Boston, the ballet, and Christmas three days late!

My sister’s second rebooked flight on Friday night arrived at the “delayed” time the airline announced, 11:15 p.m. I am getting much too familiar with Manchester Airport in the middle of the night. We had to wait for Jill’s checked bag to come up on the luggage carousel, and then we headed for Dad’s, a full hour’s drive.

We didn’t get there without a hitch, however. Shortly after I left my house, I realized that my car’s headlights had that distinctive asymmetry that denotes a burned out bulb, on the driver’s side, low beams only. *groan* The road conditions were less than ideal, as it was–we went through a brief “sleet shower” in Manchester and further west, it was raining and the roads were icing up. But in Amherst, New Hampshire, a cop pulled me over and gave me a warning for the burned-out headlight! I mean, it had just gone out! I was peeved, and had to drive all the rest of the way to Dad’s and then home from there with my high beams on as much as possible.

I dropped off Jill, her bags, two large trash bags full of my own wrapped gifts and a bottle of wine at the lake house, where Dad had been waiting up for us. Jill wanted to go straight to bed, and I still needed to go home and do my New Moon ritual. I missed the last one, for the Full Moon two weeks earlier. With the storm and the power outage and all, I just completely blanked out on it. That was the first Moon ritual I’d missed in years. I felt really bad about it. So, I definitely didn’t want to miss this one–even if I was up past 3:00 a.m. doing it.

On Saturday morning, I got up an hour early to make sure I was ready when Jill and Dad picked me up at 10:30 a.m. I was all dressed in my new black velvet outfit and it looked really nice. Trouble is–neither Jill nor Dad dressed nearly as nicely as I did. Dressing up is traditional for the Nutcracker and we had $90 tickets, I would think a tie, at least, would be in order! But Jill just wore slacks and a sweater and Dad wore a dress shirt but no tie or jacket. (He wore a polo shirt to A Christmas Carol!)

When Dad and Jill first arrived, Dad was a bit snappish, and I was thinking, “oh, great, here we go again.” But he settled down. The whole day went quite smoothly. We ended up taking the T (i.e. the subway) everywhere after we parked at Alewife. There were more stairs in the stations than I consciously remembered–if the T stops had elevators, where they had no escalators, I didn’t know where to find them–but Dad toughed it out. By the end of the day, he was talking about how much easier it was to take the T than to drive in Boston, and how the whole reason he never came into Boston was because he hated driving (and parking) in the city so much. He was really a convert! I don’t think he’d ever taken the T in Boston before! Fortunately, I’d gotten introduced to the new “Charlie Card” electronic fare system in September, and this time I scored a real Charlie Card, which is a plastic card and can be recharged as many times as you need it. (In September, I just got a “Charlie ticket.”) I also know the T system, and I’d printed out maps the night before, so I knew exactly what stops we needed to get off at and where to go after that.

The only time we got a bit lost was coming out of the T at Downtown Crossing, where the Boston Opera House is. Jill suggested that we go into Macy’s, which opened right off the T station, and use Macy’s escalators to go up to street level to avoid some of the stairs. So we were roaming around Macy’s, getting distracted by merchandise, and using the restrooms, and finally came out on the street two short blocks up from the Opera House, still about 45 minutes before the 1:00 p.m. matinee started. The Opera House hadn’t even opened their doors yet.

But here’s something I didn’t know about: the day before, there was a shooting in Downtown Crossing! I read about this in the Globe that night after I got home! The exit from Macy’s where the hotdog cart is, that the article mentions, where the police picked up all the shell casings–that’s the same exit we came out of! You certainly wouldn’t have thought anything like that had happened 24 hours earlier–no extra police presence, tons of people on the streets.

Jill raved about how good our seats were, which was nice to hear considering all I went through getting the tickets in September! We had the front row of the second section in the mezzanine, and they really were great seats, with a perfect view of the entire stage.

The performance was…well, it was the Nutcracker. I’m not that crazy about ballet or the Nutcracker itself. This was something Dad really wanted to do and I was just going along. The performance had some exceptional elements and some things open to criticism. I did like the way they increased Drosselmeier’s role because he’s my favorite character in the Nutcracker. The Boston Opera House is one of those gilded rococo old theatres, completely renovated fairly recently, and it is truly stunning, no question about it. I also like it far more than the Wang Center, which I long ago swore I would never go to again because the seating is designed so poorly, I can’t see anything. (Yes, the Opera House has lots and lots of places where the Phantom could be lurking! 🙂 )

After that it was back on the T and over to the Union Oyster House for an early dinner. I’ve wanted to go to the Union Oyster House for thirty years and I’ve finally been there! It is very cool. I loved it. I made special requests and had a very simple meal indeed–broiled scallops and steamed broccoli, and that is all! But it was very good, and anyway, the food was the least of the reasons that I wanted to go to this restaurant. I’m a sucker for anything that just stinks of history. *g* When we finished, it was only 5:30 p.m. and I wouldn’t have minded going through Faneuil Hall Marketplace, right next door, but Jill and Dad wanted to start home, so we got back on the T. Altogether, it cost us $7 to park at Alewife and $15.30 in fares for the T. It would probably have cost at least double that just to park someplace in Boston, and we’d have had to park twice or take the T or a cab anyway between the Opera House and the restaurant. Yay for public transportation! 🙂

Dad and Jill dropped me off at home. We’d considered going back to the lake and opening our gifts, but I pointed out that if we did that, someone would need to give me a ride home afterwards, and both Jill and Dad said “they didn’t think they’d be up to” giving me a ride home. *sigh*

On Sunday, I spent several hours in the afternoon finding someplace that was open where I could buy a replacement bulb for my car’s headlight (which I replaced myself). I’ve been pulled over by the cops in Townsend several times for just this sort of thing, and I wanted to get it taken care of before I needed to drive after dark. Dad was playing in a concert that had been postponed from the previous week thanks to a snowstorm, and then he was going to be glued to the two football games on whose outcome the New England Patriots’ playoff hopes rested.

I made a batch of stuffed mushrooms, wrapped one last forgotten gift and went up to the lake for dinner, presents-opening and the end of the Patriots’ season this year. (Rats…) At least Dad had plenty of diversion to help keep him from sinking into a morass of gloom. We finally opened all our Christmas presents, on December 28th! (No big dinner, though, dinner was just fish and a salad. We didn’t do a holiday dinner this year, unless you count the Union Oyster House.)

I got some great stuff! Most of it had been on my wish list. I got a combo DVD/VCR player, a programmable heater for my bathroom, a Dremel tool basic kit (man, I’ve always wanted one of these!), the DVD of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (which I really liked), and two books, Dark Banquet by Bill Schutt and Vampire Nation by Arlene Russo. I got a couple of surprises, too: a set of handle things for doing push-ups, that I talked about when we saw them in Staples (don’t ask me why Staples had them…) in August, and a DVD of Hellboy that my brother-in-law got me on a guess. It was a damn good guess, because I love Hellboy, but unfortunately I love it so much, I already have it on DVD. I’m going to exchange it for another DVD, though.

After presents, I hung out until everyone else crashed, and came home. Tomorrow, I’m going up to the lake for lunch and then driving my sister to the airport for her return flight. With luck, this time things will go a bit more smoothly! At the beginning of last week, Jill flew to New York for work reasons, and ended up sitting at JFK for something like nine hours–then she got sick for Christmas (with a house full of guests) and then ran into all that mess flying out here. We’re getting a snow storm on Wednesday, and I’m just hoping that same storm won’t be hitting Chicago on Tuesday! (Right now, it doesn’t look like it.) We’ll see!