Photo: A quiet afternoon stroll along Nantasket beach.
So one of the cool things about owning a car is that you can do utterly random driving on an afternoon, when you feel like getting away for a few hours. I drove to Nantasket beach for the first time yesterday, then went to see my first ever (like, evar, dudz) drive in movie.
The drive from here to Nantasket beach isn’t much more than an hour (though it’s one of the routes TomTom has fun with, given its European maps…I’m learning that they need to improve their Boston one-way street/road data sources, as well as other mapping data – why can’t they just provide a UI for reporting inaccuracies? I’m going to try to find one of the open source facing developers and ask them for that feature…it can already connect to the Internet via your cellphone…so it’s trivial). I wasn’t in a hurry, and I got there in time to enjoy a quiet afternoon stroll.
Made a change from the hour I spent in (the all new!) AT&T yesterday. Yes, it took one hour to move my “Go Phone” over to a contract, and enabling roaming on my “new” account was fun. I had to call customer service, from within the AT&T store (they couldn’t actually do it), then confirm my details and listen as they asked me about items on my credit report to confirm my identity. It’s amazing how much these people know about you once they have your social – and don’t go saying it’s just in the US, because that’s hardly true at all. After discussing my car loan with my cellphone provider…always very fun…I got roaming. With their utterly pointless security hysteria done, I am now free to pay ludicrous rates to use my cellphone when I’m next in Canada, but it’s still cheaper than roaming in the UK ever was 
After I had been to Nantasket, I drove over to Mendon (the one in MA, not the one in NH – but where’s that, Jon? right. Yeah. Nobody knows where that is, but I assure you that it does actually exist), for my first ever drive in movie experience. I got there between the first and second movies (I had gone for the second…I was actually early arriving) and so they let me sit and watch half of Harry Potter before I drove over to the other screen for my movie. Of course, there would be some jerk delaying a few of us getting over to screen 2, and thus missing the opening scene. But that’s par for the course. I certainly enjoyed having the top down, stereo cranked up on the movie FM, and living yet another great American experience. Seriously, drive in movies are fun.
I drove back to Boston at 2am, with the top down, listening to silly music, and loving every single minute of it.
Jon.