Saturday’s Activities Include: martial arts, cake, Sky Zone

I took T. to martial arts today. It seemed to go well; I had a nice chat with someone who I used to like talking to, but who has gone missing for most of the summer. Now that summer team sports are winding down, he’s back. Yay!

T. and I went to Wegman’s to pick up the cake for his birthday party, which we celebrated one week early this year. We had planned it for 12 jumpers, wound up with 11, but one arrived too late to jump so they actually refunded us for two jumpers. Sort of amazing, really. 2 cheese pizzas — probably should have had three. Quarter sheet cake, all but the last thin short row (4 square pieces) eaten. Nice! Turns out the nut-free kid didn’t like sprinkles, so the Fancy Schmancy Cupcake was no bueno. I happened to have a spare yellow cake cupcake from the same bakery — but he wound up not liking it either. Oh well! We tried! A. didn’t like them either; I thought they were great. But I usually like anything I didn’t have to cook but which also won’t make me sick.

Some school placements changed; it was nice to see people I haven’t seen in a while and who I enjoy talking to. One kid is now at Nashoba Learning Group — I think that’s a great placement for him, and really hope that he thrives there. Got a very useful recommendation from another mom for a possible specialist health care provider. Two kids have switched to The Guild in Concord. That was pretty neat — I was like, wait, someone else here just switched to that. Do you two know each other? They did! They were different ages and so in different classes (T. knows one from his school placement where that boy used to be and knows the other from his therapeutic riding). So I sent them off to say hi to each other, and then looked around to introduce the moms to each other, and they’d met at a parent event and recognized each other! I love when stuff like that happens. It really makes one feel like one is a part of a community of people, not just randomly passing total strangers who one will never see again.

A. nearly fell asleep on the drive home: jumping plus cake and ice cream. Also, just like at the last birthday party (different kid with the same name as T.) at Sky Zone, it was pouring down rain, which tends to make people sleepy.

R. collected some interesting stories about Conant. Lots to think about! I need to find someone who can give me a current / definitive answer about what age range is being served by Blanchard’s program — and if it covers grade 4 already, why wasn’t A. offered that.

Alewife Woes

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/08/10/mbta-closes-alewife-parking-garage-for-weekend-due-safety-concerns/9pSNVtdSj3qlrCQ3P0hOyH/story.html

On Thursday, T. and his sitter went to see Jimmy Buffet at Fenway. They left as soon as T. got home from ESY at 2:15 (so he skipped one day of his Bye Bye Birdie day camp). The original plan was to take the commuter rail to Porter Square, pick up the subway at that point and take it to Fenway. Then, they were going to drive to Alewife, pick up the Red Line there, and take it to Fenway (it’s possible there would have been an additional change — I don’t know that route at all). Then, they decided to _drive_ the whole way in, and the sitter wanted to leave very early so that she would get a spot. If she had told me this sooner, I would have bought her a spot, but she didn’t tell me so I couldn’t plan that ahead of time. Anyway.

In the event, on Thursday, 500 spaces / 20% of the 2500 spaces were closed, because a chunk of concrete or whatever fell off the ceiling and landed on a car. No one was hurt, but wow! Pretty awful! The article above details what happened today: despite saying it was okay on Thursday and Friday, they changed their mind and closed the whole thing over the weekend. Amazing, the tradeoff between troubling commuters and not. (I’m not arguing they made the wrong tradeoff. Additional chunks did not fall on anyone in the intervening 2 days. No harm, no foul, and there would have been holy hell to pay if they had closed Alewife abruptly on Thursday morning. I cannot even imagine.)

The article is notable, for the numerous commuters who park at Alewife who complain about the failure to maintain it, etc. etc. And it is true, that parking garage has reminded me forcibly of the Alaskan Way Viaduct over the years that I have lived here. The problem, of course, is that it is extremely unlikely that the city will be allowed to build a comparable sized facility in the same location — never mind the massive disruption while they tear the existing facility down and build whatever they decide to build. Alewife dates from an era when people with money, power, privilege, wtf lived out of the city and commuted into it. The people who lived in the city — and could thus vote up or down on the people who made decisions on projects such as a massive parking garage to serve Route 2 commuters — couldn’t stop Alewife. That dynamic has changed. I have a really hard time imagining that thing being replaced.

So. It’ll be a while before they take it down, and I hesitate to predict what happens in terms of that location. But anyone who thinks it will have a comparable — much less larger — number of car parking spaces is probably being a bit too optimistic. The Quincy Center garage, for example, has not been replaced.

http://www.patriotledger.com/news/20180716/mbta-dials-back-parking-fee-hike-at-quincy-braintree-garages

ETA: This is an interesting insight into the plan that resulted in Alewife’s current configuration — dates from 1979.

http://www.cambridgema.gov/~/media/Files/CDD/Planning/Studies/Alewife/alewife_fishbook_1979.pdf

Current garage is 2500 spaces; plan listed 2000. R. talks about how they had originally planned to add on but didn’t — I don’t know what really happened.

Here’s the official pronouncement on the weekend closure and upcoming work:

https://www.mbta.com/projects/alewife-garage-repairs

Note the repair project that the Boston Globe mentioned as having been accelerated due to the discovery back in November that the garage needed work done on it is mentioned including cost and time frame. It’ll be interesting to find out what is discovered in the course of doing that work.