A day in the life

C'mon, kids, let's go through a typical day this week:

THE MORNING

I'm starting to wake up later, usually between 10 and 11 a.m. It's been a difficult adjustment, mainly because I feel guilty about sleeping through that much of the daytime. Then again, when you don't fall asleep until 3 or 4 a.m., the sleep schedule makes sense.


Mmm … coffee … and memories of E-Street …

I emerge from my bedroom and head straight to the kitchen and start a pot of coffee and toast a bagel (or pull out a skillet to start a proper breakfast.) As the machines are doing their job, I'll walk over to my desk and wake the computer to check e-mail, read a couple Web pages. After breakfast is ready, I'll either eat at the counter or sit at the computer and read the Times and whichever Globe sections I didn't get the night before.

Computer time could be short, or it could last several hours, especially if there are photos I shot the day before. (NERD WARNING: I recently upgraded the iMac's memory to 3GB, and the performance difference is amazing, especially with Aperture and Photoshop running at the same time.)

THE AFTERNOON

If the weather is nice, I'll go outside. If it's hot or rainy, I'll watch TV. Lately the weather has varied wildly. It could reach into the 90s one day and then stay in the 70s another. On Tuesday, the forecast was 87, but it never got above 72 and there was a strange foggy-while-sunny phenomenon occurring.


The entrance to Chinatown.


A great walking area. It's a little sketchy at night, though.

When I go outside, I'll usually walk around downtown, the North End or Chinatown/Theater District. Lately, though, I've started walking into the Back Bay or the South End, but it takes a while longer. Thankfully, my T pass is my new best friend. It cost $59 and allows unlimited subway and bus rides for a month, which is quite a deal if you ride the $1.70-a-ride T as often as I do.

The walks distract me from the loneliness. Working nights in a town where you know two people — 1/2,000,000th of the metro population — can be lonely, especially when those two people work during the days. Fortunately Boston is awesome, and there are always things to do and see. I haven't even scratched the surface of the city's history tours, for instance. So there's plenty to keep me from being sad, but on some days it still gets the best of me.

On a side note, I have cable for the first time. This is a good thing for the hours between when I arrive home and when I finally feel like falling asleep, but I'm starting to watch TV during the days. I need to stop that. Not now, when the weather is nice and the sun is out; save that for the cold, gray days.

Anyway, I'll walk and walk and walk until either my feet hurt or it's time to go to work.

LATE AFTERNOON

It takes almost exactly 30 minutes to get from my door to my desk at work when I take the T. Walking down Beacon Hill through the Common to the Park Street station takes about 10 minutes; the nine-minute subway ride takes me five stops; and it takes about eight minutes to walk from JFK station to the Globe.


From home to the T.


From the T to work.

If the Globe still worked out of its office on Newspaper Row on Washington Street, the commute would be eight minutes by foot! Too bad they had to move to Dorchester in 1958.


A view of the building from the north.


A third of the Globe newsroom. This is where business and metro are located. The news copy desk, where I sit, is at the far end of the room and it's hard to see here. The other two thirds of the newsroom are sports (one-third) and Living Arts, the magazine and the design department (one-third). The investigation team and the editorial page are on the floor below the newsroom.

I'll look for an open desk on the rim when I get to work; after Labor Day, when the vacation-spurred staff shortage is over, I'll have my own desk in the design department as well as a desk on the rim.

Work is work. It's hard and it's intense, but I love it. The stories are so interesting and there's always something going on in Boston. Is it the city being an interesting place or are the reporters just really good? Probably both. It's just a stark difference from Jacksonville's news pages, which seem to be dominated by an odd ratio of sap-happy "special kid/man/dog does special thing" and murder/mayhem/misery. Is Jacksonville a boring town, or are the reporters just so overextended that they go only for the low-hanging fruit? Perhaps both.

HOMEWARD BOUND

In order to make the last inbound T, I have to leave the Globe at 12:25 a.m. This usually isn't a problem when I'm doing copy editing or wire layout, but if I'm designing metro I usually miss it and have to call a cab. Lately, my cab rides have been expensive: $16-$17 each time. But last night I altered my route and actually ended up getting dropped off closer to home for $11. (That's the wonder of downtown Boston streets: A route that seems shorter is actually much longer due to the insanity of one-way streets.)

Where's my car? Oh, it's at the Globe, where it's been since July 24. It's not registered in Massachusetts, so I don't have a Beacon Hill parking permit — or any other parking permit for that matter. Downtown Boston is a motorists' nightmare.


I hate you, resident permit parking only sign.

Unlike New York, where luck can land you a parking space on the street, you need a little sticker on your car that says you can park in the neighborhood — and every neighborhood has its own. So I can't just park my car in the Back Bay or the South End or the North End and just hike home. I've received two parking tickets so far, and they're $40 each. That's only slightly more expensive than a parking garage, which is $30 a night. I have free parking at the Globe, so I intend to use it until I decide to either pay the thousands of dollars a year to register the car (insurance, inspections, registration, excise taxes = thousands of dollars) or just get rid of it. The T is fast and convenient, so I have no plans to start driving any time soon.

Back at home, I'll fix a small dinner and either veg out or surf the Internet until I'm tired. Then, off to bed.

THE WEEKENDS

Take all of the above, throw out work, extend the walks' time and range and throw in a restaurant. Boston has thousands of restaurants, and I'm happily up to the challenge of sampling the amazing food. Highlights so far are:

• The best burger ever: The 21st Burger at the 21st Amendment in Beacon Hill. A former JFK hangout, this neighborhood bar and restaurant has inexpensive beer and a burger that has both caramelized onions and onion rings on it. Awesome!
• The $9 Thai feast at Dok Bua in Coolidge Corner. So much food for so little.
• Dino's subs in the North End. Dino makes 16-inch subs (read: lunch and dinner for one price!) with huge slices of mozzarella and fresh plum tomatoes.
• Peking Ravioli at King Fung in Chinatown. Many Chinatown restaurants also have a fabulous (or dubious) secret: Many that are open after 2 a.m. (when all the bars close) will serve you a pot of "Magic Tea" (beer) if you ask for it. Yay!

So that's it. Hey, I didn't claim that I lead an exciting life.