My holiday break was wonderful. I spent the first part of the week partying and unwinding from lots of stress. Monday night after class I went out with about fifteen of my classmates, and then ended up watching the Pats with two of them and a few others at Hurricane O'Reilly's. Tuesday and Wednesday were a blur of socializing. Then came Thursday. Talk about fun. I spent the holiday with my entire family, plus my aunt, my cousin Meg and her husband Max, my cousin Dan, and Will's girlfriend Gina. We had an amazing dinner, replete with three soups, all the usual entrees, and six, count 'em, six pies, plus my mom's famous homemade-from-scratch pecan tartlets. Glorious. After dinner we were joined by our tenant, Mickey, her son (and my good friend) Drew, his wife Phylle, and their friend, plus four of my brother's buddies who came over to take my family's money playing Texas Hold 'Em. Yes, we're that kind of family. But we didn't start playing poker until we'd played one rousing game of Chinese Checkers. I'm serious, people. That one game lasted over an hour and a half. I mean it when I say it was rousing.

And we topped the whole night off with dancing. We managed to convince Dan to come with us (he enjoyed going deaf along with his Jameson -- no dancing for him), and Will, Gina, Brendan, his girlfriend Sarah, and I all trekked down to O'Neill's, where we were joined (however briefly) by Tom and a drunk Ryan. So. Much. Fun. I think all Thanksgivings from this point on should be concluded with dancing.

Friday was pretty boring, aside from the very exciting receiving of my newly purchased 40G iPod. I spent the afternoon playing before I went to work. I worked from 5 until 9:30 or so, and I had all the best intentions of having only two drinks, and coming home to play with the iPod some more. The best laid plans... I was very quickly joined by Tom, Michelle, Marie, Will, Parag, and many others, and I was coerced into staying. And "staying" meant staying until close. And then Bill and Bob's. And then late night at my apartment. Which was, again, So. Much. Fun. Except that I had to wake up at 9:30am to shower and go get NB at the airport.

Strangely enough, I woke up even before the alarm went off. I guess I was looking forward to seeing him a little bit. As excited as I was, I was nonetheless cranky during the day until I got a nap. But that was much later. NB's flight got in at 10:40, and I was there waiting for him when he hobbled out of the terminal. He's so cute without the crutches! He even left them at his parents' place, where he was for the previous week (which is good, because, as it turns out, his physical therapist yelled at him yesterday for waiting a whole four weeks to start using the new knee). We immediately headed down to Stoughton to pick up his brand spanking new furniture, which we had shopped for two weeks ago. And we headed straight for the bar to watch some football, instead of dropping it off at his house (priorities, people).

After leaving the bar at halftime, mostly due to exhaustion on both our parts -- NB had to be up at 5:30 to get to the airport -- we headed back to his place. In between then and actually getting to his place, there was a minor altercation over a parking spot, which involved some superficial scratches on mine and the other PSYCHO guy's car, from which I gracefully backed down (the guy was NUTS), but that's not really important. Furniture was successfully moved in, a safe spot was serendipitously found, and the couch was flopped upon. We settled in for a "nap" at about three, and emerged around five-ish, whereupon we decided to have a nice dinner in the North End.

See, NB used to live in the North End this summer, and he hadn't been back since he moved out this fall. Plus, I was craving this amazing dish I'd had at La Summa on Fleet Street a while back. So we headed over at around 6:30. Let me tell you, things had changed since the last time I was at this place. Last time I was there, it was kind of cafeteria/family-style, with the red-check picnic tablecloths. Not this time. We walked in to dimmed lighting with white tablecloths and were graciously told that we might put our name in and come back in about an hour, but the hostess "couldn't promise anything." So we put in our name, and, since they didn't have a bar area, wandered next door for a glass of wine. We ended up getting lucky and got a table not a half hour later, when NB ran back over to let her know that we were still interested in eating, but we just weren't in sight. As it turned out, they had a table ready at that moment. The only problem was, we were only halfway through our somewhat expensive glasses of wine. Luckily for us, there was a regular at the bar who graciously volunteered to allow our wine to breathe under his watchful gaze until we returned after our dinner (right after the barwoman told us she couldn't keep an eye on them because she knew she'd forget and toss them).

Anyway, dinner did not disappoint. In fact, I had my leftovers for dinner last night, and they were even better. We lingered over a bottle of nice merlot, and a very decadent dinner, not to mention the amazing creme de caramel we shared, and when we returned to the place next door, the regular, along with our glasses, was still there. We ended up finishing them, befriending the regular, and staying put for another glass apiece. Ah, the beauty of the North End. NB and I actually had our first conversation about our first impressions there. In case I haven't mentioned it yet, we happened to have met over the personals. Yes, the online personals. So our first date was pretty much sight unseen, except for the pictures that we had posted on our profiles. And we talked about that, too. As he put it, he didn't know if I would weigh four hundred pounds or not. But I can gather that he was pleasantly surprised. I'll have to press him about his other experiences... Apparently I got pretty lucky, too (he's the first, and only, guy I've gone out with from the personals, though I got many responses). I found out he was telling people about me over the holidays, too, when he slipped up as we were talking about the slight stigma of meeting over the personals (apparently it's a lot more taboo in the south). Score. Anyway, it was a really nice evening, all in all. We ended up taking a cab back to his place, and I had a lovely night's sleep.

Sunday we got all domestic again. I went and did laundry with him, which was kind of romantic in a way -- we both brought the books we're reading, and sat there next to each other for two hours just reading together, with one or the other of our arms around each other. Then we watched the first part of the Pat's game together, before I went out to meet up with Will's girlfriend and watch the second half. It really was a good weekend. The kind I keep thinking about with a smile on my face.