Boston or Bust

This past week Chris and I celebrated our first month of being official Bostonians.  For those who don't know, while finishing my PhD at Rice this spring, I accepted a postdoctoral research fellow position starting in August in Rafael Irizarry's lab in the Biostatistics & Computational Biology department at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute with a joint appointment in the Harvard School of Public Health.  Since graduating in May, this summer has been such a whirlwind of events.  We did quite a bit of traveling in July and spent about a week driving from Texas to Massachusetts.  Some additional good news is Chris just finished his second week at his new job as a Validation Engineer at Bose!  Now that things are starting to settle down a bit, I decided to show some highlights of our trip and a few fun outings we have had exploring around Boston.

To begin, I will be upfront and say no matter how you move, moving is a pain in the butt.  The only part of moving I liked was seeing the 'Podzilla' move the POD around!  Seriously, it's one of the coolest things. :)

We began our very long drive by stopping to visit some family members in Texas & Louisiana.

Next up was Mississippi.  We only spent a short time there, but we found Elvis who sang our blues away about leaving such good friends and family behind.

In Tennessee we stopped at Corky's BBQ for some 'Memphis-style' BBQ which consisted of ribs with a very dry rub & an enormous amount of sauce on top.  I think I prefer North Carolina or Texas style BBQ, but overall it was a good experience! 

Next up was West Virgina, Maryland & Pennsylvania.  We had a wonderful time staying with some of my family in PA!  At the end of the night, we even enjoyed some s'mores under the beautiful Pennsylvania night sky. I can't remember the last time I made s'mores over a real fire pit, but it is something I wish I could do more often.

The next day, we drove through Dallas, PA where my dad grew up!  This is a picture of the house when my dad lived there:

And this was the picture the day we drove by.  So pretty!

The next day was New York, Connecticut & finally Massachusetts!  After our 1900+ mi drive, we rewarded ourselves with clam chowder the night we arrived.  We're determined to find the best new england clam chowder in Boston, so suggestions are welcomed.  

Since arriving in Boston, we've spent most of our time settling into the new apartment, but we have made a few excursions to explore the city.  We've tried a pretty famous local BBQ place called Blue Ribbon BBQ and found some very excited LSU alumni fans!  One of my favorite outings has been to visit Cape Cod. On our drive there, we saw so many windmills!   The beaches were also phenomenal.

Hopefully I'll be able to keep documenting a few of our adventures.  :)