A brush with Summer

After a freaky warm weekend (in the mid/high 80s), it got super hot today: 94 degrees! And it's still APRIL! Thank goodness it will cool back down into the 60s this week--Seth and I definitely are not ready for Summer (we moved to New England for a reason!). Another sign of the encroaching season is that the poison ivy is roaring back to life. Some lawns in the neighborhood are showing waves of sprouts, and there is already a nice long vine creeping over the rocks we hike over on our way to Uni. Ugh.

Experiment update

After about 48 hours, I am feeling almost as good as new. However, I am not sure if what I had was a cold--I didn't have the typical cold symptoms and ended up crashing Sunday night, needing to go to bed really early. I probably caught some funky bug after hanging out under the Big Top with all the hundreds of kiddos the day before. Yesterday I woke up feeling about 50% better. Since I don't know what I had, I can't say if the extra VitD helped. I suppose I'll have to wait until I get a real cold so I can try again.

The health benefits of the sun

It was interesting being downtown two days before the Boston Marathon. We could easily pick out some of the runners--the serious ones have that unmistakable look to them. Perhaps it's the nice weather, or maybe people are inspired by the race on Monday, but we have been seeing quite a few additional runners out and about the past couple days. We are betting that in 2-4 weeks the novelty will wear off and the numbers will reduce.

This morning I could feel that I am starting to come down with a cold. I don't get them very often (maybe two a year), but I am going to try an experiment with Vitamin D. My very sweet Nutrition professor (Dr. Hayes) is a big advocate of Vit. D, and a few months ago when he started to develop a cold he took extra supplements, which dramatically reduced the duration of his cold. In light of this I will try increasing my own dose from 2000IU to 4000IU/day and see what happens...

A day downtown

After a really fantastic Easter, complete with an egg hunt for Cora and Chance, a ham dinner, and the four and a half hour-long production of The Ten Commandments, we returned to Waltham on Wednesday.


Yesterday (Saturday) we were treated out to downtown Boston to see the Big Apple Circus with Mark, Gina, Adah, and Kate. It was a fairly small one ring circus in the heart of Government Center--it could boast having two horses, strong men, twin jugglers, and a troupe of dogs. As neat as it was, I think it would have been really interesting to see trained cats, which they apparently had last year. Regardless, it was nice to go out with M, G, and the girls, though I wish we had gotten there a bit earlier to join them for lunch on the steps of City Hall (the stupid T held us up... ergh...).


The Coluzzis made a quick exit after the circus, as did nearly every other family with sleepy children ready for naptime, and Seth and I walked to Chinatown to splurge on several marvelous Asian buns (we got a char shu bao, steamed rice cake, red bean pie, and pineapple bun). Though the bakery selection in Boston isn't as wondrous as what we found in other major cities, it is still more than enough for us to have our fix. The buns were... so heavenly delicious...

We spent the next few hours in the North End at a relaxed organic coffee shop to catch up on some reading and writing then met up with an old fraternity brother of Seth's and his wife for dinner at Dolce Vita Ristorante. It is always interesting to meet these college friends of Seth's--they give me clues as to what his younger, wilder days were like :P

Of course we had to top off the evening with cannolis from Mike's Pastry, after waiting in line for ages just to make it to the counter (it is one of those places not suited for claustrophobic people, where the queue pours out the door).

The Easter Bunny is on his way

Having a few days off for Passover (Seth is slowly converting to Judaism), we were able to drive up to his house in NY for Easter. In college we always celebrated with my folks in NC so it was nice to come up here to try a different flavor.

Yesterday when Seth was at home working, I drove myself into town to help clean his grandparents' old house. Seth's dad and brother have been working on fixing it up for several months now so they can put it on the market. The job is nearing completion and the house looks really great--I am sure anyone would be happy to live there. It is obscene that the house will probably sell for 1/4 the price of a similar home in Waltham... makes me jealous...

This morning I went into town again and bought Seth and myself two pairs of running shoes each (Asics 2130s), on sale for about $50/pair (which is almost 50% off, so I decided to take advantage of the sale!). I also got myself 'custom' insoles to hopefully help with the shins--I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but I am extremely excited about trying them out for an early Easter run tomorrow!!

The kids (Cora and Chance) are over today--they dyed eggs and were later visited by the mysterious Uncle Louie. He lives in the basement ;o)

"Working" on the house

Dolly's morning routine (soon the cup will be tipped over, which is also a part of the routine)

Dying eggs

Searching for Uncle Louie's trail

**By the way, it has been VERY nice to practice driving Seth's manual car here in a friendly and relaxed environment the past day or two. I feel comfortable driving a tiny bit in Waltham (like down the road a few blocks to school or to the library), but I am terrified to go any farther, especially somewhere I am not extremely familiar with. The combination of poorly marked, confusing, and winding streets and aggressive drivers makes Boston area roads so intimidating that I wouldn't even want to drive an automatic transmission car. I have never seen drivers like Boston drivers before. Besides being angry and impatient I have noticed other shocking driving habits that are actually quite commonplace: they will make up their own lane to pass you; when stopped at a red light and the light turns green, the oncoming traffic will speed ahead and make their left in front of you to cut you off (they are supposed to yield, of course); they run red lights ALL the time; they are not afraid to lay on the horn if they have to wait longer than a heartbeat for you to start moving when the light turns green; they do not give pedestrians/joggers enough room in the roads; and many other unsafe behaviors. Once when I was driving behind our apartment (I was going a bit slower than the rest of traffic) I could almost hear the woman in the car behind me screaming at me. Seriously.
Since I hate driving in the Boston area (as does Seth--in fact, we hardly ever drive if we can help it) I find it hard practicing driving, but lately I have been feeling much more confident with the standard transmission. When I am not as afraid of the MA roads, it will be great to have a bit more freedom to drive myself places when Seth is not available to be my chauffeur :o)

Shaky shins

Thanks to the Massachusetts mandatory health insurance (and thanks to being 'jobless', I am one of the people who greatly benefits from the program--though Seth and I say his taxes are paying for me), I had my first physical in four and half years. The doctor confirmed my suspicion that I have shin splints in both legs, which first became a problem when training for Inward Bound two years ago. Fantastic.

Another overdue realization came with Seth staying in Westford last night. We had been dog-sitting for Mark and Gina this past week, but since I have a field trip this morning (leaving from Brandeis), we figured we could save Seth a long drive by having me stay in Waltham while he went back to Westford after an evening recital at school yesterday. This was the first time I had been completely by myself overnight in almost three years. The month Seth was gone while I was at Johns does not count, nor does the 6 weeks he was gone when I was at the share-house in Canberra, since in both cases I was still in close-quarters with other people.