I woke to the sounds of construction out back Thursday morning. The actual work had not begun, but the heavy trucks and machinery were lining up preparing for the days work. Promptly at 7:00am the sound of massive jackhammer mounted on the business end of a power shovel broke the morning calm. I was afraid that might happen. When they were building the house across the street that jack hammering went of got weeks before any real construction began. The part of Boston in which we live is called Roxbury, named for the fact that there is a layer aggregate rock that underlies the area. Known as Roxbury puddingstone, it is a conglomerate rock filled with smaller stones that makes it look like an old fashioned pudding with bits of fruit or raisins in it. (It also happens to b the state stone of Massachusetts.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury_Puddingstone.
Needless to say it underlies everything here and any time there is a construction project a fair amount of time and effort is spent removing it. The lot out back at one time had houses on it, and much of the earth that they are removing is old bring and building debris from when ever the house were demolished. I guess that they need to go even deeper than the foundation of those structures. The pounding of the jackhammer, shakes the whole house, it comes up through the foundation and rattles the walls. I can see the cups on the shelves shaking from the vibration, and the cats are entirely confused by it.
I am not sure how much the house or we can take if it continues for any length of time. It may be a long winter.
Thing are picking up at work. As the term progresses, more and more events are coming up on the calendar. Over the last couple weeks I have been hiring and training new staff to replace those I lost last year due to them graduating from the university. The hiring process has been going well, and I have half dozen good candidates. They came in handy this week. Wednesday night was the event of the term I think: a speech on foreign by Massachusetts senator and former presidential candidate John Kerry. It was a late addition to the calendar, the event having been confirmed only the week before. Sponsored by a department on campus, they were ill equipped and undermanned to handle an event of this scale. It was clear by 4:30 when students began filling the lobby for a 6pm event.
Events that are free with no tickets and open general public are my least favorite. There is no way to predict how many people might be attending. We have 600 seats in the theatre and this one was going to be one of those when 800 people want to get in. in addition to that, the presenting organization had a list of 180 ‘guests’ for whom they had reserved seats, but it was not clear how many of those people would actually attend the event. The crush in the lobby got worse, and the presenting departments ushers arrived and were dismissed by them because they were undergrads and not graduate students. They were sent away, and then recalled again when the presenters realized that they needed them. Just a little disorganized? Eventually with the help of the campus police and my three untrained house manager we were able to sort thing out and get the audience in the space in an orderly fashion.
The rest of the evening went well, the speech and lively was interesting and the audience reacted well. I was happy when it was over
The next night was a total yang to the previous nights yin. Intended as a variety show and fundraiser for a campus charity, the organizers missed the boat on marketing, and had a total attendance of 35. It was sad to see, especially since they had worked very hard on the evening and were well organized, other than marketing.
Friday was the Halloween Dance at the boy’s school. I raced home for work and his mother and I teamed up to get him into costume and makeup. The hardest part was getting all his hair under the cheap wig. The latex gills I had made a few days earlier looked pretty well and once he was in full makeup he was pretty frightening looking. We dropped him at the school about 7:15 and them went out to dinner, as is our tradition when he has a night out. We stopped in at our favorite watering hole Doyle’s Café, for burgers and beer. I dropped Mrs. back home picking up the boy at 10pm. he was exhausted but glowing at least as much as one can tell under all the make up. He won 3rd place in the costume contest, loosing out to a blue berry and a Telletubbie but was very pleased nonetheless. I don’t think that he really planned on winning anything. He said that the best part was that no one recognized him at first. That is a sign of a successful Halloween costume. We will make a few adjustments before suiting him up to go out on Halloween night.
A Wraith in the making. 
The finished product
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