I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Part of me now wants to go back and change that blurb I was so excited about two months ago. But I figure, "nah, keep it the way it is. Someone might send me a brilliant idea on that email address, and I'd want to be sure to go back and do it someday."

So that's that, I guess. There were a few times where I wondered if I would ever make it to this point, but now that I'm here, I wish it had been "Boston in 90", or "Boston in 120". If there's one thing this project accomplished, it reaffirmed my love for this city and demonstrated rather capably how much I'm going to miss it when I depart. Sixty days' worth of activities was a grueling schedule, but there's still stuff out there I never got to do.

The moral of the story: it's not at all difficult to find a destination, or even a diversion in Boston and its environs. If nothing's jumping out at you, just follow your shadow for a while - it won't take long until something will catch your eye.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I had a lot of people making suggestions for what I should do for the final day of the Project. Some folks wanted me to have some big blowout activity, gather together everyone who's gone with me for an outing and have a party. Others thought I should pick the best of the "I wish I'd been able to do this" list and finally get it done. But I settled on something I thought was strangely poetic. I chose the bookend to my Day One entry, figuring I should go out the way I went in.

The Harpoon Brewery is a heck of a lot harder to get to than the Sam Adams brewery, but it's worth it. The brewery's tour isn't so much a tour as it is a "hey, look, there are some pretty tanks over there, now let's have some beer." I doubt any one of the 25 people in our "tour" group objected to this, as there were pretty taps with ambrosia just calling out to us from in front of the well-kept display.

Even better, unlike the Sam tour, the bartender didn't seem inclined to stop us at four samples. I'm not sure anyone took him up on this leeway, but there was no limit presented. I myself had three, including the very tasty new Leviathan Triticus. A friend and I explored the small Harpoon Brewery Store, wondering aloud if any team out there really wore the Harpoon bike jerseys. But then hey, if I was driving by and someone had that on, I'd look.

Something else that they had available at the brewery was growlers. A growler is a 64-ounce vat o' beer that's filled at taps right there at the plant. I liked the concept - for less than the cost of a six-pack, we'll fill a big jar with fresh beer in a novel container. And you can get it in any one of the varieties they've got there. Sadly, as I depart from Boston on Monday and don't need to be hungover for the remainder of my time here, I chose not to pick up one of the little brown jars. But believe me, I'll be back.

And that's 60 days of things to do in Boston. I'll wax poetic a bit more about the Project tomorrow, but let me say at least this much: it has been an absolute blast going out and exploring the city, camera in hand, every day. Sure, there are places I wanted to go and didn't, and places that if I did this again, I wouldn't do, but overall, I think it was an unqualified success. If nothing else, there's now a great archive for when friends ask me, "what should I check out?"

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Hopefully that will be the only supremely corny insect-related joke I make during this entry, but don't get your hopes up. As my Project winds down and my departure from Boston date looms, I've been taking any chance I get to see friends of mine. Tonight's activity, as a result, was something that I could bring several people to, we could chat and catch some live music, and it was eminently accessible. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably guessed by now that it was also a bar.

A jazz bar, in fact. While jazz has traditionally not been my thing, I thought I could do worse than to pull a button-down from the recesses of my closet and play a bohemian for an evening. (But not too bohemian - I still wore jeans and sneakers.) And on the suggestion of a few friends, the Beehive and its classy ways drew my attention. So after three friends and I brushed the dirt off our shoulders, we soldiered down Tremont Street and into the "it" bar next to the BCA.

Now, we arrived at about 9:15. Kinda late for dinner, especially on a work/school night. But the waitstaff told us it would be a 30-40 minute wait for a table if that's what we wanted to do. Well, this place was hopping, as my father would put it. Rather than bum around for the better part of an hour with nothing to do, we chose to just hang out by the bar downstairs and wait for the jazz trio to start their thing. We bantered back and forth, we toasted to "59 down, 1 to go", and we stared at a particular painting in the corner. It was a couch, but it was painted in such a way that we weren't sure if the couch was felt or paint. (It was paint, which goes to show how well-done it was.)

The decor was interesting, with chandeliers and exposed plumbing above us, and eclectic art on the walls. The light fixtures gave me a bit of a Phantom of the Opera vibe, but nothing fell down, so it was all good. As for the jazz, well, I'm still not a jazz music devotee, but it was nice background music. I'm afraid I'm going to have to stick with my folk/acoustic inclinations for the time bee-ing. (Couldn't help it - I told you not to get your hopes up.)

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

As a Northeastern student, I frequently hear an anti-Boston University refrain on campus. n"Sucks to BU," the chorus goes. The pitch and intensity with which the adage is proclaimed increases as we approach the Beanpot each year, but I've always said it half-heartedly. BU didn't do anything to me, so I don't really care about them, either. Until tonight, anyway. Now, I can shout in full voice, "sucks to BU." See, Day 58 was supposed to be the BU Observatory entry. Since this project began, I'd been looking forward to checking out the public night and pretending to know something about astronomy. And tonight turned out to be a glorious night to look at stars — or so I thought. I called the observatory's number shortly before I had planned to leave, and learned the event was canceled because of cloud cover.

What cloud cover? I could see stars in the sky even surrounded by the city's many lights. There was no way there was enough cloud cover to make it not worth opening the observatory up. My three friends and I suggested all manner of reasons as to why the event was canceled, none of them complimentary of BU or whomever made the decision to cancel on a clear night. Sucks to BU indeed.

We struggled to come up with something to do following that event abandonment, but settled on some sort of open-late coffee place. I remembered passing an interesting bookstore and cafe when I traipsed down Newbury Street, and suggested the Trident Booksellers and Cafe for our destination. We arrived at the bookstore (this could be another theme of my project, couldn't it?), plopped down in a corner, and promptly began chatting loud enough to drive several customers away. That's just how we roll.

While I chuckled at a friend's attempt to work the bubbles out of her bubble tea, I sipped on my "Mango Tango" frappe and jokingly criticized another friend's selection of a decaf espresso frappe. We bantered for a while, got a basket of fries and discussed the addition of mayo to the ketchup, and then checked out the bookstore portion of the establishment. Yeah, I know, not the most enthralling thing I've done for this project, but I'd go back. Lots of varieties of tea that I'd like to sample. And a pretty good magazine selection too — I didn't know Vogue came in Russian.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

There was a time — tough as it may be to believe — that I was not interested in sports. Now, please, contain your surprise. It was so long ago I can scarcely remember it. But my parents remind me that although we were frequent visitors to the Sports Depot in Allston, I had no interest in the memorabilia on the walls, or in the games broadcast on the TVs. No, I was there specifically to get the window seats to watch the trains go by.

For years even after my family moved out of the city limits, I would ask to go back to the Sports Depot, just to chuckle and point as the commuter rail sped by, or the freight trains moved forward and back, collecting cars from the train yard nearby. I had a fascination with trains that nothing but the window in the old depot could satisfy.

And I still love it for that reason. While I talked my friends into going with me under the guise of watching the Red Sox/Yankees game, I totally just wanted to stare out the window and hope a bunch of engines would pull past. We didn't end up at one of my old coveted platform seats, but I did claim the seat at our table with the best view of the tracks. And to my evident glee, I was rewarded with several trains passing by at varying speeds — some I just wanted to watch, and some I chose to shoot.

I could probably wax poetic about the CSX and MBTA trains that fly by for another several paragraphs, but I ought to mention the good, inexpensive food they had there. Since I was a notably picky eater when I'd last visited the nostalgic halls of the Depot, I hadn't tried anything on their menu. The sandwich I ordered was excellent, and the baseball game I only fleetingly paid attention to made for a perfect storm of awesome. There were three different MLB games on, a tennis match, and the Revs game. There was not a spot in the restaurant from which you couldn't see, say, a dozen TVs.

Sometimes when you revisit nostalgic things, they don't look as cool anymore. And sometimes, they do.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

So remember when I said that the elusive concept known as "the dark" and I weren't on the best of terms? Maybe fooling around in an old Civil War fort wasn't the best way to handle that. And then the guy that works at Georges Island jumped out at a friend and I from atop a dark and creepy staircase. Okay, so he didn't really "jump out" at us, but he did appear from nowhere and make me jump out of my skin.

But to his credit, he did tell us to just go exploring, since really not all that much was cordoned off. And explore we did. In fact, we got right down to the seawall, via some paths that were probably not intended for human traffic. It figured — after we got some great seascape photos, we found the easy way to get there.

The fort was really interesting - not surprisingly, I found it much like a very hands-on museum. And you all know how museums and I go hand-in-hand. This one just had some really dark and scary (and probably haunted) corners I wasn't going to even approach. I used the flash on my camera several times just to know what was at the top of the staircase I was climbing.

But the best pictures from the day came from Spectacle Island. We hoofed it really quickly up the taller of the two hills that compose the island, and it turned out we were alone in choosing that hill. So we took some brilliant shots of the city skyline from the highest point in the Boston Harbor, and discussed which would be cooler up there, a concert or a marriage proposal. And then we picked some wild blackberries on the path back down. Just make sure you can spot the differences between blackberries and poison sumac, because there was a lot of that, too.

We only got to visit two of the islands, but I'm sold. I thought it was a nice little way to offer a "farewell" to the city I love before I depart in a week — to step outside the city's clear limits and look back upon it from above and afar. I'm really in the heart of the home stretch now, and I'm getting sentimental. Someone slap me.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I like to think I'm an athletically-inclined person. I really do. I can throw a ball, catch a Frisbee, kick a field goal, and block a shot. But for whatever reason, I never mastered roller-skating. It was always a choice between riding my bike or working on the roller blades. And without fail, I picked the bike. Just worked better for me. The discouragement of falling on my butt was a major motivator in my bicycle decisions. That and I could go a lot faster.

But every now and then, I got invited to a birthday party at the roller rink a couple of towns away. I was personally more into the Lazer Tag they had there, but going to a roller rink meant you had to, well, roll. So I can coast, but I remain liable to fall on my butt. This was the test tonight — can I complete a night at a roller rink without falling on my butt? And so I arrived at Chez Vous in Dorchester with this challenge in mind.

Chez Vous is an interesting little place just off of Blue Hill Ave. It's tucked in there with a dim sign across from a police station, and the first thing you see when you walk in is the unplugged metal detector off to the side. That made me wonder just what I was getting into, but I forged on in the hope that since it was unplugged, they'd decided it was unnecessary. The rink itself was dimly lit, and as a friend and I tugged on the ancient skates, we wondered just how well this was going to work out.

I did a few laps of the rink, lurching forward from time to time as I struggled to maintain my balance. I imagine I was the least graceful one out there, but I paid $10 to get in, and I was gonna skate. At least, until they made it a backwards-only bit. Yeah, that definitely wasn't going to happen. So we only got about 25 minutes of skate time before they made it impossible for us to continue, because I sure don't have the coordination to go backwards.

The verdict? I didn't fall on my butt. Onto my wrists once, sure, but I'm pretending that doesn't count.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Wine sorbet. That's what my mother got. Sadly, they didn't have any of the cajun corn-flavored ice cream for me to sample.

J.P. Licks is all about the interesting ice cream flavors, including their submission for Iron Chef J.P. - a cajun corn pudding flavored ice cream. The idea of a spicy ice cream just seems to go in the face of everything ice cream was meant for, but hey, I'm up for a little bit of experimentation. As it was, I went with the Cow-lua flavor, which the big board indicated was made with actual alcohol.

My family accompanied me on this pilgrimage to the original J.P. Licks in Jamaica Plain, and we each chose something different. Cow-lua for me, sangria-flavored sorbet for my mother, and far more boring choices for my father and sister. Obviously, the booze in the dessert was all that mattered. And it was very, very good booze-flavored ice cream. I tried the sangria sorbet, and you could definitely notice the kick. Good thing I wasn't driving this time around.

I do have to say something about the cows, for there were a lot of them. The big cow's head above the awning outside was one thing, but then the life-size model inside? The Holstein spot-shaped tables? The hovering dude with a cow-themed shirt? That was interesting. Of course, I immediately passed off my camera and proceeded to "milk" the big hollow cow in the corner, even though it had no utters. I do hope I did not try to milk a steer.

After collecting our cups of ice cream, we retreated to the patio to savor the waning summer evening while digging in. Isn't it nice to have a couple of days now where we weren't under the constant threat of thunderstorms? I may have just jinxed it, but I've got only six days left — I think I could make even a rainy day work at this point.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

There are and will be some days throughout this project on which prior commitments make it impossible for me to get out and visit or do anything. For these days, I have set out to visit the site for that day ahead of time. This is one such entry — I completed it on August 21.

For as much as I've tried to plan ahead, and double-check my destinations' availability on the day I want to visit, sometimes even due diligence results in a big, closed metal grate. The website for Jake Ivory's says they're only open Fridays and Saturdays, but the recorded message I heard when I called indicated Thursdays were OK. And I figured it's more likely that the answering machine is up to date than the website, so we tried it. No go. So the friends that tagged along hoping for what was supposed to be '80s night convinced me to go down the block to Boston Beer Works for a pint.

I dream of a bar where all beers are created equal! And I think I might have found it - not only are all the beers equal (I sampled three of them - the oatmeal stout, the blueberry ale, and the watermelon ale), they're actually created. BBW doesn't roll with anything they didn't brew themselves. The giant brewing tanks line the walls on every side, and the taps all have interesting logos on them representing the homebrews.

They may not be crafted at a big, important brewery, but these were good. As a dark beer enthusiast, I found the oatmeal stout very much to my liking, but I was almost swayed back to the ale side of things by the watermelon ale, a special brew for August.

And the food — we ordered a single plate of nachos to split three ways. The chips, when they arrived, were piled nearly a foot off the plate, and loaded with cheese, olives, peppers, the works. We needed the beer, since the peppers contaminated each and every chip with "hoo boy!" But I'll be back at some point, I'm sure. After all, they sell growlers.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I do hope it doesn't count as cheating on this project that I lived not far from my third rambling destination. For six months, a friend and I had an apartment in West Roxbury, probably about a mile from Centre St. But in that time, I didn't do exploration of the area - I knew there were some decent Chinese food takeout places along the way, but I was content to just run up the street to the Burger King for food more often than not. So for the last of my "don't pick a place out ahead of time" entries, I wanted to go check out what I missed in those six months.

And I was certainly right about one thing: there are plenty of places to get food along Centre St. I wish I hadn't made the major tactical error of eating before I left, because I was intrigued by the Himalayan Bistro as soon as I got out of my car. That would have been a good hit. But I didn't blow it completely on the food front: my sweet tooth ached with joy as I walked past the Sugar Bakery, and I generally obey my teeth. They convinced me, even if I wasn't hungry right then, I certainly would be in a little while, so why not grab some cupcakes for the road? And I can say now, having eaten both of them, that they give Kickass Cupcakes a run for their money. We are so spoiled here in Boston when it comes to baked goods.

But I spent more time in one little shop than in any other, by far. I am a total sucker when it comes to bookstores - if I walk into one with my arms empty, I won't be walking out that way. Even if I didn't go in with a plan (the art of spontaneity, bookstore edition?), I've got to at least check it out. So when I stepped inside Pazzo Books, my eyes lit up. I mean, it was like a cartoon, my eyes went all big and popped out of my head. Okay, maybe not that much. But Pazzo, a rare and used-book seller, had some of the most fascinating books and displays.

I immediately decided how my next apartment will be decorated - in literary prints and old maps. (Yeah, I'm a nerd, but that's okay, the first step is admitting it, right?) In addition to the illustration of the Walrus and the Carpenter poem, I found a book with several images of old engravings of the city of Boston. I'm going to tear the best ones out and frame them. If I gotta leave my city, I'm taking some of it with me.

I also stumbled upon a trading post, a block off the main strip. The Reliable Trading Post doesn't have a website, and that's by design. They say on their fliers (which they hand you upon entering the store) that they don't carry anything that didn't exist in the 1800s. And the stuff was everywhere - it was an old house that was repurposed for use as a trading post, and there was wall-to-wall tchotchke. With my arms already laden in books and cupcakes, I didn't stay as long as I would have liked. I wanted to check out the adjacent barn where bands and artists are able to exhibit or perform, but I was afraid my cupcakes would melt, and I began the trek home.

I picked these three neighborhoods because they're places I never thought to investigate. I never thought the spaces in between the squares of Cambridge would have much worth checking out, and I was wrong. I never thought the C and B trains led anywhere good (E train for the win!), and I was wrong. And West Roxbury isn't easy to get to, with a lengthy train ride followed by a lengthy bus ride, but it's totally worth it. Very suburban feel, in the city proper. I'm sure there are little areas I didn't think of that were more than deserving of a "what's going on here" day, too.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I was never one of those kids who told the mall Santa, "I want a pony for Christmas". I was too busy wondering if tugging on his beard was going to get me in trouble or not (it did). But ponies still sometimes do have a certain allure, even to someone who can't stand the smell of horse poo. I go out of my way each year to watch the races of the Triple Crown and root for a horse to win, but I'm never right. Ah, but maybe it's because I'm watching those on television - maybe if I were to see the horses up-close-and-personal, I'd have a better sense of which might win.

Yeah, nope. Tried that strategy today when I went to Suffolk Downs to catch a few races. Over the course of five bets on four races, I got exactly zero of them correct. And I tried different tactics for every race. Some friends of mine follow the various circuits closely and gave me tips on what to do if you're only going to go to a track once in a while. My favorite? If you like the name of a horse, bet on it, cause you'll kick yourself if you don't.

My "cool name gets my money" bet went to "Saturday Sin"...who proceeded to get his equine butt kicked. One of my other tips was to look at the horse's history and morning betting odds, and bet on him if those odds had slipped before post time. I picked a horse that won his last three races, and four of his last five. But he didn't win today. Heck, the closest I came to a winning ticket is when I called a friend and told him "pick a number, 1-9, and I'm betting that horse". He picked the favorite, I bet on number 7 to win, and he came in second.

I think the best plan for someone like me visiting the racetrack is to admit right from the start, you're going to lose almost all the money you bring to bet. But that's okay - that's the cost of the entertainment. Go into it knowing you'll come out behind from where you started, and just go with instinct. If four is your lucky number, bet that horse. If the horse has a cool name ("I'm a Dilemma", step forward please), bet him. And every once in a while, send that text message to a buddy asking them to pick a number out of a hat for you. Cause hey, maybe it'll work.

It's not like you could do any worse than I did, anyway.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

So I've decided that Restaurant Week is my new favorite time of the year. After missing it the last couple of years, this summer I made sure to get out and have a classy, three-course lunch. And today, I felt like donning a beret, toting a long piece of bread under my arm, and riding a bicycle everywhere.

Except, I did none of those things. But I did get some French flavor by taking my Restaurant Week luncheon at Le Petit Robert Bistro on Columbus Ave. That's the one with the model Eiffel Tower outside the door, and the Christmas lights adorning the faux (French!) monument.

I gave a fleeting thought to ordering in French, drawing upon my six year-old classes in high school, but decided that would have been a bad choice. But that didn't stop me from wondering: Does the "Robert" particularly enjoy the characterization "Petit"? I'm not sure I would, if it were me, but hey.

And the food was absolutely brilliant. I had a cold vichysoisse soup, cod almandine, and a helping of the most decadent bread pudding I've ever tasted. As someone who generally doesn't eat real meals (I just eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm not), I packed it away this afternoon. And I'd go back and do it again, honestly. It's a cute little place, where many patrons walk through the kitchen to get to the main dining room, and I imagine the wine list is impressive. I didn't sample any of the grapes, as I had a drive after my lunch, but it's on my agenda if I return.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

So, there are some quotas I decided I needed to fill for this project. I think I've more than satisfied the quota for museums, my quota for restaurants, and my quota for excuses to have a beer. But there was one I hadn't quite satisfied: my quota for witnessing cross-dressing. Rocky Horror wasn't enough. I needed to get out there and find me some drag queens!

Luckily, a friend of mine knew just where I should look — Jacque's. He told me Monday nights are a great night to go, cause we'd see Becca D'Bus hosting. I have to say, Becca did not disappoint.

Sadly, the only picture I had of Becca had her facing the wrong direction. So instead of posting a picture of a vibrant green wig floating atop a brilliantly mismatched ensemble (that I'm told Becca sewed herself), I'm going with this better shot of the Jacque's drag stage. Tonight's show featured three queens alternating their performances with a couple of plain-clothes folks doing spoken-word and acoustic music that fit the theme.

Oh, and the bachelorette party. How could I forget the bachelorette party? A group of about ten girls sat very near the stage and got lots of attention from the queens. Becca and Katya (our Iron Curtain drag queen of the evening) frequently visited the corner that the bride-to-be and her friends staked out and then chose a lap or two to sit in. And gyrate in. And collect tips in. Although the crowd was smaller than I expected, I don't think Becca, Katya, and Lotus Blossom suffered for lack of people pushing dollar bills into their false bosoms.

Wow, I just used the word "bosom" during this project. I'm not sure how I feel about it now that I have. But I do know I've seen sufficient cross-dressing for this summer.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

It's a good thing I'm no good at HTML coding, because I would totally put the Jeopardy theme song right here. That's right, boys and girls, tonight was trivia night for yours truly. Boston and the immediate suburbs are awesome for pub trivia, with a whole bunch of bars hosting events (almost always free) every night of the week. I took the opportunity to introduce a friend of mine to the fun at CitySide Bar and Grille in Cleveland Circle.

There are a lot of rules to pub trivia — not the least of which being you have to come up with an interesting team name. Being the children of the 90s that we are, my friend and I resorted quickly to Nickelodeon references. The winner? "Dare...Double Dare...PHYSICAL CHALLENGE!" Even the trivia jockey appreciated that one. After that, you've got to pick up on how the game is played. Four rounds, each with four questions. You pick a point value for your question based on the category, and you turn in your answer and assigned point value to the trivia jockey. In between each round is a bonus question — some involve pictures, some involve identifying a celebrity based on progressively obvious clues, and some might involve naming books based on their brief synopses. And then there's the final questions, where you wager points for two questions and hope you don't blow them.

Right here, I want to apologize to a family member who will be upset I got a particular question wrong. Uncle Pat, I blew a question on what dog group a Rhodesian Ridgeback belongs to. But "Dare...Double Dare...PHYSICAL CHALLENGE!" did quite well, considering most trivia teams are at least four people. Our two-man team remembered it was Alexander Hamilton who was killed in the duel with Aaron Burr, that the Caucasus mountains separated Europe from Asia, and that Plato was Socrates' student. But we forgot that Ira Glass hosted "This American Life", that Kilgore Trout is featured in Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" not "Cat's Cradle," and who starred opposite Shia LaBoeuf in "Transformers." Even still, third place for a two-man team? I'm rather psyched with the results.

No prize for third, sadly. But after my long hiatus from trivia night, I'm glad I got back into it. And for the record, Rhodesian Ridgebacks are in the Hound group.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I must say, I was excited for the projectiles.

At most movies, if you talk during the show, a freckly teenager in a bellhop's uniform will come by and tell you to be quiet. Responding to the characters on-screen would probably earn you a second warning. And throwing things at other audience members? Well, that's almost certainly forbidden.

Not so at the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I'd seen the movie before, but never the hybrid movie-performance version at Harvard Square's AMC Theater, so I figured I was due. Not to mention, midnight movies are something I really enjoy, and this was near the top of the list. Before you can even enter the theater, there's a whole spiel you've got to listen to about what you can throw, who you can throw it at, and how to make the actors take their clothes off. And then they give you the projectiles. It was all harmless stuff, but I'm still picking grains of rice out of my hair and shoes.

The audience gets a quick warmup, as the cast performs a couple songs and then teaches the main dance number, "Time Warp." You learn to get cozy with the people you're sitting near very quickly, since you could at any time have to grab their hips and, well, "it's the pelvic thrusts that really drive you insane." Once the movie starts playing, it's a constant dialog between the audience and the big silver screen. At our showing, about a half-dozen people in the audience knew the response to every single line in the movie. It was amusing at first, but it wore on me as the movie progressed and I missed more and more of the actual lines.

Plus, of course, there's a live cast acting out the show right on top of you. And that's not an exaggeration — if you're sitting on the aisle, you might have Magenta straddling you at any given point in time. The costumes were a dead-match for the movie's original costumes, something I understand is uncommon in the cult following of this particular movie.

Overall, it was a blast, even if Rocky Horror isn't my first choice for a cult-movie. I wonder if I can drum up any support for a midnight showing of Newsies....hmm....

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I like to think of myself as a reasonably athletic guy. Or at least, to the point that I wouldn't embarrass myself during a pickup baseball game or soccer kickaround. But that little misconception of mine was exposed and exposed greatly when I encountered the kayak. I lived on the same floor as a rower my freshman year, and I didn't envy the folks she lived with - crew practices are at an insanely early hour. And in a small room with three people? That had to be no fun.

My arms are sore. And I don't think we even went that far down the Charles before doubling back. My friend, who was rather more experienced than I at the art of the kayak (I've never sat in a kayak before today), was in the back seat of the two-man boat, and probably is hurting more than I am, considering just how much compensating for my poor form that she had to do.

All this and more with Charles River Canoe & Kayak in Newton. For just a Jackson or two, you too can make a complete putz of yourself by repeatedly (albeit unintentionally) turning what should be a straight-shot kayak ride into a zig-zag. You too can steer into lilypads, other canoers, or even big hard-to-miss islands.

And don't forget the best perk - biceps that want to secede from the Union that is your body. Maybe it was just my novice technique, but I probably trailed more water into the boat from my paddles than if I'd just jumped into the grody river. For that, I apologized to my friend repeatedly, since I wasn't sure I was going to be able to stop doing it. And when it comes to driving into other boats? Just try not to hit them at high speed. At least I managed to control that.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

...that's playing the blues on a barge. At least, that's how it was sold to me. The Boston Harbor Hotel has a whole series of summertime entertainment, including Thursday nights with live floating blues music behind the hotel. I knew I was going to get to one of their events, it was just a matter of picking one. As much as I enjoy dancing, I think I would break some part of my body if I attempted to swing dance, so I thought something a little less active was appropriate. And the movies they've got going on may be classics...but I think I'd like to see something that was made while I was alive.

So blues it was.Two friends and I took the trip, hoping to catch some tunes and not some storms. I had a hard time convincing anyone to accompany me since I tried to do so right as the heavens unleashed. But thankfully the clouds parted for the barge, and we arrived just after 8.

Sadly, we didn't stay long, although not because we didn't think it was a cool idea. We gathered that you had to be seated to remain in the audience, and every spot on the stairs was well and truly taken. A Boston Harbor Hotel employee told us we couldn't stand behind the tier of stairs, so we shuffled off to the side to observe for a bit. And after a song or two that we slowly, but rhythmically bobbed our heads to, we took off. Waiting for a table to free up wasn't going to be a productive night.

So here's a tip: if you're going to do something at the Harbor Hotel, don't go halfway through. Go early and stake your claim, or you'll have to find somewhere else to get a drink.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Today was another one of those "walk out the door and see what catches your eye in a particular neighborhood" days. I'd done it once before in Cambridge, and on the recommendation of several friends, I thought I'd give it a try today in Brookline's Coolidge Corner. Not to mention that seeing all the closed storefronts before the hair-band singalong last week made me curious to see just what was behind some of those grates and locks.

It was an entirely different scene from that in Cambridge. While Mass. Ave sported more indie boutiques and clothing stores, Coolidge Corner had several interesting places to eat. And while I would have liked to try more than one, my friend and I chose to stop in the Coolidge Corner arcade at the little cafe there for some homemade sandwiches.

There wasn't really much of a pattern to how we explored the area. It was basically "ooh, that store has an interesting name, what do they have in there?" That strategy isn't always a bad plan — we found this fascinating little Russian bookstore where I tried to find familiar titles with a fading knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet. This came after our stop at the Brookline Booksmith, where I got lost in the used-books section downstairs, finding several hardcovers and paperbacks I wanted to take with me. (Sadly, I left them there. I'm behind on my reading already.)

We also stuck our heads briefly into the New England Comics store, where my travel buddy's eyes glossed over (he's a comics guy), while mine drooped a bit (I'm not a comics guy). I plead for all English teachers to cover their eyes as they read this, but when it comes to superheroes - I'll wait for the movie.

There was a cute little "toy and school supply" shop down the street where I sang the old Slinky song upon seeing the display of the springs. Yeah, I'm not sure the proprietor appreciated that. We also walked by several delis and Asian food places I would have loved to have tried, but alas, my turkey sandwich and Italian soda was all I could handle.

I've got one more of these little neighborhood excursions planned as I approach the final stretch of this project, but I'd love to know if there's somewhere you're just dying for me to take a look at. Send me an email!

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

...that kind of noodle just soothes the soul! I was really feeling the lunchtime vibe today, and I consulted the list of restaurants I still wanted to visit for the Project. This time, I thought to call ahead and make sure Betty's Wok and Noodle was open before I hoofed it up Huntington Ave.

It was a late lunch for me, about 3 p.m., and the restaurant was all but deserted when I arrived. With the exception of the one guy in the front reading the newspaper, I had the place to myself. No matter — I'm OK entertaining the waiters on my own. And considering the great things I've heard from fellow students and professors alike, an empty dining room sure wasn't going to stop me.

Nice-looking place — kind of a combination of 50s decor and a more modern Asian theme. Which, I suppose, fits in nicely with the concept behind the restaurant. They plug it as Asian-Latino fusion cuisine. But the Frankie Valli-esque soundtrack piped in over the loudspeakers was just a little bit anachronistic. Fits the 50s part, not so much the Asian or Latino parts. But hey, it worked.

My sweet and salty peanut noodles were really good. I could pretend they made the dish special since I was the only one there, but I bet not. I would definitely go back for seconds. And thirds. (Added bonus: The food itself was only about $10 - not bad at all for lunch.)

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I suppose it was bound to happen sometime. I was going to run out of my apartment in a hurry to get somewhere for this project, and I'd leave my camera behind. Naturally, I wouldn't notice until after a 40 minute train ride, by which point there's really nothing I could do about it. Such was the story today, as I made it all the way to the Museum of Science before I realized I'd forgotten one of the most important parts of my operation. Rather than double back and spend another hour and a half on the Green Line, I just picked up a single-use camera there. Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to get it developed yet, so if the picture beneath is no longer just of my ticket, it means I've gone and scanned something better.

I suppose that was inevitable, too. For the Boston in 60 Project, I had hoped to avoid the most tourist-heavy or stereotypical destinations. I wanted to get out and see places I didn't know about, or do things that had never occurred to me. But the call of the Museum of Science was something I couldn't avoid, particularly when they've got that Baseball as America exhibit going on. In much the same way I'm a sucker for museums, anything to do with old-school baseball, and I'm there.

It's only appropriate, though, that I once again hit a photography roadblock. No photos were allowed in the exhibit. I'm guessing it was to preserve the really old stuff inside, but I didn't ask. And since I was toting only a crappy single-use camera instead of my slick Canon model, I didn't dare cheat. But the exhibit was pretty cool - I, unlike many of the ragamuffins skittering around with high-pitched voices, was interested in the development of the catcher's mitt, and in the history of baseball in film. They just wanted to see David Ortiz's hat from last season's World Series. I'm sure they got their fix, though, when they made it to the end of the exhibit and got to pitch in front of a radar gun. I'd personally like to know if that radar gun was functioning properly (66 miles per hour? That's it? I thought for sure I threw harder than that).

Lest I focus too much on one exhibit, however, today was the first time I got to explore many parts of the Museum on my own. I like to move through museums at my own pace, stop and check out what interests me and blow right past what doesn't. So the computers exhibit that I've never gotten to take a proper look at (why do I always end up going with kids with short attention spans?) held my interest for a while, while the wildlife of New England did not. Speaking of the computers, though, I only just found out the old Computer Museum next to the Children's Museum closed. And this was almost ten years ago! How is it I missed that? I loved the giant keyboard and trackball!

At any rate, no, I didn't finish my visit with a laser show. No, I didn't get into an Omni movie, and no, I didn't see the lightning exhibit (that one did, in fact, hold the kids' attention when I've been recently). But I did get to take some cool pictures! I just haven't seen them yet.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

There are and will be some days throughout this project on which prior commitments make it impossible for me to get out and visit or do anything. For these days, I have set out to visit the site for that day ahead of time. This is one such entry - I completed it on August 8.

Not so long ago, a friend of mine spent a semester in Belgium working on her International Affairs program in an environment better suited for that kind of study than Huntington Avenue. While there, she rapidly became a fan of Belgian beers, in particular, the short stout-bottled Duvel. The Belgian stuff is lighter-colored, hoppier, and with a bit more kick in terms of alcohol content. I tend to prefer my beer darker and with more robust malt, personally. But at Jacob Wirth's, no matter what kind of beer you like, they'll have something for you.

A friend and I sat down for some Fatherland food and a hearty beer or two after we shook off our umbrellas (this summer hasn't exactly spared us the storms, has it?). I make a point of not asking a waiter/waitress for more time to decide on a menu item, particularly when it's Friday's dinner hour, but we had to request another minute or two on the beer alone.

Once we'd settled on our libations, we looked at the food menu to find schnitzel. While I'm normally a daring person when it comes to food-sampling, this time I was the lamewad who got a burger. It's German, ain't it? That's gotta count for something, even if I did get it covered in bleu cheese.

My friend, however, got the German food sampler plate. So she definitely gets the experimentation points for this meal. And our beers? Solid. But any place that has Narragansett as its "house" beer gets a lot of credit from me. My only regret is that despite being there during the Friday Night Singalong, we didn't know anything about it — we were on the wrong side of the wall.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Over the first two-thirds of this little project, there have been a couple of themes. One of them is that I really like visiting museums. I'm a curious guy, indeed. (Wow, I had to keep making that sentence longer to get all the links in. I'm not sure if it even makes sense anymore.) But the other reigning themes are that I really like to eat (and how), and that my initial plans frequently implode, forcing me to improvise.

Such was the case today - I had wanted to stop by Betty's Wok and Noodle, having heard excellent things about their little diner where Mass. Ave and Huntington meet, but I found it closed when I got there. Yikes. Well, I decided to play it by ear, and I just kept walking in the general direction of Copley Square, hoping something would jump out at me (literally or figuratively). I meandered over to Newbury Street and fought my way through the densely-packed crowds of tourists and spied a little sushi place tucked into a corner.

After getting my raw fish on a bed of rice, I hoofed it back toward Copley Square, with the thought of just sitting in the sun and watching people go by as I ate. On one side of me were several well-dressed folks filing into Trinity Church for a wedding, and on the other were tourists, trying to get just the right angle for their picture of the Hancock Tower. I've written about little restful enclaves of the city before, but somehow, I'd forgotten that Copley Square was just that.

I do love those fountains. That's something I think I'm going to particularly miss about Boston after September begins - the ability to just plop down, eat lunch, and watch people in a familiar environment. It won't be the same when I hardly know what Metro stop I'm nearest to. I have a nagging concern that I'll become a regular at some chain restaurant near where I work, just out of routine. The moral of today's story, though: having a destination is nice. Having no idea what's going to happen is often nicer. And every now and then, just sit down and watch.

I have twenty days left in this project. Let's see if I can practice what I preach.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Whenever I'm in a situation in which I make someone feel old, I like to remind them that I was alive during the Reagan administration. Alas, I have not yet created a comeback to their retort, "Yeah, but what of it do you remember?" See, while I may have been born in the 80s, I was a 90s kid, through and through. The 80s to me were just a decade in which people wore strange clothing that was usually too tight. And they often had haircuts you could set your watch to.

But something happened when I got to college: 80s music began to rock. By this point, the songs were 20-some-odd years old, but KISS, Guns 'n' Roses, and Twisted Sister didn't earn a quick "change the station" moment when I heard them on the radio. The Coolidge Corner Theatre had a singalong tonight of those 80s hair band songs I loved to pretend I remembered.

My friend and I got really into it, banging our heads in time with the rhythm of "I Wanna Rock". Dee Snider can do it, why can't we? Oh, yeah, he had a lot more hair. Well, that wasn't going to stop us! Between the ineffectual hair flinging, the bellowing of whatever lyrics and melodies we knew, and the mouthing along of the ones we didn't, we had the 80s music bits pretty well covered, I thought.

But then they gave us inflatable electric guitars. Real live "air" guitars. Because I apparently needed more encouragement to go completely crazy. The Adam Sings in Front of Strangers series continued tonight with attempts at "Livin' on a Prayer" and "The Final Countdown," neither of which I should ever dare to try again. It's a good thing the music was loud and everybody else was going for gusto, cause I think I missed a few notes here and there. I haven't been able to hit Bon Jovi notes since it actually was the 80s.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I'm rather more accustomed to bigger stages and brighter lights than those at the Hong Kong in Quincy Market. But, you know, you gotta work with what you got, so I got right on up there and belted a Three Doors Down song into a microphone that shook rapidly in my hand. I may be a theater guy who's been singing for a decade or so, but I'm still kinda leery when I'm on a stage for the first time.

I will say this — and I'm throwing all modesty violently to the wind, here — I was the best singer in the place. And you'll never hear me say that out loud, but boy, the folks were bad at singing. I heard some terrible impressions of Steven Perry, some worse impressions of Bon Jovi, and possibly the greatest crime of all, a Sublime song or two. Just leave those alone, people, you can't do them. Yeesh. I almost wanted to get up there and sing Bonnie Tyler on-key, just to spite them, but I decided to stick with what was in my wheelhouse.

Some random guy started talking to me about the vacant frontman slot in his band after I stepped down from the stage, and a couple of people applauded. I'm just going to assume they'd had more to drink than I had, because I certainly don't think anyone should be applauding for my feeble attempts to cover a popular '90s pop-rock song. But alas, you wouldn't have found me complaining...just turning bright red and booking it for the door.

I was not a big fan of the place. Too many people that were too drunk too early in the night for me to enjoy it. Give me a quiet, hole-in-the-wall place with a solid beer list any time, and I'm there without a second thought. But a loud, rambunctious place in a tourist trap? Not really my bag, baby.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I promise, King Husky, it was just the once. I'm never going to do it again. I'm never going to forsake Chicken Lou's to cross into another Beanpot combatant's turf, not even on a dare.

But, King Husky, you should be proud of me for my conduct deep in enemy territory. If I'm going to Eagles Deli, where the walls are covered in Boston College memorabilia, I'm not going to order one of their famous burgers, oh no. I'm going to get a hot dog! Dog, see! (Will you ever forgive me, dear King Husky?)

While my brother, whose school of choice (URI) freed him to order a burger, I couldn't in good faith betray my Husky Heritage (Capital Letters!). My lunch became an unintentional breakfast when what I thought was a bottle of malt vinegar for my fries turned out to be maple syrup. Apparently the Chestnut Hill College student body likes their sweet syrup at all hours, unlike us Husky folk, who understand the difference between breakfast food and lunch food. So that hot dog got renamed the "luncheon sausage". Hah!

I'll just have to grin and bear it, though - the food was pretty good. I wouldn't dare attempt the Challenge Burger (5 lbs. of beef, 20 slices of cheese, 20 pieces of bacon, 5 lbs. of fries), lest I find myself on the Wall of Shame pictured above. And I couldn't bring that kind of shame to my beloved alma mater, dear King Husky.

So this week I promise, I will return to my home on Huntington Ave. and I will commit myself in the future to remaining with the Gospel According to St. Lou. After all, where else can I get a sandwich known as the "Cholesterol"?

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

...oh my. And yes, I decided that was obligatory, when the day's destination was the Harvard Museum of Natural History. I got a few tips to visit the various Harvard museums, and this was the top of my list. Dinosaurs, duh!

Although my excitement was tempered somewhat by the frequency with which several rambunctious youth groups passed through. Obviously, I can't say "quiet, kids", cause they're in a museum - better that they're learning about geodes than sitting and watching TV, I guess - but it's still really disruptive. And then throw in the smell of formaldehyde and my patience wore pretty quickly. I'm not sure I made it through every exhibit.

While I personally enjoyed the room with the examples of minerals (it's quartz! Check it out!), I decided that pictures of stuffed animals are more interesting than pictures of rocks. And when I say "stuffed animals", clearly I don't mean Tigger. By the time I found the room with the dinosaur skeletons, the aroma of the old building had started to get to me, so I didn't stick around.

Perhaps if I'd gone that direction first, rather than last, I'd have been better off. I also got to explore, albeit briefly, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, which is adjacent to the Natural History Museum. That one was full of artifacts from ancient cultures, including weaponry. Weaponry is always cool. Because I said so.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

They warned us as we got onto the boat that the back end was where the most water splashed up. Nonsense, I thought. They told us there were no completely safe spots on-board, and that we should all expect to be moist by the end of the tour. Phooey.

Lesson learned - when the people in charge of a really fast boat tell you what's going to happen, they usually know what they're talking about. It's been a few hours now and my jeans still have a couple of damp spots from the Codzilla high-speed Harbor cruise. I hopped on board with a young penpal and his mother, and we briefly wondered if the lack of seat belts in our row was something to be concerned about. Of course not, I figured. I'd done one of these type of cruises before, long ago in New York City, and I neither got wet nor significantly jostled. We'd be fine, I told them.

And we were, for the most part. At least until the boat started doing rapid 180-degree maneuvers. That's when I discovered just why they said the stern got the wettest, as my back and hair got a nice coating of seawater.

It's not a long cruise - 40 minutes from dock to dock. But they work the little bits of information pretty well into the script...on the way out. Once you get to Deer Island, the cruise stops being a tour and is more about what fun tricks can be done in a speedboat. Which, to be fair, is why I signed up for this ride. Yeah, the info can be interesting, but make me need to buy a new shirt, why don'tcha?

But it was a good time. I got pretty well hit with splashed-up waves, and the kid seemed to enjoy the zip around Boston Harbor. It's not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

There are and will be some days throughout this project on which prior commitments make it impossible for me to get out and visit or do anything. For these days, I have set out to visit the site for that day ahead of time. This is one such entry — I completed it on July 15.

I have a confession to make: I didn't go into this pastry sampling with a completely open mind. When I decided on the four places in the contest, I had a favorite right off the bat. It's the pastry place my family has been visiting since before I can remember, and I deliberately sampled their cannolo last in the hopes that it would completely blow me away. (Yes, I'm using the proper "cannolo" for a singular pastry, and "cannoli" for plural pastries.)

The idea for the cannoli taste test came to me out of one of my many arguments with friends over which North End bakery produces the best pastries. Almost everybody I speak with goes for Mike's Pastry, or infrequently, Modern Pastry, both on Hanover Street. But I've always been a Bova's boy, subscribing solely to that little 24-hour place on the corner of Prince Street. Those three were the foundation for the pastry parade, but we needed a fourth. I've on occasion heard good things about Maria's on Cross Street, so we threw that in for good measure.

I should also admit that this wasn't a scientific survey by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn't a blind test; I ate them as I went along. But I did have a small measure of methodology: I had to get the same type of cannolo from every shop (ricotta, with powdered sugar, but only if they offered), and eat it ASAP. I've had healthier dinners in my life.

I wasn't even sure what I was looking for, really. I was kinda hoping my cannoli-eating instincts would kick in as the evening progressed. Either that or I could summon my Grandma's Italian blood to point me in the right direction. Boy, I've got a tough job, don't I?

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Growing up, I simply adored when my friends had birthday parties at the nearby bowling alley, Fairway Lanes in Natick. We'd roll out the bumpers and play a couple strings of candlepin. Candlepin only, mind you — we didn't have that big-ball variety.

As such, I didn't roll a bowling ball with finger-holes until I was 18 and visited an alley the other direction on Route 9. To this day, I prefer candlepin; not only am I demonstrably better at it, I also get the thrill of introducing friends who aren't from Mass. to the wonders of three-ball-frames.

Well, the opportunity arose for some late-night candlepin, and I sure didn't need my arm twisted. So a friend and I jumped in my car (when I say late-night, I mean after the T stops running) and headed to Boston Bowl, where the lanes never close. My friend, being from the North Shore, was all about the choice of candlepin over tenpin, though both of us were a little bit uncertain about the "bowling in the dark" concept they had going on:

But it didn't seem to affect our game. We both sucked at it. But I won, which is the most important thing. (Yeah, I'm the eldest child, how can you tell?) We raised our eyebrows at the, shall we say, "eclectic" music blasting at us from the speaker above as we finished off our one string.

Oh, and did I mention they give you socks? Yeah, Boston Bowl gives out socks with shoe rentals. I have three pairs of big gaudy Boston Bowl socks now, but I wear them with pride whenever I can. I just make sure to fold it over so the logo isn't showing.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I just don't get it. I've tried to on several occasions, but "modern" art just doesn't make sense to me. It might look pretty, but anything deeper than that and I'm completely stumped.

But I gave it another shot. The old proverbial "college try", if you will. I headed down three (!!!) separate T lines to get to the Institute of Contemporary Art down by the courthouse. Sadly, I learned shortly after getting my ticket that photography was not permitted, and I was again disinclined to try and sneak a shot. So the only photo I have of an exhibit is from the lobby.

Being the uncultured bohemian that I am, I honestly thought the design of the building was more interesting than the stuff inside it. Beautiful facility they've got there, especially the little overhang — the media room. That and the elevator right out of a Roald Dahl novel (it was made mostly of glass) impressed me.

The art itself? I just didn't get it. I did think a few things were pretty cool - the urban experiment in hunting-gathering involving a guy shooting his groceries with a bow and arrow was amusing, as were the chalk art photographs. But the featured exhibit just confused me. Lots of big red things. It was a pretty shade of red, almost the color of blood, but still.

So maybe I'm a Lamey McLamerson, but I'm gonna pass on the monolithic clay spheres for a little while.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I really like my Capital Letters. I like them because they make whatever I'm saying Look Important, and because they can also indicate a Miniseries Of Some Sort, particularly when contained within a larger series, like Boston in 60.

So here's one of those miniseries I get to use my Capital Letters on: my Three from the Sea Tour. As I mentioned in my entry on the No Name restaurant, there were three seafood places I had my heart set on visiting: the Daily Catch, the No Name, and Belle Isle Seafood. Today, I completed that seafood tour by stopping by the little building a lemon-seed spit's distance from the Winthrop line.

Lunch today was a fried scallop roll with cole slaw on the side. Cash-only, as it seems many of the best places are. Lots of options up on the white board, but I figured you can never go wrong with scallops. Also, I wanted to mix it up — remember, I got calamari at the Daily Catch and seafood chowder at the No Name. And to all you people who told me about Belle Isle and insisted a seafood-lover like me needed to go there? You were all right.

The lunchtime helping of scallops was plenty, although I personally would have preferred a bulkie roll to the hot dog roll it came with. The cole slaw was also very good — I wish I could have had a little bit more.

To anyone expecting rankings of the restaurants in the Three from the Sea Tour, there won't be any. It seemed like each place specialized in something different: The Daily Catch does calamari, the No-Name has famous chowder and lobster, and Belle Isle is where you go to get fresh fish to cook yourself. The prepared food was great, don't get me wrong, but I got the impression that most patrons are there to pick up some fillets.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Would you be willing to pick up clothing you've never seen, off a floor that's never clean, and put it on your body? That's the question of the Buck-a-Pound Challenge, invented by yours truly on the way to today's stop: the Garment District in Cambridge.

The rules are as follows: one person turns their back on the Buck-a-Pound pile on the first floor, while everybody else in the group decides on three pieces of clothing that individual must wear. When three items are agreed upon, the victim, er, model, dons the three articles and struts his or her stuff on the catwalk. If the impromptu fashion show is not done to the group's satisfaction, a second round may be demanded. The display continues until everyone in the group has walked.

This is what my sister and I chose to do upon arriving at the Garment District this morning. I picked out what I thought were a couple of chuckle-worthy, but not guffaw-worthy, ensembles for her, one of which featured a leopard-print vest. She, however, went after me with gusto, putting me in a ladies' sweatshirt that read "SASSY" across the front. And she topped off my outfit with a fuschia wool poncho.

After we shook off the layers of strange attire, we tromped upstairs where the clothes are a bit classier (and not in a giant pile). There, we exchanged strange hats for a while, trying to determine which would look the wildest on our dear brother, who didn't have the guts to join us. I think we settled on the purple felt fedora.

I left with only a single shirt, and my sister says she found nothing interesting. I almost insisted she choose an item, but I didn't want to tempt her to find another bizarre sweatshirt.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I like bacon. I like all breakfast food, really. If there's not a box of Froot Loops or Cap'n Crunch sitting by my computer for me to pick at, it's a sign I definitely need to go shopping. But what I enjoy more than the sugary cereals my parents wouldn't let me eat when I was younger is going out for a good breakfast.

I had never even heard of Sorella's. A friend of mine told me I absolutely needed to check this place out, and after the IHOP experience, I needed something to redeem my faith in breakfast. Sorella's was going to be my last chance.

While I didn't end up sampling one of their unique omelettes (Salmon? Really?), I did enjoy my simple eggs, bacon, and home fries plate. And for $4, I certainly made out better than a couple donuts and an iced coffee from what we students refer to as "the Dunk".

The place did give me a bit of a Daily Catch vibe — it's cash-only and has a very limited amount of tables. I'm told that if you arrive any later than 9 a.m., you've got to wait in line outside on Centre Street, but it's worth it. Not just for the basics, the eggs and bacon, but the omelettes Emeril would envy.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

The Boston Public Library wasn't what I had planned on doing today. I originally set out for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, only to discover that it's not open on Mondays. That was a problem, but not one I couldn't resolve.

I hadn't been to the library in a couple years, not since I needed to use the microfilm room for a school project. And even then, those scoliosis-inducing tables were all I'd seen of the monolithic building in Copley Square. There must be some other stuff worth checking out. Maybe a special exhibit or two I could see — the John Adams private library, perhaps?

John Adams is one thing, but I think some of the earliest copies of the works of William Shakespeare might just trump it. There were several interesting exhibits running at the library, including one on the folios of Shakespeare's plays and poetry, up in the Rare Books room (which is not easy to find, let me tell you). I found the room with the propaganda posters from the First World War a bit more captivating, though. For a writer, I was never much of a Shakespeare dude.

I bounced around the first public library in America, rapidly losing track of time as the exhibits and the pretty outdoor courtyard caught my attention. I found a typo on a sign in the Marathon exhibit, which made me chuckle. It's a library — how does that get all the way to the public view without someone catching it? It was an interesting display nonetheless, outlining the history of the Boston course and the runners' experiences.

So while Plan A was a bust (and I'm not real keen on trying again), Plan B proved to be successful. (There's a cliche in there somewhere, I'm just trying to avoid it.)

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

There was a time not so long ago when I would have considered myself a capable poet. Not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination, but competent enough to pull decent grades in my English classes.

But after sitting in the audience at the Lizard Lounge for Poetry Jam Night, I realized just how inadequate my verse skills are. (I plan on sticking to prose for the foreseeable future.) The slam featured the Lizard Lounge Slam Poetry Team, which is on its way to a national slam poetry contest.

Each poem topped the one before it as the team members rotated at the microphone and laid down their best words. And these weren't just recited or read from a paper, they were performed. The slam poets brought their tempo and energy up to match the emotion conveyed in their verses, to stunning effect. Though the topics ranged from mixed-race heritage to dissatisfaction with the government to the trials of raising a child on your own, the passion and the friendly competitive spirit remained constant throughout the night.

Following the work of the team, the floor was opened to any and all comers to recite their own material under the dim red lights, with the backing of the Jeff Robinson Trio. I wasn't sure how folks would cope with having a jazz group grabbing onto a spoken cadence and improvising, but nobody seemed particularly stressed by it.

I walked away from the evening thinking "I could do that," but no. My poetry slams aren't pretty. So with prose, I shall stay.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

The only thing I know about cars is how to drive them. And considering I've been driving in Boston daily for the last three years, many folks would say I'm not even very good at that.

But I do know one thing: some cars look cooler than others. So I drove my Grand Cherokee
(not cool-looking) to the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline to see some old-school Italian cars (cool-looking). Heck, even the castle (!!!) that it's all housed in was interesting.

That car? Looks cool, but probably doesn't get very good gas mileage.

Apparently Larz Anderson was a very wealthy, very eccentric dude who was a big fan of the first cars to reach the market. The downstairs area displayed several of these ancient cars, some of which it looked as though were still in the same condition they were in when they stopped being road-worthy. And one of them appeared to have a toilet inside. I can only imagine the pamphlets pushing that car: Act now and receive our latest model, complete with commode!

Although I couldn't point to the carburetor if you gave me a map, I thought it was interesting to see this little shrine to automobiles. Another little museum that I'd never heard of before starting this little project. I'd recommend it for those who know a thing or two about horsepower, but the details were completely over my head.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Okay, I'm just gonna say it — "the dark" and I have never really been the best of buds. We're on speaking terms, but let's just say there's no love lost. So maybe it wasn't the wisest thing to go shut myself with a bunch of strangers inside an "ancient Egyptian burial chamber".

My Little Brother and I took on TOMB this afternoon. I described it to him, not actually knowing how it worked, as a cross between Indiana Jones and the old board game Clue. In retrospect, that probably wasn't the most accurate way to talk about the place, but it's not a terrible image to have going in.

As soon as the door shut behind us (despite my Little Brother's best efforts to throw his body in the path of the closing door), the flashlights all went out. And at that moment, I realized my Little and I had another thing in common, as he grabbed for my hand in the darkness. He's a real tough-guy on the baseball diamond, but turn the lights out and all bets are off. To get from one room to the next, the two of us had to work with the other folks in our expedition to solve several puzzles.

Being the Type-A leader wannabe that I am, I tried to take charge and inevitably botched the job in more than one way. "I've done these pyramid moving puzzles before, I can totally delegate this," I thought. Learned the hard way that doing a puzzle and telling other people how to do a puzzle are completely different animals. Heck, it's a good thing that Pharaoh was forgiving, cause we'd all be dead with my leadership skills at the helm.

After escaping from the wrath of the mummy, we agreed that the place was pretty cool, if more than a little bit eerie. And then we went out for ice cream. Because nothing says "I beat back a 3,000 year-old curse" like ColdStone, right?

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

For the longest time, Chinatown was nothing more than a stop on the Orange Line to me. It was sandwiched in there, right between Downtown Crossing and New England Medical Center (are we supposed to call it Tufts Medical now?), and was just one more dot to pass on the way to something else.

Well, today, I set out to change that. My brother and I went off in search of foods we hadn't tried, which we would then dare each other to consume.

I was the first guinea pig. We stopped at a bakery on a street corner near the big Chinatown gate, and I picked out a "melon cake." Hey, it was 80 cents, I thought, what the heck. I learned something on the very first bite: pastries from Chinatown and pastries from the North End are very, very different things. For example, there was roughly no sugar in the Chinatown pastry. My brother was having none of it. Nor would he try the bubble tea. What a wimp.

We then struck a deal. I wouldn't call him a wimp in this entry if he would sample two foods of my choosing from the Super 88 down the street. My first choice was a flavor of ramen noodles neither of us had encountered before, but that turned out to be just shrimp. So with everything on the line, I spied something in the beverage aisle that was like a beacon, calling to me:

A drink, made of the same stuff we rub on sunburns. And it had things floating in it. My brother eyed it with apprehension, but he promised, and I was holding him to it. I did decide to let him take it home first, so he could at least be near his bed if the aloe vera didn't agree with him. On the drive home, we munched on fruit snacks that the package likened to the cheeks of children who live in cold climates. I love translations.

But the aloe vera drink was anticlimactic. As he reported and I confirmed, it didn't really taste like anything, although the floating stuff was a strange texture. So we ended our taste test even, and I won't call him a wimp. Shucks.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

It happens every time I go and get a burrito with someone. I'll inevitably face the question, "have you ever gone to Anna's? They've got awesome burritos." And when I answered in the negative, I'd then sit through ten minutes of Anna's evangelism. So for lunch today, I thought I'd hit up an Anna's, see what all the fuss was about.

What I'd like to know is how so many people from my area (Northeastern) have been to an Anna's, since there's no way to get there in less than half an hour. They're convenient all right...if you live on the Red Line north of Park Street. The closest one to me was a forty minute T ride out into Brookline.

I've come to expect something pretty decent in my burritos. I'm a Boloco devotee after four years of having one a block and a half away, so that's the bar for "good" in the portable meal. And Anna's didn't even come close. The guy preparing my burrito did his best impression of an Olympic burrito-maker, trying to break an elusive world record. Of course, he could only attempt that if he flung the sour cream from the spatula onto the tortilla. Yeah, that was more than a little unappetizing.

The walls were physically damaged in many places, including the large hole next to my table that went straight through the drywall. Other than the pockmarks, the walls were completely bare, and painted in a jaundiced color that did nothing for the already-dismal atmosphere. And the finished burrito? Also sucked.

I'm going to stick with my Boloco, I guess. Even if I think they shouldn't have ever changed their name from "The Wrap".

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

This might be the first time I abandoned an activity halfway through because I thought I'd seen all I needed to see. My goal of exploring all the art galleries on Newbury Street came to an abrupt halt after I visited the Pucker Gallery.

In my four years living in the city proper, I've never come across the gallery before today. I saw a sign out front promoting a Pablo Picasso plate exhibition, and that was all it took to get me in the door. From there, I was given a guided tour of the five floors of the gallery, which included pieces from all parts of the globe, some of which were supremely eye-catching.

Like the Inuit sculptures, for example. That was my personal favorite part of the gallery. I also particularly admired the "cloth paintings" of Alison Cann-Clift - she creates these pieces that from distance look as though they were made with paint, but are actually formed with needle and thread.

The tour was both organized and disorganized at the same time. Everything that fell under a particular category, like the pottery of Brother Thomas, was kept in one room. But the museum itself didn't have a flow to it, likely due to space issues. Five floors of a Newbury brownstone don't make it easy to put things in any sort of an order, I expect. The tour guide did an admirable job anticipating what I might look at next and explaining the nature of the piece, and for that I was grateful.

Upon leaving the gallery, I thought I'd accomplished what I'd set out to do. I've no doubt I missed some great work a little bit farther down Newbury, but sometimes you gotta quit while you're ahead.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

One of my favorite things about Boston is that no list created can include everything that's out there to see or do. Sometimes, you have to just walk out that door with no plan and hope something hits you on the way.

Like today, for instance. I purposely didn't plan anything specific for today - I just picked a T stop and thought I'd walk around for a bit, see what caught my eye. I jumped off the train at Porter Square and started walking back down Mass Ave. toward Boston, letting anything that intrigued me be my destination.

Within minutes, I'd already made my first stop. There was a stationery and paper shop that I noticed and popped into, and found a great little collection of greeting cards. I don't think the local supermarket is going to quite cut it now that I've seen those. After grabbing a congo bar from Rosie's, I collected my mug from Made by Me and kept on my pavement spelunking mission down the road.

I made a stop at Stereo Jack's and picked up an old record for my father, and was then drawn to the colorful front windows of the Utso's Tibetan Boutique. When the incense started to get to me, I headed down toward Harvard Square.

I didn't know about that statue in Cambridge Common. It's both riveting and disturbing in the expressiveness of the faces, something an artist was trying to capture as I passed through. I made one final stop at Karma Yoga Studio's tearoom as a nasty thunderstorm came through, before I finished my trek in Central Square.

What started out as a "maybe I'll see something" experiment turned into something pretty cool. I now want to do similar T-stop excursions once or twice more during this project. What stops should I pick? Drop me an email, or post on the Facebook group to let me know which spots are the best for a no-destination day.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

My summers when I was younger were usually spent outdoors, but not doing anything organized. Pickup flag football games, pretend missions to the Moon on the swingset, or street-wide cops 'n' robbers events were the order of August. Sure, I had the morning-long theater camps, or an afternoon soccer camp, but I never did the sleepaway camp thing that's so romanticized among folks my age.

Well, I'm a bit older now, and "camp" doesn't come with marshmallows, swimming trunks, and ghost stories. It arrives with business cards, breakout sessions, and networking. My first camp in many years, and it's a social media camp.

Yeah, maybe it makes me a nerd, but I went to PodCamp, hosted at Harvard Medical School. It's a summit of social media (think Flickr, Twitter, Facebook) users and experts featuring two days of talking about how these technologies can provide a benefit. I was particularly interested in exploring the question of how social media can serve traditional media (think the Globe). I've kinda got a foot in both camps (see what I did there?), and at this time and at my age, sticking closely to one or the other isn't prudent. So I wanted to see what people would tell me about how to keep both feet planted. While that heavy topic can't be solved in just 48 hours, some great ideas were bandied about on how to bring those two establishments closer together.

I'll admit having been more than a little apprehensive about what I could gain from the PodCamp ordeal, but I can call it an unmitigated success. Beyond the connections with other bloggers I gathered, I also picked up a handful of tips and tricks on how to make this little project better. So while today wasn't in the same mold as Days 1-19, what I learned at summer camp should help make Days 21-60 sparkle.

And then I went home and toasted some marshmallows. I mean, c'mon.

Adam's note: I would like to thank ooVoo for paying my way for the PodCamp conference.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

There are and will be some days throughout this project on which prior commitments make it impossible for me to get out and visit or do anything. For these days, I have set out to visit the site for that day ahead of time. This is one such entry — I completed it on July 18.

I like to know about places that other people don't, when it comes to eating. The best way for someone to get my attention when describing a pizza place or a bar is to call it a hole in the wall. That little feeling of "I'm cool because I know of this place" is really quite something.

Well, at the No Name Restaurant, even the backs of the waitstaff's shirts play with this concept. "I know the way!" they shout in big letters. (I would certainly hope they do know the way, seeing as how they work there.) But the prevailing vibe at the No Name is that this is where the locals go to eat seafood. Durgin Park might get the headlines, and the Union Oyster House might have the rep, but the No Name was the "insider's" seafood place.

And I love seafood. The Daily Catch set a very high bar, one that I didn't think any restaurant could meet, but three spoonfuls into the seafood chowder (no 'chowda', please, spell it right) and I was sold. And speaking of sold, the prices were solid, too. I made no pretense of eating "healthy," and tore through the fried seafood plate. I may have to head back before the summer is out to eat lobster. I've never done the full lobster thing before. The pictures on the placemats describing how to do it were quite amusing.

There's only one seafood place left on my must-do list for this project, Belle Isle Seafood in East Boston. But that can't be the last of the really good places in the city. Where else do I need to go? Send me an email, drop a comment below, or post on the Facebook group's webpage.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

It's a contrived way of getting a blog post title, but I really wanted to use the Arthur theme song somehow. And since there's an Arthur exhibit at the Children's Museum, I figured I'd go for it. Friday nights are $1 for entry, so my friend Danielle and I jumped at the chance. How often is it that the T fare to get there costs more than the event itself?

I'm a tall guy, and I spent a substantial amount of the time worrying I was going to step on a small child somewhere. And those little kids ran around the building with complete disregard for the big solid legs in front of them. This became clearest when we tackled the jungle gym.

Telling us that there was no age or height restriction to the jungle gym might have been the most dangerous thing a Children's Museum employee could have said to me. Naturally, I took their permission as an implicit challenge to climb the structure all the way up, despite being about twice as tall as I was last time. I remember ascending an earlier version of that tower some 15 years ago, where the exit on the second floor was unpatrolled. Now? There's a guard at the upper door, and kids can't get out unless they have "their" adult right there to meet them. Psh. When I was 7, that was the whole point. Jump in on the ground floor, race to the second floor, and lose your parents.

We also played with the giant chess board on the second floor. I only mention it because I won a game of chess, which is remarkable in and of itself. Danielle and I bit our lips as several ragamuffins strolled by and upset my pawn or her knight, and just reset the board once Mommy came by to collect the darling little terror.

It was a good time. We had the idea, while walking out to get some food, that the museum should have a college night in the fall. Let all the college freshmen and sophomores (a.k.a., those too young to drink) come in and just fool around on the jungle gym and the other active parts of the building. I think they'd get a decent turnout if it were similar to the Friday night dollar-to-get-in. But what do I know? Maybe it's an acquired taste.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I think it's rather well-established that I'm a nerd. A nerd for presidential history, for kids' books, for classy drinks, what-have-you. Well, here I go, exposing another one of my nerddoms: geography. A couple of emails I've gotten tipped me off to the Mapparium, and I'm a sucker for anything that shows what the world looked like back in the day.

At first glance, it's just a really big map. A really big old map, for that matter. But being the dork I am, I found it nothing short of fascinating to see what Africa's political boundaries looked like in 1935. Sadly, no photography was allowed inside the Mapparium itself, and I wasn't inclined to try and sneak any shots. So all I can offer is this photo from the reflecting pool outside.

What I found most interesting about the indoor globe, however, was the acoustics. If you stand in the center of the bridge and speak, the sound waves bounce back on you, creating a disorienting sensation of speaking into your own ear. And if you stand on the end and whisper, the sound waves travel across the planetary glass and arrive on the other end. What wouldn't be audible from 30 feet away is clear as crystal in this sphere.

My friend and I explored the rest of the Mary Baker Eddy Library after traipsing through the Earth bridge. We marveled more at the architecture and layout of the exhibits than we did at the content. I don't know anything about how to build a birdhouse, let alone a museum, but the configuration of this building was aesthetically pleasing and logical in its path.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

There are and will be some days throughout this project on which prior commitments make it impossible for me to get out and visit or do anything. For these days, I have set out to visit the site for that day ahead of time. This is the first such entry — I completed it on July 11.

The title to this post refers to a famous quote by pastor Martin Niemöller that marks one end of the New England Holocaust Memorial. The large stone tablet bears the poem he wrote about the systematic removal of particular social classes by the Nazis during World War II.

The Memorial is one of those parts of the city that so many people have seen, walked past, and recognize, but don't stop to examine. After 13 years, the six glass towers have become a fixture, one that's not forgotten, but not necessarily remembered. And while part of this project's aim is to explore the hidden treasures of Boston that are "fun" to investigate, I won't allow this hidden-in-plain-sight memorial to pass through the proverbial cracks.

There are six towers, each bearing the name of one of the death camps used during the War. From underneath each tower, white smoke gently wafts up, creating an uncomfortable warmth and presence around the ankles. The glass of each tower is engraved with the identification numbers of the prisoners that were killed. The numbers, the simple volume of numbers on every side, on every panel, on each tower, stretched from the ground several stories high. It's not just imposing, it's all but physically overwhelming.

Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, they told us in grade school. But that total — six million — doesn't mean anything. You can count to six on your fingers. This memorial does something that no movie, no book could ever accomplish: it's a tangible representation of that figure. Each tower's collection of numbers is overpowering, but every step in the slow procession through the memorial becomes even more so.

There will be many days in the remainder of this project during which I walk past this part of the city. But on none of them will I fail to consider it, as I might have before.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Being from the Boston area, I was naturally indoctrinated in the Gospel According to Robert McCloskey in grade school. But when I drew up the plans for this project, somehow I neglected to include that little piece of nostalgia on my list. Thanks to the several folks who reminded me of the "other" boats with waterfowl titles.

Usually when I'm walking around by Park Street, I'll cut through the Common, but skip the Public Gardens entirely. Today's trip on the Swan Boats was a vivid reminder of why that's a mistake. The water underneath it may be only 24 inches deep, and the journey only a few minutes long, but it's a serene little slice of the city.

And speaking of Robert McCloskey, my friend and I walked the short distance from the Swan Boats to the statues commemorating the 1941 book. The two fixtures of the Gardens seem so intertwined that it's impossible to think of one and not the other. While my friend (who is not a Masshole by birth) listened to me prattle on about the book that engendered the figures, we caught a couple of young kids sitting down to draw the procession.

Yeah, that's really what it's all about.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Karma has a great way of working itself out, doesn't it? Yesterday, the movie I tried to get into at the museum was sold out, so I had to improvise. Today, I had no plans on going to a movie at the museum I chose, but there was one playing, and it turned out to be pretty cool.

The movie was part of the Kennedy Library Forums, and was about the astronauts who walked on the moon's surface. I'm a space nerd. I'm also a politics and Presidential nerd. So when I walked into the JFK Library and found out they were airing a new documentary about the space program, I had to stifle a happy dance.

After the movie, I explored the exhibit halls, checking out all the swag handed out before the 1960 Democratic National Convention. Political slogans were a lot simpler in that day, it seems. "Youth for Kennedy," rather than "A Leader we can Count On", for example. I want more old-timey political buttons.

The museum paid a lot of attention to Jackie Kennedy, something I'm not sure I agree with. I was OK with the little exhibit on the art of the White House dinner, and I was OK with the biographical display, but the jewelry? The nightgowns? This is the shrine to one of the most influential presidents of the last hundred years and we're focused on the evening attire?

I was a bit apprehensive before going about how the assassination was going to be handled, but I was very pleasantly surprised. It was a very classy and understated presentation.

On the way out, I picked up a Kennedy/Johnson bumper sticker. I might actually put it on my car, just to see the double-takes I'd get when driving around.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I wanted to go to the French Film Festival at the MFA. I had a snarky lead sentence written up and everything. It involved a white flag, a CharlieCard, and Zinedine Zidane. But they just had to go and sell out the flick I was going to see, didn't they? Humph.

And to my credit, I only pouted for a moment before deciding to just meander through the exhibit halls instead.

I honestly don't remember what that was, other than that it was supremely eye-catching. We wandered through the collection without a map, hoping to let our instincts bring us to the cool stuff in the museum.

Which, naturally, meant we found the Ancient Egyptian funerary art real fast. We examined the jars in which organs were stored, and wondered aloud if the organs were still inside. I think I scared off a five year-old or two.

My favorite object was the one with a typo in its placard. A "lion from a funerary monumnent." I'm the nerd who finds that highly amusing.

I've been to the MFA before. In fact, there may not be a publicly-open room in that building that I haven't walked through at one time or another. But I never fail to be impressed by the famous names on display: van Gogh, Matisse, Renoir, Monet, Manet, etc. (I could pretend I know what I'm talking about here, but I really don't.) The cachet the MFA carries is something I'm going to use this fall to plug my city.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Let me just get it out of the way: I'm a white boy. I am a "white-boy-dance" practitioner. I like to think I've graduated to the "advanced-white-boy-dance," because I don't attach my arms to my hips. But still, it's the shuffle step left and right.

That said, I like to get out there and hone my shuffling skills when I can. When a friend told me about Dancing on the Charles, I thought it was worth a try. Nightlife promoters Soul Clap and Marz Entertainment host this Saturday night dance party/cookout at the American Legion right next to the Elliot Bridge, which I think is technically in Cambridge.

It got more crowded than that, let me tell you. Two friends and I arrived early enough to beat the increased cover (it was ten bucks before 9 p.m.), but it didn't fill in until almost 10 p.m. The video screens they've got there are downright bizarre. The video guy was playing clips of movies we recognized, but they were heavily distorted and pulsating with the rhythm of the mediocre house music coming from the other side.

While the event looked to have been designed for folks my age, it wasn't populated that way. Felt like a 30-something mixer at times, and featured some "innovative" dance moves from folks too excited to shuffle, but not coordinated enough to dance well. These included the Cowboy Conga Line, Dropping the Kids Off at the Pool, and my personal favorite, the Jamiroquai impersonator.

Oh, and the tiki torches failed to keep the bugs at bay. I'm going to look like I have the chickenpox in the morning.

But it was fun. I do wish they'd do something like this within easier T access. Say, the Fens?

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

My life is now complete, I suppose. I can say I have eaten black pasta.

It was stained with squid ink. How cool is that? It's a specialty at the Daily Catch in the North End. Several people told me about this place when I started the project: "they have the best calamari in Boston"; "it's cash-only so you know they're legit"; and "they serve it right in the pan they cook it in."

And when it comes to primo seafood, my arm doesn't need to be twisted very hard. My only apprehension was that the Daily Catch is infamous for having only five tables. The wait during dinner hours is said to be extensive. But with no reservations accepted, a friend and I decided to chance an early dinner and hope we didn't have to wait too long. Miraculously, there was an empty table on arrival, and we grabbed it.

I think my favorite part of the meal was the glassware, or lack thereof. The wine was served in small plastic juice cups. For a brief moment, as I raised my glass to one-sixth of the project completed, it felt like a church social, like I was sipping on grape juice and swapping in fake curse words for the real ones whenever the priest (or Mom) was in earshot.

But gee willikers (see, I can still do it!), if the pasta wasn't excellent. I've met and probably exceeded my daily quota for squid ink.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

"It's an experience," I was told. Something I had to do before I left, and therefore, something that needed to be high-priority on my list. Underlined and circled in red ink, even. You might consider it cheating to upload a Thursday entry very early on Friday, but they'll understand why I had to do it.

It was all about the boysenberry.

You know, I'm not sure I've ever seen an actual boysenberry. Just the sauce. I think it's an imaginary fruit. It only exists in IHOP-land, where it's cultivated and harvested during the 1 a.m. rush. So, a friend and I set out to see the elusive boysenberry in its natural state.

Late-night food is supposed to be some sort of college rite-of-passage, but I'm fairly certain I would have been all right with the extra sleep. Now I'm getting ready for bed...with an extra several ounces of grease sitting in my stomach. Late-night IHOP is a great idea until you close your eyes.

As for the "experience" of shoveling eggs-over-easy at midnight, I could take it or leave it. I'm glad IHOP's there, since there aren't enough all-night places in the city, but it wouldn't be my first choice. I'm content to eat Haagen-Dazs out of the freezer at 1 a.m. and save the gas money.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I'm an old-school drinker. I like my bourbon on the rocks, my beer dark, and my martinis with gin, not vodka.

I'm also a little bit of a nerd when it comes to old-timey charm. So I reasoned that the Warren Tavern in Charlestown would be a great place to grab a beer and daydream about the famous Bostonians who sat in the seat I occupied. Paul Revere allegedly loved the place.

To my disappointment, though, the bar's charm stopped at the door.

It's possible that this is the original wall painting, but I doubt it. My friends and I didn't stay long — the cover band was mediocre, the place was crowded and claustrophobic for no apparent reason (it was a Wednesday night!), and the crowds inside weren't mixing well. Softball players and young urbanites.

Maybe I just caught the place on a bad night. Maybe I psyched myself up for it too much and set the bar too high.

Alas, I can't walk away thrilled about everything I experience on this project. Back on the horse.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I wanted the rain gone. I'm not sure I would have chosen 90 degree heat and high humidity to replace it, but beggars can't be choosers, right?

A friend and I slathered on the sunblock and headed to Post Office Square, for the free acoustic concert series during lunch hours.

Turned out the music was very much a background thing, but these guys were pretty good. I'm not even really into "Dixieland/Swing", as the website describes it, but it was cool nonetheless.

I don't think I'd ever come across that patch of grass before. It was like a little quadrangle right in Boston's Financial District.

I want to go start a Frisbee match over there and see if I can get any attorneys to join in. It'll be like right out of a beer commercial. It'll be great!

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

I have a sweet tooth. Several of them, actually. My dentist will back me up on that.

So when a friend of mine clued me in to Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square, I knew I had to go. The pilgrimage was set.

I came away from the store with a box of four: two for me, and two for the dogs at home. (That's right, they sell cupcakes for dogs. And cats. I almost asked what they tasted like, but I'm not sure I want to know.) If the dogs' reactions were anything to judge by, cupcakes are their new favorite food.

My two were, well, "kickass." (Sorry, you all knew that joke was coming, so let's just move on.)

Adam's recommendation: the Lucky cupcake and the Mojito cupcake. Yeah. Do those.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

This is the face that's going to haunt my nightmares for the foreseeable future.

It's also the face of a robot named Kismet on display at the MIT museum on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge. I gathered from the information placards near the display that nobody else finds the robot as terrifying as I do. Alas.

Nonetheless, the museum was a nice little find just off of Central Square. There's a collection of genetically-mutated fish on the first floor that calls to mind Bruce Banner, but I suppose if a zebrafish sprouted big green fists, we could handle it.

The hologram exhibit upstairs was cool, but not being a student at MIT myself, I still have no idea how they are created. There was a sign but it might as well have been written in Icelandic.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Would you look at that! It didn't rain today!

All the better for a long walk, I suppose. My Little Brother and I took to the paths at the Arboretum this afternoon to check out which interesting trees we could find there.

We scaled Peters Hill, which is billed as the second-highest point in all of Boston. (Question: Did I visit the first on Thursday?)

I'm not a very outdoorsy person, but I thought the place was very peaceful; a nice little enclave of serenity within the city.

And, it was pretty cool to see trees native to Japan, China, and parts of Europe side-by-side with trees native to Boston. Makes you wonder how they pulled that off with the varied climates of each country.

Oh, and that title? About getting lost? Yeah, that actually happened. Whoops.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

In hindsight, a tent might have been the best idea.

Going to the Esplanade for the Fourth of July celebration was high on my list of "things to do someday." I'd seen the television coverage in the past, and with this project occupying my summer, I thought, why not?

We fought with obnoxious latecomers who claimed the three-foot strip of grass in front of us as their own turf, we did our best to ignore the passing showers that dripped on us, and we swam through the seas of humanity to escape after the POPS portion of the concert to catch the fireworks someplace else.

Overall, it was a fun experience, but I doubt I'll be repeating it in the near future.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

There's this little building up by Copley Square. Pretty tall, has a T stop under it. Something with a 'P'. Perfunctory...palindrome...prejudicial...Prudential, that's it.

And there's this restaurant up on the top floor of this little building. You might have heard of it — it's called the "Top of the Hub". Fifty-two floors above street level, you can sip a mojito and take in the view. Someone told me you could see clear to the Cape from up there. Maybe you can — if there's not a thundershower passing through right when you exit the elevator.

Two friends and I made the ear-popping trip up to the bar in the sky for a couple pre-Fourth cocktails.

Yes, even the martini glasses were swanky. (Swanky's a fun word. I pledge to use it more often.)

A jazz quartet set up camp in the far corner of the lounge, but I admit I hardly noticed them; the view was that pretty. And, well, there were several illicit displays of fireworks that were a bit more captivating.

You can make the boy dress up all and get all cultured, but he's still gonna "ooh" and "ahh" at the pretty explosions.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Yes, I know, every English teacher I ever had said "always avoid alliteration," but I couldn't help it. This blog title just presented itself like a hanging curveball.

Sixty days is a long time, and I'm gonna need some coffee to get me through it. (O.K., I apologize, that's a terrible segue, but I'm rolling with it.) So today saw me in Porter Square on the other side of the river, painting my own new coffee mug at Made by Me.

My friend Natalie clued me into the little paint-your-own place, and after we shook off the rain, we settled in to paint ourselves some new liquid energy containers.

I was reminded very quickly that I can't paint to save my life. So I chose to simply paint stripes on my mug. Maybe keeping it simple would make it look better. (Wishful thinking, that.) I'll be able to pick up my fired mug next week.

Both Natalie and I chose little "coffee guardians" that sit on the handle and look into the mug. She painted a rabbit that resembles her own pet Leland at home, while I...I chose a duck.

Rubber ducky, you're the one indeed.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email.

Beer? On a Tuesday morning? Sure, why not?

I could think of no more appropriate place to kick off the Boston in 60 project than somewhere we could toast what this summer will hold. And that led three friends and I to the Sam Adams brewery tour in Jamaica Plain.

It took no time for the beer to end up in front of us. Sam Adams was conducting a taste test for people waiting to take the tour. We sampled a blackberry witbier (wheat beer) and a coffee stout, and trust me - the blackberry beer was good. Definitely looking forward to having that in the future.

After moving inside, our tour guide showed us the ingredients of beer and explained the process for brewing. He used lots of big German words, some of which I think he might have made up, because we'd never know. Nobody asked him any questions...because once he finished up with the history of the company, we got to taste more beer.

Apparently there's a whole five-step process to sampling. I had no idea, but the free glass they gave me will serve as a useful reminder, provided I'm in a judgmental mood (like always). We tried two more types of Sam before the tour concluded and I went and bought a poster depicting all of Sam's widely-available beer varieties.

Is it concerning that I'm proud to have tried everything on the poster? Nah.

I'm Adam Sell and I have two months left before I leave Boston. My challenge? Do something in the city every day. Have ideas for my adventure? Send me an email

I've got a blurb! I don't think I've ever had a blurb before...is that good?

Anyway, like my blurb says, I'm Adam, and I've got two months and counting until I bid 'adieu' to the only city I've ever known. So with those 60 days, I want to explore this city and its hidden treasures like I've never had the ambition to do. I'm going to go out into that concrete jungle and do all those things I've always wanted to check out. And I'm taking you along for the ride through the lens of my digital camera.

Sixty days' worth of activities is a tough slate, though, so I need your help. Do you have an idea for a place to go or an event to explore? Send me an email - bostonin60@gmail.com, join the Facebook group, or comment right here on the blog. I love feedback (almost as much as I love blurbs!)