Feeb-y

Lemme just tell you about my day.
My buddy Joe and I had been planning a visit to the Busch Reisinger Museum with stops in at the Fogg and MAYBE the Sackler. They’re all right there, within one block, in Cambridge, after all.

The Busch Reisinger has Max Beckmann’s 1941 painting The Actors as well as Self Portrait in Tuxedo. LOVE!

There's Franz Marc's Grazing Horses IV and Gustav Klimt’s Pear Tree. While I’ve been there more than a few times over the years, I’ve seen these beauties before, I just adore revisiting. They’re like old, dear chums that I don’t get to see anywhere near enough.

There are at least two VERY important things I’d forgotten since living in town.

1) While the streets of Cambridge and Boston are crowded during the week, on the weekend they are mondo, giant, colossally jam packed. Especially on gorgeous sunny mid 70º first days of summer.

The Harvard campus was filled with tourists (students and families?) from around the world snapping shots in front of various buildings. The Square itself was gearing up for the 7th Annual Make Music Harvard Square / Fête de la Musique. We're talkin' serious throngs, hordes and mega clusters.

I was fast approaching overwhelmed. Why? I don’t have balance nerves (they got sliced when Doc’s Ojemann and Barker went in to “debulk” {that’s seriously the ever so inglorious, inelegant surgical term} my various tumors). The point? My equilibrium comes from sight — if I’m all distracted, can’t focus, well, boyhowdy, I’ve one hell of a time staying upright. So, not only was I working my ass off to lipread my pal as we walked and talked, I was, additionally, in full gear navigating the crowds and uneven sidewalks, trying to keep from toppling junk over tits to the ground.

Exhausting.

We got to the museum only to find out that all the Harvard Museums are closed until NOVEMBER! What the hell?

So here’s Nummer zwei of very important things to remember when making the trek into town.

2) Have Jen or The Amazing Bob call the museum to see if the joint’s open.

Mind you, I’d not even glanced at their website which MIGHT have given me a clue that something was up. Here’s what I found when I finally bothered to look:

The Harvard Art Museums—comprising the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum—will open our new Renzo Piano Building Workshop-designed facility to the public on November 16, 2014.

Now, to me, this doesn’t say that the current exhibition halls are closed — just that the new will open in November. Still, had I checked, I would’ve thought to make a call to verify.

DOH!

What to do? What to do?

Joe and I moved on to our second planned activity for the day — The Million Year Picnic. It’s one of the greatest comic book stores around and it’s been at 99 Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square forever or, at least, since I moved here almost 34 years ago. That totally counts as forever.

From there, after I’d spent WAY too much lettuce, we made our way down to Central Square for lunch. My heart was set on this fabulous little Indian joint, Ghandi.

Closed. Boom! On to Plan Z.

We made our way past the scores and scads of folks queueing up in front of the Phoenix Landing for World Cup action and went to Mary Chung’s. Man oh man, I could eat there every day and not tire of it. BEST scallion pancakes EVAH! So, not Indian but MARY CHUNG’S!

After our phenomenal repast I was still overwhelmed and exhausted from maneuvering through the masses and had to head home where I could just stare at the lovely water and fall asleep by eight. Joe, on the other hand, was still full of mega energy and went out dancing ‘till dawn.

OOF, I feel feeble.