Back to School Time

Back to School time has arrived as can be seen by the stream of students that are returning to the city. It was a good weekend for UHaul, and a bad weekend for driving (as we found out Sunday morning on the way to church)!

Been a while since our last post and as usual, we've been keeping busy and trying to make the most of the last of this great weather! Although, last weekend when Sarah and Ryan visited, it wasn't so nice, but scorching hot and humid! We still managed to make the obligatory Freedom Trail tour:

Saturday evening we took a 2+hr trip to western Mass to Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. We saw John Williams direct the Boston Pops in their annual Film Night. We had lawn seats and got there early with some from our community group so we could have a nice picnic dinner. A lot of fun was had by all. It was good having Sarah and Ryan, and hopefully next time they can stay a little longer (I think they felt they almost spent more time on the bus than here in Boston!)

Dinner on the lawn.

The Boston Pops (fortunately they had some screens so could see what was going on!)

Katis has started back on a rotation that is Q3 overnight (translation: every third day she has to pull a 30hr shift). They are often rough days, but the good news is we often have more time on her non-call days in the evening. The bad news is the other days she doesn't come home (like today!). On a side note, Megan is having her first Q3 weeks of many to come! Her and Katie will be able to empathize with one another.

I spent a couple days last week down south visiting a coal power plant. They are amazing structures - so intricate and jumongous (somewhere between jumbo and humungous). On my interview day, their was one part of the job they failed to mention. Silos. Large silos (to hold ash). Very tall silos. Silos they want me to climb. The first site we went to had a 130foot silo. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about climbing to that height. Fortunately, to my surprise this silo had an elevator (although if the sketchy elevator had stopped - which I heard it did the week before - I would have quickly wish we took the stairs!). When we got to the top we had only one flight of stairs to climb. As I climbed them, I quickly came to the conclusion, that I like dirt a whole lot better than standing on gratings 130feet in the air. The following day, we visited a site that had a silo a 'mere' 100feet high. Unfortunately, no elevator. Just stairs, made of grating so we could look straight down and a handrail on either side. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it all the way up, but somehow I did! And in hindsight, it wasn't that bad, so hopefully a few more trips and I will feel a little more comfortable. Until maybe we get to the 180feet silos, that could be another story...

The "short" silo.

We did have a nice view once we got to the top though!

So, that's a little what has been going on here. We hope all is well with you back home and around!