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Boston received its first real bout of inclement weather yesterday. Walking home after helping a friend put together a website for childhood leukemia patients, parents and survivors and in between helping push out a couple cars and not breaking my neck, I snapped these.

Click on the photos to see explanations of the wear marks

I purchased a new pair of jeans last weekend. In fact, I got the exact same brand (Carhart), style (relaxed-fit) and size (34-34) from the same store (Jones Department Store, “Jonesy’s” in Southie vernacular) at the same time of year (Novembrish) as I did last year. I also bought a new cap too. I don’t want it to seem like I don’t make progress in my life but the cap is identical too, to one I got last year (it matches my mittens) on the same expedition. Its progenitor was lost to the Boston Public Library one cold March morning.

Buying pants is always exciting for me; I never even owned a pair until I was 13–in San Diego one can get away with that. My mom likes to tell the story of my middle school principal saying to her after eighth grade promotion (for which I was en-panted), “I never thought I’d see the day with Ben in pants.”

In side note, it was pouring rain last Saturday when I went out to Southie to buy the jeans. Jonesies is far up on East Broadway; and while I caught the #9 bus there, I walked/swam back.

Yesterday a subset of the gang skipped the blustery weather to bake and decorate Halloween cookies in Danielle’s inviting kitchen. Other than the predictable headache and infirmity from massive sugar intake, we had good times.

I was passing through Somerville last night and in Powderhouse Square I ran across photographer-stranger Tia taking some large format photos.

Powder House Square was the focal point of 1774′s Powder Alarm during which British Soldiers took possession of potential militia firearms and supplies. The subsequent mobilization of militia forces “essentially provided a ‘dress rehearsal’ for the Battle of Lexington and Concord seven months later.” (Wikipedia: Powder Alarm).

Despite the fact that one of these days the whole darn school is going crumble into Boston Harbor, serving at UMass Boston isn’t so bad; I have lots of opportunities to ride around the harbor in the university’s vessels.

I spent the weekend in New York City. Saturday, having a free afternoon, I walked from 59th Street all the way up to 148th Street in Harlem. It took about four hours, but was a beautiful day and an awesome walk.

My primary digital camera broke about two weeks ago. I pull my old one out of storage; it’s clunky as all heck, but the old camera has a lot more manual settings than my sleek, sexy and recently broken one did. To make lemonade out of a bitter situation, I’ve been taking a lot of more night scenes and abnormal exposures because, well, I can.

I spent the weekend in the Connecticut suburbs with some friends, camping out in their parent’s backyard and playing Marco Polo at midnight.

The tent we had was huge; we were only five but it easily could have fit 10. The ground was surprisingly flat and the grass soft; it wasn’t a spectacular night’s sleep, but I’ve definitely had worse.