Six days to plan

We just bought plane tickets to Italy--and we leave in 6 days! Seth has some research to do at three libraries in Northern Italy (in Venice, Turin, and Ferrara) and so we decided to make it into a sort of extended working holiday. I'm also taking advantage of having vacation time (though Seth's 'vacation' is far more limited), as well as making use of cheap airfare and a somewhat weaker Euro. There are some unbelievable flights out there, such as Dublin for $220, Sydney for $650, Tokyo for $600, etc. We even considered taking a detour into Marrakesh, Morocco from Rome for about $230. (I would still love to go to Morocco, but this will have to be left for another time). For some reason our flight seems comparitively more expensive at $500 (Boston to Milan, per person, round trip).

Though the big stress of purchasing flights is taken care of, we only have a few days now to plan where to go, how to get there, and where we will stay (we will be there 16 nights). If anyone has any suggestions it would be appreciated!! Of course, I also need to do some research because aside from what I learned in my high school Latin Classes and what I observed in Boston's North End, I don't know ANYTHING about Italy.

Making the most of my time

After a casual job interview a few weeks ago at the local coffee shop, I realized that if I were to actually get a permanent job, I would probably have to suffer the same fate as 99% of the rest of the American working world and only get two weeks vacation per year. Since this horrible revelation, I have been trying to pack in as much stuff into my weekdays as possible, things that I would normally have to take vacation time to complete. I went to the optometrist for my annual eye exam, booked a dental appointment, and yesterday hung out at the Massachusetts RMV all afternoon to get my out of state license converted. However, it didn't surprise me to find that I will have to return to the RMV and use another what would be 'vacation day' because one of my four forms of identification was not valid. Ergh. (The Watertown RMV is a total mad house and the line always spills out the door--yesterday one particularly stressed customer actually snapped in the waiting area and started shouting and caused a scene, which thankfully helped pass the time).

Last week I was able to participate in one of the Waltham Land Trust's trail building projects. I spent three hours raking a new trail (I was sore for the next several days), but it felt good to be able to make myself useful. Very luckily, I did not get poison ivy (there was an unbelievable amout in the reserve and I felt that I was constantly bumping into it--I guess I must have washed down afterwards really well), but unluckily a pod of 2-3 dozen tent caterpillars fell on my hat and down my back and arms. That was really terrible.

I have also managed to get in contact with the Waltham Kiwanis Club. They recently stopped holding regular meetings due to poor attendance, but I was still invited to help them at the soup kitchen on Monday and a few days later attended their monthly board meeting. It will be great to keep active with Kiwanis and possibly get involved with the Bently College Circle K, which seems to be relatively strong.

More recently, I found on the Brandeis Classifieds a 'wanted' section for research study participants. I have already booked myself to participate in a few memory/cognition experiments at a lab on campus. I love reading about the outcomes of these sorts of psychology studies and I think it will be fun to see what they are like first hand! As the icing on the cake, I get paid a whopping $8/hr, which is $8/hr more than I get paid now ;o)

The boom and bust of Tom Turkey

Last weekend when running up Prospect Hill, Seth took me to the summit where he had been spotting a large wild male turkey in full display mode. I found this a little hard to digest because I always thought of wild turkeys as being scrawny, lean little guys, but when we made it to the summit (located at the end of a road which I normally bypass), sure enough, I saw a great big Tom Turkey strutting along the ridge overlooking the entire city of Waltham, with downtown Boston spread out in the distance. He probably hadn't left his post in days. It was the most remarkable thing I had seen in months; he looked just like a farm-yard turkey with a colorful head, barred wings, a decorative beard of feathers hanging off his chest, and an amazing tail that he periodically fanned out, making a swoosh. Who would have thought, that positioned at the second highest peak in the entire Boston area, struts a turkey? I returned a day or two later with a camera but like a ghost he was no where to be found. In fact, he hasn't been seen since that wonderful Sunday morning...

Ironically, last night I baked up a huge Thanksgiving-style turkey dinner to celebrate the end of Seth's first year teaching as a professor--he submitted the final grades to the registrar earlier in the day. (This served the triple purpose of also clearing out the freezer, which was annoyingly occupied with that 9.5lb headless carcass, and allowing me to practice roasting an entire bird for ourselves, just in case I botched it). It was a good thing we didn't have guests over because the turkey was still frozen, even though I transferred it from the freezer to fridge three days ago (we have a cold fridge). Also, I realized I didn't have a meat thermometer so couldn't check for doneness, so I cooked it at a lower temp for a few extra hours and it turned out dry. Oh well. I cooked everything from scratch (which took all day, but at least I won't have to cook again for several days), with the best part being the dark chocolate pudding pie for dessert (no Jello-Pudding here!). ;o)


*Yes, I realize the light is really bad, so don't be fooled--the food was more appetizing than the photos suggest!

The end of the year

The last day of classes at Brandeis was on Wednesday, and finals begin today. It's a little sad to have them come to an end as I have grown attached to my classes this semester: American Environmental History and Nutrition. As I mentioned briefly before, the nutrition professor (aka the Smart Balance guy) is refreshingly gracious and I'm going to especially miss him. The nice thing about auditing is that there is no pressure and I can fully enjoy the material and spend a little more time thinking about and digesting what I learned. Because of this, I feel like I have gotten more out of these lectures than many of the lectures I took as an undergraduate.

Now that my daily routine is off, I'll have to do a bit of readjusting and keep focused until I can either find a job or wait until the next semester begins. In the meantime I'm hoping to get back into volunteering on a few community projects as well as join the local Kiwanis Club, if I can afford the dues. Kiwanis dues tend to be very high, mostly because their meetings are often held over dinner in restaurant-type places; in Chapel Hill they met at the country club, and in Waltham it is at a nearby Italian restaurant. Maybe I can 'brown bag it' ;o)

I will also need to look into nearby yoga studios since the Brandeis Yoga Club obviously won't be meeting over the summer. (Another thing I have come to appreciate is having power yoga offered on campus--and taught by very competent instructors--twice a week, and since classes would normally be $10-15 each, this is WONDERFUL).

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...