Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Central Park East - 7:00am

We are finally into the midst of fall - the leaves are the prettiest they've been all season.  I am enjoying every day they are here before the trees are barren for the winter.  It will be pretty then, too, just in a different way. 

Have a wonderful day!!

Monday, November 7, 2011
Central Park East - 7:15am

Mom and I had a beautiful post-Chicago walk in the park this morning.  Hope you like Little Dog-Big Park's fall makeover :)

Have a great day, everyone!

Friday, November 4th, 2011
Central Park East - 7:25am

Happy Friday!  Mom & Dad, can't wait to see you tomorrow!

Thursday, November 3, 2011
Central Park East - The Great Lawn - 8:00am

12 hour time-point down, 24 and 36 hours to go :)  Last night was an odd experience.  Went home from work, walked Sofie in the Park - I might add it was a beautiful afternoon - then went to the gym and did a spin class, then came home around 8:15, cooked eggs and broccoli, showered and then.....got dressed and went back to work?  It was a bit surreal - like time was in fast-forward and it was the next day again.  This feeling was added to when I got to lab and it wasn't deserted.  I got there around 9:45pm, then worked until 1:15am.  Luckily a friend from lab was there working on his candidacy exam.  In need of some distraction and conversation he helped me the whole time and really made the job more pleasant.  In the process I learned all about computers and the history of computer science.  I'm supposed to look up Countess Lovelace because apparently she is very interesting.  Either way - evenings like that are nice surprises - you expect to be slogging around the lab all by yourself until 1 in the morning and you end up having a grand old time. 

I'm a bit tired this morning but I think it's mainly because when my alarm went off I was having a pity party for myself that I only slept 5 hours (i.e. not because I'm actually tired).  In exchange for having to do that twice again today, I'm treating myself to Bagelworks this morning instead of making breakfast and coffee for myself.  It's the little things :)

Have an excellent excellent day!!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Location:  The couch - 8:45am

I did not go to the Park this morning - Brian took Sofie since he knew I have a tough experiment coming up today and tomorrow that involves me doing large parts of the experiment at 12/24/36 hour timepoints.  That means that this evening at 10pm will be my 12 hr, tomorrow morning at 10am will be 24 and tomorrow night at 10pm will be 36.  Starting a timepoint at 10pm means that it will probably be finished 2 hours later or so...yay.  It involves sacrificing my mice, harvesting their lymph nodes and spleen for their T cells, and then measuring the degree of activation in those T cells.  So I'm grateful that instead of getting up this morning at 6:30am, I got to sleep until 8am :)  Thanks Brian! 

By the way...this is what Sofie does after she is walked and fed her breakfast.  She goes back to sleep for her morning nap. 

Have a wonderful day, everyone!

One more thing...

Hi again - I just read an article that describes just how significant the damage is to the trees in Central Park.  This may not seem like a big deal, but for those of us who depend on the Park to give us our daily dose of green - it's sad when when you see big beautiful tree limbs in all their fiery, Northeast color, hanging off the trunks.  Especially when the Central Park Conservancy works SO HARD to protect the rarer, older trees. 

Here's the article I found: 

http://www.truth-out.org/central-park-snow-collected-still-leafy-branches-fells-even-hardy-trees/1320093560

"The damage was spread across about half of Central Park’s 840 acres, making it the worst devastation that Douglas Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy, had seen in his 27 years there."

Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Central Park East - The Great Lawn - 7:35am

Remnants of the storm.  Have a great day, everyone!