcement have added up to major differences in the trajectory of tobacco culture. In NYC, where you can still find public places to smoke with friends, the sense of legitimacy and in particular the popularity of rolling your own seems to be higher.

More on that later. I need to cut this short and check my work queue before Nikki gets back and asks me what we’re doing for the evening. Lots of exploring to do these next few days.