This is a small joke I left for a coworker. We found a chip that had obviously blown up and suspect she was the cause. It came out rather well I think!
And it was April Fools day recently so I might have played a prank
Or two
It is Boston, so managed a little of the Freedom Trail, or at least a little trip up 294 steps on it with the uncles...
The main event of the last little bit is dad retiring after 36 years with the same company. We were all invited to a luncheon put on by work. This is the real reason the uncles came. One of them talked the restaurant into making the celebration a bit more public than dad was expecting.
When he got home from work, he arrived at "the finish line". Pretty impressive I must say.
A close up
Not to be outdone, Bryce arranged a small surprise of his own for the next morning.
Along with a memorable final departure
Why retiring now? It is, in fact, a little early. There must be a good reason, right? Correct
No post would be complete without a little Emmett update. He continues to amaze us all. He just does not stop! The other night we were watching (at his request) "sullie, mike wazowski, baby" - otherwise known as Monsters, Inc. I looked over and had to catch a picture of Katy and him. If you've been wondering where Emmett gets his poses from, this should help answer the question:
Random
Speaking of Emmett, I've gotten a couple funny videos of him lately. First, him singing along in church a couple weeks ago:
What's up?
The other occurrence of note might be the amount of snow we've gotten. One blizzard in particular let quite the impact.
Thank goodness for a snowblower and thank goodness it snowed exactly enough for the snow blower to handle it!
Feel sorry for whoever had to clean off the train platforms!
The road I worked on was down to a single lane.
I discovered this little gem at Harvard. And you thought it was just a story!
It's been nice to catch up with the family on this side of the country. For example, Jamie will sometimes drive over and visit. Never a dull moment...
Tight fit, but he does manage to bring Tyson some times, too.
The other thing I spent a lot of time doing was heading down to NY to help clean up after Hurricane Sandy. I wasn't able to make it the first couple of weeks, but that meant things were well organized by the time I got there. I wasn't the best at taking pictures... It's hard to describe the sensation you have that first time as you see what happened. Honestly, there is not a lot of external damage so it slowly dawns on you as you start going in houses to clean up. The entire island flooded! Every house had damage. That's overwhelming if you think about it!
I took this picture to try and capture the water line - it came up to the top of the garage door here.
There weren't too many signs like this, but it conveys some of the emotion people were feeling.
I guess the most obvious sign at first was the cars - they were everywhere. I guess because of insurance they couldn't move them until they'd been processed so they were all over the sides of the roads and at all sorts of weird, random positions and angles - wherever they'd managed to float to. Burned out cars like this weren't very common, but again helps convey the atmosphere.
Knowing you were helping people was pretty rewarding, but it was also great to meet great people from all over. One weekend I got teamed up with this group from Virginia. They were pretty well organized, were shuttled back and forth each day on school buses, allowed us to sleep over in the chapel with their group, and the local members provided us a belated Thanksgiving dinner and program. Again, just great people everywhere you turned!
Jobs were as varied as the houses. Sometimes you were ripping everything off the floor and walls. Sometimes you were disposing of belongings that got soaked. A big problem was the sand - the closer you got to the beach, the more it had piled up on people's yards. At this house we helped remove it. It doesn't look like much, but at the end of a day, it was a lot of work. This homeowner was awesome. Typically you had 3 assignments and he was the third. He knew we were coming but didn't know when. When we got there, he'd already started but hadn't made much headway. When we finally got there, he greeted us all, cracked a couple jokes, then took off his coat and joined us. To be that resilient in spite of what had happened was pretty impressive.
It turned out this was his mother's house. His was actually right on the beach and sand was the least of his problems...
Obviously, most of the houses on the beach were total losses. Did I mention how impressed I was by him? He'd lost his own house and yet he was still cracking jokes and making us feel like a million bucks.
We had one lady tell us she woke up in the night to the sound of water pouring into her basement. She went to inspect thinking a pipe had broken in the washroom. Just as she went in the room, a window broke and the room started to flood. The water pressure slammed the door shut and then blocked the door so she couldn't get out. She said she almost drowned but was saved because the washer got picked up and smashed into the door, breaking it. As if that weren't enough fun for one evening, because the power was out, they had candles in the bedroom. The candles caught the bed linens on fire and burned up the bedroom. Each weekend I'd leave with just the profoundest respect for these people.
Many of the volunteers drove in for the day/weekend. The work was organized and coordinated through the New York South Mission and we just went where they sent us. Because of their schedules and because there was no power in the Rockaways, we generally wrapped up at 3:30 and headed back to the command post to return tools and load up and head out. The impressive thing would be to look around as you were walking back and just see an army of MHH yellow vests coming out of all the side streets and heading back as well.
It made for long days - generally we would leave Boston around 5 am and return around 9 pm. We'd be gong across the bridge just as the sun was setting. It meant you prayed like crazy the driver stayed awake, but did make for some good pictures!
I'm sure everyone has seen this by now, but this is the video that really motivated many in Boston including myself to do all that I could to help out.
And we were just there for the weekends. The truly inspirational ones were the missionaries serving in the area. They did this every day of the week for almost 2 months! As a nice followup, then, I thought I'd share this. The Rockaways host an annual St Patricks Day parade. This year was no different - you can't stop a tradition just for that. In acknowledgement of all the mission had done to help the people in the Rockaways recover, they invited the missionaries to march in the parade. The mission blog has a video of it. With the context of what I've shared, maybe it won't seem so strange to you that a bunch of New Yorkers are genuinely cheering and waving as the missionaries march past.
How do I transition back to what I did before all that happened now? I'll just keep this quick. Prior to this, I went to an amazing jack-o-lantern display. Yikes!
I got called as an early morning seminary teacher - this is my main excuse for falling off the face of the earth since September. I did manage one last diversion before it all started - a trip into the North End for the St Anthony's feast. I love that part of town!
Oh yeah, and helped out in the garden. This picture is from after the "summer slump" when the weeds take over because everyone is gone on vacation. The pile is actually in the background and was about 5 feet high!
Ok, so you are now caught up with what I've been doing! I'll be impressed if anyone actually made it al lthe way to the end!
