Tag Archives: WPI

Baby’s first apartment

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We moved Lex into his first ever apartment this weekend. He’s living off-campus this year, with two of the guys from his campus apartment last year. They seem like a good group. One of his roommates who lives an hour away was there as well, with his family for a bit, unpacking and moving in. We had a nice chat. The boys have a nice apartment a few blocks from school. Second floor, three bedroom, classic old house with wood paneling, gypsum lath and plaster walls, and high ceilings. Lex has the smallest of the three rooms, but he seems fine with it. We bought him a new dresser, desk, mattress (he has a hand-me-down bedframe from a roommate who upgraded to a bigger bed), and window AC. The tenant before him left a pile of Christmas lights on the floor, so E and I put them up around the window for a little whimsy.

A cute little house…
… on a cute little street.
Building a dresser. They started it, but Eve finished it and built all the drawers.
Building a desk.
Photos by Mema
Goats and music
Cozy room with little sister resting on the bed.
Good night.

Alan and Lex went out to buy an AC and some groceries while E and I finished building the furniture and unpacking his bags. We ordered pizza for dinner and finally said goodbye around 10pm.

I almost forgot to take a family photo! Fortunately I remembered, just as we were saying our goodbyes. I was sad to leave my baby, alone at night in that apartment by himself, but he was ready to settle in and start making it a home for the next year or two.

The next day he had his drumline audition. He’ll be playing Bass 2 again this year. He was hoping for snare, but he said bass is fun too and he’s just happy to be back on the field with his band friends. <3

A few little BIG things

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Things are busy around here these days.

My tiny baby boy entered a new decade last week! Years ago my grandpa made a comment about how we take so many more pictures of babies than of older people. That came back to me just now as I realized I only took two pictures of Lex on his 20th birthday, but probably a hundred on the actual day of his birth!

The pile was small, but high quality..
The photos weren’t even good photos. Poor kid. I’ll have to do better on the 21st!

The weekend before, E and her friends went to Senior Prom. They took photos at the Powerhouse, had dinner at Panera, survived torrential rain to get there, then danced their hearts out at the Marriott.

We also attended the FRC wrap party on a recent weekend. E and her teammates designed trophies for the coaches and we 3D printed them. We had fun at the party and everyone enjoyed the awards.

G and E presenting the awards.
The gold is their robot design. :)

I’m currently home alone, getting a tiny taste of the upcoming year. Lex and E drove to Worcester together to meet with Lex’s roommates and landlord for next year. They planned the trip, including extra time for whimsey, and seem to be having a great trip. They’ll be home soon. E sent me some photos while Lex and his roomies made plans. I can’t wait for the full update when they get home!

The living room
His bedroom. Now to figure how to furnish it!

R spent the day sleeping, waking up at 4pm when I woke him!, then headed out to spend the evening with friends. I’ve been alone with the cat and dog for company.

We are skewing towards calm around here, but the chaos still rears up… usually around midnight! And I love it. <3

A Sunday of ups and downs

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Last Sunday I took R down to MA to catch his bus back to college. He had a very busy spring break, so it was nice to have some time to catch up with him before he left for school again. We had a good trip down, despite the on again, off again rain.

After dropping him off, I made a spur of the moment decision to zip over to Worcester to watch Lex march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. It was a total spontaneous trip and I loved it! The weather was perfect, the crowds were varied in all ways, and suitably drunk for noon on a Sunday. LOL. The WPI marching band was early in the parade, but I parked near the end, so I walked along with the band as they finished up the route. There was another band mom there too (probably more than one), and she was following the band the whole way. We joked that we are “with the band” and therefore must be cool. 😂

This is a playlist with five videos. Not the best quality, but fun anyway. Dad — watch until the end! I took a video just for you! :)

I met up with Lex at the end and we got bagels for lunch. He said several band members didn’t make it to the parade, the bus never came, and he had to play two drum parts, but otherwise he had fun. Alan had just brought him back to WPI on Saturday, so it hadn’t been that long, but it was still nice to see him. 💗 I also enjoyed the walk back along the parade route. The energy was high and it was fun to be part of it.

On the drive home, things took a turn for the worse. I was routing to a charging station, cruising along, then suddenly started getting an error message saying “Vehicle may not restart. Service is required.” Umm… ok. I kept on to the charging station. When I got there, I plugged in, the car said “charging” for a second, then “stopped charging.” Threw a few more random error codes. I unplugged/replugged a few times, but no change. So I decided to move to a different plug, but when I tried to put the car in drive, it didn’t work. Just threw a bunch of more errors. So now it won’t charge, won’t drive, and is spewing error messages across the screen. I then spent the next few hours researching error codes, calling Tesla, calling my insurance company, calling Eve, calling Alan, and calling a tow company. Not necessarily in that order. In this time the battery died completely, with the window down, and the wind whipped ahead of an impending storm.

Eventually, about four hours later, the tow truck came and towed the car to the nearest Tesla service station. Alan picked up Eve and they came down to pick me up. Alan thought maybe we could replace the 12V battery and get the car going again, so we went to the service station. He and Eve braved the winds to do some diagnostics, then we went to WalMart (the only place open at that hour) to buy a battery and some tools. Back at the dealership we got the old battery out, the new battery in, and the car started. Yay! Lights on, screen on, windows up… but still no drive. Each time we tried to put it in drive, we got all the same slew of error messages. So we gave up and Alan brought us home, after a quick stop to recharge our bellies and his car. We drove home in heavy wind and think fog. It was a late night for us, especially him!

The Tesla service center was able to diagnosis it today. I was hoping it was a big battery issue, because I have another year left on that warranty. But, alas, it was not. It’s a “PTC heater failure.” Apparently that’s an important thing and part of the “high voltage” circuit thing and no longer under warranty. 😭

Tomorrow, E and I are taking the day off from work/school and going back to MA to pick up the car. Maybe we’ll swing by and see Lex again. LOL.

Quick trip to WPI

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We met Rosy at WPI this weekend to take in a pep band concert (with a little football on the side)! It was a great fall day for a day trip. The sun was shining, the leaves were falling, and the WPI Engineers won! We took Lex out to dinner afterwards (Olive Garden, of course), then had to say goodbye again. :( Good thing we’ll see him again in a few weeks for Thanksgiving!

This is a playlist, so just click play and let it run through all six videos.

Back to WPI

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We brought Lex back to WPI today. The summer went by waaayyy too fast! He went back a week early again this year for band camp. This year he’s living in a campus apartment with six other guys. He’s in a friend group that decided to get two adjoining (or at least near by) campus apartments. He’s sharing a room with the same roommate he had last year. They both got along well. They are also both in band so they will be the only two in the apartment this week.

The apartment is nice, but the bedrooms are TINY. I was reminiscing about my freshman dorm and it was probably twice the size of his room!

  • His dorm last year was that building in the background. His room was the window in the peak. :)
  • In this picture you can see his current window (and him in it) and last year’s window. :)
  • The path from the car to his room felt like a Donkey King game. Glad no one was throwing barrels at us!
  • The living room. (we were all pretty hot and sweaty by this point!)
  • The other side of the living room. That TV looked a lot bigger in last year’s room.
  • The kitchen / dining room.
  • His bedroom.
  • They have bunk beds! They aren’t allowed to unloft them, which is fine because there’s no available floor space anyway. I think this will be hard for Lex this year.
  • Looking out the front door of their apartment.
  • Campus is just across the street.

Once again he had drumline auditions so we couldn’t spend the day with him. We did have time to get him moved in and somewhat unpacked before he had to go. Plus a few photos, of course!

I texted him tonight and he said the audition went well. He’ll be playing Bass 2 in pep band this year. He again was hoping for snare, but seems happy with bass. I’m looking forward to seeing him perform, and just seeing him again! :)

WPI BBALL

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I took Eve and Simon on a road trip yesterday down to WPI to watch a women’s basketball game. More accurately, E & S agreed to come with me to WPI to watch a pep band concert with a side of basketball. LOL. We have lots of fun. We took Lex out to lunch before the game, then took a little campus tour with him afterwards. The game was great, both teams played hard and kept the score very close throughout the whole game. WPI ended up losing in the last few seconds. The band played loud and often. I loved it!

  • Lunch at the OG (or course!)
  • Krazy Kids
  • Hanging with Gompei
  • The goat
  • <3
  • The church bells rang at 4pm and Lex pointed out that the “bells” are really just giant speakers in the bell tower. LOL.
Here’s a playlist with seven videos. Check your sound volume, click the play button, and settle in for the show!

Oh Christmas Tree

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Today was a pretty perfect, festive, holi-day. Alan came down to visit and we went to get the Christmas tree. Lex is still at school and River was at an event, so it was just me, Eve, and Alan this year. We found the perfect tree in a matter of minutes! I’m not sure if we got really lucky, or if just few voices make for faster decisions, or what. But whatever it was, the tree is lovely and we were efficient.

  • Small group this year, but having fun nonetheless!
  • Eve was very helpful this year.
  • The annual “Alan carrying the tree” photo. :)
  • Teamwork!

When we got home we turned on a livestream of the WPI basketball game Lex was performing at. Lex was on snare drum and easy to spot in the crowd. The basketball game was a good one (WPI won!) and went quickly, like most basketball games do. After the halftime show, which is just the band playing, no marching, we brought the tree in and set it up.

Three videos in a playlist. Hit play once and let it run through all three.

Eve and River went off to play DnD with their friends, Alan headed home, and I went to have dinner with a good friend. It was her birthday yesterday so we got carrot cake for dessert. Yum!

When the kids got home, Eve and I put up the star and the Christmas lights. We also each put up one ornament. We decided to do the rest tomorrow. There is a storm warning for tomorrow, so it will be the perfect day to cozy up at home and decorate the Christmas tree. I’m excited for it already.

  • Eve’s favorite birds. They always have a special place on the tree.
  • I made ornaments for my book club this year!

Next weekend Lex will come home and my house will be full again. <3

All the feels

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We had a busy week. Lex was home between A Term and B Term. He successfully finished his first quarter of college! He ended it with two A’s and a B. The B was in Calc III, a class that the FB Parents groups says is the most “NRed” class at WPI. “NR” means “not recorded” and is an option if your grade is too low and you don’t want it to count. I’m not sure if the credit counts or not, but Lex was pretty pleased with his B in that class.

He came home last Friday night and, at the urging of high school pep band friends, he went to the homecoming football game and played with the pep band. River went to pep band that night too and they all had a great time!

On Sunday we had our usual family chat with Eve, but this time all of us were in one place, sharing one screen, EXCEPT Eve who was on the other side of the ocean. It quickly devolved into tears. I’m not sure if it’s because we were together or not, but she was pretty miserable. She’s had a cold for awhile and medicine is weirdly limited there. They don’t have the standard go-tos, like DayQuil and Sudafed. She said even Tylenol requires a prescription. So weird. Her host family tells her she needs to eat more healthy (true) and bought her some decongestant that takes 6-12hrs to kick in. Weird. As I’m typing this I realize I should research why Sweden is so anti-OTC meds. I don’t remember that from almost 30 years ago! Super weird!! 😮 So she cried through that whole conversations. Everything is awful, everyone is terrible, she hates it all, and misses everything at home. Sigh.

Lex came to visit me at the library on Monday. I gave him a tour of the library that he hasn’t seen since he was four years old. No surprise, he didn’t remember the place! :) I got to show him off to my co-workers, then we got pizza at the pizza place next door and enjoyed each other’s company.

The week went on. My job is so low-key that I am quite often bored with *nothing* to do. I have cleared up both of my email inboxes. I went from 2K+ in my personal account and 8k+ in my school account (still active because I’m still doing the website work) down to 15 and 2 respectively. I didn’t read all the emails (of course!) but I scanned the subject lines and initial text as I deleted them. When I got to the March 2020 emails in my school account I noticed my heart rate increased and my breathing got shallower and faster. I literally had to close my email and step away from my computer for awhile. I didn’t come go back to the email until the next day. It was such a strange experience as all the memories from the school closure came flooding back.

On Thursday the boys had some friends over. Simon, Jonah, and Liv. They hung out, watched YouTube, laughed, ate, etc. All the things teens do and they were all happy to have Lex back for a few days. Part way through the evening I got a text from Eve saying it was hard to be away when all of her friends are hanging out at her house. True, of course, but I was surprised she knew. She said they were posting quotes and picture on Discord. I had to politely ask my house full of teens to stop posting on Discord for the evening. Eve and I continued to have a long, downer conversation via text, while I simultaneously texted with Joyce about her exchange student experience. Eve hasn’t directly asked to come home, but she was hinting at it pretty strongly. Sigh.

Eve texted me later that night and said her bestie, Simon, had sent her a bunch of love via text and memes. 💗

Follow-up conversations with family and friends have shown me that Eve is pretty positive when texting with everyone else. She’s saving the tears for me. Good, I guess.

Last night we (me and the boys) joined Rosy and two of friends at a local pub for dinner. The service was slow and the music was loud (but good!), and we all had fun.

We had another family chat today (since I’ll be busy tomorrow) and it was once again all of us here and Eve there. I tried having us all join from our own devices around the house, but apparently my broadband can’t support three independent video conference streams very well, so the conversation was choppy. We ended up consolidating on the couch with my computer. Eve said she isn’t bothered by our being together, but she definitely got more emotional after we gathered on one computer. We had a good chat though and I managed to end it on a high note with everyone happy and smiling. :)

Lex decided to go back to WPI today instead of tomorrow so that he has a day to settle in. So weird that WPI is now “home” and he needs that day to settle in there instead of here. It makes sense, but still weird. He packed this morning, after our chat with Eve, and we once again played the “waiting for the dryer” game. A perennial favorite (ha!) in this house. By the time the laundry *finally* got done, Lex was overcome with a wave of emotion. He was tired today and doesn’t generally do well with transition, but when it was time to get in the car he started crying and worrying and all the emotion came out. Way more then when we dropped him off in August! He said he was too tired, he didn’t want to back to dining hall food, packing was too hard, etc. We talked about how hard it is for vacation to end and the stressors of getting back to the “real world.” It’s so surreal to me that the “real world” is no longer here with me. Alan picked him up last week and brought him back to WPI today. It gave them some good quality time. Alan texted me hours later saying he just dropped off a happy boy at college. Whew! I sat down on the couch to read and promptly fell asleep for an hour. I think I was emotionally drained.

Rosy and her friends are in town for a lovely New England weekend. Unfortunately the universe said NO, and it has been raining the entire time. They spent the day exploring in the rain, then went back to their Airbnb for the evening. I was going to join them, but when I woke up from my nap I could not motivate myself. We will be spending all day tomorrow at King Arthur Flour doing a cake baking/decorating class, and then my book group will come over tomorrow afternoon to meet Rosy’s friends and help us eat four cakes! This afternoon I spent a weird amount of time sitting at my table, unable to get up and go hang out with her and friends, thinking about my messy house, thinking about socializing, thinking about kids, etc. I was just stuck. So I did the lame thing and bailed on socializing. (Sorry, Rosy!) Then I hand washed some dishes, folded the laundry, and swept the floor (my roomba is broken and the floor was long overdue!). Then decided to write a blog post. :) Above the laptop screen right now I see my couches that need vacuuming tonight (stupid pets) and a pile of TLC goodies for Eve that I need to ship as soon as I can find a box for them. I think I’m going to vacuum the couches, watch some TV, and crash.

I’m excited for cake baking tomorrow, and spending time with Rosy, her friends, and my book group. Then settling back into my new life on Monday with just me and River in the house. Plus the always needy pets, of course! :)

The teacher in my is dying to ask: How many emotions did you see in that text? The title said “all” of the emotions; did you see “all” of the emotions there? What other emotions can you think of?

The sane person in me says: Tessa, get a hobby! LOL.

Fall football at WPI

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One of my besties from school accompanied me to a WPI concert this weekend, with a little football on the side. :)

When I first told her that Lex was going to WPI she got all excited because her sister had also gone there. When I said he was joining the marching band, she squealed (literally) and said she’d love to see him. She’s the music teacher and was instrumental in his musical career. I suggested a football game and she was all in.

Months later Lex is happily marching with the band and I am no longer at school. I texted her to see if she was still interested and she said heck yeah! It was a beautiful week all week, with just one rainy day, Saturday, football day. :/ I monitored the forecast obsessively and bugged Lex daily via text. The band can’t play in the rain, so all our plans hinged on that rain holding off. And it did! (mostly) It rained on the drive down, drizzled a little for the first quarter, then stopped. The band did the tunnel and played for the first half of the game. Then they did the halftime show as the wind picked up and the sky darkened. The forecast predicted an imminent downpour, so the drum majors (the band bosses) gave the band members the option of staying or going. A handful stayed, but most left. Lex was hungry and eager for Olive Garden, so he was happy to leave after halftime. We were happy to leave then too.

I loved having hours to catch up with my friend. I loved watching the band. I loved watching the band with a music teacher and former pep band member! She had so many good questions and observations that I didn’t even know to make or observe. I loved getting to see Lex. I loved that the rain held off enough that we got to see the band perform. Overall, it was a great Saturday!!

Parking lot question

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This is my car just AFTER getting a car wash too. Sigh. We need a better car wash around here!

I got out of the car in the grocery store parking lot today and an older gentleman started walking toward me, clearly about to talk to me. I prepared myself to answer questions about the Tesla. It happens on a somewhat regular basis, so I’m used to it. The guy walks up to me and say, “Excuse me, can I ask you a question?” I agree, hoping it’s one I can actually answer. He says, “What does the WPI stand for?” 😄 I told him and he said, “Oh, interesting. I thought it must be an Institute of some sort. Thank you.” Then he walks over to his wife and they head towards the grocery store. I don’t know why, but I thought it was really funny. He also had a pretty thick accent (German, maybe?) that added to the moment. The official parking lot score now is:

Tesla questions: too many to remember
Magnet questions: 1