From whence they came…

At work, we have some maps up and try to encourage people to mark where they are from with pins. At the end of every week, we take the pins down and “reset” the maps. I took down the old maps the other day because certain areas (like Hartford, CT and the Netherlands) were completely obliterated, but it was really interesting to see the distribution of all the pins. Here are some pictures (and proof, if you’ve ever needed it, that people come from every continent to visit Boston):

Visitors from the South Pacific

Visitors from Europe, Asia Minor, Northern Africa

Visitors from Africa

It will be interesting to see how the map morphs and changes over the next few weeks as most of our visitors will be from New England and Western Europe. Most of our cruise ships are carrying people from the New York/New England area or Britain to Canada and back again, so probably fewer South Africans or people from the South Pacific, but who knows!

Screaming Fans

Working downtown allows you to see a lot of weird things. Walking out of State Street today, I heard a lot of yelling but had no idea what was going on until someone told me that they were filming a Visa commercial outside. We got to see an eyeful of these people because they had to do about 20 takes to “get it right”. Apparently, it is a 90 second Patriots Visa commercial and it will be featuring fake BSO performers, Patriots Fans, Patriots Cheerleaders, and the End Zone Militia in it and Morgan Freeman is the narrator.  Figure it will be on the TV for the game against the Jets maybe…

Here is a sneak preview:

Odd things people look for…

Oddly enough, the most popular posts on here have to do with living in East Boston and my costume choice for last year, a German Beer Wench. People are interested in the weirdest things.

Either way, my costume last year looked like this in the catalog:

This is probably the best picture I got that night…no one was really taking pictures since we were all too busy playing darts and drinking:

Not sure what I am going to be this year…maybe Rosie the Riveter…or a ’50s Vamp. It all depends on if I can find a costume for the boy since we’ve never dressed up together but probably should one of these days to get it over with.

What are you going as?

House updating

Now, I knew when we bought this house that there would be a lot of time spent fixing things. But I didn’t really realize that it would take so much work. And it still isn’t done yet!! There is always something to do and something to buy.

The Office Before

The Office Inbetween

So this is our office. It went from being a boring light blue like the other rooms in the house into a nice light yellow squash. There is still some touching up to do but it is much nicer than before and has our desks set up just in time for school to start up again.

Bedroom After

Bedroom Before

The bedroom has been changed a lot, as well. Before it was a bland green color and the furniture they had in there was huge! We changed the paint to a “mellow mauve”, really a nice purple color and will be putting in a much smaller fan. This one feels like its going to take someone’s head off. That room is mostly done except for the fan, which is a small job that can be taken care of easily.

Now we just have to get moving on removing the asbestos covered hot oil heater in the basement. Its going to be easier than I thought, which is nice since we don’t have a ton of money to toss around on something like this.