Boston, NH, and FL

Hi all!  I have been to Boston, New Hampshire, home, and now I'm in Florida, but I've had no time to write.  Let's see what I can remember.  There has been so much!

First I went to see my friend Ray.  He lives in Leominster, MA (pronounced lem-in-stah), We left for Boston at 7am so we could get the tickets for the Red Sox/Angels game.  We managed to get 2 tickets!  Yeah!  Then we were off for the New England Aquarium.  This is a fairly large aquarium with a 4-story tank at the center.  There we saw 4 large leather back turtles as well as several varieties of fish, sharks, and sting rays. As soon as you walk in there are 3 types of penguins.  Some were very vocal.  The smallest ones seemed to have the loudest voices!  I liked the eyebrows on the rockhopper penguins.

After spending a few hours there, we stopped at a holocaust memorial on our way to the T(train).  We got off at the wrong spot and so took a ferry over to the USS Constitution and the USS Young.  I didn't realize how exhausted Ray was at this point.  We went to the USS Constitution Museum first.  This tall ship was one of the first 6 ships commissioned for the US Navy by George Washington.  There were interactive programs, and I was able to save the USS Constitution in a reenacted battle...woohoo!  Near the end of viewing the museum I realized that Ray was falling behind.  He was TIRED!  But he persevered to explore the USS Young.  When we got to the Constitution we had just missed the last half hour long tour of the ship.  I think Ray was secretly relieved.  We walked around the ship on our own.  We went for dinner and then ran to Fenway Park for the game.

The Angels won 4-2!!  I was decked out in all my Angels gear.  I was a little worried, but I was told that as long as I wasn't supporting the Yankees, I was fine.  I took out my 2 Angel mascots...Scoop and Clutch.  The little girl next to me had a Red Sox teddy bear, so I showed her the Angels' bears.  While I had them out, the Red Sox scored their 2 runs.  I put them away and the Red Sox didn't score again.  The little girl said, "They aren't too lucky, are they?"  I had to agree.  Maybe the Angels need another mascot.  Whatever happened to that Rally monkey?

The next day Ray and I drove up to New Hampshire for the Inside out Soul Festival, which is a 4 day Christian music concert.  I got to see a lot of bands that I had never heard of.  Mostly families and youth groups attended.  There weren't many people there my age, but that was okay.  I heard a lot of good music.  I listened to a lot of bands that I probably wouldn't have heard, but there were 5 stages and I missed a lot more that I was curious about.  EVERY kind of music was represented.  There were bands that played folk and gospel, but there were also bands that played rock, hard rock, southern rock, heavy metal, punk, or thrash or a combination of these.  There was an 80s type band-Big Fat Jam-that looked sort of like Aerosmith and
played hard rock.  I listened to POD, a punk, thrash type.  I probably wouldn't have paid to see just them, but it was interesting to see them live.  It was like they had touched a live wire or something!  :)  Of course, I couldn't understand their lyrics!!  They have traveled with Ozzfest.

We met up with our friends Mack and Rebecca and her son Josiah.  We shared a couple of rooms at an inn.  That was a bizarre place.  The fuse kept blowing and the owners were asking us if it was our hair dryers.  We didn't have hair dryers.  It was that there were 3 rooms on the fuse and ours had an air conditioning unit.  We kept most of the lights out so we could run the a/c.

Ray was still pretty exhausted for most of the weekend.  He had a hard time recovering from Boston.  I wish I'd realized earlier how tired he was.  The first night we were returning to the inn from the concert he said, "Which way do I go to go straight?"  We had a good laugh about it, but it was obvious that he was still exhausted!  I'm used to traveling with my mom, so I figured it was just the age difference, but maybe I just have too much energy.  People at work are always asking me where I get all my energy.  Maybe I do have a lot of energy.  Maybe I just want to see everything when I'm visiting.

The concert was at the Loon Mountain Ski Resort.  They had the ski lifts running to the top of the mountain.  The view was incredible, but I'm glad I didn't have to ski back down!!  That run would have been too difficult for me!  But they did have concerts up there, and caves were mentioned.  Well, they weren't actually caves.  They were rock croppings with directions for going in, around, through, above, etc.  Ray is 6' 4" and a little heavy so he declined to go through most of it.  I went through all of them!  Some were a TIGHT fit, and I followed some teens climbing up a cliff we probably shouldn't have been on.  I was proud of myself because I could still do it.  I was just disappointed that I haven't lost any weight with all this travel and hiking I've done all summer.  
I was also disappointed by the fact that I wore shorts the whole time in NH, and my legs didn't tan.  There was no color change whatsoever!  It's like a mirror that reflects the light.  I must have blinded a lot of people!  My arms and face have probably my best tan ever now...that Irish tan, a reddish brown with freckles.  It was so HOT and STICKY!  EEWWWW!

I was back in CT for about a day and a half.  I was going to go into my classroom, but I ended up being diagnosed with strep.  :(  My brother apparently had it when I was visiting his family in Ohio the week before.  Then it was on to Florida.

CT was HOT and sticky!!  It was supposed to be in the high 90s and FL was in the low 90s but higher humidity.  So FL wasn't as bad in comparison.  I had been dreading coming to FL in August!  I flew down with Mom and dad on Wednesday.  Mike brought his son Alex and Terry came down from New York on Thursday.  I think my parents have been without small children for so long that they didn't remember that small children have limits.  My parents eat dinner around 6-7pm and Ila often eats later than that.  Alex has dinner usually at 5:30.  We all did very well trying to compromise on dinner times and bedtimes, and attention spans.

Friday was the big day!!  Ila graduated from college.  She got her bachelor's degree in Social Psychology with a minor in ethnic studies.  She's not sure what she's going to do from here.  She got a lot of her friends and family in because they forged passes!  SShhh!  Don't tell anyone!  :)  Each graduate was only allowed 2-4 tickets!!  How insane is that!  We had a big graduation
dinner that night!  It was a lot of fun!  I met a lot of great people that are Ila's friends.  Dinner went from 6-10, and I still hadn't talked to everyone, but that's probably good since I was losing my voice.  I think my brothers will celebrate when it's completely gone!!

Today (Saturday) Mike, Alex, Terry, Mom, and I went to the Seaquarium in Miami.  It was QUITE humid today, but we got a few hours in.  Alex loved the sharks when we first got in there, then he was mesmerized by the Manatees, and his other favorite was the Orca and dolphin show.  He was bopping to the energetic music.  I know that Terry was thrilled that Alex readily held his hand while we were walking.  He also enjoyed having Alex sit next to him at the dolphin show and lean on him.  He's going to make a good dad.  It was great for me to have Alex there too.  He didn't mind talking to me, sharing, or holding my hand.  Alex soon got too tired and hot to stay, and I think Mike and Terry were ready too!  It was a good day.  

Well, I'm sitting in the hotel room now watching Bull Durham and getting packed up to leave for home tomorrow just as the temperature is supposed to drop to the low 80s!  Woohoo!  Good timing!  I need to get back so I can focus on my email!!  I had over 100 when I returned from NH, but I got it down to about 24.  I just checked it briefly and got it back down to 86!  I need to stay home and control my email!  :)

I'd like to hear from all of you and hear how all of are doing this summer.   I'm going to head back to work and college when I return, so I will find it harder to find time to write, but if you write I will write back!  :)  Have an awesome day!

PS I have pictures from Boston.