Woke up this morning to a bright, clear day in Cambridge. Took Frisket out for a long rambling walk along the river into Kendall Square and around the neighborhood east of Kendall. Today’s earworm was about three lines from Harborcoat by R.E.M.

I made the mistake, just before leaving, but with Harborcoat sort of rambling in my head, of looking up the lyrics online.

I'm not sure why, just now, I thought to look them up, after all I've known them for years.

I don't know if they're the right lyrics of course, but in R.E.M.'s early days the lyrics were more like additional instruments to the music, not something separate.

Perhaps that's why you don't hear so many covers of R.E.M.

In college, my friend John and I tried to work out the lyrics to various R.E.M. tracks, initially by actual postal mail, but at some point in either our Junior or Senior years we managed to figure out how to email each other.

Now, this was 1987 or 1988. One didn't just email someone. You had to know the path to that person. If you were lucky, they were on an ARPAnet system. Then, all you had to do was find a path from your system (unless you were on ARPAnet as well) to their system. If you were somewhat less lucky, you were both on semi-well-known UUCP systems. Then you could try bouncing the mail through uunet.

So, I'd send mail from costello!sir-alan out into the wilderness, routing via ncoast and uunet, eventually reaching John's VMS system at Marquette.

Anyway...for awhile we tried to figure out the lyrics to tracks like Harborcoat, and Stumble. By the time we got to Maps and Legends and Cuyahoga, the lyrics were becoming more distinct, less part of the music and more a specific thing. I still liked R.E.M. as they went mainstream, but their music definitely changed. Not for the worse, just different.

Anyway, Frisket and I set out on a little ramble along the river. We're staying at the Hotel Marlowe which is on the east side of the Cambridgeside Galleria, across from the Sonesta and the old Lotus Development buildings.

An aside on the Marlowe... when we first stayed here I described it as a W Hotel gone tragically wrong. As though someone stayed at a W, and then through a very bad phone connection described it to someone else, who then transcribed it in a language they only partially understood, and then sent it off to a designer to implement.

Most of my original criticisms still stand. But we’ve adapted. They truly, honestly accept Frisket as a guest (though this trip they didn’t add her name to the welcome list by the biscuit bowl at the front). And they have honest-to-G-d free broadband. The only improvement I'd make to the broadband is to eliminate the accept-our-terms page you have to go to each time you connect to the network. Oh, and they have 802.11g throughout the hotel, so you don't even need to use the in-room ethernet.

The room-service options are still not what I'd expect at a hotel of this caliber elsewhere. The food is fine...just the options are limited, especially if you arrive after 10:00 p.m. And the decor is still rife with a strange animal-fur-leopard-spot motif.

But we like it, it's close to our friends, and it used to be a good spot for Lisa when she was with IBM.

So (this is a rambling post by the way, punt now or accept it), we head off down to Canal Park along the river.

We walked the length of the park, running into a couple of dogs along the way.

We then cut across to Broadway and walked up Broadway to a walkway to 6th street.

We took 6th to Charles St. where Frisket got to talk to several other dogs. I'd thought it was a dog run, but it was a soccer field which just happened to have a number of dogs and their people, watching a soccer game get set up.

We headed back along Hurley Street and finally found the squirrel Frisket had obviously been tracking all along. The squirrel was hanging out at the playground. I may have let Frisket run around a bit chasing the squirrel, of course she at no time entered the playground, which is off-limits to dogs, even when empty.

For the remainder of the walk Frisket was quite pleased with herself, and continued to look for Squirrel the remainder of the way down Hurley to First Street.

The Best Buy at the Cambridgeside Galleria Mall either suffered an automotive intrustion overnight, or just felt a strong need to replace their doors (perhaps in preparation for crowds on Black Friday?)

On returning to the hotel Frisket was offered many treats, the desk staff at this point know her by name (though we're just Frisket's People, I wonder if we're registered as that. Maybe next checkin we just let Frisket leave a paw mark on the registration book.)