I've finished my first week (or set of weekdays) here, and I'm now pretty much set up with everything for the next three months. Friday morning I went to the bike store, bought a helmet, a couple tools, and things that flash, so now I can bike around reasonably safely.

Riding on the left side of the road turns out to be easier than I expected, especially when other cars or cyclists are around. The example of other practitioners serves as a reminder of what I ought to be doing, and of course when the practitioners are buses or cars, you want to stay out of their way.

I paid the first of what will doubtless be many trips to Heffers, one of the big bookstores in town, to stock up on philosophy books. After years of avoiding philosophy in favor of sociology-- my graduate program was pretty militantly anti-philosophical, a way of differentiating itself from what its founders saw as the excessive influence of philosophy on the history of science-- I'm now having to catch up. But what better place than here to read about Wittgenstein, the philosophy of mind, and arguments about embodied cognition?

the menu at gardies, via flickr

Biking around town tonight, it looks to me that on Friday night downtown Cambridge is abandoned by everyone but men with foreign accents, and women who think that

After a full day at the lab, I wandered around town a bit more, and after crossing the river found three things I'd been looking for.

the Cam, via flickr

I bought a cowboy hat when I was in Montana, and decided to bring it with me. I tend to become somewhat more American when I come here, partly because clients are buying a certain Silicon Valley aura, and partly because I never want to become one of those Americans who after a month here sounds like a BBC announcer.

my hat, via flickr