Off to CNU...

I'll be back from CNU Sunday night, when I'll finally be able to take a deep breath and relax. I think.

Nantucket

Surprise

I haven't forgotten this blog thing, I swear. An unprecedented amount going on - after Mark & Katie's wedding last weekend:


two deadlines had to be handled this week AND I moved in with Heather. Some late nights and a lot of stress. This weekend Heather planned the first of our annual surprise trips. I had no idea where we were going until last night after work when I met Heather at the bus station and we headed to......Nantucket! Ah, a relaxing 3 day weekend with no plan except a dinner reservation tomorrow night. Exploring, eating, drinking, and lounging. Just what we needed!

Now I have to choose my surprise weekend plan for Columbus Day. I hear Framingham is lovely in the fall.

Celebration, FL

For a field trip during our long weekend in Disney, Heather and I spent Saturday morning in Celebration, Florida. Celebration is a master-planned community developed by Disney a few miles away from the theme parks, and includes a mixed use downtown and approximately 4,000 homes. The downtown features shops, town hall, Michael-Graves-designed post office, movie theater, restaurants, offices, condos - basically everything is mixed up in an ideal New Urbanist configuration.



The downtown is centered around this beautiful gathering spot, viewed here from the walking trail around the lake.


The town's residential areas radiate from the town center, and several of the narrow streets have wide center medians that accommodate parks. In general, Celebration's parks are vastly oversized, although this center median with a stream is incredibly landscaped and very interesting.


There are townhouse style condos near the town center:


and in addition to many monstrous houses, there are plenty of more modestly sized homes, which I find much more attractive:




Despite the variation of housing sizes and architectural type within the town as a whole, homes of similar size seem to be grouped together into homogeneous neighborhoods, which is unfortunate.

Most homes have alleys in the back for garages, trash pickup, etc., but interestingly, in Celebration the alleys are overutilized at the expense of street life. Cars are parked in either 3-car garages or in a mish-mash way in the alleys, and in some cases driveways are constructed in place of backyards:


Painful:


The result in some cases is a complete lack of cars parked on the street, which when combined with the oversized median parks makes some of the streets seem overly wide and barren of energy:


Some streets work out well and with the additional benefit of mature street trees feel like a more comprehensive public realm:


After spending an hour or two exploring Celebration, Heather and I sat in rocking chairs by the lake to wait for our cab. We ended up chatting with Steve and Beth, who just moved to Celebration from Ludlow, MA in December and were raving about the town. They hadn't heard of New Urbanism, but were glowing about all the design features incorporated in their town.

They ended up showing us their house:


and giving us a ride to Epcot. I think this spontaneous meeting is partly due to the New Urbanist physical town layout, which facilitates interaction within the public realm, and also the simple fact that a majority of Celebration's residents chose to live there because they are friendly people interested in community and interaction with others.

Thank you to Steve & Beth!

Picture of the week

Here's Heather and I in Disney, the California version. I'm heading to Disney, the Florida version, tonight to meet up with Heather and her friends Kittson & David who have been there all week. Florida, where the weather is sunny and 85, not raining and 45 like here. Yipee!

Deep-sea fishing

What a weekend spent deep sea fishing in Gloucester for my cousin Mark's bachelor party. When I say deep sea fishing, what I really mean is spending all day on a boat 25 miles from shore hanging out and goofing around with Mark, my cousin Eric, my Uncle Frank, and a bunch of Mark's friends while holding fishing rods. We didn't catch many fish.




The two fish big enough to keep we had filleted on the boat, then we had a local restaurant fry them up. The best fish & chips I've ever had.

Arctic Monkeys review - no rating...

Does England's Arctic Monkeys debut album "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" live up to all the buzz? Yes, and then no. The first half of the album is the best stuff I've heard in a long time, a cranked up Libertines but way better - cheeky, clever, and utterly rocking. Great stuff. Then the band abruptly shifts into more standard Libertines style balladry, which would have been ok I guess but I wanted the party to continue. Not a coincidence the songs were listed separately on the album cover. Maybe someday I'll give part II a fresh unprejudiced listen, but for now only part I made the iPod playlist.