Rememberance

The Holocaust Memorial in downtown Boston at night.

Mayor Kevin White

On Thursday, former Mayor Tom Menino died in Boston from cancer. Today, Faneuil Hall hosted a wake for him. Though a lot of people did not show up, it was a well attended event. Flowers were left everywhere, including on the statue of former mayor Kevin White.

Blurry as heck Snowy Owl

Found a snowy owl down the street! So excited. Next time, I’m taking binoculars. Thanks to the people who told me where to look.

Work in Progress

I decided that I was going to try and create a quilt last year…and I knew it would take me a while. I didn’t think it would be this slow, though! 🙂

Cutting took the most work…but once that was over, it was just a matter of piecing together the top and adding the border.

Now, I am just waiting for my batting to arrive so that I can put the top, batting, and backing together and get this done! Its going to go on the full bed but I think my next quilt will be smaller…this seems so much bigger than it actually is.

Mountain Week, Summit Photos

Four times up and cloudy skies each time. I actually had some clear skies once while almost to the top, but they went away fairly quickly.  Mount Washington spends about 90% of its year in some sort of cover: fog, clouds, snow, sleet, rain. It looks like this time will be no different with showers predicted for the morning of our hike.

Hopefully by the time this summer is over, I will have two more summit pictures to show. One will be a true summit (in my mind) because I’ll walk up myself. The other one will be aided by a car ride (really a truck ride) up the Auto Road. As my birthday present to myself, I have booked myself a weekend at the Mount Washington Observatory. Not only do I get to be geeky and learn about weather, I get to sleep overnight on the summit. How cool is that? I would rather the clear skies for that because I am definitely bringing both my cameras (just got the new one) to try and take pictures of the stars! 🙂

Mountain Week, The Mountain

Mount Washington stands at 6,288 feet (1,917 m) and is the highest point of both the White Mountain’s 4000-footers and of New Hampshire. It is known for having incredibly wild weather and holding the record for the highest wind gust measured at the Earth’s surface, 231 mph on April 12, 1934. Before Europeans arrived, it was known as Agiocochook.

First seen in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, it was first ascended in 1642 by Darby Field (for whom Mt. Field is named for). The Crawford Path was laid out in 1819, providing access to the summit. In 1861, a stagecoach road was placed for the summit (which was turned into the Mount Washington Auto Road) and in 1869 the Cog Railway was created.

One of the silliest things I’ve done in my life is to pick up a book entitled “Not Without Peril”; I did this on the first night of a 20 mile hike through the White Mountains and was fascinated by the ways that people have died on Mt. Washington. Some were quite simple, people wandering off trail or trying to summit in storms…other people have died in very unique ways, the ones who died by drowning caught my attention. Apparently, someone has also been murdered on the mountain in 2001.

I would strongly suggest not picking the book up before going on a hike through the Whites, but it is a good read overall.

Sandcastles in the Sky

We finally got to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a few years now…go to the sand sculpting contest at Revere Beach. It was interesting and then we walked up the beach for a bit with our feet in the water. Nice way to end the day.

The rest of the photos are here

The View from Eastie

Well, our little party was a success…only 1 car got lost and ended up by the airport. They were also the car that had a person slightly freak out when they went through the tunnels under the harbor and who asked every few minutes “Is that an airplane?!”

Too bad about the Patriots, though. The Jets suck.

BSO

Holiday Show with the Pops

Watching Keith Lockhart wander around in the audience, shaking hands and hugging old ladies is amusing. However, even more amusing is seeing him try to do a can can dance. Too bad I didn’t have my camera ready for that.

Good show, either way…however, I think next year I want to do something differently since we’ve been to the Pops the last two years and have been about 5 times in our last 10 years together.

Tomorrow, we host the Patriot’s game and hopefully Miami will lose so that we will continue on our season. If not, then we will be able to talk a lot more during the Superbowl game. Oddly enough, it sounds like we’ll have about 5 extra people coming over tomorrow so I guess we’ll actually have to do the cooking and whatnot.

thanks