With a busy month of graduations ahead, Angelina getting her PhD from Boston University and Danny earning his BS from Purdue, we celebrate with this shot of Angelina and her house skeleton from my trip to Boston last October to celebrate our birthdays.
Tag / Boston University
Turning 24 (and 49)
We celebrate Angelina’s 24th (and my 49th) birthday with a photo from last May, when I was in Boston for her graduation from BU.
The Harvest
The final quarter of 2023 starts with my and Angelina’s birthday month, so we celebrate with a picture of her getting her Boston University diploma from last May.
Fall Is In The Air
We enter meteorological fall with a look back to last summer, where Angelina, Danny, and Michael posed for pictures following her graduation from Boston University.
Grads
As the school year comes to a close and we approach the end of the first half of 2023, we have a shot of Angelina wearing her cap and gown from her graduation from Boston University last May.
2023 Calendar
Now that Christmas has come and gone, we can unveil the cover to this year’s calendar gift, given annually to my mom and sister, and made up of pictures I have taken throughout the year. It is getting harder and harder to get enough pictures to flesh out the calendar, especially with Angelina spending more and more time in Boston and Michael being homebound for the most part. Danny, on the other hand, is an embarrassment of riches, between his different band activities. As in year’s past. the calendar was produced by the good folks at Shutterfly and we will unveil each month’s photo(s) on the first day of the month throughout 2023.
This year’s cover features Angelina, Danny, and Michael masked up outside of Agganis Arena on the BU campus from our visit this summer for Angelina’s graduation.
Travelling The 50 States – Michigan
Over my 48 years, I’ve done my fair share of travelling across these United States. I thought it would be an interesting experiment go look back at those trips to each of the 31 states I have visited (62% isn’t bad, is it?) and see if, and when, I may be returning. Working in alphabetical order, we continue today with the 26th state to be added to the Union: Michigan
State: Michigan
Joined the Union: 1837
Visits: 5
Despite its proximity, The Mitten has been an infrequent place for me to visit. Nearly all of my visits can be attributed to one of two things: baseball and ice skating. The one outlier came during the COVID lockdown, when travel options were limited.
My first trip to Michigan came in 1999 in an effort to see a game during the final season of Tiger Stadium. Along with my mom and my sister, we took the quick flight and then took a bus into Windsor for a pre-game meal, the first time any of us had left the country. After some slight difficulties getting back across the border, we headed to the game, where rookie Kip Wells made his major league debut for the White Sox and picked up the victory against the Tigers. We flew back home the following day.
Nearly a decade later, I returned to Detroit in 2010 for a Labor Day weekend clash between the White Sox and the Tigers. This time, I booked a hotel in Windsor, so I drove from Chicago to Canada, checking in to the hotel before catching a bus back across the border and to Comerica Park. The next afternoon, I drove back and took in the afternoon tilt before driving home with two Tiger victories under my belt.
Six years later, the synchronized skating championships were held in Kalamazoo. The family travelled north to see Angelina and her team compete.
In 2019, the family traveled to Ann Arbor, where BU was competing in a synchronized skating competition.
My most recent visit to Michigan came over Labor Day week in 2020. With everything locked down thanks to the corona virus, I was looking for a chance to get away and found a nice Airbnb in Holland close to Lake Michigan. Other than a couple of trips to the lakes (both Macatawa and Michigan) and a day spent in Saugatuck, I didn’t see much of the sites, as the rona was still very much a concern.
Will I return? I imagine so. Neither of the boys have been to Comerica yet, so a future visit is not out of the question.
Travelling The 50 States – Massachusetts
Over my 48 years, I’ve done my fair share of travelling across these United States. I thought it would be an interesting experiment go look back at those trips to each of the 31 states I have visited (62% isn’t bad, is it?) and see if, and when, I may be returning. Working in alphabetical order, we continue today with the 6th state to be added to the Union: Massachusetts
State: Massachusetts
Joined the Union: 1788
Visits: 6
The Bay State has been a more recent travel destination, with all six visits coming within the past five years. In what I’m sure is completely unrelated news, Angelina has been attending Boston University since 2018. This visit total would have been at least one trip larger, as I had plans to bring Michael in April of 2020, but the whole pandemic thing kind of put the kibosh on that.
My first visit to Massachusetts came in August of 2017, when I took a weekend trip to Boston to see the White Sox take on the Red Sox with Danny and Michael. We arrived in Boston on Saturday morning, heading straight from the airport to the Museum of Science, where we spent most of the morning. After a quick breakfast, we headed to our hotel, which was located in the medical district. We checked in and relaxed for a bit, before deciding on going for ice cream prior to heading to Fenway Park.
The game went about as you would expect. With James Shields on the mound, the White Sox did not put up much of a fight. We were sitting down the left field line, with a good view of the Green Monster. The seats, which may or may not date back to the stadium’s opening in 1912, were not really designed for people well over 6 feet tall, so there was a lot of uncomfortable shifting as our knees were smooshed into the seats in front of us.
The next morning, we went out in search of breakfast once again before gathering up our belongings and checking out of the hotel. Our first stop was just down the street, at Harvard Medical School, where we posed for pictures. From there, we headed to Skywalk Boston, their version of the observation deck at Sears Tower. It was only on the 50th floor, so the effect was a little different, but we did get to see the majority of the area. From there, over to the harbor to see the Boston Tea Party museum. The two-hour experience took us through the town meeting where the “attack” was planned, on to the boat to throw the tea in to the harbor, and then through a movie and other artifacts from one of the most famous events in American history. From there, it was off to the airport for the flight back home.
My next trip came the following year, when I returned to Boston in late October to celebrate birthdays with Angelina. I arrived on the Tuesday before our birthday, enjoying a brief tour of BU and a nice dinner at Fogo de Chao with Angelina before heading over to the House of Blues to see Garbage. The next day I took a tour of Fenway Park prior to Game Two of the World Series, before heading out to Cambridge to look around Harvard before heading home.
Just over a month later, I returned to Boston with my mom to see Angelina’s first synchro competition on Cape Cod and an ice show by the BU Figure Skating Club, seeing many of the same BU sites as my last visit.
In October of 2019, I once again travelled to Boston to see Angelina for our birthday dinner. Unbeknownst to me, she had suffered a concussion the day before, so she was busy for most of the day. After chilling in the hotel for a bit, I headed over to campus for a late lunch before waiting for her at a protest I happened across, trying to stop hate monger Ben Shapiro from coming to campus for a speech. After dinner, she headed back to her dorm to rest, and I left early the next morning to return home.
After a two-year hiatus thanks to COVID, my next trip to Boston came this past May for Angelina’s graduation. Danny, Michael, and I flew out on Friday and spent Saturday sightseeing around Boston with the family. Graduation was Sunday morning, which we topped off with a dinner out on Sunday night before heading home on Monday.
My most recent visit came earlier this month, as birthday celebrations were finally allowed to restart. I arrived late on Friday night, and then spent Saturday with Angelina and Emily, including a trip to the Museum of Science and a return visit to Fogo de Chao. Sunday morning. they picked me up from the hotel and drove me to the airport, bringing my latest visit to an end.
Will I return? I have to say yes.
Harvest Time
We enter Angelina’s (and my) birthday month with a shot of her performing with the BU synchro team at the Porter Classic in Ann Arbor back in December of 2019.
Mass Appeal
We wrap up the first half of 2020 by turning our gaze to the east and the state of Massachusetts. These pictures come from two different trips our east, the first with Danny and Michael in 2017 to see the White Sox battle the Red Sox at Fenway Park and the second in 2018 to see Angelina skate with Boston University. The first row has Angelina performing at the BU Skating Show followed by Danny in a small chair at the Boston Science Museum. The middle row sets the scene with a cool looking Boston Red Sox sign, followed by Angelina with her friends at the free skate after the show and, finally, Danny with his now famous Lendall Pitts card from the Boston Tea Party Museum. The bottom row has Angelina and her teammates competing in the Cape Cod Synchronized Skating Classic, Michael measuring himself at the Science Museum, and Danny and Michael in the stands at Fenway.