let the eating begin.

My Thanksgiving holidays have officially begun. As have my dogsitting duties. Basically, it goes like this...my aunt and uncle planned their trip and then "whoops, it's over Thanksgiving...you weren't planning on doing anything right?" I mean, my family lives 25 minutes away, but yeah I was planning on spending Thanksgiving alone in my apartment this year. Right. Also, my sister hasn't been home for Thanksgiving for 3 years and is home this year. And won't be home for Christmas. So, I really want to spend some time with her and her boyfriend. So, I'm going home for two nights, and bringing the dogs with me. Parents are not overly excited to have a rambunctious puppy in their house, but they are dealing with it so they can spend time with their lovely daughter. And my aunt has compensated me aplenty, so I am not at liberty to complain. But I might still a little (only when they wake me up at 5 a.m. to play outside).

Tonight the family came into the city and we dined at the Top of the Hub. The restaurant is 52 floors up in the Prudential Center and is supposed to offer fabulous views of Boston. Which it does. I've been there several times and it is extremely romantic and beautiful. Umm yeah. We walked in tonight and it looked like the shades were pulled on the windows. The fog was so thick we couldn't even see a single city light. Kind of sad, because, although the food is quite good, the views are totally what that place is all about.

I should have said when "I" walked in, actually. After completely stressing, driving my stuff back and forth to my aunt's, going to the obnoxiously crowded grocery store, and running through the streets in the rain in high heels to get to the restaurant for our reservation (I was told not to be late and it's kind of a hike to and from the T), my family walked in a full 40 minutes after our scheduled meeting time. Yeah, I was not a happy camper. And I needed a drink badly. So, screw the whole never drinking again thing, because I had an absolutely amazing dirty martini with Grey Goose (clearly, the other night's Grey Goose did not scar me for very long). And wine. At first I thought going home for a few days would be cleansing for me. Then I remembered how much my family drinks. Yay. Although they normally don't get out of control like I did the other night. Thank the lord.

Dinner was delicious...baby spinach salad with roasted walnuts, goat cheese, pears, and port wine reduction lemon dressing, yum. And spaghettini with braised baby clams, pancetta, garlic, and roasted tomatoes, sooo amazingly good. And creme brule, yesss. It's only Tuesday and I've already been eating like it's Thanksgiving. It's gonna be a long week. But a deliciously good one.

Tonight I'm sleeping with the dogs at my aunt's beautiful house. Then tomorrow I'm getting up to bake an apple pie and pumpkin chocolate chip squares and then packing the dogs in the car and heading for home. I'll definitely get some new pics of the pups, but if you want to see them in all of their cuteness, check out my old post. Trust me, they do not always look this calm. At all. But I do love them.

Oh, and check this post out if you want to see what dogsitting consists of for me...this was when there was only one dog. Now there are two. And the puppy is a bit psycho.

remember pokemon? they're still alive!

Today I semi-attended Boston's Anime Convention. No seriously, this convention was going on in Boston. Who knew, right? My friends and I certainly had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to do a bit of shopping in Copley and the Prudential. As we crossed the bridge over to the Pru, we slowly began noticing people in strange costumes. And as we neared the center of the Pru, there were suddenly people dressed in costumes ALL around us. "Is it some sort of Halloween thing?" my friend asked. "Umm it's April," we replied. "Well then, it has to be some sort of video game convention," she determined. We finally asked the employee at a nearby watch kiosk and he informed us it was an anime convention that was lasting all weekend.

So, we did what any other normal human beings would do: we went and got lunch at Au Bon Pain and sat in front of the entrance to Hyne's Convention Center for over an hour, just watching all of the action. You would not believe the costumes that these people were wearing; I'm not even going to try to explain them because I could do them no justice. I don't know much about anime but I do know we saw some characters from Pokemon, a few Sailor Moons (remember her??), some Yu-Gi-Oh characters, and even a couple Marios (a la Mario Brothers) and Princess Toads. We also ran across a Jesus Christ, a Hello Kitty, the green Power Ranger (Tommy), and a Jack Sparrow; and we heard through the grapevine that there was a Waldo wandering around. Not quite sure how they fit in, but they were there.

The highlight of the event was when two people dressed in giant brown boxes realized they were both dressed as the same character. "Look!! Turn around!! There's two of you!!" one of the brown box's friends yelled to him. He turned around, both of the brown boxes began running toward each other, and they embraced (as well as they could dressed in boxes). The crowd in front of the convention center erupted in applause and cheers.

Apparently Anime Boston is the biggest anime convention in New England and last year they had 9,000+ attendees. My friends and I spent a lot of time discussing the kinds of people who are obsessed with anime, how you become interested in it, the amount of artistic skills it must take to make some of the costumes, etc. There were little kids there and grown adults, but the majority of attendees were probably in their teens and twenties. I, for one, never knew such conventions existed nor did I have a clue about the extent of them.

Check out the website http://www.animeboston.com/ to learn more. All kinds of events were going on, including 24 hour video gaming and an Anime dating game. One of the best parts of the website is the dating games FAQs. One atendee asks "My costume has moving parts/large weapons/gets in other people's way. Is this a problem?" which renders a long explanation about costume restrictions. And let me tell you, some of these costumes were NOT "street-legal" (hello, excuse to dress skankily and excuse for men to wear dresses!) and I have no idea how these people were allowed to walk around a mall with all sorts of fake guns, swords, and huge knife-like weapons. But they did.

We didn't even enter the conference center (it was $30), but we learned oh so much about a whole subculture of New England we didn't even know existed.