place suggestions

So, my thirtieth birthday is in a few months.

My goal is to host a weekend event where we get together in some public place (like a park) and construct a temporary labyrinth together. Probably out of birdseed. We will document the event with pictures.

What I need right now is suggestions about where in the Boston area might be a good place to do that. I am fine with calling around for availability and permits and stuff, but I need ideas about what places I should do that for. Places I have in mind now :

- by Spy Pond in Arlington
- that really nice lakeside park I went to with katkt and buxom_bey a few years ago, that I can't remember the name of
- the Arsenal park in Powderhouse square

Any other ideas?

It would be ideal if the place has a barbecue area, so we could grill. It would also be ideal if it's a little bit out-of-the-way - not the main day-off destination for tons of people in the summertime.

The Knitting Circle

Thursday, I re-read my old favorite, The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones. I am really, truly, going to re-read the whole series. I have already started The Magicians of Caprona. It's not reading as familiar to me so I don't think I've read it before.

Thursday, I also read the new book The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood. Yeah, that does mean that I read two entire books on Thursday. It was that kind of day. This book is about a woman who takes up knitting after the death of her young daughter, and the people that she meets through the knitting circle that she joins. In this book, everyone has tragedy in their background. I like that about the book - it suggests that everyone has suffered pain and loss, and we just don't usually know what their story is. I liked the way the book described the act of knitting when in despair - it was very familiar to me. This book was a lot darker than I expected - like the traumatized but really honest twin of The Shop on Blossom Street. It stands out from the knitting fiction herd. Three stars.

so I've been reading back issues of QC...

and one of them made me grin, because it explained why I'm not a goth anymore.

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=132

Yup. I'm so cool I'm not even goth. I used to be goth, back when it was cool, before the scene got taken over by upstart snot-nosed kids who shop at Hot Topic. Le sigh.*

I can still dance and glare with the best of them, though. Turns out that glaring while dancing is actually a pretty hard habit to break, once you've trained yourself to do it.

Actually, I don't miss the goth scene. The closeness of the community was comfortable, but also pretty confining.

*That's not how I actually feel. I just used to hear a lot of people say stuff like that to explain why they left the scene.