Today was glacial. If you really want to develop an appreciation for your daily grind, regardless of how much it may wear you down (I’m thinking of my retail days), work a convention. Preferably a very specific one like the (making this up now) American Association of Chess Board Manufacturers. Standing in the same place for eight hours a day for three or four days repeating the same speech to people over and over again makes you long for something mentally stimulating. Really.

It’s not the worst thing in the world - far from it - but I am well aware that I don’t have the temperament for this sort of thing. I can fake it for a while, but it wears me down eventually.

Anyway - after this long day, there was more fantastic dinner in the North End of Boston (the Italian section) at an Italian restaurant called Mamma Maria. The venue itself was adorable; it’s in a town house looking out over Paul Revere House. We had some chianti, a Bibb salad (Boston lettuce with lemon pistachio vinaigrette) and the chef’s special for the night which was lobster ravioli with trumpet mushrooms, asparagus spears and arugula in a crazy delicious sauce that I couldn’t sort of parse out, but it was such a wonderful combination of flavors. There were huge chunks of lobster in the ravioli; the asparagus was perfectly cooked with a citrusy sauce of some sort; the mushrooms just have a beautiful delicate flavor that wasn’t too earthy; taken all together, it was just amazing. I ended up wiping my plate clean with the last bits of bread. Sure - that might have been gauche, but the sauce was soooo good. And I was demure about it.

Since we were pretty stuffed, we walked around the North End a bit and went to Mike’s Pastry to get some dessert. Tiramisu, ahoy! And I bought a cannoli to keep in the little mini fridge in my hotel room so I have dessert for tomorrow night. Nomnomnom.

We continued to walk and saw the New England Holocaust Memorial. It consists of six glass and metal towers; the plates of glass on each tower are etched with the prisoner numbers of people killed in the concentration camps. Each tower is named for a concentration camp and has a brief first person account or quote from a survivor etched on the interior of the tower base. You walk along the path– you can walk through the towers. They are open four-sided structures with a doorway through each; the foot of each is a metal grid through which you can see lights that mimic a starry sky, and steam comes up through the metal grids - perhaps to call to mind the gas chambers. There are lines of text carved into the marble that makes up the path; some of it is factual and some of it is more inspirational in nature. At the very end of the memorial, there is a large block of marble containing a quote from a Lutheran minister named Martin Niemoller.

Nearby was Faneuil Hall (Quincy Market) so we walked through that a bit and saw all the horrible tourist trinkets for sale… then caught a cab back to our hotels and called it a night. This was but an hour ago, and I have to be up tomorrow morning to do the glacial part all over again. Who knows? Tomorrow might fly by in a flurry of activity and excitement. I somehow doubt it, but hope springs eternal.

Also, it’s extremely cold here. They were forecasting snow, but it hasn’t fallen yet. It would look incredible from my hotel window if it did happen… a girl can dream.