Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Once in a lifetime

Last night the aurora was so strong and so high we caught a shot of it from our back yard.  We live relatively close to the downtown area, so between trees, neighbor's houses and light pollution, it must have been a massive, amazing show for us to catch that little green line.  It was early enough in the night that I got Alex to come down and take look, although it was past Zoltan's bedtime.

I deeply regret not getting in the car and catching the real show somewhere darker.

(Photo taken with my phone, so one more reason it's not as spectacular as it could have been.)


Sunday, October 10, 2021

Catching up on the last few months

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent three weeks in Doha helping with the evacuation of Afghanistan.  In the space of just about a month, more than 120,000 individuals left Afghanistan. Roughly half of them passed through Doha on their way to other places: home, for those of dual citizenship; locations set up to process visas and humanitarian parole; in the end most are in the USA or will be.  The experience was physically, mentally and emotionally challenging and for all the things that went right, it's the things that went wrong that stick the strongest.

I returned home from Doha and spent about 10 days with my family before heading back out; this time to Boston, where I spent 10 days with my father in the aftermath of his wife's passing.  

Oh, and Terry broke his foot back in August so he hobbles around in a special boot.  No fall hikes for him, and his ski season will start a bit late.

It's been a hell of a few months.