Seeing stars

This tiring, tiring weekend I had a better time than I imagined I could.

On Friday S had a work barbeque to celebrate the house warming of two of his colleagues' beautiful new rental home. Their house is gorgeous - with brand new hard wood floors, a pretty, pretty kitchen and a big back yard with a full set of brand new playground equipment (you know, people in their 20's need a good swing set and a slide or two, to keep sane).

I was a bit worried I just wouldn't be up for the party, because it was the end of the week with a bunch of new faces and I had to drive in the worst commute known to New Englanders to get there. But it was a lot of fun! The hostesses made so much incredible food, including veggie burgers with fixings and hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken for the meat eaters. I got to meet a few of the absolutely beautiful (and hilarious) kiddies of S's workmates, talk substance abuse prevention for the second BBQ in a row with S's boss, and stand around a fire pit to warm my hands in the mid-June drizzle. I think it is so neat that S works with a group of young, fun scientists (sorry, you'd think after college I wouldn't be prejudiced, but I am...), that can manage not to talk about filtration for an entire evening just to enjoy each other's company like buddies.

On Saturday S and I got the extreme pleasure of hosting another of his work friends, this one from his first full time job in North Carolina, where his former company contracts with another group in Japan. His guy flew in from Tokyo and knew, I am sure, more about the Boston area then we did! He made up a list of the most famous sites to see from his guidebook, and we, like lost llamas, bumbled around using our GPS, trying to actually drive to them.

We checked out Boston Common, where I was actually a somewhat helpful tour guide, then the skywalk observatory at the Prudential Center, which is a bird's eye view of Boston and Cambridge from all sides, and though it's pricey, it's totally cool too. We went on an overcast day (It didn't get sunny until after the weekend passed, naturally) and we could see every building and green space clearly with no glare. I got such a kick out of being able to identify the most obvious places, like Fenway, Hardvard, MIT and the Charles River.

Next we got seafood and Ben & Jerry's for our visitor, because that's what we're all about in New England, and made our way, slowly and without any sense of direction, to Charlestown to visit the USS Constitution, the USS Cassin, and Bunker Hill.


S and I aboard Old Ironsides 

The hill area reminded me so much of Mount Vernon, it made me crave my camera. Of course, I hadn't brought it along with me, because Saturday was not our day, it was S's friend's day to have fun and to focus on what he wanted to do, see and remember. Me with a camera is always a tedious affair by which those who simply take pictures to document would be bored. M, S's friend, was a documenter; he never took more than 3 seconds to take just one picture of every site we saw. I'll have to go back another day, on my own time, and spend a few hours in Charlestown to show you what I mean. It's beautiful.

I am lucky to have met so many of S's work friends at this point. I am always so pleased that he's well liked by those he spends his days with, and that those who he's closest to are very kind people. We made M promise that the next time he's in Boston, we'll have to take our  first "duck tour" together - for us, after nearly 8 years of living in two cities (Boston and Baltimore) that boast such spectacles. I'm happy that when the time comes, one of S's work friends will be a friendly face to us both.