Not to brag

But I win at dinner:

Grilled cheese with brie, argula and fig jam, carrot salad with lemon and mint!

90% awesome, 10% epic disaster

So I went to Boston for the Fourth of july! It was such a cool place to be on the fourth-surrounded by people in their very best flag t-shirts, wandering about historic churches and meeting halls where the whole party got started.

The day was almost entirely awesome-we wandered around the parks and markets and the riverfront, stopping frequently for drinks and food. I tried mussels (a brave step for someone who vomits at the smell of most seafood). We ended up at a Mexican restaurant in Cambridge where we had an actual dinner accompanied by some ill advised tequila shots. Dark fell, and it was time to head back to boston for the fireworks. And then things went south. Due to a lot of factors, mostly involving drunken belligerence, we walked back to boston. Despite my repeated warnings that we only had 45 minutes after the fireworks ended to get back to the train station to get our train back to Providence, and thus we needed to watch the fireworks from the riverfront subway stop, we did not take the short, five minute subway ride back to the riverfront, but instead walked. The map below shows our path. You may have trouble seeing the scale, but our trip was nearly five miles (after wandering around boston for most of the day).

I've helpfully illustrated with self-explanatory symbols the points where my feet started to bleed, the point where we stopped to watch the gorgeous, gorgeous fireworks over the river, and the point where I realized that the cop had misdirected us to a much further subway station than we wanted, that we were likely were going to miss our train, that I was going to have to sleep in my clothes on a couch of a friend of a friend and turned into a total bitch. We did indeed miss the train, slept on spare beds at the home of a friend of a friend, took the six AM train back to providence and drank gallons of water. My feet are still bruised and shredded,and today is the first day I can walk relatively painlessly. Not the best fourth of july ever, but far from the worst and certainly one to remember.

Important interruption

You should really go make this pea pesto immediately. Reason one: it is awesome. Reason two: It is super easy and takes very little effort. This is cuisine for the lazy, you barely turn on the stove. Trust me, my other accomplishments this weekend include an accidental six hour nap (i think I'm getting sick? or depressed? i don't know! I don't feel sick or depressed but six hour naps were the earliest signs of both mono and crushing barely treatable depression! Maybe it's a summer cold), dozing off during church (but I went to church!), and reading a 460 page book in one (long) sitting.

So, we have now established that this should be made immediately. Well, first you should go to the farmer's market and get freshfreshfresh peas. Do not mess around with frozen, or heaven forbid, canned peas, as they are both nast-o and should be banned from the planet. Is there any food that is as ruined by processing as beautiful sweet peas?

Now, as usual, I modified the recipe. Making anything from Smitten Kitchen puts me into this intense conflict between my belief that Deb (aka the Smitten Kitchen lady) can do no wrong and my complete and total inability to follow directions without tweaking them. So, for this recipe, the biggest change was adding mint-roughly half the amount of fresh mint leaves as peas, I guess? I think this really enhanced the flavor of the pesto-mint and peas are perfect together! Other little changes you can take or leave: I doubled the garlic because I don't plan on kissing anyone tonight, cut down on the cheese because I like pestos with less cheese so I can sprinkle more on top (also becacuse I was using my good expensive parmigianno reggiano and a little goes a long way). I swapped in some almonds for the pine nuts because I could!

This is the most amazing thing I've eaten today. And that includes an Egg Mcmuffin and chocolate-peccan banana bread.

Team Coco

Conan O'Brien's commencement speech at Dartmouth. All of it funny, but the last ten or so minutes are particularly good.

lovely weekend

This weekend was extra amazing, because my dear Edie came to visit me! We had lots of fun eating, drinking wine, exploring Rhode Island, and drinking more wine.
Saturday started with pancakes and bacon for breakfast!

Followed by coffee and shopping on Thayer, where we bought these spectacular, genuine diamond friendship rings for five whole dollars. Guess who broke hers within three hours?

We went to Federal Hill for delicious Italian food and wine, including a baked goat cheese and san marzano tomato appetizer that was among the best things I have ever eaten. This is a crappy picture, but Federal Hill is super pretty

Post-wine portrait

On Sunday, we went down to the Bay, stopping off at Greenvale Vineyards.

What a hideous place to spend an afternoon.

Next onto Newport, where we walked along the cliffs, and then sadly I dropped Edie off at her conference.

It was such a fun weekend-I loved having a visitor to explore my new home with! I'm a little sad to go back to normal life again. Luckily, Edie and I may have time to rendezvous for lunch on friday before she heads back to alabama, so there may be more adventures to come!

Things!

a) I bought a TV and a cherry pitter this weekend. So far the cherry pitter has seen more action

b) As I have two (2) friends in providence, I do pretty much whatever they are interested in. One friend is canadian and way into hockey! So I've been watching the Stanley cup finals at bars. I have been to the bar 3 times in the last week. I've been out past midnight 3 times in the past week. Needless to say, this does not normally happen, no matter how many friends I have. It has generally been a blast, and I've met lots of people and expanded my social circle and will maybe someday have more than two friends.

c) We have undergrads in the lab! They are three girls, aged 19. That's nine years younger than me. Which means that when I was in college they were in middle school. When I was learning to drive, they were in first grade. I feel old.

d) It is going to be 98 and humid here on thursday. That's Alabama weather, and I do not approve

Less than 100 books, April and May

At this point, I am obviously not going to make it to 100 books, as I would need to read 19 books in June to get back on pace. Curse having a "real life".

32. The Crucible Arthur Miller For PSBC. Reading plays makes me want to be in a play
31. A Discovery of witches Deborah Harkness You know how before I said I don't finish books I don't like? Not true in this case. This book is awful. Don't read it. It has an interesting enough story (why I finished it). But. Is there something about vampire books that makes authors tell you things instead of show them? In regular books you are supposed to show, not tell. The characters are awful. I hate them all and wish they would die. Also, this book is about vampires. Don't read it.
30. Cutting For Stone Abraham Verghese
29. 22 Brittania Road Amanda Hodgkinson
28. The Tiger's wife Tea Obreht amazing! It's a pretty quick read and so wonderful. One of my favorites ever.
27. Swamplandia! Karen Russell also amazing! Story of a family who runs an Alligator wrestling theme park in the swampy part of Florida. I loved it. It's told from the point of view of a 13 year old, and the author does a great job of tricking your adult sensibilities into not seeing danger until she does.
26. The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis For PSBC's continuing Devil and God series. We found CSL to be an insufferable douchebag.
25. Galore, Michael Crummey Galore is beautiful! If you've read 100 Years of Solitude, it's a similar winding family tale told with magical realism, but in a very different setting.
24. Comedy in a Minor Key, Hans Kielson
23.Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides This one is really good, but tricky. There is incest and hermaphroditism, and you have to get over any icky feelings you have about it immediately. If you do, it's a great book. Another one that goes on the all time favorite list.

Previously
22. Great House Nicole Krauss
21. The Children's Book A. S. Byatt.
20. Room Emma Donaghue
19. The Lady Matador's Hotel Cristina Garcia
18. The Lonely Polygamist, Brady Udall
17. Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
16. The Wordy Shipmates Sarah Vowell
15. The Warmth of Other Suns: The epic story of America's great Migration, Isabelle Wilkerson
14. Little Bee Chris Cleave
13 Fool Christopher Moore
12. A Dirty Job Christopher Moore
10. Lolita Vladimir Nabakov
9. Super Sad True Love Story Gary Shteyngart
8. The Swan Thieves, Elizabeth Kostova.
7.Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood.
6. Faithful Place, Tana French.
5. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read them, Elif Batuman.
4. Purgatorio, Dante Alighieri.
3. The Scarpetta Factor, Patricia Cornwell.
2. Bite Me, Christopher Moore.
1. Devil in the White City Eric Larson.

not grown up

Elizabeth: I had bread and olive oil and grapes
me: grapes or wine?
Elizabeth: and I was like, hey! this is healthy!
and then I was like, wait. Maybe I need to not think that is healthy before I am grown-up enough to have children.
Grapes AND wine
me: ahhh!
I mean, it's not bad
are you having children soon?
Elizabeth: no.
but I mean.
it's good to remember these moments
when I get baby fever.
me: yeah
Elizabeth: it's good to be young and unattached
and very good for the potential child.
me: when I am like "I want a baby right now" I think "ok, I just took ap icture of my cat in a suitcase from a trip i returned from a week ago that is open in the middle of the living room because I have been pulling semi-clean clothes out of to wear all week. no babies"


ADDENDUM, because biffy is hilarious:

Elizabeth : I kind of want to make "Good news! I bought a box of wine! Love, biffy"
my new email signature.

Lovelovelove Adele

Sorry Internet

Well, it has been a while. Since Easter, I've been some what preoccupied. I had a surprise two-to-ten page proposal to write a for a training grant application (I ended up with six pages, heavily borrowed (with permission) from the boss's grant) with about three days notice. Good news is, I got the slot so I have a guaranteed job for two more years-a rare thing even for a postdoc in today's gross funding climate. Doesn't really quiet my growing anxiety about what I'm going to do after those two years (well, ok, probably get another grant and continue to postdoc for a few more years, but after that...???). I moved rigs, which gave me valuable experience troubleshooting noise. My old rig had a giant poster of canada, was directly below the room where they did tests on monkeys, and shared space with the morris water maze. My new rig has windows! that I can see the bay from!, no monkey sounds/smells, no behavioral equipment and is in the same room as the rest of the lab.
I also went on a too brief vacation with my family-my parents and sister and my mom's brother and his family, which I'll have pictures of soon. I will say that I love my family-we're all brainy and sarcastic and giant nerds. We had a snarky conversation name dropping propaganda films from three different eras within ten minutes of me getting off the plane. We do uncool things like puzzles and board games and build giant sandcastles and watch the tide come in and smash them and have so much fun. I love it.
Now I'm back to work and real life, looking forward to exploring more of RI now that it has thawed!