We'll start out with 4th of July weekend. The last few years I've had a pretty good group of people up to Bristol for 4th of July (usually around 20-22 people). I've loved it because it's always been pretty hard to coordinate getting people to the lake, so it was awesome to have so many people show interest and actually show up! This year was more back to the olden days of many invites, few attendees. I'll never understand why it is so hard to get people to come to someplace so awesome, but oh well. It WAS kinda nice having a more relaxing/chill weekend since there were only 6 of us out there. A lot easier to coordinate a group that size :-)
MC and I drove up after work on Thursday so we could fully take advantage of the long weekend. Friday MC and mom got up and went for a 7 mile run (MC has to get her long runs in on the weekend for her training) and dad and I hit the lake for a wakeboarding set. The water was super glassy and it is always fun to steal a morning run before anyone is out on the lake. I was also pretty stoked because I had been working on a wake-to-wake backside 180 (Here's a reference video for you non-wakeboarding types), and I finally landed one! Since it was just Dad and me out there, I have no documentation, but I promise it happened ;-) Then we met up with the girls back at home and got some things organized and hung out until Giuliana and Juliana (friend's of MC from Miami) flew in then we headed out to the lake. Mostly just relaxed and took it easy and got settled until Brandon and Bopper showed up. Since most people had friday off, it was already starting to get pretty crowded so we just enjoying the relaxing combo of beer and the lake! (no we didn't drink the lake. Drink the beer, hang out at the lake) Later in the evening I went to go see our neighbors to see if Brad wanted to join us for a morning boarding session. Chatted with them for a bit, then when I was walking through the woods to get back to my house, I slipped and landed directly on my left ankle, promptly pulling a Roper and spraining it nicely.
 |  |
Dad | Giuliana |
MC | Bopper |
 |  |
Sunday was mostly organizing, cleaning up, and travel. Nothing really too fun an exciting, but I hope all guests had a blast like I did! As busy as things have been, a chill weekend away is always welcome. Especially when it is the beginning of a crazy travel week for me. So we got back into Tallahassee later in the evening and I was here about 7 hours before I needed to be at the airport to fly out to Boston. Not much of a "layover" haha. I was heading up there to get started on some research with a professor who will be starting at FSU in the fall. He is a Biologist, so it will be really interesting and fun to work on some of the projects he has in mind. Basically we are looking at chromatin and evaluating the effect of the DNA sequence on nucleosome positioning (among some other epigenetic features). We're also looking at the effect of these various attributes on gene expression as well as trying to devise ways to evaluate the effects of mutations on non-coding sections of DNA. It is looking to be some pretty interesting work! Jonathan picked me up from the airport and we went straight to the office to get started! His boss was not in so we got to work in his office. Can't complain about the view!
Had a productive day, then met up with some family he had in town for dinner. In total there were 13 people (Jonathan, his wife, his twin daughters, his 9 week old son, his older brother's family (the brother, wife, son and daughter), his younger brother and wife and me) so it was a helluva time! Everyone was a lot of fun and the food was awesome as well. The younger brother, Christopher, volunteered to take me to my hotel while Jonathan wrangled the majority of the group off to home. Talk about a long day! I played around on the computer then had NO trouble passing out.
The next day I walked about 6 blocks to the subway and headed up to North Station. Weather was a little rainy as I waited to meet up with Jonathan so we could walk a few more blocks over to his office. Figured I would document a little as I waited.
Got up and headed to the office early the next day to try to get things wrapped up a little earlier so mom and I could hang out. Mom hit the exercise room at the hotel then got to do some shopping while I was getting things together. I had a pretty productive day and we actually wrapped up about everything that we really needed to get done. I have TONS to do, which was pretty much my goal. I learned a lot and I have a feeling that trend is going to continue throughout all this research. I'm just stoked to have some research that I am actually really interested in. Jonathan and I are both really motivated to start churning out some papers on this work so I think it is going to be a really productive second half of the year for me. Yay! I met up with mom and we headed down to the waterfront to hang out a little bit before our Tall Ships tour. Ate at a little place right outside the aquarium and perused some souvenirs before heading over to the dock to board our ship. I didn't bring a camera to Boston because I didn't think there would be much to take pictures of, but I wish I had because the low light of a cloudy day doesn't jibe well with a cell phone camera. Oh well, you can still get the gist of what we were seeing. Saw lots of really cool ships, and even got to see the Constitution from the water. Here's a smattering of the ones that turned out decently.
 |  |
 |  |
 |  |
Since I had pretty much wrapped up the work I needed to do with Jonathan the day before, mom and I had the morning to mosey around and see a little of the city and do some shopping. Nothing fancy, but it was fun hanging out.
Friday I picked MC up from work and we headed straight to the airport to fly up to Bristol. The main reason for the trip was a really fun 8k race that goes on in Kingsport (like 20 mins from Bristol) every year. It is a night race (starts at 9:58 PM) and is through neighborhoods with tons of people cheering you on. So MC and I got in and just took it easy at home before hitting the sack.
I was still having some trouble with my ankle that I had sprained the previous weekend, but I was going to do a short test run in the morning to see how it held up. Unfortunately, it was bothering me a decent amount just running to the end of the driveway so 5 miles was out of the question :-( It was the first year that mom and I had registered as a mother-son team, but I guess we'll have to wait to completely own people until next year ;-) Mom and MC were still fit so I just planned on joining Dad in the cheer squad. We ran some errands during the day and decided to let MC experience her first horseshow. Mosley was riding Lauren's horse, Blinkie, in the show and mom had never seen her show him so we thought that would be a cool experience. On my second try I got a pretty cool picture, with my cell phone no less!!
Sunday we got a morning wakeboarding session in, even if the weather was looking a little rainy. I was stoked that I landed another wake-to-wake backside 180, then landed one with a grab! Wakeboarding probably isn't the best rehab for my ankle, but who knows when I'll be back in Bristol so I gotta get riding in while I can! Dad got in a little set and MC decided to sit this one out since she was having some aches and pains from the race the night before. We had a nice lunch out on the porch then got things together so we could head to the airport. It was weird still being in Bristol at 3pm on Sunday! The airport was jammed and apparently hadn't heard of A/C so the security line was a pain. Once we got through that we got to Atlanta ok and had a 1.5 hour layover, which is about perfect since we had time to grab food and make it to the gate plenty early but not so long you feel like you are in the airport forever. We boarded and seemed to be doing ok time-wise, but then we stopped and the pilot informed us that we were 22 in line for take-off. Oh Atlanta how I loathe you!!!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment