In Boston we
stayed with Jane, Tom, and Jaeda. Instead of seeing all the cool sights
Boston has to offer, we mostly ran errands and relaxed a little. They
were nice enough to let us use their cars, and that was very helpful. It
was quite hot when we arrived, and I don’t think we had a day below 80
degrees all week. The first full day in the area, we did a Death By Pull
Up workout (9.5 rounds for me), and then did some random errands. I got
Skype set up on the 128MB WinXP machine, which took a while. Then
Danielle took full advantage, calling what felt like every travel clinic
in the region to sche’dule our last twinrx shot (that’s for hepatitis A
and B). She eventually found Passport
Health who could fit us in the
following day. I did some other phone errands. We made copies of our
important documents. We went grocery shopping, and finally made gazpacho
for dinner.
The next day
we went and got our shot, which was pretty painless (except for the
cost). We stopped by a jeweler on the same street to get some
replacement wedding rings, and then went to a recommended barbecue joint
to celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary. We both ordered ribs (silly
reference coming up; you might want to skip to the next line) because we
sho’ were hungry. They were tasty, and we left totally stuffed. In the
afternoon my parents came up, and we went out for a big family dinner at
night.
Then, having pondered the pay phone problem, the next day I went
downtown to meet somebody to buy his laptop. Everybody knows laptops are
better than cell phones, right? I hope it’ll be at least good enough,
and that the laptop will pay for itself by cutting down on Internet cafe
costs. I got an Asus Eee 4G, with 1GB of RAM. It’s a great toy, and I’ve
spent quite a bit of time playing with it. It now runs Ubuntu, and has
Nethack installed. In the afternoon we drove
Jane and Tom to the airport, and then we relaxed (read: played on the
computer) at home.
On Saturday
we drove to Gloucester to visit Danielle’s friend Casey. She owns a
kayak and snorkel place, so we were invited to join a 4-hour guided tour
where we got to kayak and snorkel. It was very cool to snorkel on the
east coast, where there are different things to see than near Santa
Barbara. Also, the water was clear. The main things we saw were several
kinds of crabs and lobster. We also saw a flounder and a few small fish.
All the crustaceans were a lot bigger than what we see at home, and it
was cool to see crabs eat, fight, and run away in their natural habitat.
Afterwards we hung out for a while before heading home. At home I
stubbornly did a quick workout: 10 rounds of carry a stump 20 paces, and
jump over it 10 times. 8:00.
Sunday
morning Danielle worked out before we drove down to the campground where
my parents were staying, and Jaeda was spending the weekend. We had a
good time teaching Jaeda how to ride a bicycle. She is getting pretty
competent at it! We also went to the pool, and got the passport photos
we took of ourselves printed. We’ll see if various governments think
they’re worthy of their visas.
