Illness Strikes, The Train, and Boston

My company has an annual user/customer conference, and, this year, I was honored to be attending in the role of trainer for some of the courses at the conference which was being held this year in Boston, Massachusetts (next year - San Diego!). Grandma was more than willing to step in and watch Zoie while I was gone...that is until she got the flu - AGAIN! And, boy, did it have her down! I've never heard someone cough so hard and so often. She also had a fever that, well, had her a little delirious the saturday before I left...and it really scared me. I knew that even though she wanted to, that there was no way I could leave with Mom being like that...she wouldn't have been able to get out of bed let alone chase after a toddler...so, Aunt Chris to the rescue! I called to see if there would be anyway she could come and stay while I was gone and it just so happened that it would work...they put her on the Amtrak to town and, due to a slight change in his schedule, Gary was on days for the week so the boys would be fine and they could come and get her on the weekend when I got back. Talk about a relief! So, Zoie and I picked Chris up at the train station around 7:15 a.m. - even though she was supposed to get in 3 hours earlier! We had a day to get her oriented with where to drive and all and then the next day, I took off for Boston!


Flying into Boston I had a great view of the harbor but, because I was there for work, I spent most of my time inside the hotel conference rooms and my room. I had to laugh though...the hotel was called the Westin Waterfront - but check the views we had out our hotel room...the air conditioners!! Glad I didn't have to foot the bill for that view!

Luckily, my company was also sponsoring a hospitality suite on a higher floor that had GREAT (albeit a tad overcast) views.



Being a person who works remotely, I don't SEE people I work with, so this was an excellent time for that! One evening, my company sponsored dinner at the Boston Museum of Science, which was really cool! We did also get out for dinner a couple of nights - great food there! Boston is definitely a town I'd like to get back to and see more of one day! A little trivia - you'll see a "Cheers" sign, but it's not the bar that was from the tv show...before the show I don't know if there really was a bar called Cheers...the one you see in the opening credits of the show is a place called the Bull & Finch.