I Suspect that the Artist Guides are breeding in the trunk of my Car

Day 11
Westford, Massachusetts in a White Pontiac G6
Breakfast music: either Rod Stewart or a very raspy woman (could be either) singing "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"




Catching up with last week, I sent this postcard to Alissandra Seelaus, who calls Niskayuna, NY her hometown, which is near Schenectady, NY, which is in the Albany area, where I was doing school visits for the highly regarded art college I work for.






Those artist guides seem to multiplying; impossible, but yet, it looks like there are more of them whenever I open the trunk. (People seem to LOVE the portability of these little books; they're especially popular at college fairs, where people grab 'em by the handful and take them off my hands). Today was another four school day, and I ran into an insane block of traffic leaving my hotel in Westford for my visit in Lexington, which according to Googlemaps, is only 20 minutes away. Ha! More like an hour, with traffic. On the other side of the highway, I noticed the traffic moving away from Boston proper sailing by with no delays. So, I was late to my first school, but managed to get through all the majors in my presentation (15 minutes!). The teacher clued me in on a helpful tip: stay in the city and you'll avoid all the traffic in the 'burbs because people in the burbs head TOWARDS the city in the morning (cue: the happy cars sailing away from Beantown). It was a good day: one really great portfolio in Ipswich (surprise!) The weather is cooperating: clear and cool, and sunny (apparently the first chance of rain will find me on The Cape, on Saturday. Cape Cod in the rain in October loses its charm very quickly.

So, I'm on an upper floor of my hotel, in a handicapped access room (read: large and spacious, with a shower stall instead of the ubiquitous tub). I'm not quite sure how this happened; you wouldn't be able to tell this room from any another save for the fact that there is a call button for assistance on the outside of the room. Why on the outside of the room? Why is this accessible room on an upper floor? It's probably illegal to ask someone straight up about disabilities, so the very discreet staff hasn't said anything. The room is actually quite lovely, so I decided to stay.

I'm still trying to get to the H&M in Cambridge. There's an aqua/mint blouse that I should have bought in Syracuse that's haunting my dreams (much like the leopard print shirt dress that I finally bought at the Galleria). I wanted to beat the traffic, so no shopping today (maybe tomorrow?) I made it back to the hotel in good time, so that was a good trade-off.