AAMC meeting in Boston

I was at the AAMC meeting in Boston at the beginning of November.  There were 22 people went from SLU, quite a crowd of us.  I took a few pictures when I was walking to the conference center on my first day, which was the best day weather-wise while I was there.  Most of the pictures are of random churches, there are a lot of them in Boston

Random door....

One of the Plenary sessions was by Siddhartha Mukherjee, he wrote a great book about cancer that I read a while ago

I stayed at the Revere Hotel, this statue was in the foyer

View from Angela's hotel window.  She had a much better view than I did!!!!

Photos from my last day's wanderings.  Was much colder than the first day I was there

My hotel was right by Boston Common.  These are some of the houses around that area.

George Washington

Picture to rival my MBG ones!!!!

Boston Public Library

I went to the AAMC meeting in Boston last week.  I had only been to Boston once before and it was in 1993 when I was a post-doc at Wash U.  I went for a weekend and it rained the whole time, it was completely miserable.  I had not ever really wanted to go back there, but now I am glad that I did, because I absolutely loved it.  I didn't have much time to look around as we spent so much time at the meeting, but I did get chance to look at some of the cool old buildings.  The meeting opened on Friday night with a reception at the Boston Public Library.

There were 4500 people at the meeting.  I don't think they were all at the library, but there were a lot.  This is the entrance

Courtyard at night

Reading room (not sure how I got a picture of it without a bunch of people sitting around eating!!)

I went back on my last day to have a look around in the daytime.  This is the detail on the ceiling on the ground floor

Courtyard in the daylight

Light on the staircase

Reading room in the daytime.  I'd be there all the time if I lived in Boston

Lions on the staircase.  The foyer reminds me of The Fox in St Louis

Fountain in the courtyard

October trip to MBG

Ben and I met Arline at the botanical gardens.  It was really busy, because it was their "Trick or Treat" day.  It was fun to see all the kids in their Halloween costumes and we relived old times when the kids were little and we did the event ourselves.  We found these pumpkin piles near the Children's Garden

I took a picture of this last month, it acquired a skeleton since then!!!

We walked through the Japanese Garden we thought the trees might be changing colour, but it was still a bit too early, most of them were still pretty green

Although the trees were still green, it was apparently cold enough for Arline and Ben to complain!!!!

Our monthly tree is still green-not Fall yet!!!!

A little bit of colour is forming.....

September trip to MBG

It was 95 last Sunday, so we went to MBG when it opened. Even so, it was pretty warm by the time we left.  It was still a nice day though and we saw some interesting things that we may not have seen before (but that might be hard to believe!!)
We went in the Climatron.  We hadn't been in there since they took all the glass down.  Surprisingly, it doesn't look like they had kept any of it

Found this pumpkin statue over by the Kemper Center.  They must be getting ready for the Halloween event

Root system of Arline's tree.  We went over to the Japanese garden to feed the coy because Arline had some quarters and Maggie loves to feed them

The water lilies are at their best at this time of year

The lantana have been crazy everywhere this year.  These have grown so much, you can hardly see the pond behind them!!!

Flowers of the Climatron

The colors of Fall

There aren't many plants in bloom right now.  The garden is definitely going into /Fall mode, but some are still going strong.  The asters at the bottom of the rain garden have bloomed again, I should have staked them up so they would have looked better!!!!

I took this picture of the Caduceus statue on campus.  They planted a few tiny plants at the beginning of the growing season and they have gone crazy.  I'm beginning to wonder where the radioactive waste is going.......

I saw these mushrooms last week in a lawn down the street from us.  I thought they looked rather nice

School days........

The kids are doing well in school this year.  I have done Maggie's IEP meeting and Ben's is coming up soon.  Ben is doing amazingly well at getting up at 5am to get to SouthTech.  They have started wearing their scrubs every day now.  Sam took this photo on the first day he wore them.

Maggie's grade went to Camp Lakewood for 3 days.  The school posted some pics of the kids doing their team building activities.  I copied all the ones with Maggie in them