Acronyms in the Treehouse


Suzie and her BF Mark are staying in FF Treehouse this weekend. They met in an online dating site. Mark, a SWM, had made several failed attempts at finding a connection, and just as he was about to give up, he caught a glimpse of this SJF who works as an ICU nurse at MGH. Since he’s an engineer at MIT, he liked that she was in a science field and close by. When they came to FF, they’d been dating for 6.5 months.
Both components of this attractive couple are just past the 30 checkpoint, and both live active lifestyles. A few weeks ago, wanting a thrilling adventure for Suzie, Mark took her to an indoor climbing wall. She tumbled and tore her ACL.
 “You weren’t wearing a harness?” I ask.
 “You’re supposed to fall,” she says. “They have soft mats on the floor. But I fell wrong.”
 She doesn’t blame Mark, but she’ll be away from the ICU for a couple months after her surgery to repair the injury.
 Suzie has a good sense of humor about her work. “Nurses in the ED [the ER] have ADD, and nurses in the ICU have OCD,” she says. She explained that in the emergency room, nurses have to handle several patients at once, think fast and multi-task. ICU nurses, on the other hand, work with one critically ill patient for three 12-hour shifts, tuning in to monitors and vitals and attending to every detail.
  It takes a lot to rattle this gal. She was on duty when the Boston marathon bombing victims came in and shook President Obama's hand when he toured the ICU to greet the injured.  
 At MIT Mark is involved in designing a flying car. He’s nearing the production stage with a vehicle he says is similar to a Cadillac Esplanade with wings that unfold for flight. Imagine flying into an airport, taxiing to a stop, folding the wings, driving home and pulling your Terrafugia into the garage without ever leaving the cockpit. By 2015, you can have one of your own for a mere $279,000. Check it out: http://www.terrafugia.com/.


      After the Terrafugia “takes off” (ha ha), Mark plans to work on the TF-X, a VTOL vehicle. FLW had that idea in 1940 when he designed Crystal City for Washington, DC. Take a look at his drawing with small helicopter-type vehicles that hover-fly from one skyscraper platform to another. FLW’s concept was massive and included restaurants, stores, 24 apartment towers, park space and a thousand-room hotel, all on 10 acres near DuPont Circle. The DC zoning board scuttled the plan by refusing to waive the 1910 building height restriction of 130 feet.
   But maybe FLW wasn’t so far afield.
   As far as predictions for the future for this bright and genial couple. Suzie says she likes things neat but being a little OCD, she says Mark is a bit messy. 
    “I’m OCD in my head,” he says. 
    In that case, I’m sure things will turn out well.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sex and the Treehouse

Image
When Hana asked to book Fern Forest Treehouse for herself and three friends, H said there wasn’t room, the treehouse is only ninety square feet, he didn’t know how they’d sleep. “Oh, we’ll bring sleeping bags,” she wrote. “Don’t worry—we’ll fit in.” H is a pushover, especially for such youthful enthusiasm. And he thought it sounded like a good time. When the four gals pulled in from Boston around eleven Friday night, H was waiting up for them, the path to the treehouse lit by solar lamps, the treehouse itself all aglitter with colored lights. From upstairs, I heard excited giggles as he showed them around, more giggles as they climbed into the spa under a sky studded with a million stars. As happens in water at 102 degrees, the giggles calmed to whispers, and eventually all was quiet. The sun rose clear Saturday morning, warming the treehouse so that the girls were up a little after 7:00 a.m. We were still in bed when I heard water running in the downstairs bathroom, and H and
Read more

A Treehouse guest discovers his roots in an old millstone

Image
In spring 1794, a group of men set their shoulders to clearing land in what is now Lincoln, Vermont. The footpath they blazed into the forest eventually became a road named for the Quakers who came to settle with ox carts holding all their belongings. They were young, strong, and healthy. Once they pried rocks from the fields, they found the soil rich enough to support their crops. A year later, nearly one hundred residents, mostly from New York and Connecticut, scattered over 24,000 acres of wilderness, most living in tiny one-room cabins made from logs they hewed by hand from trees they had cut on their property. They cooked meals in stick-and-mud fireplaces, spun wool from their sheep, wove fabrics to make their own clothing, and cobbled shoes for their families. They hunted game in the forests and guarded their livestock from wolves that prowled the land. When the crops failed and game was sparse, they went hungry. Quaker services were held in homes until they built a m
Read more

Octopus Fishing in Portugal

Image
Ann was studying in Spain for a semester, living with a Spanish family. When the university had a break, Portugal called. It’s an old country, remains of the first settlements dating back to the Neolithic period, five thousand years before Christ. The Visigoths invaded in the sixth century. In 1986, the hills were covered in wildflowers, and horses grazed in fields crimsoned with red geraniums. On the southern coast of Portugal, the area of Algarve is dotted with small fishing villages. Santa Luzia, Tavira, Lisboa, Faro, Cape Sagres, Salema. From the gold dust beaches, one can look across the sea to the shores of Morocco. Bathers swim topless—young women, old women, bathing tops cast aside, breasts bared to the sun. Ann felt strange covering herself. She was just nineteen and modest, but she wanted to fit in, to be accepted, even among these strangers on the beach. She’d worn a one-piece tank suit but slipped the straps off her shoulders, rolled down the suit’s upper half, lay
Read more