Long week...and good food....

It's been a week...thanks to those who have kept up with my posts...

My apartment smells of bacon right now. I asked my mom to send me a recipe for a very yummy stew/soup-ish recipe earlier in the week, and she delivered. I went grocery shopping tonight for the ingredients (discovering a new generic brand at Shaw's...something called Shoppers Value) and came home to prepare this most awesome sweet-and-savory stew (you readers are not entitled to the recipe, I am sad to announce). It ended up involving cooking 12 ounces of bacon and a pound of lean ground beef, mixed with many beans and other condiments (including various types of sugar). The best part is that it will all cook together while I am at work...all slowly cooking in my Crock Pot. I didn't realize that frying bacon would end up with a 1/4 inch layer of fat in the pan, but that just added to the wonderful aroma experienced from cooking this dish. The grease is now in a soda can in my refrigerator, for later use ;-)

The weekend was great...spent the daytime reading my New Yorker and at night either at my friends' place smoking (ahhh...and now, we are not criminals) and hanging out at the local bar at Kenmore Square debating just how many people who work there are gay. We drove out to Worcester last night with the sole purpose of eating at Arby's Roast Beef, which isn't that common at all around here.

'Have a good week at work, everyone!!!

Autumn Frollicking

'Twas a rather good weekend. Started out at Cornwall's in Kenmore Sq playing darts and Taboo over drinks before Bill and I headed to the St. Botolph District for a few more drinks with Matt...then back to my place for more drinks.

Yesterday...slow start, but I managed to make it on time for my hair cut appointment. Bill picked me up Downtown to drive to the Burlington Mall, where we met up with the Bootys for the sole purpose of eating Chik-Fil-A. We also happened upon a LEGO store, where each of us bought something. I am now the happy owner of a 66-piece Christmas tree ornament that will grace my parents' 9-foot tree that I will inevitably be trimming in 3 weeks.

Bill and I stopped by the Christmas Tree Shops in Lynnfield on the way home...I bought a bag full of crap, which was so much fun. Much of it will end up in my sister Ellie and her partner's "Kitschmas Box" this year...a tradition we started in 2007. It's my turn this year.

Party last night in a depths of Jamaica Plain. Bill fared worse than me, but I managed to get him up and out of bed for a trip to Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge...America's first garden cemetery and designated a National Historic Landmark by the Department of the Interior. Enjoy the pics!!!





















Tonight's great find: a barf bag (unused) from Lufthansa Airlines...near the front sidewalk to my building.

Interesting Photo...

I just found this photo on my Facebook account tonight...apparently I log into Facebook so infrequently that I am not aware of when I am tagged in photos.

This was taken back in late August/early September when a group of people at the lab took a grad student out to lunch because she was leaving her program to pursue other interests in NYC. We are at the corner of Jersey Street and Park Drive, just feet away from Thaitation (one of my favorite restaurants), a block from where I live. The cause of celebration is third from right (in all black). My boss is near the center, wearing a green shirt. I am to the far right (yes, unflattering picture in those jeans...they really don't look like that).

Why is this picture odd? I am 5'8", and I am the second tallest person of the group. This is the truth, too...not just because of visual effects from the perspective from which the picture was taken.


As a prequel of pics to come, I offer the following of myself, dressed as Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. It involved a little makeup, but the costume was borrowed from my friend Matt, who celebrated his 33rd BDay last night (on Halloween!).'Hope everyone had a safe and fun Halloween! Enjoy the early sunsets from your windows at work at 4:00PM!!!! They are quite stunning of late.

Life is peachy...

...patient-doctor stabbings at MGH, sodium azide poisonings at the Harvard Medical School NRB, sexual assault across the street from my apartment, and a fortunately discovered window leak at my desk found just as I was walking out of the lab this evening, aside, it's been a good week.

The sun will be out tomorrow and Friday (until 5:30PM)...we get an extra hour of sleep this weekend. And I have a Halloween costume in place for a party on Saturday. All I need to do is figure out if I need to shave the chest...or keep it natural. I'll be Jack Sparrow from "Pirates of the Caribbean"...any thoughts? There will be eye makeup, oh yes.

These are the days that make life in Boston worth living (I keep telling myself, at least). I still think back to the day on the roof in Mission Hill (around August 10th)...ahhhhhhhhh.

More pictures from the Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Plain, Boston, MA

Here are the photos I promised (yes, I actually came through this time). We were there in the late afternoon sun, so some of the shots may look a bit dark, but I think it only adds to the effect.

suggestion: cue music: Enya, "The Memory of Trees" (hahaha)


...an underexposed shot for effect. Notice that the sun is to the far left in the photo, behind some tree branches. What appears in the center sky is a refraction of the sun's light in the clouds. I know there is a name for this effect, but it escapes me at the moment....







Nice late afternoon sky...

I found my favorite new plant in a dark, heavily wooded area yesterday. It's called the Harlequin Glorybower. An excerpt from Fine Gardening...

"This large shrub offers a late-summer display of jasmine-like white flowers encased in red tepals and scent. Bright blue berries in autumn are accented by conspicuous bright, pinkish-red calyxes."

Here's the autumnal pink-and-blue display:

The best part...when crushed, the leaves smell like peanut butter.

Other berries nearby:

Autumn continues....

It's late October, which means one thing...the annual Harvard Immunology Retreat at Loon Mountain in Lincoln, NH. We were all bussed up to the resort Friday afternoon for a weekend full of talks, poster sessions, free food, and parties. I woke up yesterday and today feeling like I had been hit by a truck, but all in all it was a good time. I learned a lot and helped spread some of the usual Harvard lab gossip, which I find really interesting (we may be geeks, but rather dramatic at that).

For instance, we received the following email last Friday about a recent poisoning in the building adjacent to my lab's building...

"As you may be aware, we have been investigating an incident that occurred on August 26, 2009, when six members of our community were seen in the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center emergency room after drinking coffee from the same single serve, manual-fill coffee machine located in an open common area on the eighth floor of the HMS New Research Building (NRB). All reported similar symptoms. Five employees were treated and released that day; one was held overnight and released the next morning.

...

While we do not yet know how this incident occurred, we have recently learned that sodium azide, a preservative commonly used in laboratories, was present in the coffee consumed by the six employees. As the investigation continues, we are being prudent and taking additional precautionary measures to ensure the well being of our community..."

Scary, indeed. I'll think twice before consuming food and drink in common areas. And all this time I thought it was acrylamide...

Anyway, the weather sucked up in NH, with heavy rain and cold weather. This is the best picture I was able to take of the mountains in the mid-afternoon...

Bill and I drove to the Arnold Arboretum this afternoon for some local leaf peeping. Here I present a preview of what the foliage looked like while we were there...the clearer skies make it look more spectacular than the pics from New Hampshire a few weeks ago...those would have been better in the right light. Even so, we have been enjoying a spectacular foliage season this year.

I'll upload more pics in the coming days.

Trivia and how the T cheated me

I was on Wikipedia tonight and decided to look up events/births/deaths of November 24, which is my upcoming birthday.

What I already knew...Nov 24 was the birth date of Zachary Taylor, who was born in 1784 and served as US President from 1849-1850 (he died while in office from gastroenteritis). What I didn't know: a professional female wrestler named Beth Pheonix was born the same day and year as myself. That's kinda cool. A coworker of mine was also born the same day and year as me, but he was born in the Netherlands. We have tried to figure out who was born first, given the time difference. We were within an hour, figuring that I am a few minutes older...that is, if we have our time differences figured correctly.

Perhaps coolest of all: November 24th is Darwin Day, celebrating the anniversary of the release of The Origin of Species. Better yet...this year is the 150th anniversary of the book. Here's the kicker...I'm related to him. My maternal family tree, which has been well-documented over the past couple of centuries, shows that he is very distantly related, yet, it's still cool to see his name with correct date on the tree.

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A warning to MBTA patrons: think twice before uploading money onto your Charlie Card using the web, which is a new feature of the MBTA's website that was implemented in the last few months. I tried it out when it first went online, only to find that the website told me that my Charlie Card wasn't valid for the web-based system. I tried a more recently procured card that worked (this was a few months ago). The only difference is that the invalid card had a red serial # (I received it within a week of the Charlie Card system's debut, long before the online money uploading feature) while the valid one has a black serial number. Now, yesterday, I uploaded more money on the "valid" one, received a confirmation, and tried to use it yesterday. The transaction had not gone through. So, I try again today, thinking it needed overnight to register with the system. Today, still no dice (I had to manually upload $20 on the bus...thankfully, I had it). I checked my bank account this evening, and the transaction had already gone through. So, basically, the T took $20 from me. Any suggestions? Since I wasn't at a computer with a printer hookup when I completed the upload, I have no receipt. I think I learned my lesson and am currently SOL.

And since I can't find an appropriate picture of the Charlie Card defaced in some hideous way, I instead leave you with a picture of an MBTA bus involved in a minor Boston fender bender. Shit happens. Another day through the gauntlet....