There is that...

You may have noticed that the blog posts have been pretty spotty over the last couple of weeks (scroll down and you will see I have attempted to make up for that tonight).  Well, I have a good excuse.  My parents were visiting, which was the first good reason.  The second good reason is that my mom discovered the wonders of e-mail and thus I had difficulty actually accessing my laptop in order to write blogs.  However, it was fun to have my parents here and show them the wonders of Boston (and discover a few wonders myself).  We had planned to visit Cape Ann (to the north), downtown Boston, and Cape Cod, but decided to ditch the Cape Cod plan as being far too ambitious.  I had mixed feelings about posting pictures, fearing that it would dissuade visitors from bothering to come (i.e. "we already saw it on your blog!"), so I have compromised and posted more of a tempting cross-section of Boston pictures to pique your interest - check them out here if you like.

In other news, I have finally started doing lab work, which has been really fun actually.  I hate feeling not useful in general, and now that I am in the lab, making stuff, and getting a couple of neat (if not groundbreaking) results already, I am beginning to feel useful again.  Unfortunately, to purchase a chemical at MIT, you almost have to donate a kidney to facilitate the process, which is holding me (and many others) up a bit.  I have become convinced that MIT is a success in spite of their best efforts in many cases.  Also, when you come to work at a "top" university, the whole "big fish in a small pond moving to be a small fish in a big pond" analogy definitely comes into play (I can't count how many times I heard that from the guidance counsellors in high school, coming as I did from the middle of nowhere).  It really does take a bit of time to really find your footing and, in a sense, regain your confidence that you are really good at what you do and it makes sense for you to be there.  It might sound stupid and/or pompous, but it's true - so much of research (and academics in general actually) is about being confident in your ideas and what you are trying to achieve.

I have also more or less decided on a church - the small, disorganized one in my neighbourhood (although, to be fair, it seems to be much more organized than my initial impression would suggest).  Again, consistent with my desire to be "useful", I think that is the place where I can participate the most and the best in a church here in Boston - also, it is a very friendly church which takes both its sense of community and its scripture very seriously, which I like.  I am headed to my first worship team rehearsal on Thursday night - based on what I've seen so far, it ought to be extremely interesting!  But, strangely enough (besides the people), playing on worship team is one of the things I miss the most about Hamilton, so it will be good to get involved again.  There is also a 20-something small group and I met the Baptist chaplain at MIT today who apparently runs a post-doc group during lunch at MIT, so that is another thing I might check out. 

It's also great to have Brett and Courtney in town now -- it is entirely odd that all three of us went to McMaster and the same church in Hamilton and all ended up in Boston through a totally independent mechanism (unbeknownst initially to each other!)  Having friendly and familiar faces around in a new city is always huge, so I think it will be great for all of us to have some "instant friends" here.  We did a progressive dinner last night (after the ball game, scroll down for the story) to show each other our apartments, which was a lot of fun.  So, lots of stuff is slowly coming together.  I am very much somebody who likes routines, and I'm starting to get into the rhythm.