You know that you've got Boston blood when you walk past the former site of Filene's Basement for the first time and literally feel the knife going through your heart. Ughhh. I know they're not taking any more residents, but I think F.B. should get its own gravestone in the nearby old-as-dirt Granary Cemetary with the beautiful crooked headstones from the 1600's. Here lies the final shopping bag of Filene's Basement (sniffle) (sob).

You also know you've done time in Boston when you have trouble to adjusting to friendliness. Last month when my mom was here, she practically took a picture of it when someone "waved her in" during high traffic. She could _not_ get over it. "People now wave here?? That doesn't seem right."

I took a long walk along the downtown parts of Boston yesterday and couldn't get over the changes that resulted from the Big Dig's decades-long work. I always thought it was mainly designed to dig a tunnel and get people to the airport, but in fact, the waterfront/ seaport/ wharf areas of Boston which used to be under the highway are now on the same level with one road, and the highway is acutally under that.

The buildings didn't move, obviously. The highway did. But it's surreal to see it for the first time, when your brain has a different memory of the same things in another context. Especially because for so many years it was partially done with temporary roads and sidewalks with orange cones and scaffolding; you couldn't quite imagine the end result.

Now they've added a gorgeous string of parks through on the road divider named The Rose Kennedy Greenway (above left). Kind of like the Fenway, but pretty and safe. The area around South Station especially is almost unrecognizable. I had to rub my eyes when I saw that there was a small little Farmers Market at the top of the South Station T entrance. And with fresher looking vegetables than I've seen at any Colorado Farmers Market.

In many ways, it's just exquisite and the perfect combination of parks and city -- but the inner stubborn Bostonian in me has to hesitate for a second. Wait, is that really a freggin' merry-go-round between lanes of rush hour traffic?