Mills in Mass

It's taken too long for me to write of this, nonetheless, it was one of the best weekends since I've called Boston home. Thanks to D & M for making the trip and to my (awesome) fiancée for doing so much to make the weekend go smoothly.

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I can manage approximately 10 weeks of a standard 15 week semester in conjunction with the day job before it all gets to me. How does it get to me? Foooooood. And this is why meals were the cornerstone of this weekend.

Chinese? Friday dinner. Takeout – although they do have a glorious buffet. Best place in town. UnitedHealth Foundation just released its ranking for healthiest states in these United States. Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire were all in the top 5. States don't make it to the top of this list without making some sacrifices. Chinese food from New England has a distinctly lighter taste than most areas. Kudos to both D & M for giving it a chance.

French? Saturday dinner at Pigalle. Getting there was a challenge. More specifically, it was my challenge. Turns out…there's more than one 75 Charles Street in Boston. In such cases, zip code is very important when entering the destination into the GPS. Fortunately, we were still in Boston when I finally admitted that we had driven to the wrong 75 Charles St. We were only 10 minutes late to dinner. Fiancée and I split the Arugula with Prosciutto appetizer and then went our separate ways for the entre. I had the Duck and she had the (not so) petite Beef Tenderloin and Braised Short Ribs. We were forced to cut dinner short because we had to make our way around the block to get to Blueman. We didn't have time for dessert. I'm pretty sure that I have to take fiancée back for dessert in the future.

Philadelphia? Sunday Lunch. Cheese steaks from Carl's. This is a bit of a divergence from the traditional Philly cheese steak. Not being a native Philadelphian, I am comfortable saying that these are way better. My go-to cheese steak is a small Teriyaki with mayo and mushrooms. Phantom ranked Carl's #8 on the list of top 10 cheese steaks in Bostonia. There are 3 critical factors that make Carl's so good.

1. Diced steak
2. Fresh bread
3. Excellent variety
4. The cheese and additional toppings is evenly mixed throughout the steak (not just gobbed on top).
5. LARGE portions. Did you notice that I only get the small?

I couldn't stop at 3.

American? Twice. Thursday dinner and Saturday lunch. On Thursday we took D & M to Mad Raven. This is one of the places that fiancée and I will miss once we move to Somerville. Good atmosphere. Good food. And we even got a good parking space. It was meant to be. On Saturday, I took D & M into deep Boston so that they would have the opportunity to see Fenway. If you haven't been to Fenway, it's a really cool stadium. We walked around the stadium to give them a feel for how small it is and to point out the green monstah, etc. One of the cool things about Fenway is that there are big sports bars tucked underneath of it. Cask 'n Flagon was under construction so we decided to have lunch at Game On. The waiters/waitresses offered terrible service, but the food is worth writing home about. Fiancée and I watched Clay Buchholz throw a no hitter in 2007 at Game On. …it was against the Orioles.

   

 

     
So that's about it for the food. The other attractions for the weekend included a tour of the oldest car collection in New England at Larz Anderson Museum, Blueman Group at the Charles Playhouse, and a the regular weekend dog walk through Catrock (M's shoes will never be the same).

There is a lot more to be said about this weekend but I realize that this blog post is already too long. Be sure to click through the Mills in Mass photo album on the left hand side for some more details and commentary. It was a terribly rainy weekend but the skies cleared up long enough to offer this sunset on Sunday night.

November Means...

Ah, November.

With each November come the official holiday season, weird rain-snows, and one step closer to graduating…again.  Yup, midterm exams and projects are all behind me leaving only 3 assignments, one final exam (Finance), and one final project (Global Strategy).  My last class is scheduled for December 17^th; the countdown is so on!  …seriously, there’s an 8 ½ x 11 sized countdown on our fridge.

Securitization has been in the dumps for the past year, but bankruptcy has been keeping the legal industry very busy.  Fiancée’s been ultra busy with one specific bankruptcy…you can guess (but I’ll never tell who it is)...which has left me with a handful of stories that no one can substantiate.  For example, the dingo and I ran into a wolf at our local hang out spot, the Paine Estate.  Yeah, a wolf.  But what’s the point of telling the story?  …I have no proof.

Paine estate has been the sight of some interesting recent activity.  While there have been numerous Cameron Diaz sightings in Boston, our tiny town is often overlooked by Hollywood.  Until now (maybe).  During one recent trip to Paine, I was ordered away from the house and back toward the parking lots.  Why?  I’ll let you be the judge:

The Man vs Food show was in Baltimore last week.  They went to Chaps Charcoal Restaurant and sampled some of the sandwiches and raved about the Chaps Pit Beef Sandwich.  Chaps is on Polaski Highway – if anyone’s been, tell me if it’s as good as they made it look on TV.  They also said that the best crabs in town were at OBrycki’s and encouraged viewers to try the Great Steak Challenge at Steak & Main.

Update: We can’t take this one horse town anymore, so we’re leaving!  We just signed a new lease in Somerville (atleast a 7 horse town).

Random Thought:  The Motorola Droid commercials start cool and quickly change into an expensive advertising mistake.

Random Update: The temperature in Rio de Janeiro is 77 degrees.