J and me in Boston

My friend J (from college) came to visit for a few days.  It snowed like crazy for most of the time. Above is a photo of us in Back Bay, after a satisfying brunch at Masa.  Photo courtesy of J and her iPhone :)

Nooooo!

The mouse is back.  We found poo on the stove.  Cleaned up the apartment, set out traps with cheese (even though I'm pretty sure the mouse won't bother with them).  Found a hole in A's room, so we'll get some steel wool to plug it up.  Other than that, I just don't know.  Of course I emailed landlord C, but what's the next step?  Does anyone know?  Does he have to go through with some major extermination ordeal?

26 Hours with K

K visited this weekend, arriving at 10am on Saturday and leaving at noon on Sunday.  The visit was short but sweet.  We hit up Petsi Pies twice, but both times, they didn't have our top scone choices.  Boooo!  We made do with a pear and pecan scone on Saturday and a blueberry muffin and delicious hot chocolate on Sunday.

The other highlight of the visit was a trip to Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, a wonderfully pricy specialty food store with an amazing cheese selection.  The photo K took (above) does not do it justice.  We got some pancetta and young goat's milk cheese from Belgium (raw, aged only 15 days).  The pancetta went into making pasta sauce (what else do I eat when I'm with K?).  I made sure we had salad, too, of course.  The other highlight of dinner was a surprisingly good Chianti that my parents had left in my apartment when they visited.  Se label in photo.

During and after dinner, we watched 'It's a Wonderful Life' (on TV), and I was crying away by the end.  Really, what's happened to me?  I've become a mush over the past few years.

Bad Blogger

I think if blogging were a course, I would earn a D for the infrequency of my entries and the lack of photos.  So here I am, trying to pick things up again after a couple weeks of not blogging.  In my defense, I was traveling a bit and working a lot!  But then again, some of my other blogger friends are super busy but still manage to keep it up...

Anyway, I recently came back from a trip to the Bay Area.  Oh, I miss the Bay Area!  I went to attend a reunion performance for my old ballet studio; it was their 30th anniversary, and they invited some alums to perform in the Nutcracker.  So even though I have not danced in a long time, I put on my ballet shoes and did a little dancing.  It was so much fun, but the most fun was just seeing all my old friends.  The photo above is of some of us during rehearsal (we learned our part the day of the performance, in less than 2 hours!).  I won't put up a photo of me in costume, with pink tights and all.  Although, those of you on Facebook maybe have already seen some of those photos, posted by friends of mine :)

I also figured that if I was already flying to CA, I would stay a few days extra, which I did.  That gave me time to catch up with other old friends (A from high school, L and N from college).  And, of course, I saw my parents and K. 

When I got back, I had a boatload of work to do.  It ended up being really satisfying, because I made quite a bit of progress.  I have some pilot data now, and some of it is actually analyzed and looking potentially promising!

K is flying in today.  Poor guy is coming for just 24 hours.  Hopefully we can arrange the next trip so that he's here for ~48 hours and has direct flights (which he does not this time).  After this last trip to CA, I've determined that I will only fly direct when going between the east and west coasts (something that my friend N from SD has been adamant about for years -- I now agree with you!).