Pictures of flowers

I love springtime. Here are pictures of flowers I took while I was in Vermont (I was there when the lilacs were blooming, beautiful!).














And pictures from CT.







And...Bailey!

Good News, Everyone!

As of Monday 6/29, (exactly one month after I was offered the job), I am officially an employee of Boston University! Hurray! And one of the (many) benefits of being an official employee was that I had my first paid holiday on Friday. Which meant that I was free to spend Independence Day weekend in Connecticut with C, where we attended a lovely dinner and fireworks here on the third (click "guest" to see a few photos) and a fabulous picnic and fireworks here on the fourth. Much fun and delicious food was had by all.

I left my camera cord in Somerville (and accidentally forgot my camera last night), so none of my pictures from these events yet. I even attempted to use the fancy "fireworks" setting on my camera, so we'll see how those turned out.

In the meantime, a barrage of pictures from the last few months.

First, adventures in cooking:These are candied kumquats, which were quite tasty but not as wonderful as I'd hoped. Kumquats are strange little citrus fruit that you can eat whole, including the peel. In case you ever run across one, here's a video about how to eat them.


This is delicious fall vegetable cobbler (scroll down past the roast pork loin to see the recipe). I made a few modifications to the recipe:
-honey mustard instead of whole grain mustard
-sliced up some chicken, browned it, and threw it in before baking
-added a cut rutabaga, cut parsnips, and a handful of peeled whole garlic cloves
This has become one of my favorite cold, wintery day comfort foods. Yum.


Finally, in celebration of Pi Day (3/14), I made an Oreo Cookie Pi Pie. I'm pretty sure that this is the recipe I used. However, I am not a fan of cool whip so next time I'd probably try a recipe more like this one, which didn't yet exist.

Next, adventures in crafts:Progress shots of my first cross stitch project in a long time. It's progressed a lot since these were taken, but I've been lazy about photographing it.

I've also been knitting dishcloths and fiddling with a bit of crochet and sewing, but the cross stitch has been getting most of my attention.

Coming soon: adventures in flowers and adventures with Esme.

Hope everyone is having a happy Fourth of July weekend!

Big News

Hello everyone! Sorry about the accidental hiatus from blogging. Until May 15, there wasn't much excitement in my life. Applying for jobs starts to get discouraging after a while, and there wasn't much going on to report.

And then . . . and then on May 15 I left Dover for the final time (sad) and moved down to Somerville, Massachusetts. My lease was up at the end of May anyway, and most of the jobs I had been applying for were in the Boston area. It made sense to be here for the summer and keep applying for jobs. And then, within two weeks of moving down here, I had an interview. It was for a job that had caught my eye on Craigslist and that I had applied for a few weeks earlier. The interview seemed to go well, and the research sounded fascinating. And then, the next day at 8:58 in the morning, the PI of the lab called and offered me the job!

I am now a (temporary) employee at the Boston University School of Medicine in Boston, MA, in the department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Hopefully next week I will be an official employee (with benefits and everything!). So far the job is going fabulously, and I absolutely love it. I have all kinds of fun stories and I just uploaded about 200 pictures. Once I've had a chance to sort through them I'll post some so you can see what I've been up to, but in the meantime, videos from the trip to the zoo in January! Enjoy Alice the swaying elephant and baby Kenya the giraffe:

Giraffes and a weekend in Rhode Island

This is Kenya. She is a darling baby giraffe at the Roger Willams Park Zoo in Providence, RI. I believe she was about one month old in this picture, give or take a week. Isn't she beautiful? Back in January, Matt M invited C and me to visit him in Providence, and we had a fabulous time. I can't wait to go back, perhaps over the summer when there may be another tiny giraffe at the zoo, and we can go to the beach. The first night, we ate at Hemenways, a wonderful seafood restaurant. I had stuffed shrimp, and the boys had lobster. Yum! On Sunday we braved a snow storm to visit the zoo (which is half-priced in the winter), and we were 3 of 16 guests that day. Most of the animals were in their warm and cozy houses (who could blame them), but we (well, I) really only cared about the giraffes, and their warm and cozy house is open to the public. But before we get there:

Map of the zoo

This is where the elephants hang out when it isn't winter. Pretty nice, huh?

Yeah, it was cold

After wandering around for a bit and not finding anybody, we finally made it to the giraffes:Inside, we were met by this fellow:This is Griffy, the daddy giraffe. In a separate area there were some elephants:I also love elephants, and these three ladies were quite beautiful. Alice, one of the elephants, had a strange quirk. She spent a lot of time rocking back and forth, which the keepers likened to a child sucking her thumb for comfort. BUT, while watching the elephants have lunch was certainly entertaining, we were anxious to see Sukari and Amber (the female giraffes) and the tiny Kenya. So was Griffy, apparently:Can you imagine walking by the door and seeing that peering back at you? And finally, this tall skinny door opened and in came the ladies! I am going to just throw a lot of pictures at you now. Sorry to those of you who don't love giraffes as much as I do (crazies), feel free to skip down to the other animals at the bottom.I'm not going to caption those, because there are SO MANY, but if you have questions about any of them feel free to ask. Whew.

Once we had our fill of the giraffes, we had roughly one hour to see the rest of the zoo. And see it we did.I can't wait to go back when it's warmer and see all of the rest! Also, I should mention that the cow up there completely ignored the boys, but looked up and mooed at me. They really do like me!

After all that excitement, Matt took us to a wonderful Italian restaurant for dinner, Caffe Dolce Vita. We shared the antipasto and a bottle of wine, and I got the chicken parmigiana, which was the best I've ever had. And a delicious dessert of tiramisu.Yum!

Thank you to Matt for hosting us for the weekend and showing us around your wonderful city. We had a great time, and we'd love to visit again sometime soon!