Nor'easter With Chocolate

February 13th, plows began ominously circling the city. I noticed them in the morning when I left for work. I noticed them in the evening when I came home. Circling...hopefully. We hadn't really had much snow this year, and there was finally some in the forecast, so the plow people were eagerly anticipating the first job of the year. It was supposed to start snowing late at night on the 13th, and then snow progressively more for the next day or so. Why do I remember the date? Because February 14th was Valentine's day, and we had plans.

Back in January, Matt and I had made reservations for the special Valentine dessert dinner at Finale to make sure we'd actually be able to get reservations. It would be really convenient; Harvard Square is practically right in the middle between our two offices, so it would be a cakewalk to get into Harvard Square for dinner, and we wouldn't have to wait forever because we had reservations.

So February 13th rolled around, and I looked at the weather report. Snow and mixed precipitation, all day on the 14th, particularly in the evening. Since it hadn't snowed at all yet this year, I really had no idea how to drive in such weather, so I decided to just take the train to work that day and save myself the headache of worrying about driving home after dinner in the storm.

Tuesday morning rolled around, and things were looking quite a bit nastier than I'd imagined. However, I had dinner reservations I certainly didn't want to miss, so I hiked out to the train wearing reasonably nice clothes for dinner with big clunky snow boots, and was off to work. Sometimes fashion sacrifices must be made in the face of inclement weather. At least my snow boots are a festive pink.

I should have suspected something when over 2/3 of my office had decided to stay home rather than risk the drive home that evening. I sat in my office and watched the snow get heavier as the day wore on. I heard crazy stories of flower delivery companies going to lengths to get deliveries where they were supposed to be on time for Valentine's day.

These showed up in my office about an hour before I needed to leave to make it to Harvard Square for dinner, and only mildly the worse for wear. I felt pretty bad for the delivery person who had to venture out in that weather to make sure the flower company met their guaranteed delivery date...I sort of wished I'd known or had a way to tell them I wouldn't mind if they were a day late!


They're very pretty in person; my photos don't really do them justice.

Unfortunately, I didn't have anything even vaguely vase-like at work, so I determined that they were just going to have to go to dinner with me. After their already-hard day, I didn't want to make them sit overnight in a box in my office.

I set off early from work (since nobody had come into the office anyway) because I figured that the buses to Harvard would be slow due to the weather. I walked out the door, and stopped dead in my tracks when I encountered every single bus that runs the line I needed....stopped dead in front of my office. Apparently the ice on the power lines was making it impossible for these trackless trollies to run.

Having no choice, I joined the crowd of people on the bus stop, called Matt to let him know there was a delay, and prayed. After about half an hour, a single bus crept up to the stop, and we piled as many people as possible onto it. While standing, packed in like a sardine, I looked down and noticed that the box of flowers was carefully cradled in the crook of my arm...upside down. Oops. No helping it, I shrugged and hoped they didn't mind too much.

Once I finally made it to Harvard Square, meeting up with Matt was trivial and we made our way to Finale for a lovely multi-course meal of:

Sorbet Trio
Chocolate Dipped Strawberries
Chocolate Paradise
Cookies and Milk
A box of Valentine chocolates to take home (thank goodness; we were stuffed!)



Unfortunately, since we'd decided to take the train into town, that meant that we had an hour to kill after we'd eaten dinner before we could go home. Normally, this would be fine and we'd walk around Harvard Square and poke into a few shops. Normally, when there wasn't a giant Nor'easter howling its way down the streets.

Somewhere along the way, Matt had found some colossal puddles, and his shoes really appeared to be in a bad state. He muttered something along the lines of, "What I would pay for a dry pair of shoes about now..." when suddenly through the snow we saw a sign: Huge Winter Boot Clearance!

Well. Since we had to kill time ANYWAY, it made sense to go in and poke around. If we could find a decent pair of dry shoes at the right price, it might just be worth it to buy shoes to wear home...Matt's were that wet. We looked around the shop a little, but most of the stuff was pretty expensive even on sale. Matt started eying a pair of rain boots with pink pugs printed all over them, and I momentarily considered that if his feet had been a few sizes smaller, I probably could have gained a new pair of rain boots out of the adventure. Sadly, his feet are much bigger than mine, so we walked off an went in search of another store.

Eventually, we found ourselves in the basement of Urban Outfitters where I was contemplating whether they had any gloves (I had forgotten mine; we were quite the pair that evening) and Matt announced that he had found dry water repellent shoes for $10, which seemed a bargain to someone with soaking wet feet in a snow storm. I glanced over to see Matt holding a pair of hideously ugly, vinyl women's ankle boots in a rather large size. Oh my. I might have stifled a giggle, and forbade him from ever wearing them again once we had gotten home to dry shoes.

Turns out to be a rather good thing that Matt found dry shoes, because there was still a lot of walking to do before we made our way home. We caught the train on schedule, but it turns out that in Waltham the snow had been heavier, and there was a good 10" of snow and ice on the sidewalks that we needed to wade through to get home.

Eventually we, the chocolates, the flowers, and several pairs of shoes made it home safely. However, much of the Boston area stayed under a thick sheet of ice for over a week, making transportation difficult. We congratulated ourselves on our great fortitude, and declared that we had fully earned our feast earlier in the evening, as well as the box of chocolates that we brought home.