i have discovered my own personal hell.

and it is downtown crossing the weekend before xmas.

for the non-boston peeps, downtown crossing is a shopping area of the city... it's like a combination of south street, chestnut street (is it chestnut or walnut where all the shopping is?) and the gallery mall. all the stores are outside and spread out over several blocks in a town-square sort of formation, and it usually gets kind of busy each day at lunchtime when people use their lunch hour to run errands.

but the holidays... holy smokes. total nightmare. i hate xmas shopping anyway, but this just brought it to a whole new level. thousands of people, all bumping into each other and spitting on the sidewalk and walking 3 abreast to block the people behind them. a line in borders that snaked 4 times over, and the most aggressive perfume saleswomen in macy's that i've ever seen. bleh.

besides that fiasco, my boston trip has been nice. the dance crowd thursday night was reeeeally small, but i got a few good dances in and got to see a few familiar faces... had lunch with katehaney and occhi_cinesi and dinner with J2 and his friends yesterday... today is a movie and lunch with my best friends here, and then the long drive home to philly.

i'm looking forward to seeing the boy tonight (he was like, "i'm kinda on your way home, can you stop by, pleeeeease?"). i've missed him. i want to cram in every possible moment before he moves away. just thinking about that makes me queasy.