For Science!

This weekend my parents visited us from New York so my dad could take part in the (ridiculously named) Imagine Lifestyles Ultimate Driving Experience. If you live in the Boston area and are subscribed to any of the social deal websites — Groupon, Living Social, etc. — you probably saw the deal they had during the summer where you had the opportunity to do some laps in a Ferrari or Lamborghini. Dad is a total car fanatic, so my sister and I bought two Groupons for his birthday. That equates to six laps around the track in the fancy car of his choosing. Naturally, he chose the red Ferrari!

The email we received from Imagine Lifestyles (uhg, that name!) said to show up 30 minutes before our 10:00 appointment and warned that the whole ordeal could take up to three hours. Being the punctual family we are, we showed up at 9:20 at the track, which was set up in a parking lot across from Gillette stadium in Foxboro. Luckily, the whole process was extremely simple. Dad got registered, put on a helmet, and drove his six lap in about an hour. Not bad!

To hear Dad describe the experience of driving on the course, it sounded pretty stressful to me! The weather wasn’t great for going fast, but there was on straightaway where you could hit the gas for a while. I asked him how fast he was driving (no speed limits on the track), but he was too busy to pay much attention to the speedometer. Apparently a couple of other people had spun out during the weekend, so he had to be quite careful going around the sharp corners. Good thing he didn’t crash, because we only got him the cheap insurance package! 😉

George and I had a relaxing vacation in Portland, ME this holiday weekend. Incidentally, I’d actually never been to Maine before, despite having lived in the Northeast all my life. Somehow I just never made it any farther north than New Hampshire!

Since this vacation was coming after a couple of very busy weeks, I tried not to over-schedule it too much. Mostly we slept in late and then spent the afternoons walking around the city and eating a lot. Apparently on vacation anything goes, food-wise. I put my ban on fish and sugar on hold in order to indulge in some Maine lobster and blueberry ice cream. Yum!

In addition to having a nice break from the city, George and I were conveniently out of town for September 1st, which is the most dreaded day for a Cambridge resident — MOVING DAY! It’s the day when practically every person in the Greater Boston Area is moving into a new apartment. The streets are clogged with moving vans and you will inevitably have friends who need a hand moving heavy objects. Sorry friends! This year, instead of carrying couches up stairs, we were busy browsing used book stores and strolling by the ocean! (Though, to be fair, we did spend some time carrying heavy objects in the weeks leading up to Moving Day. We’re not such bad friends!)

So… I’ve pretty much abandoned this blog since last year. But no more!  I have a lot going on these days: new job and new boyfriend (at least new since the last time I blogged) and lots of travel. A blog reboot is definitely in order!

I spent my Thanksgiving with Rae at our parents’ house, as we do every year. After a harrowing drive through the snow to get there, we pretty much did nothing but eat and relax. So this is a post about my Mom’s amazing cooking!

I’ve experienced somewhere around 17 Thanksgivings as a vegetarian, so I’m something of an expert at not eating turkey. My family makes it easy because we don’t eat a ton of meat to begin with, so I have never been forced to rely on a Tofurkey. Have you ever seen a Tofurkey? I can’t vouch for the taste, but it looks pretty gross, especially when compared to what I ate. That would be mashed potatoes with caramelized onions, veg stuffing, wild rice pilaf, a sweet potato, cranberry sauce, and garlic-y green beans & tomatoes. Looking at the photo makes me want to eat it all over again!

Two kinds of pie for dessert: apple and pumpkin. I ate a slice of each two nights in row. No regrets!

So thanks, Mom, for making such an amazing dinner while I sat watching the National Dog Show and thinking up nicknames for the winning dogs! And thanks, whole family, for indulging me by watching Starship!

StarKid by Kath at Give Me My Remote who was lucky enough to be backstage.

Last night I dragged Rae to see Team StarKid at the House of Blues in Boston. It was totally awesome.

My love of  StarKid is a little complicated. I first watched A Very Potter Musical several years ago, back when it was still called Harry Potter, The Musical. I liked it, but I didn’t think much more about it until I heard Darren Criss was going to be on Glee. I rewatched AVPM, which led to watching their other shows, and before you know it, I was a full-blown fangirl! The complicated part is that it sometimes feels like I’m the oldest StarKid fan ever. I imagine the average age is somewhere around 16, based on the audience of last night’s show. It’s a little embarrassing to be the oldest person in the crowd who isn’t someone’s mom, but those songs are just so damn catchy!

I felt bad about cutting our Thanksgiving visit short in order to get back to Boston (sorry, parents!), but it was kind of worth it. The show was SO MUCH FUN! I couldn’t get over how good they sounded — much better than in the videos. They played all of my favorite songs in new, cool arrangements, plus choreography and little skits. Once the music started, I didn’t care about being surrounded by teenagers — I was cheering and singing along as loudly as any of them! I just hope no one got my terrible dancing on video… there were certainly a LOT of digital cameras!

I tried to be a good blogger and take some photos of my own to make my post look nice, but it was easier said than done.

This is supposed to be Darren. It kind of looks like three Darrens.

A very blurry Jim and the Povolos, aka Mark, Jaimie, Lauren, Clark, Brian, & Dylan.

From now on I’ll leave the photo-taking to the teenage pros. I’m sure they’ve all posted to Tumblr by now!

Okay, just a few more random thoughts:

• When Rae and I arrived at a little after 7:00, the line was at least three blocks long! The staff seemed completely bemused about the whole thing. I guess there were over 2500 people there (the biggest crowd at any of their shows)!
• The main benefit of going to a show with a teenage crowd: no lines at the bar and the bartender remembers your drink! Also, I could see the stage over the tops of their heads.
• I really liked Charlene Kaye, the opening act. She and her bandmates were so perfectly in tune with their harmonies. I was both extremely impressed and also a little sad because so few groups can sing that well.
• The first time Darren came on stage (to sing Dress and Tie with Charlene), the screams were literally deafening. I’m pretty sure I suffered permanent damage!
• My favorite new arrangement was the guys singing Status Quo. I wish I could buy an mp3 of it on iTunes, because all the recordings on YouTube are obscured by screaming girls!

Okay, that’s enough out of me! Now I’m going to get back to watching A Very Potter Sequel with Rae, who is now a fan too! I’ll leave you with a video of one of my favorite songs, courtesy of YouTuber apickelyt:

The artist at work!

There was one more things I wanted to mention about Rae’s photo shoot, and that is her mad Photoshop skillz. Yes, with a “z”. They are that impressive to me.

When looking through all the photos, I mentioned offhand that, of the two below, I liked the face I was making on the left, but I prefered the composition of the one on the right.

So what did Rae do? She used her Photoshop magic to combine them into:

I honestly couldn’t even tell that she had messed with them until she told me. I recommend that everyone get a Photoshop pro for a sister: you will never look bad in a photo again!

Rule-breaking Megan thanks you for your time.

Yesterday Rae and I spent nearly three hours taking photos in and around the Public Garden. Ostensibly I was posing so that Rae would have a chance to practice using her DSLR, but secretly it was because I am a big ham who loves having her picture taken, no matter how many people are giving me weird looks! I even managed to get Rae in front of the camera a couple of times.

Mostly we went around the Public Garden, where we were in the company of lots of other photographers. Some pros were doing what I assumed were engagement and senior photos. Others were doing weird stuff, like the women who were being approached by a scarily large goose or the students who tied a really long ribbon to a tree. When we got bored of trees and swans, we ventured around Park Plaza, where we found a cute pastry mural, over to the (very reflective) John Hancock tower, by the doors of Trinity Church, and finally to the opposite side of Copley Square in front of the BPL.

I made a slideshow of what I thought were the best shots. There’s definitely a new Facebook profile photo or two in there!

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Besides the vision research that I already mentioned, I’m involved in one other clinical study. In the main study, I’ll sleep in a sleep lab where I’ll be monitored during the night. Then in the morning, I’ll complete some kind of aptitude test. I’m a healthy control that they’ll be comparing to patients with sleep apnea, the hypothesis being that people with sleep apnea will do worse on the tests because they have interrupted sleep.

Today I participated in what they call a companion study — basically since the group I’m working with is already getting a bunch of sleep apnea patients into the sleep lab, the second group is teaming up with them so that it doesn’t have to recruit its own research subjects. The companion study is looking at how sleep apnea and relates to someone’s capacity for exercise and their eating/exercise habits. To do that, I filled out some long questionnaires about my habits and then went to Brigham and Women’s Hospital to do a stress test.

The whole experience was a little weirder than I thought it would be, though everyone was really nice. I knew beforehand that during the test I would be riding a stationary bike for about 10 minutes with an EKG and some kind apparatus to measure my breathing. Clearly I didn’t know anything about an EKG before, because I imagined it to be something like three or four electrodes stuck to my chest. Turns out it takes TEN electrodes! I had to wear a gown an everything because there were so many. All the wires hooked into a heavy pouch that I wore around my waist like a fanny pack. After I got on the exercise bike, they staff brought out the breathing monitor. It was basically like the mouthpiece of a snorkel that was attached to a flexible tube. None of this was uncomfortable, but it was all a little awkward! If you want to get an approximation, you can put on a bathrobe, wear a fanny pack full of rocks and breathe through a snorkel while riding an exercise bike. I’m sure you will look just as awesome as I did!

The test itself was pretty easy. I sat still for a few minutes to get a baseline and then I started pedaling the bike. At first it was really easy. I was supposed to pedal just enough to keep my little monitor at 60 RPM, but it was pretty difficult to keep myself from going higher. The resistance was programed to steadily increase as I pedaled, though, so by the last few minutes it was getting really hard! In the end I rode for about 8 minutes before it got so hard that I couldn’t make my legs do 60 RPM anymore. When I was done, I had to lie down so they could check my recovery. Not counting the set-up, the whole test was under 15 minutes.

All in all they told me I have an appropriate response for a non-athlete person of my size. So I guess I’m not disastrously out of shape!

I’ve tried to go to Harvard Square two other times before and — no joke — each time I accidentally got on the T going the wrong direction. I’m just so used to going into Boston!

After Rae and I managed to make it there, we spent a couple of hours power-walking around the crowds of students and tourists (we can’t stand to walk slowly!) We spent some time browsing the Harvard Book Store, walked past a wedding, looked at consignment shops, and drank apple cider. We got hungry, so Rae introduced me to Border Cafe where I had my first ever empanada. Maybe I had never seen a vegetarian version before, or maybe I am just very dedicated to burritos, but I can’t believe I have been missing out on these all my life! Yum! Unfortunately all the empanadas put me in a food coma and I didn’t accomplish much aside from weeping profusely at the finale of the fourth season of Doctor Who!

I guess our exploration of Harvard Square wasn’t that adventurous, but it’s hard to believe how nice the weather still is! Just walking around outside is nice (though it doesn’t make for very interesting blogging…).

Our parents came to visit us this weekend for Columbus Day. Rae and I had been scouring Groupon for good things to do/places to eat. We used one at an Indian restaurant (Mela). They had a “vegetarian dinner for two” that was a good deal and came with all the extra stuff that I like (samosas, raita, and even dessert!). Yum!

A few weeks ago Rae and I had come across and ad for the show Two Kids, One Hall which featured two of the five members of the Canadian sketch comedy group The Kids in the Hall (Scott Thompson and Kevin McDonald). We were determined to see it because we’ve loved KitH since high school. Since they were only in town for one night, we convinced our parents to come too. Big mistake! We had already seen the group live and we’d been to Scott Thompson’s one-man show, so we thought we know what to expect: a little stand up, some monologues, and sketches. Turns out it was all stand up, which was fine. What was extremely awkward was that Scott talked about only the most racially charged and sexually explicit topics you can imagine! Not the kind of show you want to bring your parents to! Kevin’s material was less offensive, but he sang several overly-long songs that didn’t make any sense. Luckily our parents were good sports about the whole thing (at least one group in the not-packed theater walked out in the middle). Personally, I feel like I can handle the shocking content, but wasn’t even all that funny! Very disappointing. 😦 I’ll have to watch “Journey to the Top of the Stairs” a bunch of times to console myself!

On Sunday we used another Groupon at the MIT Museum. We thought it was really interesting: and nice combo of art and science and MIT history. Also, apparently Lady Gaga went there, so you know it’s cool. Plus I wanted to buy everything in their adorable gift shop! After that we went to Toscanini’s for ice cream — Mom had been determined to go ever since Rae told her that they have a malted vanilla flavor. Sadly, they didn’t have it that day, but she was happy with toasted coconut too. I got salty caramel and could barely eat one scoop! It was practically as thick as real caramel! Later, we ordered pizza from The Upper Crust and Dad helped us hang some pictures and the magnetic knife rack. Now we have a whole bunch of knives stuck to the wall, so no one had better sneak up on us!