Completely drenched day in Boston

What a weekend - the gallons and gallons of precipitation we received - everything from snow to sleet, freezing rain, and plain 'ol windy cold rain - made for a perfect weekend of watching movies, baking pumpkin bread, and cooking a chicken.

I did all of those things, but sandwiched in a trip to The Natick Mall (...excuse me.... The Natick Collection) on Saturday, and a matinee showing of I Am Legend during this, its opening weekend, on Sunday.

If the entire MetroWest population didn't also decide to kick around Natick and Framingham on Saturday, and if the puddles of sludge and slush at every intersection weren't each 3 feet deep, it would have made for much more pleasurable Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

We left Boston at 3pm on Saturday, and parked at The N.C. at 4:15. 40 minutes of that drive were sitting in traffic attempting to get off the Pike, through the toll, and onto Rte. 9. Oh, Amazon.com, why have I foresaken you?

The new retailers at The Natick Collection are quite nice, but I still can't figure out who would willingly purchase a luxury condo in the complex attached to the mall because of the shopping convenience. I mean, how often do you really need to go to Juicy Couture and Tourneau?

The Sunday movie was a spontaneous decision, precipitated by a call from Chris, who invited me to go. Trudging my way to the T in my ski coat, hood, and ski goggles, I managed to avoid most deep puddles (the same was not true for the walk back form the T after the movie). While I might appear silly to be wearing ski goggles around Boston, I was complimented today about how much of a good idea one neighbor found my goggles, and asked by another if I skied (um, yes...good guess there Einstein).

In the pouring rain around 4:30, I attempted to walk Rosie to my car with a snow shovel, thinking that I would throw her in the car while I dug myself out. After about five minutes, I gave up - soaked through to my skin, wet dog in car, futile shoveling of solid blocks of ice.

My gut tells me that I'm going to be using my CharlieCard a lot this week.