The Cavalier and His Christmas Crabs

After Seth’s final exam on Wednesday (the end of his first semester teaching), we spent the following day hanging out in downtown Boston. We first walked through Chinatown and then heckled the squirrels in Boston Common before catching a show, Dinosaurs Alive!, at the Omni (IMAX) Theater at the Museum of Science. Considering we hadn’t seen a movie together in the theaters in about a year and a half (Tales from Earthsea, in Perth, Australia), it was a particular treat to go to the IMAX.

After the movie, we killed time (and froze!) in Downtown Crossing before buying student rush tickets to see the Boston Ballet’s The Nutcracker. For dinner we then headed to Chinatown to eat at the Gourmet Dumpling House, which was totally packed even though it was earlier than 6pm. We noticed that most of the people in the restaurant had ordered these gorgeous, gigantic hot pots and bowls of soup. Being a chilly night, we were very, very interested in getting one of these soups, but the menu was long and confusing, and the waiters spoke little English, so we got two “safe” dishes (noodles and dumplings), and went for one unfamiliar dish we hoped might be a soup. It turned out to be a plate of smallish whole crabs, with no utensils or hints on how to eat them. We spent an hour wrestling with the little buggers, navigating through lots and lots of shell, trying to find little morsels of meat (which, of course involved crunching on tiny pieces of additional shell). We are still puzzled over several pieces of crab anatomy, including the orange blob in the body, the green paste in the shoulders, and the random spots of yellow goo, and are still wondering if they truly were edible. We didn’t get terribly bad stomach aches afterwards, so they must have been ok.

After dinner, we went to the Opera House to see The Nutcracker. I love the Christmassy-ness of this ballet, and Seth had danced the leading male role for multiple years with the Triangle Youth Ballet, so it was fantastic to see it. The only bad thing was that the seats in the theatre were poorly laid out and it was hard to see much of the stage, but we eventually moved to good seats about halfway through the second act.

The rest of the night involved getting a Dunkin Donuts coffee while waiting for the bus, then falling asleep on the bus and nearly dropping that same beloved coffee. The perfect end to the day.

The squirrels of Boston Common

Frog Pond

Perhaps not as big as the tree in NY City, but far more majestic.

So what are we supposed to do with these??

Building a gingerbread house Seth's parents brought for us. Notice Seth's house-nipples.

Somehow this gingerbread tree transformed into a gingerbread man.

Just like the picture on the box!! (Well, not quite.)

Seth out running in the first snow storm of the year. I decided to do yoga indoors, instead :o)