Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Skype Night

We love Skype. Yeah, calling our family on the phone is easy and can be done anywhere, but it is so much more fun to be able to see who you're talking to! We don't use it too often though... We definitely need to change that.

A funny thing happened during Skype time tonight. Usually Max just looks around the house for us, but I guess tonight he wanted to talk. He was hilarious! We kept talking to him and he just kept tilting his head and watching the computer. He really got excited when we started talking about his treats!


Hi Max! Want a chewy?

It was great to talk to family tonight, we miss everyone terribly! It was nice to have some face-to-face conversations... It makes us feel closer to home. Now if only we keep this snow so we'll have some fun skiing stories to tell the next time we're on Skype...

Monday, February 15, 2010

All you need is love

Valentine's Day was much more exciting back when we first started dating. After 6 Valentine's Days together, we know it is just a Hallmark holiday. Since this was our first married Valentine's and one on a dental school budget, we decided to be smart shoppers and refused to spend money on cards or flowers. Amit got Cool Runnings, in honor of the Winter Olympics (and it being one of his favorite movies). I'm looking forward to getting a new plant (I'm trying to develop a green thumb).

So how did your favorite newlyweds celebrate Valentine's Day?
We started celebrating on Saturday night by going out for dinner at Captain Fishbones. It was delicious! We skipped their fantastic, but more fancy seafood dishes and opted instead for more American fare. Amit got a burger and I went with my standard fish and chips. Yummy!!
 
We came home from the restaurant and curled up on the couch to digest as we watched the Winter Olympics. Then Seth and Kirsten came over and we all watched a movie.
On Valentine's Day, I woke up to the smell of waffles cooking. Amit is really good at making waffles! I love when he lets me sleep in until the food is almost ready... After enjoying breakfast and more recorded Olympic footage, we headed off to run some errands. Yep, that's how we married people spend V-Day. Shopping is always fun, though. We went to The North Face to buy me some hiking shoes. We were really excited when we saw that they were on sale, too!! Woo-hoo! After stopping at a few other stores in the city, we grabbed a very romantic (and satisfying) lunch at Burger King. Grocery shopping was followed by...
That's right! More Olympics!!! It is fun to watch snow sports, since there is almost NO snow here. 
We picked up some crab cakes at the grocery store and spent some quality time in the kitchen, together. It was nice to be cooking along side each other, rather than me making dinner by myself. I enjoy talking to someone while cooking. Our dinner of crab cakes, couscous, and green beans was delicious and easy! We finished off our Valentine's Day by watching some chick flicks, since it was obviously a romantic holiday. (Amit is not a fan of most romantic comedies, but he gave in to me.)

Today we went hiking in the Middlesex Fells with friends. It was a very fun Valentine's weekend celebrated with some quality time by ourselves and some with our very dear friends!

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Climbing Mount Monadnock

To fulfill my new year's resolution, I decided to climb Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. Mt. Monadnock is 3,165 feet high. Seth and I thought that it would be better to start with a shorter mountain, since we don't have proper winter climbing gear, like crampons. Last Saturday, it was about 30 degrees at the base of the mountain and sunny. It was the perfect day to reach the summit.

We took the White Dot Trail, which is the fastest, most direct route up the mountain and also the steepest. As we climbed and passed people coming back down, they all asked if we had any traction. Everyone had some form of crampons on, except us. They thought we were crazy to do this climb without any traction. (Seth and I did a climb last year on Massachusetts' tallest mountain, Mt. Greylock, where we reached the summit without using crampons. However, we had a good two feet of soft snow below us, so we really didn't need crampons.) Since we have not had much snow this season, the snow that was on the trails was packed down and most of the trail was covered in ice. As we found out, crampons would have been a big help.
We could not see the summit as we were climbing and didn't know how much further we had to go. We got to a point which we thought was the summit. We stopped to talk a man who was letting us pass him, and had some wise words of wisdom. He first thought we weren't smart to not bringing traction aids with us. Then he asked if we had any matches; we didn't. So he said that not bringing matches is just plain stupid. We should have brought matches, but considering there were about 50 people on the mountain at the same time we were, we weren't too worried about being stranded. After talking to the guy, we kept heading for the summit.
 We had a lot farther to go
 
 I took another picture when we thought we had reached the summit...

 But then we turned around and saw the real summit.
We continued to head towards the real summit. Once we reached the summit it was an amazing sight. Visibility was great and you could see for miles. 
Here are photos from the actual summit  
The hike down was more treacherous than going up. The ice that covered the trails was a large slip and slide made of ice and rocks. It was a lot of fun, though. We plan to climb our next mountain in the next few weeks, but this time we will bring crampons... and matches.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Maine!

On Friday we went on a mini road trip. We've been talking about heading up to Maine for a while now and since there was no snow in Boston, we thought it was a great excuse to take our chances on some cross-country skiing up north.

In case we haven't talked about it with you, we're leaning towards heading up to Maine after graduation. There is a dental residency program based out of Bangor and there are some community health centers that he could work at after his residency. They are also able to do an externship there during their fourth year. That being said, we thought we'd start exploring the area to see if we'll like it as much as we like Boston. Amit did some research and chose a few different sites to check out before we headed to Portland to do some shopping at the LL Bean outlet.

Our first stop was Sebago Lake State Park. It looked like there must be lots of camping during the summer, but there wasn't much activity when we stopped by. We looked for any good places to ski, but there were none. Instead, we climbed out of the car and walked to the beach. We'll definitely be coming back here when its warm out!
It was so serene and beautiful...
After admiring the beautiful view, we headed to do a little skiing. We were a little nervous that there wouldn't be enough snow, but even though it was icy, we had a nice time.
It wasn't a very scenic trail, 
but we enjoyed being surrounded by all the trees.
This guy seriously loves XC skiing!
 Who am I kidding? We both do!
 
The next stop on our tour was Two Lights State Park. Yes, Amit loves hiking and skiing on land, but he's also become a little obsessed with the ocean. There was no way we'd do a trip to Maine without visiting the coast.
 It was a different ocean view,
but absolutely breathtaking.
A different photo of the two of us
Gorgeous views!
Say cheese!
While driving around, we found some lighthouses. Amit thought it would be pretty cool to own a house AND a lighthouse. I have to say, it was a gorgeous house...
Who would mind living near such a picturesque setting?
(I loved the lone lobster trap... I had to take a picture!)

After doing all of our sightseeing, we went to Portland. We grabbed lunch at this great little burrito place, complete with psychedelic decor. Downtown Portland was full of cool little art galleries, but seeing as we're poor we headed to the LL Bean outlet. If we end up moving to Maine, we will definitely be frequenting the outlets... What great deals! It was a great trip, too... I love my adventuresome husband!!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Yankee Dental

Heather has been asking me to blog for a while now on my experience in dental school. I am beginning my blogs by writing about the Yankee Dental Conference we went to last weekend. I enjoy going to conferences, since as a student the school pays for our registration and we get to go to some of the classes. So, I am taking advantage of these classes while they are still free for me.

On Wednesday, we went to the student lecture and reception at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel. I attended the student lecture and Heather joined us for the reception. We of course got free samples from the sponsors, Crest and enjoyed beer, wine, pasta, some bruschetta, and dessert. They had a DJ and my buddy Derrick loves dancing and kept asking to dance all night. I told him I needed some more drinks in me before I would go dance. So as we walked around, we got introduced to the President of the Massachusetts Dental Society, who organized the event. After talking with him, he handed us a handfull of drink tickets. In the end, I ended up dancing the night away. Heather and Derrick's wife, Mel, talked the whole night.

On Thursday, we had a very busy day. First, I attended a CE course taught by our pain control teacher. The class was on oral surgery for the general dentist. Basically, He taught us how to do basic oral surgery procedures in the office and how to manage the complications. We then headed to the Exhibit hall where we ate lunch and visited vendors. In the Exhibit Hall, we tried different instruments, looked at new technology, and picked up free samples. We finished the day by going to a few CE courses on how to buy and sell a practice and also how to start a practice. Since we don't get business training in school, it is great to learn about the business side of dentistry.

On Friday, Heather joined Seth and me in attending the conference. We walked around the exhibit floor and checked out more technology and got more free samples while we waited to head to another reception. We attended the Boston University Alumni Reception which was held at the Seaport Hotel and again enjoyed drinks and appetizers. I got to introduce Heather to some of my professors and classmates. The reception didn't have too much food and we were still hungry, so we ended up going to Olive Garden with Seth and Kirsten.