Fallen blossom

blossom is all around at the moment! some trees, like the ones above, already have lost their pink flowers, but others are in full bloom. soon it will be all green again, its always such a short time that its is at its most pretty..... no?

this was sunday, at the cemetery. soooo many pretty pink and white and red trees there!!

Real blossoms!

jaaajjj! saw some real blossoms today. isnt it pretty?! this is in portland, oregon, where we happened to be this morning... :)

some very general impressions of the states oregon and washington; defenitely more hippies here than in boston, and lots of people driving old cars (classics, just old, or just very crappy and many volvos), and more people on bikes. many more coffee places (and many cute very tiny drive through coffeebars along the road; tim now wants to start one in the netherlands) and the supermarkets actually have good bread. oh, and beautiful sights. amazing cloud formations (very different from the east us coast), empty beaches... (also so very different from the ones around boston!).

but now im tired, goodnight!

A sign....

... of spring!! with a raindrop though... :) 

i wasnt in the mood for blogging yesterday or the day before. i actually searched for a particular photo yesterday, and couldnt find it. it was to illustrate that i finally got my "learner's permit", now i could practice driving, provided someone with a real license sits next to me....  when we moved to the US, now almost 3 (!!) years ago, i promised i would get my license here (its so much easier, and MUCH, much cheaper), but well.... time flies and i never got to it.... not sure i really will now, having driven a bit back in december i learned its really scary if the road is not perfectly straight and when there are other cars on the road too....... lets see, it would be good to have, no..?

My muscles...

....can you see them? have you heard about them? does it help if i just straighten my back and flap my arms around like a monkey? do you see them now??! perhaps you understand what i mean...

sometimes here in the gym at our apartment you see guys like this as well. sometimes, when im trying to lift some weights or biking really hard, tim is walking around like that. or pretending to lift some very heavy weights while maintaining the "real cool guy with huge muscles" posture. what else can i do than laugh? well, sometimes it annoys me, or i am embarrassed and/or afraid that the guys who seriously walk around like this are offended... one of them even runs like this on the treadmill, haha... sure, im not used to anything. before coming to the us, i had never been in a "gym", and surely didnt work out there myself... nowadays i dare to go alone (in the beginning i would only go when tim went).

yep, another with the blossom trees. were they working out or just showing off..?

Blossom roof

im still not done with the brooklyn botanic garden. here another picture... as you can see, it was really crowded. everyone brought children and cameras, it seemed.... 

my computer is soooo slow at the moment.. :( it takes forever to do something. anything. viewing my photos, etc. perhaps its time for a new one, but spending nearly a month of salary on an apple computer is just SO much...! (today i read that a qualified car mechanic makes 100,000 dollars a year, before taxes, which really makes me wonder whether that could be an alternative career path for me....? do you need to be able to drive a car for that? :)

Blossom snow!!

have you ever been surrounded by so many blossom trees that their branches formed a beautiful roof? i had not, until yesterday! as the wind blew lightly through the trees, pink snow was everywhere.... the cherry blossoms in the brooklyn botanic garden where at their peak so we went to see them... we had been wanting to go to new york since a few weeks, and reading about these blossoms was the nudge we needed to finally really get some bus tickets... we decided to do another 1-day new york trip, like we did in december. at 4.15 the alarm went off, and at 6.15 we were in the chinatown bus to new york! jeeejjj! before 11 we were in the botanic garden, and for whatever reason we did not have to pay the 10 dollar entrance fee... (when we left everyone did have to pay, we were lucky once again). it was soooo beautiful! and there were sooooo many people. and kids. and cameras.... and flowers, ofcourse. it was the perfect place for people watch... and i took a lot of pics..

after that we went to see some other stuff in new york, which i will show you soon, probably! when we got home around 11.30 last night we were too exhausted to do anything and also today will be a pretty slow day... :)

One photo

actually... i took quite some more than one photo. either it turned out crooked, or a car came by, or tim was not posing the way i wanted.. 

now i see hes standing next to a patched up window or something...? hadnt seen that while taking the pics! ah, and another blossom tree. we drove around a little for those. but it was really cold (from 30 degrees C on thursday to 8 C or so today... ), and some rain too!

Blossom trees!

all around, and in, boston blossom trees are in full bloom, or about to.... its very pretty! this is at the cemetery behind our house..

perhaps tomorrow we should walk around boston, before they loose all their pretty flowers again. surely they are blooming earlier than last year, but if i remember correctly, april 1st it was still snowing...

First blossoms

i saw the first tree coming to blossom this saturday in the public garden! that day wasnt so sunny yet, but sunday was. and so was monday, and tuesday, and today.... it is well above 22 degrees celsius! today it even was 25 C and we had dinner outside. it feels like summer, can you believe it, in march? it is so warm that i wake up during the nights... the blankets are still for winter temperatures. tomorrow its supposed to be even 28 degrees! 

this night it seems there is something else to distract me besides the warm weather; a car alarm is going off since at least one hour... buuuuhhh. i hope that stops, but the weather can stay as it is! (i read somewhere that in the state of california cars will be towed if the alarm goes off for more than a minute, to spare people the noise. here there isnt such a law.. but it is illegal, and you can be ticketed after the alarm goes off for more than 5 minutes. the fine is then 50 dollars.. perhaps i can file a complaint to the city?)

Zoomed in

a blossom! with the new lens... i think that lens is magic!

good night, or morning, or afternoon... :)

Blossoms, finally!

this is what i was waiting for.... and now i finally got a picture! isnt it pretty? tim showed me last night some pictures he took of those trees with his phone, and i could only answer; "so, you were just watching this without taking me there?! i want to see it toooo!!!" especially since before you know it, all flowers are gone again and only green trees are left. we went there today; its just opposite the building where he works....

we also drove through somerville, where we lived the first three months exactly a year ago, as there are a lot of blossom trees as well. just, so pretty!!

ah, and tim got a new lens for the big fancy camera, surely you will see some pics through that lens the coming days...
(click on the pic to see it entirely; i just wanted the flowers as big as possible)

No blossoms...

...yet! but its coming!

cant wait fur everything to be in bloom.... last year many streets in somerville were so pretty with all the blossom trees.... this is what im waiting for!

and now im so tired as if its friday already, but its only wednesday....

Truly bizarre

this photo i took on one of our walks through the fells reservation, close to our apartment in melrose. found the shadows on this fallen tree so pretty. didnt post it so far as usually i like a story around a picture (unless i really like the pic and it speaks for itself.. :) or when im lazy... ;) ), but couldnt imagine the story with this picture would be this weird....

my parents went on holiday last week. the day after they left i got an email from my sister with the subject "IMPORTANT!!!!" that worried me a little... 

she wrote me that a blossom tree in my parent's garden had been cut down; the person taking care of the house could not open the door to the garden and discovered a huge tree was blocking it. uuhh??! i think the tree is as old as me, and a real! big! tree! (not as big as the above one though). pretty too, although not nice to sit under, as many birds liked it as well, and the chance of getting shit on your head was pretty big. anyways, on the day my parents left, someone, somehow cut down this tree!! can you believe it?! else nothing happened (luckily), but there was no sign, no note, no phone call, both neighbors on holiday...

and now this big, cut down tree is lying there. my parents came back today and called the police, but they said that its not something to come over for (it is a big tree! i would have no clue how to get rid of it..). im quite curious, actually, what the police here in the US would do about this...

now i told my sister to take some pics.... so maybe i can post one here... :)

normally i never do this, but today i violate my own rules; below 3 pics of the actual tree, before and after, and its removal.... see, a nice, big tree... (photos taken by my father, in the netherlands)
:(

 

Harvard ID

this tree i posted before, but then it was full with blossom. i passed it to try to get my Harvard ID once more. the previous time i could not, because i was not yet in the system. that took more than a month (why?). in that month i officially could not access fulltext papers in Pubmed (had to use Tims ID), and could not leave or enter my lab after 7 in the evening, or in weekends. and.. security was annoyed sometimes i dont have one, and for registering trainings, i also need it. yesterday again it was not possible, since i was in the Harvard system as "Cathleneyne". i either could get a card with that name on it, or first get my name spelled correctly at yet another building... arrrghhhh..., since the lady making the badges was not allowed to make changes to my name herself... aarrghhhh!!!!
maybe when the tree has lost its leaves... i will finally have this stupid Harvard-ID......

Blossom tree

this tree reminds me of a painting... i presume the owner of the painting knows what i am talking about! :) the area around my lab is very pretty, i defenitely will post more pics of it here...
yesterday another round of apartment viewing... pff. we saw 5, 2 were disgusting (students were living there), never ever saw something like that, not even on tv. 2 were very nice, but also very expensive. and there is a lot for us to learn: you can negotiate about the monthly rent, they prefer people that will stay there years and with good jobs (our jobs are considered very good), if you want an apt, you have to give the agency immediately the first one rent on a cheque, so negotiations can start. and.. we discovered that you can even get some discount on your rent if you will always put the trash out, or shovel snow. these are landlord responsibilities, but if you are willing to do it for them, you pay f.e. 50 dollars less rent per month (thats why nobody at our house puts out the trash! so surely we will call the landlord and tell them we want to do this stupid job in exchange for a lower rent...)

Blossom trees

blossom trees in our neighbourhood. so pretty! they are all around Boston, in fact. last weekend the weather was perfect, but now it is really cold and rainy....
we spend the entire day in only few shops (they are soo huge!). looked for a new camera again. then decided to buy an olympus (same brand as the broken one) with a lot of discount. they had only the show-item left which we could buy at even further discount, but..... it came without manual, battery, memory card, charger, cords or anything. so no.. we ofcourse did not buy that. oh, was i disappointed! i thought i could start taking pictures again... :(