Man-by-the-Sea

Guess what? The Atlantic Ocean is WARM(ER). ER than the Pacific Ocean. Surfing in the Northish Pac requires a wetsuit, a parka, and a healthy dose of poor judgment. Swimming in the Northish At requires a train ticket to Manchester-by-the-Sea, some sunscreen, and a good book. And a swimming suit, of course. Singing Beach is a quick half-mile meander from the train station and it has plenty of room to relax in the soft sand and relax with some beach reading. (i.e., not reading about Chlamydia, which is the bacteria my first project deals with, well maybe Chlamydia because the two main characters in my novel got a little too serious about halfway through and I had to put it down, stupid book.) Anyway, here's a shot of the rocks looking towards Gloucester, Mass. It was basically a perfect day.

Out on the grill.

Wow, look at me all busy with being social. Tonight I invited two of the girls in my ward plus two of my roommates to enjoy an evening out on our back deck in Charlestown and grill up some pizzas. I had bought some lights at the Target a couple of weeks ago so it was time to put 'em up. The grocery store in our naybahhood is called Johnny's Foodmastah. Although their organization takes a bit getting used to, they do sell delish pizza dough for $1.29 that'll make two good sized pizzas. So I got some basil, mozzarella, pep, and etc. to work the grill. It was great to be meeting new people because I learned from Seattle that perfect strangers aren't as sympathetic to your stupid protein problems as your dear friends are (obviously!). Naw, it was fun, check out the results:Obviously I'll need to be meeting some men at some point but I just found out that there was a whole handful of men in our ward from Missoula, MT that just moved out and away from Boston. Hey universe, that's just mean. And funny. Feany?

Straight outta Cape Cod we're keepin' it whale.

Since I turned in my grant to the Harvard somebody-or-others yesterday and so it can get submitted to the feds on Monday, it was time to relax after three straight weeks of 12-13 hour days of writing. It felt wonderful to be busy again and it feels even better to start exploring this beautiful piece of the United States that I live in. Today, I went whale watching. Okay future tourists of Boston, get this. The New England Aquarium runs a whale watching cruise (3-4 hours) out of Boston Hahbah. They take you out to the Stellwagen Bank Marine Sanctuary where we saw two cow-calf humpback whale pairs an additional humpback and a few minke. Seeing 'em spout off water because (as the naturalist pointed out several times) whales are mammals so they breathe air. It was a straight up stunna. On the way out, we had the Codzilla following us. Here's what it looked like with my roomie Alex trembling at the approach.Here's a really bad picture of a whale. We did see a couple of tails come out and of course you can see 'em down in the water . . . but no, we didn't see any of them jump into the air. Hopefully next time.And on our way back into the hahbah, there were dozens of sailboats. As Isak Dinesen said, "The cure for anything is saltwater: sweat, tears, or the sea". I think I've got the first two down so it's definitely time to get myself sailing a boat.

And I'm close to family!

Rochester, NY is the home of my brother's family with three adorable kiddos. I drove up to Rochester recently to visit the fam and we checked out a few hikes (so, what's with the bugs?) and Fort Oswego. The hike was really beautiful and it was fun to spend time out in the woods. Although admittedly, I'm grateful for my orienteering training, I got a little worried at the end that the hike was going to be a LOT longer than I was planning when HUZZAH! The parking lot! Here's the two oldest checking out the lake on our hike (Lake Ontario? So, by "Great Lake" you mean, "Lake that is so immensely big it has it's own weather system and could be mistaken for the ocean"?We visited Fort Oswego where I'm fairly certain that my niece Grace has found her calling as either an Annie Oakley impersonator or as a future member of the NRA. Probably both.Further proof of this is that she's apparently already Pavlovian conditioned her older brother Isaac to stick 'em up at any slight provocation. Yup, I just said that I was going to take a picture. This pose was all his own.

And I love my palatial digs.

So if science doesn't work out, I could pursue a career as an interior decorator a la Doris Day in "Pillow Talk" but the problem is that I only have one style---mine. And, I'm not sure how transferrable it is. I'm guessing not so much. At any rate, I wanted a little bit of Seattle in my home in Boston so I promptly got rid of the purulent med school scrubs green:And went with something that would accurately mimic the soft sunset that illuminates the Hoh Rainforest in the Olympic National Park after a rainstorm. I think I got the color just right.I have so much room in my room, I've left the middle third empty because I don't know what to do with it.I'm thinking of installing a rat/raccoon/possum/squirrel/crow habitat to make sure I don't forget all the animal friends.

I LOVE MY JOB!!!

Okay, this is basically to point out that life is wonderful. Even if you spent a lot of years moving around microscopic amounts of liquid from tube to tube and jostling bits of atoms around on a computer screen and got to the point where you realized that you should have just skipped straight to Montana without passing GO! where GO! equals any sort of education past the third grade or maybe college at the latest, this happens. A good three weeks of work. Totally enjoyable, despite the fact that I should have been stressed and rushed getting a grant out the door right out of the gate, it's great. Wow. I never ever ever would have guessed. And Boston is rockin' by socks. Even if the next six years is a total mess, I don't care (cough, right now, cough) because this has been so so so much fun. Yes, that's right, science is FUN! And this photo, this is my neighborhood. I'm four blocks from the monument on Bunker Hill and seven or eight from the USS Constitution.

On the road again!

Okay folks, here's a condensed version of the road trip. It was 3200 amazing miles. I went from Washington to Idaho to Montana to North Dakota to Minnesota to Wisconsin to Iowa to Illinois to Indiana to Ohio to Pennsylvania to New York to Massachusetts. Apparently, we live in a REALLY big country. Here's some highlights of the things I saw. I didn't include any photos of Washington, Idaho, or Montana because in the first two, I've taken lots of photos and have talked about them lots in the past. In the third, it's too painful of a reminder that I don't live in Montana yet. But I will, I will! Here's me outside North Dakota. Turns out, this is home of the famous song "Home on the Range".Where not only the deer and the antelope play, but also apparently giant rat alligators. Ratalligators? Ratocodiles? What the? No wonder Teddy Roosevelt (best prez ever!) was so ready to shoot big things in Africa (not the best practice). He'd been fighting off these at his ranch! And those of you who scoff at North Dakota will have to deal with me. Look at how beautiful this is. It's Theodore Roosevelt National Park.Also in North Dakota is a place called Jamestown that has albino bison and apparently four types of meat bbqs. Is one type albino bison and another flavor regular type. Mmmmm . . . bison. Not as gamey as buffalo.In Minnesota, it rains. Whitney said, "Oh my gosh, look at those clouds, that looks really bad" (pointing to an immense thick bank of black fog). And I said, "Oh Whitney, I don't think it looks like much at all. It's just cloudy. Hello!" Well, it turns out that it can rain so much that you have to stare the white line in the right lane to stay going straight. Also in Minnesota, since the rain might keep people inside for a while, there's time to collect twine.While outside Minneapolis, and boy I wish I had a picture, we hit construction. Which was hot and tarry but okay since the construction men in MN do not wear shirts at all. Seriously, it was hilarious. Really boys, it's sooooo hot that you must just sport a small orange mesh vest? I wish I had had my camera out. But maybe this distracted driving is what led to me hitting something on the road and it ripping up the undercarriage, i.e., my rear right brakes that had to get fixed in Madison, WI for a whole day. This turned out to be fantastic because we stayed across the street from this beauty:Yup, the Wisconsin State Capitol. And I also ran into the most delish thing I've ever tasted: beer battered cheese curds. No wonder everyone in Seattle is railyard skin, they don't have access to food like this.And, we had enough time to check out PBS which was showing a special on "Star Wars in Concert". Looking up online, it turns out that it was in Moline, IL the NEXT day. So of course we backtracked west to make sure we saw Anthony Daniels (C3PO) narrating, the original Han Solo in carbonite prop, and listen to all the music with a full orchestra, choir, and big LED screens. Here's me channeling my force.And here's me admiring Harrison Ford circa 1983.Okay, I'm just going to skip over the next bit because it turns out, the northern halves of Indiana and Ohio are horrible. I have a fondness for Ohio because of a college friend is from there, but it can't be the freeway across the top could it? Here's what I found when I got to Massachusetts: Rain! Lots of it! Awwwwwww, a welcome just for me!And all of the cosmos' thanks go to Whits for sitting shotgun in an old pickup truck with no air conditioning for 3200 miles. SAINT!