18/52 - Weekend in Boston
Every few years, Corinne changes up her hairstyle a bit. But this time, she did it with a 5 year old in the house.
Anders: Mom, did you get a haircut?
Corinne: Yes. What do you think?
Anders: Well... I think it looks pretty terrible to me.
Then, later that evening:
Mom, you should get a wig that looks like your old hair and wear it forever.
Now, tell us what you really think, Anders?
May brought our quarterly "Seeq Week" business trip. As an entirely virtual company with employees scattered around North America, we have found it useful get together in the same place every three months or so. This time around, the travel destination was Portsmouth, NH, close to our old stomping grounds in Boston. We could extend our trip on either side to visit with friends. And, we would be bringing Anders and Donna with us! Anders would be with us during the long weekends on either side of the business portion, and Donna would spend time with him while we worked during the week. Great!
Flight to Boston
Our flight to Boston wasn't on Anders's favorite airline, Southwest, but I think Alaska may become his second favorite. Why? Because Alaska also serves snacks.
The east/west airline corridor from PDX typically goes down the Gorge between Mount Adams and Mount Hood, and shortly after we departed we noticed that we were fairly close to Mt Adams. To Anders, I said (jokingly): "Hey Anders, there's Mount Adams! See if you can see our house from here." And you know what? We DID see our house. By the time Corinne got the camera out, it was hard to find again, particularly when zoomed-in. But somehow, she pulled it off. (She couldn't actually find it through the lens, but we got lucky and captured it in the frame anyway.)
Anders enjoys a rare treat on these non-stop cross-country flights: blocks of time with his favorite iPad games.
Weekend in Boston
When we landed in Boston, we only had about 2.5 days there before we had to head north to New Hampshire for our meetings. Of course that's not nearly enough time to see all of the people we wanted to!
Saturday morning, we met with Dennis and (most of) his family in the park and spent a few hours catching up and eating Union Square Donuts.
Our hosts, Becky and Gordon (and Lily and Quinn) made us feel right at home in their place in Somerville, which was actually only a few blocks from our last apartment before moving west. Quinn is roughly Anders's age, and Lily a bit older, and they all fell right in together when we arrived.
As it happened, Corinne, Anders, Becky and Lily were able to see a Red Sox game in Fenway while we were there.
Anders's T-ball experience made him a bit more connected to the game, and Corinne spent some time doing a play-by-play for him. But in the end, it may have been the MBTA subway and bus rides that were the most fun for this country boy.
Saturday night after dinner, the three kids decided to put on a show outside. Quinn and Anders alternated singing songs from Frozen (what else?) while Lily directed the spotlight and gave stage direction from atop the jungle gym.
Gordon became a sort of jungle gym himself during another moment of downtime.
We did manage to sneak in a few other short visits with folks, but pretty soon our weekend was over. Thanks for being great hosts!
MIT
Before heading north on Monday, we took a walking tour through MIT. Unsurprisingly, it mostly looked the same. Some of the staff from our time are even still here! And that was... well, it was a few years ago. We'll leave it at that.
The last time all three of us were on campus was back in 2011.
Flashback
With this year's graduation just around the corner, of course the 'Tute was in the process of putting on its best face. (Hence, the yellow tape around the newly seeded - or possibly painted - grass in Killian Court.) Of course we couldn't leave without a picture of Anders in front of the Great Dome.
Anders has a long time before he will really have any idea of what a place like MIT is. But from the looks of this photo, he's starting to feel the pressure already.
He's actually just shielding his eyes from the sun, but that isn't nearly as interesting.
And with that, we were off to Portsmouth, NH.
- Mike, Corinne, and Anders
