Naturally, when I’m not baking or working, I’m usually drinking with my best gal, J. It starts, as it usually does, with one making an overture to the other. “Care for a drink?”

One drink. We could do this! We are totally committed. It is a work night, after all, and we are industrious little ants.

And maybe it was the heavy use of figurative language a client had used in a survey I was reporting on, because suddenly I was feeling poetic, which, led to us breaking the number #2 cardinal rule after Do Not Drink and Drive: Do Not Drink and Go on Facebook.

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In terms of sheer physical size, Boston is not really that big of a city. Its well-known neighborhoods, in actuality, span a few blocks in any given direction. I’m not sure what my friend Julia and I were expecting on the last day of the Chinese New Year celebrations in Boston’s Chinatown. A big, gaudy Western-styled parade? Probably. It’s not what we got, though.

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It’s 8:30 and the subway is down. Hundreds of anxious commuters stand outside the station, unsure of how to find alternate transportation that isn’t a bike or car. Each shuttle bus that bothers to stop is filled beyond capacity and not many taxis mill about this neighborhood. We pay for our suburban, green-loving lifestyle with a distinct lack of the city’s major conveniences.

I’m about to consider going home and telling my manager I’ll be working from home when a minivan cruises the street, its driver, a woman of indeterminate age with silver hair and bright eyes set in an open, expressive face, does not scrutinize us for our wares so much as asks if anyone trusts her enough to let her drive them downtown.

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