My Turkey Weekend

I headed out to Oregon, with my parents, to see my brother for the weekend. It was the four of us in a cabin in the woods with lots of Thanksgiving food and Thanksgiving leftovers. I ate a LOT of turkey and stuffing and gravy and mashed potatoes and squash and homemade rolls and then more of everything. Never mind the wine and beer the four of us managed to go through! We were at the cabin drinking, playing cribbage, and reading by the fire from Wednesday through Sunday and made it back in time to see the Patriots game at my brothers. Here is the view from the deck of the cabin:

Here are some mountain views during our brief outings (we had to get back to drink, read, and play cards!).






My brother and parents:

Good times with jenski's family - my dad got his second finger up just before I took the picture:

On the way back to my brothers, we took a different route and went by a bunch of waterfalls and stopped at the top of a hill overlooking the Columbia Gorge. The wind was so strong that my Mom was uncomfortable going down steps (her balance is not great to begin with) and I had to stop walking a couple of times and wait for the gusts to die down!

One of several waterfalls we stopped at on the drive:

I read one magazine and three books for fun. One is Intuition (Allegra Goodman) ,and is essentially about house easy it is to misrepresent scientific findings and how one post-doc tries to bring it to her labs attention. I forget who the other two were by. The other two were by Patricia Cornwell, whose books I had never read. They were all loaned from friends and it was nice to read some new stuff.

Since I have been back, I have done a lot of catching up with lab, student council, and general personal stuff like bills and figuring out what to get people for Christmas. I had visions of calling boys and going out, but have yet to pick up the phone. I am really bad at trying to date?!

I think that is all for now! I hope everyone got some downtime if you had a holiday weekend. I am off to my parents (probably for some drinking and cards again) to get a tree this weekend and help them decorate theirs.

One holiday down...

...a couple more to go.

I think I am still digesting Thanksgiving dinner five days later! Once I get caught up on work and email, I'll try to post some OR pictures (that's OR for Oregon). It was a wonderfully relaxing weekend with no travel mishaps!

In other news, in case I have not already shared my excitement with you, I got my first publication! This is a big deal because it is essentially the first chapter of my dissertation for my PhD. One publication down; one more to go (hopefully).

Happy Early Turkey Day!

Oh, yes. I fly tomorrow. My parents and I are going out to see my brother, and I will likely not have internet access for nearly a week. My parents rented a cabin with a hot tub near a mountain that just got 10 inches of snow. Snow, wine, a hot tub, games, books, and my parents and brother. It is going to be a wonderfully relaxing loooooong weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The 4-1-1

I have two guys on the drawing board.

I met Restaurant-owner guy. Appearance-wise, he kinda reminds me a little of my high school boyfriend. Kinda. He absolutely loves what he does, which is great. It leaves me feeling a little weary of how willing he is to have a life outside of his restaurants though. We will see. Definitely worth a second date. I am coming down with something and losing my voice, so I hope I did not seem boring.

I also met a friend of a friend over the weekend. (Are you reading, "of a friend"?) I drove to the party, and he asked for a ride back to his bike at the end of night. Who am I to say no? Of course, I totally did not get what was happening. We had a nice chat in the car. When we got to his bike(/scooter thing), he asked if I was going to watch the MLS finals. It finally dawned on me that he may have had ulterior motives for asking for a ride. Apparently, I am a little slow sometimes. Anyway after some awkward how-do-we-continue-this-conversation-pauses, I asked if he would like me to give him my phone number. We did not end up meeting up for the MLS game or that Pats game. We did talk though, and he is cute and seems like a nice guy. "Of a friend" confirmed he is a nice guy and said she was glad he and I got a chance to talk. He and I left it at catching up after the Thanksgiving weekend. He brews beer. A lot. Yum.

Closed matches: 411

[Or 412 if you count the fact that Restaurant-owner Guy just closed the match because we are communicating outside of the internet world now. I have only been home for an hour?!]

400

In 28 days, I have 100 new closed matches. I am up to 400 men that some online dating service thinks are great matches for me. In reality they were just not meant to be for a variety of reasons. I may have mentioned this before, but I get a little worried that I will see or meet men who are oddly familiar, and it will not be until much later that I place them as a match. 400 men is a lot of men!

The end of December will be the end of the 6 months I have paid for this service to find new people for me to meet. I do not plan to renew it. I will reflect more on the experience then, I am sure, but it has been worth it just to get back out there. At that point, I will stop looking, not expect to be swept off my feet anymore, and that is when it always happens. Right? :)

In the meantime, stay tuned for what it is like to date new people during the holiday season...

(Probably not much different than dating new people not during the holiday season.)

Closed matches: 400

A budding young photographer

Rather than work or go hiking with friends on Veteran's Day (observed), I got to (get paid to) spend it with my nephew, who is six. My sister had volunteered to go with my niece and stay at her sister-in-law's house while her sister-in-law had a scheduled c-section. She did not realize my nephew would not have school that day, so I came to the rescue (because my sister said he would pick me over any of the other options - how could I say no???).

We went to the aquarium. I am not sure which my nephew liked more, the aquarium or riding three different subway trains to get there. It was fun! I love giving him my camera for two particular reasons. He loves taking pictures, plus it often prevents a meltdown or a sibling fight. Here are some pictures he took at the aquarium. The Rockhopper Penguin is a little dark, but he had just dropped the camera so I am not sure it was working correctly.
The fur seal is 19-years old and an "elder animal" according to the staff. I hope I can just hop right up out of water like that when I am an elder animal.

Hmmmm...

I was going to title this post "Where to start?", but refrained...because of the "title" of the blog. Really, though, where to start?

I'm back in the online dating game. The current most promising prospect, for meeting in real life at least, owns some restaurants. We'll call him "Restaurant-owner guy". He only claims to be my height. Let's hope he is being truthful and is not actually two inches shorter than what he claims a la "Right-on guy". He seems pretty funny and laid back over the internet, and he has a nice smile and eyes. All good things.

The ex and I are talking again. I would ask not to be judgmental, but go right ahead. I had a bad week; I let part of my guard down; I now have to keep reiterating that we will not be getting back together. I brought this upon myself. He has lent me a new nano that he is borrowing from the marketing department of his company. It does not really have the music on it that I would want to listen to regularly and he will not take it back. Grrr...

Engagement is contagious in my department right now. One friend is a year ahead of me and got engaged last spring and just picked out her dress. Two more friends have gotten engaged recently. One is a year behind me in the PhD program, and his boyfriend gave him a watch when he proposed. My other friend came in to the program the same year as me and her fiance gave her a beautiful antique ring. I may start wearing my great-grandmother's diamond ring to fit in. It is really quite pretty. ;)

Relief?

I knew it would be awkward, but I just spent 42 minutes "breaking up with" the boy. It's done. He's a nice guy. I do not feel nearly as bad as I did when I knew I wanted to stop seeing him but had not told him. I am trying not to feel guilty after talking to him.

He has an excellent point in that the only way that a relationship will work is if you open yourself up to someone (duh), and I know I have a hard time doing that. Here is where I make excuses for myself though - I feel like when I meet the right guy I will not have a hard time opening up, as I have not always had a hard time doing that anyway. The ex never had that patience to wait the 10 minutes it takes for me to really start talking once I have started talking about something difficult. So I stopped trying. That is bad and and I need to avoid that repeating itself. This guy was just not the one with whom to do try and I think I knew that a long time ago and hoped for the best anyway. Lesson learned.

New glasses and hair!

Well, I cut my hair short last spring, but have done something different every time I go back. Short hair is fun that way! Here is the latest style (with all the mousse and hairspray washed out) and my new glasses (again).

Mmmm....meat

I was just going back to look at the various recipes I have lauded on my blog, because I could not remember posting one that had meat in it. Every once in a while someone will be surprised by my eating meat. I am not a vegetarian, but I do cook a bunch of different things and do not feel the need for meat a lot of the time. Plus good meat gets expensive, and I am a grad student after all.

Before I started graduate school I was working as a research technician. We fit in a bunch of long days the summer before I left to get as much data before someone new started who did not know the routine. A group of us were staying late one night to collect data and I was starving. I started talking about this amazing steak my father had grilled for me, along with some portobello mushrooms, that we had with a nice cold beer after moving he an my mom into a temporary living space. The scientist-in-charge (i.e. PI) was looking at me funny and said, "I thought you were a vegetarian. Apparently not."

Then there were two nice dinners out when I had meat wrapped in bacon - venison wrapped in bacon and pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon. I find the latter particularly interesting - why not wrap pig in pig an eat it? Everything is better with bacon too. Or chocolate. Never combined, though.

The short version of this [Jen story*] is that I am in no way vegetarian, but I do eat lots of vegetarian stuff. And chocolate.

*See profile

Sporting my new glasses

I just picked up my new glasses. I am very excited, because it has been 5 or 6 years since I got new frames. I tried to pick out a pair I would want to wear, as it is really better for my eyes than wearing contacts 24 hours a day. What do you think?

Still undefeated!

Belichick tried not to smile until the snap.
The Pats won and now hold the only undefeated record in the NFL.
Brady and Vinatieri hugged.
In that order.

I can never get it to stick together!

I like making my own black bean burgers, but they never really stick together through the whole cooking process. I tried this recipe from Self magazine, but have had the same problem with other recipes. Maybe I do not let it cook long enough on both sides? Admittedly, I added some carrots when I chopped the mushrooms and used the equivalent amount of bread, rather than breadcrumbs, but still?

Although I am sure it is good, I also did not make the corn salsa the recipe suggested. I just ate it with cheese and a bun. :)

I also made peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and those stayed together just fine.

Rise and Shine!

This was the sun rise yesterday morning from my bedroom window. So far this morning is not nearly as colorful.

Lyrics #11b

More from Lyrics #11 because I love the song. :)

We don't want to be the ones, Who lie and cheat and slander
So we hold each other up to a higher standard
And I'll tell you what, I never tried to make it hard
'Cuz when you're hard, just to be hard
The only thing that's hard is you.