i pledge allegiance...

i just got back to boston after a few quick days in DC for an international education conference. originally i had thought i was going to be job hunting right now, so that was the main reason for trekking off to DC. when i landed the HBS job a few weeks ago everything was already booked and paid for, so i was able to relax and enjoy the change of scenery without the pressure of landing a new job.

it was a wonderful few days- picture perfect weather, good friends, good food- friday was pretty much a free day and my flight back to boston wasn't until 8p, so i had the whole afternoon to wander around-

a few photos:

union station:


metro:


sexy orange carpeting in the metro:


world war II memorial:




washington monument:


the candidates:


on the hill:


freedom, defiled:


(all the rest of the pics are here)

summerstart

puppylove

where i've been

wow- the past few weeks have been anything but the usual. let's see if i can attempt a re-cap with any semblance of order:

so my brief stint as america's next top intern at harvard's international office was the prefect segue to a shiny new job. luckily, while i was at hio i made a few invaluable connections and exactly as dionne warwick predicted (for the bahgain price of $3.99/minute) the planets aligned and out popped a bona fide solid career opportunity that seems to have been custom-designed pour moi. i have to say the interview process was rather full-on. i had to take 3 sick days from my soon-to-be-no-longer-job in travelparadise and met with 11 different people, all individually(!) but it was well worth the effort- starting june 9th i'll be the manager of immersion programs at harvard business school, working on existing short term study abroad programs as well as helping to research and develop new programs. i could not be more excited. i'm thrilled to have landed a job 'in the field' and so closely tied to both what i went to school for and what i'm interested in. it's also quite the novelty to work somewhere with actual stability and a professional, supportive environment. i suppose somewhere way down inside i will miss my current nuts-o VP that sees no issue with dropping the f-bomb during our usual weekly meeting.

so that's the big news on the jobfront. j.mo and i headed out today to the wrentham outlets to get me a whole new wardrobe- i've had the luxury of sneakers, jeans, and polo shirts for the last 8+ years of work. it's all shirt & tie and hookah shoes from here on out. that $600 gov-mint stimulus couldn't have come at a better time. i wonder if i can write it off as a charitable donation to the banana republic?

may 18th it was all about this:


and this:


it's kind of a curious feeling to no longer be a student. no more trekking off to class, hours of forced reading, no papers, no friggin groupwork. yeah- i don't think i'll be running back to school anytime soon!

the butter queen was kind enough to think of j.mo and i when she scored some excellent red sox tickets. we had a fabulous time a few nights ago at fenway-









after this lovely long weekend i'm off to washington dc for an international education conference- since i scored the HBS job, i don't have to worry about job hunting anymore, so i can just kick back and enjoy dc ;) when i get back to boston i've got one week left at work and then it's up, up, and away. may 2008 has been an incredible month. grad school was a wonderful experience and seems to have already paid off- but i must admit i'm thrilled at the idea of being able to spend more time at home and with friends and family now that it's back to a normal schedule.

so that's where i've been. hope you're all enjoying the long weekend.

-g

a ton of bricks (literally)

ok, i'm mostly going to ignore the fact that it has been over a month since my last post. in 50 words or less, here's where i've been: internship ended, graduation next week, 3rd round of interviews for what could possibly be the perfect job (more on all that later), exercising and running resumed. basically, it's been a thrill and a half to have a normal schedule again and i've been rediscovering all the things i used to enjoy. with this post i hope to be back on the blogginwagon.

there's nothing j.mo and i like more than a project- something around the house, maybe pet-related, an outdoor do-it-choself adventure. living in a relatively small space and lacking a bottomless budget, there aren't all that many projects left for us to do. but we did say last year that we wanted to do something with the front of the house. and for various reasons never got around to it. well last week we got together with the neighbors and decided it was time to get to work on adding a little gayspray to what was a rather sorry bit of front yard.

cue the visuals...

here's what we have been living with: litter-strewn clumps of grass peppered with 'dog treats'(of the non-Franklin variety, of course)- the whole lot inevitably turning brown and dying a crunchy death during the summer months.



not so sexy, huh?


bust out the gloves- you know you live in the hood when there's at least a pound of automotive glass shards in the front yard from the last time a car was broken into.


attack the 'lawn' and tear up all of the grass-







and here come the bricks- literally a ton of them. they're 22lbs each and we carted well over 100 of them home with multiple trips to our local home depot. bricks, oh my bricks. each lifted off of the shelf, loaded on to the trolley, loaded into the car, taken out of the car, stacked into position. and i wonder why i feel like i was hit by a truck this morning.



so 5 trips to home depot, all those bricks, 15 bags of mulch, and a whole bunch of plants and a lot of moaning and groaning later-





before:


after:


well worth the train wreck aching body this morning. hope everyone is having a good weekend- happy mother's day to the mums...