Free Time
Stephanie and I had the rarest of occasions this past Wednesday – 24 hours of free time together. As you may be experiencing yourselves, depending on who is reading this, a period of 24 hours of completely free time happens about as often as Tom Cruise actually being in a movie that is good.
Planning in advance for these things, of course, is useless. We tried to plan two weeks before, but the only day it could possibly work was a day when I had jury duty. The following day would work as well, but how can you book a room at a hotel or plan anything when you’re not sure if you’re going to get called back for a second day of jury duty? Then there was the time we planned an overnight in NYC – and we went! Ah, but there was that little problem of me laying in the bed whole time with the flu. Theres nothing like laying bed having soup for a day or two in nyc. See? Planning these things is useless.
So we rolled the dice and assumed that something would be available the day before or even the day of. I wasn’t as worried about a hotel as Steph was, but then again, Stephanie’s personality is one where she is only truly comfortable when everything is known and planned. That is the way everyone should be, actually, but I’m not wired that way, which probably drives her nuts, the poor thing. I always think that last minute is possible and for hotels at least, we’ve been ok.
But when you get one of these free periods of time, you can sympathize with wanting to make sure everything is planned and happening. I get that.
Anyway, we found a great little hotel called The Copley Square Hotel and other than our absolutely tremendous meal at Stella in the South End, that’s where hunkered down until about 11:30 the next day. We did nothing. NOTHING. Steph slept until 10! I read! We ate. That is about it. I’m not sure we’ve done that since the stork showed up. What a time!
When we checked out, we then visited Flour Bakery, sticking to the South End, and we were not disappointed at all, most especially when we were stuffing our faces with their spectacularly delicious sticky buns. After that it was off to the movies! Are you kidding me? A movie too? We headed off to the Kendall Square Cinema, a place we used to visit quite often when we lived just outside of Davis Square and it was a different world.
The movie of choice was called Please Give, a Katherine Keener, Oliver Platt and Amanda Peet movie about middle age and grasping for reason and satisfaction. It was very very good, much like the remainder of our respite.
By the way, back to Stella – if you’re remotely interested in food, Stella is your place. They put a grilled Halibut over corn/onion/potato salad entree in front of me that hasn’t been equalled anywhere else in years. Seriously. I don’t think I’ve had a better meal in years. So go there.