The week has been and continues to be under the banner of "Germanness", and not only with the impending visit of my brother and his entourage in about a week or so. This past Wednesday I again joined the German ExPats Group at Jacob Wirth's (http://www.jacobwirth.com), which as usual was a fun event. A never ending influx of German transplants, other German speakers and hangers-on makes the group a wonderfully dynamic congregation and at each meeting about 20 of us gather around a big table, eat German food and chat about all things important to us foreigners. Tonight I will see some more German people, a German language group of sorts , who strangely enough will meet at an Irish pub in my neck of the woods (The Asgard - http://www.classicirish.com/asgard_about.html) - but hey, beer is beer, right? As long as they do not run out of it, I am game and so are the other Germans.
I am writing this to you from my office, where I will dedicate my efforts today toward the first draft of my application to retain the German citizenship. I have been dragging my butt on this one for quite some time, mostly because it seemed like a pretty hopeless endeavor. To summarize: If I want dual citizenship, and I do, Step 1 is to first deal with the Germans. Their application contains two parts - in part 1 I have to prove existing connections with Germany (no problem here), and in part 2 (and this is the hard part) one has to prove that not having the US citizenship would be a hardship for this, that and the other reason. Generally those reasons are either serious legal or financial reasons (estate tax - if you are really loaded). So I had pretty much given up on this and was ready to go for the US citizenship anyway, but recently discovered an amazing Yahoo Blog, which contained tons of tips on how to prepare this application successfully. The web site contains many successful applications to download, and today my friends, I am going to pilfer. I have devised a strategy that may just succeed, and I hope to finish the application within the next month or so. Wish me luck.
So, this week was a busy one, and I cannot believe that it is Saturday. If you recall, last Sunday I flew to Washington, DC and then headed out to Bethesda, Maryland for a two-day conference on early drug development in cancer at the NCI< the National Cancer Institute. Of course (and I know at least two people I can blame for this), I got a cold on Sunday, and was a bit of a sorry sight, red nose and all. Most of the conference was spent in a haze of decongestants, and in one meeting room, so I am afraid I cannot tell you too much about Bethesda, aside from the fact that it is a wee bit northwest of Washington, DC. It was named after a church built in the early 1900s, the Bethesda Presbyterian Church, and they pilfered the name from Jerusalem's "Pool of Bethesda". The actual word Bethesda stands for "House of Mercy" (from Aramaic). Bethesda is dominated by quite a few government agencies, but in particular the National Institutes of Health, which cover quite some ground there; the National Naval Health Center and Lockheed Martin are located there as well. Famous Bethesda natives include astronaut John Glenn, actress Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, talk show host Maury Povich and NPR great Cokie Roberts. And of course Eunice Kennedy Shriver lives there. I was actually very surprised by quite a lovely downtown area (http://www.downtownbethesda.com/) when we headed out to dinner one night, and I must tell you that our French meal at La Miche ( http://www.lamiche.com) was absolutely superb. My boef bourguignon was spectacularly tasty, and I only heard the greatest praise from my colleagues Paul and Geoff across the table about their choices.
Work has been very busy this week, and kept me here late last night as well. I continue on my honeymoon in the Translational Research Lab, and this week we practiced cutting microscopically thin slices of tumor tissue from FFPE (formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded) blocks. And you know what, apparently I have quite the knack for it, and they let me go to town with the microtome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtome). Aside from one little bitty slip-up, I had a very nice day there, and next week we will be doing some staining. (You are noticing, that I am turning into a science geek, right?)
The weather as of last night has hopefully made up its mind (considering that it is supposed to be fall) and dropped the temperatures down to the upper 50s (phew!), rather than the mid-90s we have been experiencing this week. Hopefully we have some wonderful foliage to look at when my family snows into town.
With my brother's visit, this coming month will be slightly insane - it is sandwiched between two trips to California (first one next weekend to Napa for the wedding of my friends Chris and Brad), and hopefully I will find some time to breathe in between. By the time my birthday and late October comes around, I may just want to sleep for about a month or so.
As for this weekend, there are plans - this afternoon, I will be heading to Union Square in Somerville for the "What's The Fluff? Festival", which will feature all kinds of things (including cocktails) with the famous marshmallow spread (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmallow_creme), which was invented in Somerville. Tada! This may be a sticky affair and all the sweet stuff may have to be washed down with a beer tonight when meeting with the German speaking hordes. Tomorrow a lovely brunch is in the works with my friend Ruth (who finally moved back from Toronto!!! yeah!!!) and her fiancee Georges - our brunch place of choice this week is 75 Chestnut, a charming little place on Beacon Hill http://www.75chestnut.com/. More about that next week.
Before I leave, two big news items:
Number 1: I got a cortisone shot yesterday at the Sports Medicine Clinic (damn that hurt!), that hopefully will make that heel of mine heal up nicely and in about ten days or so the steroid should have done its work, and the inflammation should be seriously reduced. Still have to do stretching, and icing every day. As of now the heel is sore from the shot and I'll have to grin and bear it for another day or two.
Number 2: The Red Sox clinched the American League East division title last night!!! I believe there might be some parade going on Monday night, where the hub once again will be filled with tens of thousands of baseball fans. Gotta love it.
Go Sox!!!
pet:)
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