wife, mother, ph.d. student, hot stuff.

Friday, November 26, 2004

Holidays = food....

Yesterday, Robin and I spent the Thanksgiving eating and relaxing with friends in the Boston area. We stuffed ourselves silly on Turducken (a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken), mashed potatoes, yams with marshmellows melted on top, green bean casserole, salad, rolls, and 3 different kinds of cranberry sauce.


This photo of Tim with the aftermath of our meal pretty much sums up how I felt after we were done eating.

A lot of people have heard the urban legend that turkey contains tryptophan, and that this amino acid causes sleepiness after a Thanksgiving meal. Snopes has pretty well shot that myth down. However, I stuffed myself so thoroughly that after we were done eating, I curled up on Tim and Molly's couch and conked out for a good half hour . (But not before I unbuttoned the top button of my skirt. Yes, I really did eat that much.)

A couple hours later, we attempted to have dessert. (a few of us couldn't finish, they were still too damned full.) We had pumpkin pie, and a decadent chocolate hazelnut mousse cake that Robin made over the course of the two previous days. My only contribution to this cake was the powdered sugar decoration.... I printed out a picture of trogdor and cut out the outline, which on top of the cake before Robin sifted powdered sugar over it.


The paper cutting


The resulting cake

Unfortunately, powdered sugar Trogdor did not travel well... by the time we got to Tim and Molly's, the sugar was jostled all out of place, and the only recognizable parts were Trogdor's beefy arm and some majesty. The cake was delicious, though.

Saturday, November 20, 2004

eh WHAT???

Fark Gem: but in case it gets bahleeted, check out the savings you can get at Target!

Friday, November 19, 2004

Be still my beating ovaries...

Poor 1 month old Ben is blotchy because of the dry heat that is the inside of a Boston apartment in the winter, but he's still getting cuter by the day.

There are all kinds of writeups on the wonder that is a baby, so I won't add to the drivel. It suffices to say that I am amazed that this little man exists, and I will be watching his development with wide eyes.


Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Monday, November 15, 2004

Why Blog?

I've been blogging for a long time. It started on my college webpage, over 5 years ago. Every month or so, I would add a text blurb about whatever interesting thing was going on in my life. Since then, I've gone through a variety of online presences (some on personal webpages, some on blogging sites), all with different amounts of interaction. In turn, I have watched as over the years, the number of people I personally know who were blogging grew exponentially.

A question that I have struggled with since the beginning was who my audience was, and what kind of interaction I was hoping for. Clearly, blogging is not just for personal record keeping... that is for paper journals. What I put on here is accessible to anyone and everyone; in essense, I am informing the world about events in my life, thoughts that I have, etc. Are my parents and brothers reading? What about my in-laws? Without interaction (or paying for web counters/IP trackers), it's hard to tell.

When I was simply posting text to my webpage, interaction was limited to email. Other online journals I have kept encourage a lot of interaction between the blogger and his/her readers in the form of comments on each entry. For some reason, I tended to chat a lot more with other bloggers whom I had never met in person, more than I did with friends I knew in real life. Slowly, my posting became geared towards interacting with these other online presences. It wasn't simply about keeping track of my everyday life anymore, it was socializing. Audience became tied in with interaction, something I didn't (but should've) foreseen.

And what about the people who are reading and not responding? I'm sure that my online blogging has had an unseen audience. I know that there are blogs and websites that I keep track of, but do not correspond with the author. Surely the same applies to me. Should I care about the voyeurs? Do I brag about my accomplishments? How much should I censor myself to prevent others from nitpicking/laughing over my entries the way I tend to do to others?

Ultimately, these are questions that only I can answer. I don't think those answers exist anyway. The reasons I blog are continuously evolving. All I know is that I have blogged online for a long time, and I will probably continue to do so far into the future.

Friday, November 12, 2004



Fall was nice while it lasted. Today is the first day it really feels like winter; it's snowing here in Cambridge. I'm still not used to the fall season being so short. While I was growing up in NJ, fall lasted till after Thanksgiving; I didn't have to break out gloves till December. But this year, I've been bundling my head up in scarves and shoving my gloved hands in coat pockets since the beginning of November. That's what I get for living 5 hours drive north of NJ.

When I was at Caltech, I complained a lot about missing the seasons. Now that I'm actually getting seasons, I sorely miss CA weather. Perhaps it is aggravated by our lack of a car; in NJ, I was driven everywhere and didn't have to be outside for more than 5 minutes at a time, but living in Cambridge means walking EVERYWHERE.

I know Robin wants to head back to the West Coast eventually. I think I'd be happy either here or there, as long as we get a car. Of course, job/grad school location will dictate it more than weather, but sometimes it's nice to dream.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

rolling rolling rolling...

I've been at Payload for less than a year, but already I'm moving on.

Robin and I attended the wedding of his second cousin, Michael, in September. I met Nir at the reception (Nir and Michael's new husband are both faculty at Harvard/MGH). He wanted to talk to me about my new camera(Canon Digital Rebel) which he saw me using. We eventually started talking about what we did for our day jobs, which resulted in him visiting me a couple weeks later to talk more about his lab, which resulted in this:

Dear Regina:

I am pleased to offer you the position of Research Laboratory Technician for MGH’s Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology, Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases.....

This is really a huge development, and not just because I'm switching jobs. I'm taking this job with the intent of completely switching fields. The plan is to get a couple papers out, and apply for a ph.d. in biology.

Where I go after that is anyone's guess. Industry? Academia? I don't know. And where does starting a family with Robin fit in with these new developments? I have no idea. There's only one thing I do know; for the first time in a long long while, I'm really excited about my career. It's a good feeling.