A Stalled Car and a Passive-Aggressive Cake

Last night, my family had a graduation party for me in my hometown of Sharon - at Mandarin Taste, of course! My master's program ended in December, and I finished up the last of my requirements a bit on the late side (late April). Oops.

Joel and I attempted to leave Somerville at 4pm to head to Sharon...right in the middle of yesterday's crazy storm. He lives on a hill, and we could see the rain water rushing down the street. At the bottom of the street, the water level was up past mid-wheel on the parked cars. A car in front of us went through, and we thought we'd be fine with Joel's Subaru's all-wheel drive. Turns out all-wheel drive doesn't really matter if the water is high enough that the car floats above ground. We stalled, and we floated there. Joel called AAA and the Tacos Lupita staff peered curiously out the window at us.

Some cars coming up Somerville Ave. paused at the base of the street, U-turned, and drove away. Other cars came up behind us, honking endlessly. Obviously we were stuck, jerks. A few squeezed by us and we floated forward a bit. Somerville Engine 4 appeared at the base of the street. They were coming to check out a tree down on Summer St., but first, they waded into the knee-deep water and pushed us into a parking spot around the corner. (Thank you, firefighters of Somerville Engine 4!)

By this time, the street had already started to drain a bit, and a small crowd had gathered to photograph other cars nearly getting stuck.

It was deeper than this when we got stuck.

One problem solved. We were out of the road and out of the water. But...the car wouldn't start. Joel stood near the car holding jumper cables, hoping someone would stop and help out. A couple men came over (thank you, anonymous helpers!) and tried to jump the car several times, to no avail. It made an awful noise. Meanwhile, we had already called AAA, so we figured they'd show up soon enough.

Then panic set in. Was I going to miss my own party? It was also a 94th birthday for my grandfather, who had flown in from Florida for the occasion, and a bunch of other relatives that I don't see very often would also be there. How were we going to get to Sharon?

Fortunately, one of my former classmates had also said she'd come to the party, and she was going to be driving from Somerville. She hadn't been feeling well yesterday, so she was on the fence about going, but when I frantically called her and told her about our predicament, she very nicely saved the day and brought us to the party! (Thanks, Jennie!) We arrived an hour late, but fortunately I had also invited Lauren, one of my childhood friends who lives in Sharon and looks somewhat like me. She acted as my stand-in for the first hour.

After all the drama, we arrived and had a nice dinner. Then, I was presented with this lovely cake:

Passive-aggressive (and grammatically strange) cake, courtesy of Mom.

I didn't even get a congratulations! Hmph.

I shouldn't complain too much about the storm, though. I saw several news reports of cars getting obliterated by falling trees in Brookline and other areas. This morning on the way to work, I saw many fallen trees in the Public Garden and the Boston Common.

In the Garden near the duckling statuettes

A bigger tree down, also in the Garden. This man is six feet tall,
so that should give a frame of reference as to the size of this tree.

The man in the above photo had some interesting views on how the oil crisis caused this storm. (He said something about oil underground exerting some sort of gravitational force holding things down, but now it's all coming up to the top and spilling in the oceans, so things aren't going to be held down as well.) Other results of the crisis will include (according to him) more volcanic eruptions in the coming years, people's moods changing ("There will be lots of f****** psychos," he said), an Ice Age, etc. Probably Doomsday, too, but I don't think he mentioned that one. I wanted to be a good science journalist and question him in detail on these views, but alas, I had to get to work.