March 20th, 2008 – Thursday                 42F/27F, partly cloudy & windy

I’ll start with two things…one, I do not only ever wear my red parka and two, I am really tired. I was just looking at the photos that John and I posted over the weekend and I swear that our stuff arrived and that I have different and sometimes new clothes underneath my standard red parka. No one has called me out on this yet but honestly, it looks kind of funny that I’m always wearing the same thing…for almost two months! I will try to take some photos in the future of me in something other than the parka…but it’s just so warm! It makes my life so GREAT! Being able to explore the city while comfortable and warm in what is pretty much a sleeping bag with sleeves is pretty much the best thing ever! ps. I don’t wear my parka in the house…we just took those pictures when the jackets first arrived…I only wear the parka outside…every time I’m outside!

I am super tired this week. I am burning the candle at both ends and then another candle right next to it. My life would be peachy if I could just focus on one thing but if I had to describe my life right now, I would have to describe my life right now as very dynamic and very exciting and totally exhausting. My internship at Microbia PE continues to be awesome and is in fact, getting even better. As I settle into being a member of the team and feel more confident about working independently, I am really finding my stride with respect to the research. I am helping advance the group’s goals while also working on an independent project. I feel totally comfortable and integrated into the group and will definitely be sorry to leave at the end of next month. I’m learning heaps on the research end and then I’m also getting a lot out of just being in the industrial environment. The perspective I am gaining by being there as a full time employee is absolutely invaluable…the experience is AWESOME!

So that’s one end of the candle…at the other end is my thesis. I am feeling good about my writing and how everything is coming together but I’m not quite there yet. I have another month and I’ll get there but it’s slow. I’m writing sometimes in the morning before I go to work, sometimes during breaks at work, and then always after work. When I’m not working on the thesis, I’m still at the computer…I have two important postdoc fellowships to turn in over the next couple of weeks and the applications require a lot of time and attention and thought. So, I’ve been getting up around 7a to run, then work for a bit on my thesis if I can before going to work, then work all day, and then come home and have a quick dinner before working in the office until between 12p and 1a. I’m not complaining…perhaps I’m just justifying my lack of correspondence with my friends and family. I’d also like to document this time in my life so that in the future when I think I can handle a ton of work, I don’t underestimate how little time I will have for myself and the other things in life that I enjoy…like hanging out with John, talking on the phone, exploring Boston, playing cards or being crafty. I have to admit I did know this was coming…at our family retreat this year I answered the prompt “if you could be anything else, you would be…” with the answer “I would still be me…just me in June.” It’s been a busy 2008 already and it’s only March! However, if I’m truly honest, I totally asked for this.

And all that said…I wouldn’t change right now for the world. Alright…I would be rich so I didn’t have to worry about funding my postdoc…but that might be the only thing I’d change. I am super glad that John and I moved to Boston together. It has been an adventure just getting here and then there’s setting up our house together, learning how to live with one another, and really enjoying the fact that I get to come home to my best friend every night. Well almost every night…tonight he’s on a plane to Las Vegas to celebrate his close friend’s birthday. It’ll be a quiet weekend here at home for me but I need it…and I don’t have to feel bad about leaving John alone so much. I know he doesn’t mind at all…in fact he keeps himself quite entertained and busy when I’m working…he checks in with work quite a bit (he’s really enjoying his postdoc and my feeling is that MIT is really going to be good for him), he’s been reading a lot (just bought a few new books), he watches the Colbert report and he makes sure my iPod has all the latest podcasts so when I run in the morning I have something to listen to/keep me awake on the treadmill!

Living together has been both SUPER cool (I expect it to remain this way) and has forced me to do some self reflection. I don’t think I’m easy to live with. I’m hoping this is primarily a product of being stressed out and when I say I’m not easy to live with, I mean that I’m fairly particular about certain things. I knew this about myself and I knew I was different…but I’m having to face all my quirks head on for the first time. I like things a certain way and I am having to reevaluate the things that are important to me…and when important, I then have to practice bringing suggestions to the table without emotion and in such a way as not to sound like a TOTAL nag! Ready for some true confessions…I don’t like seeing things on the carpet (sock lint, wood chip, small rock, etc.) and I will pick up lots of these little items and throw them away (my dad really need to visit and bring the vacuum!), I love to recycle (in a total militaristic fashion…the community program here is awesome and it make me want to recycle everything!), I make sure the shower curtain is closed so that it dries completely and doesn’t mildew, I make the bed every day, I make sure my socks are not all balled up when I put them in the clothes hamper, I like the toilet paper and paper towels to roll off the top, I like the pillows on the couch to be put on either side at the end of the day, I like to put the trash and recycling out the night before, I like my hangers to all face out, and I like the stove top to be clean and the sponge to be wrung out after washing dishes (so that it dries out before the bacteria can start to grow…yes, I’m a microbiologist and you should wring out your sponges or wash them once a week in your dish washer to keep them clean…think about it). It’s in my honest moments like these that I’m really glad that John doesn’t read my blog! I would prefer that he not realize how wacky his girlfriend is…or rather, not see a long list of reasons other people might find her more than a bit uptight. But I prefer to think of myself as particular. I’m neat and tidy and have decided only to care about things that will affect our health or have been deemed important in the part of my irrational brain that won’t let go. And I do have to say that John’s fantastic about so many of my wants…he’s pretty good about recycling and the bins go out the night before; he helps me make the bed and has started un-balling his socks before throwing them in the laundry (he’s made slow but very steady progress in this area); he closes the shower curtain because he also doesn’t like mildew and he’s not a bacteria-in-the-sponge kind of guy and so he’s almost better than me at wringing it out at the end of doing dishes; I don’t look at his closet so I don’t know which way they point, he doesn’t care about the lint on the carpet (probably because he can’t really see it from that high up) and just doesn’t get the toilet paper and paper towel over the top thing…most don’t…so I just turn it over…mostly because it falls into the “not a big enough deal to mention/makes me sound mental” category. So after rereading all that, John’s pretty much perfect for me. He’s patient and so willing to work with me if my requests make sense. Note, they have to make sense or else they get put in the category of “you just want it that way because it’s your way.” It’s interesting putting together “mine” and “yours” and learning to call it “ours”. I’m not quite used to it but at the same time, it’s fun. It’s great that we moved out here together and in together at the same time. It’s cool because now we have our house, our couch, our dining room table, our dishes, our pots and pans. Yet, we also have our own spaces…I have my desk, my closet, my side of the bed…and I still call it my car…but I’ll have to give that one up soon. I’m transitioning…I now call it “the” car.

Cool things worth mentioning this week…I experienced my first sleet yesterday and can now recognize it (it’s not as bad as I had imagined…I think I was imagining freezing rain but it’s more like baby hail or tiny snow). Foods are packaged the same on the west coast and the east coast but the names on the packages are often different…Kraft mayo doesn’t exist here and is called Hellmann’s and Dryers ice cream is called Edy’s. Donut holes are pop’ems and don’t call anything a freeway…over here they’re all called highways. As crazy as things are for me right now…I think I’m going to keep trying my best to notice little things…learning new things is fun and I feel a bit like a sleuth figuring out which things are different in the the two pictures. Living in Boston is fun and I’m looking forward to more exploring and “living in Boston” in the future.