What happens when I actually leave the house

From there I made my way to the waterfront for more pics, and then meandered my way back towards my intended meeting spot. Along the way I encountered a chinese woman who may or may not have been begging. I am guessing she was asking me for more when she held her handful of change out to me. I made myself laugh when I said "No thank you!" to her as if she was offering the change to me.

I still had time before meeting my friend, so I wandered a bit more, finding a nice bar for more photo ops and more thirst quenching. Getting closer to meet time, I went back to Starbucks, and ordered myself a hot chocolate with no whip-cream. It was kind of disconcerting as the gentleman who was preparing my drink repeatedly chanted whip-cream as he made it. Not sure if I should have been concerned about that. I enjoyed my hot chocolate thoroughly. So much so that I decided to wear some of it to impress my friend who was going to arrive in about five minutes. After all we have not seen each other in years. Might as well make it memorable!

My friend arrived, and after a hug (manly of course!!) we went to dinner, where for a couple of hours we shared a very fine  Smörgåsbord of good food, reminiscence, fun conversation, and future plans. We parted ways with another (manly) hug and promises of doing this again soon. Unfortunately thanks to the excellence of public transportation in this magnificent metropolis, I had a couple of hours to wait until I could get a train back home. So I let the feet carry me where they would again. I did want to make my way back towards South Station so I did not risk missing the train. Unfortunately, the average East Coast city is designed in such a way that only a cow with attention deficit disorder could possibly navigate them, so I found myself quickly all turned around. No worries. The city officials take this into account by conveniently placing maps here and there for the novice city goer. Maps that are conveniently nowhere near any street signs or notable reference points. Maps that conveniently do not even have a "You are here!"

Finally I remembered my smart phone (which is obviously smarter than me) and found myself back at South Station sitting in a bar. Go figure! I was somewhat surprised when the bartender said "Hello Steve!" at one point, considering I had never been there before and did not know him. But then I recalled the odd yet proven fact that at any given moment, any bar in the union will have a minimum of two Steve’s in attendance, so he of course was not greeting ME. The bar was attended by a few regulars, one of whom I swear was Stan Lee, so the wait for the train was a pleasant one. It was so comfortable there that my bag almost chose to stay! Another uneventful train ride had me back to the starting point, where except for a bit of difficulty figuring out how to actually WALK out of the train station parking lot and a brief visit at (you guessed it!) a local watering hole, I was soon home in bed, quite content with the day’s adventure (except for that blister on my big toe).