"My Summer" By Brian Astl

I guess I’m first up to post my summer update, so here goes! I’m writing this as I sit in the sun here in Toronto enjoying the Canada Day holiday. It’s our country’s 138^th birthday and we’re of course celebrating by drinking beer, building igloos and giving our sled dogs some extra blubber… just kidding, I just played golf and drank beer. A bunch of folks from the section are also coming into town tonight to spend the weekend in Toronto, which we’ll kick off with a big day-long party tomorrow that some of my canuck friends are throwing for my birthday. Which reminds me – one of the big milestones for me this summer is turning 30 a couple of days ago. It’s funny, because I still feel about as mature as I did when I was 21, and Ben Mandell reminded me that I still have a tight body, so I guess 30 is not so bad after all!

This summer I’m working for a Toronto-based startup called Siamons International that was started by my boss from my previous company. We are commercializing a cleaning solution that was invented by the fellow who invented Mr. Clean. It’s a great product – completely non-toxic and environmentally friendly and has some cool differentiating attributes. The three folks in Toronto are launching the consumer incarnations of our product (#1 is a Mold Killer/Preventor), and my job is to launch the industrial side of the business from my ‘office’ (i.e. Spangler study room) in Boston. It’s a great opportunity as I really get to play entrepreneur for the summer but with someone else’s money. Some aspects of working alone are tough though, like when I had to name our product for the industrial space. Brainstorming is a difficult thing to do with a team of 1, so thankfully I was able to drag Benoit out to a bar one night to help me think of ideas. All in all though I’m excited about the opportunity, and about being able to do it from Boston so that Reygan and I can spend some time together.

Speaking of which, we are both really enjoying the summer in Boston, from learning how to sail at Community Boating to going to beer festivals with Mark and Carissa Brown to checking out Martha’s Vineyard this past weekend. Campus is a spooky place to live during the summer though as it’s really eerily quiet, and the only people on campus seem to be a swarm of construction workers tearing the roof off of SFP, gutting the rooms in Aldrich and finishing up Baker Library.

Anyhow – looking forward to hearing how everyone’s summers are going and to seeing you all soon!

Bri