The Help AND Free Printable Oscar Games

Tomorrow night are the Academy Awards 2012 - how exciting to watch the fashion on the red carpet. If you are hosting a Oscar-watching party, this awesome Oscar bingo game and ballot (generously made and shared by How About Orange blog) is begging to be printed out and given to your guests before the show. How fun, right?

On a related note, I would like to highly recommend The Help. You can watch it instantly with Amazon 48 hour rental for less than 2 dollars. Yes, the novel is waaaaay better than the film, though the film was pretty great too and had me cry like a baby. But I did not like that they changed A LOT of the original story in the movie. I guess you have to if you are trying to compress a complicated story in about two hours of film.

Did you know that before The Help was a nominated film, it was a best-selling novel by writer Kathryn Stockett. While looking to sell the novel, Stockett approached 60 agents, all of whom rejected her request for representation. When the novel finally did find a home with an agent and eventually a publisher, it became a best-seller soon afterward.

New Toys

Jack just got these great new toys - I ordered them today and cannot wait to try them with him.

LA City Guide: Hidden Lake Hollywood

On our recent vacation to Los Angeles we have seen the usual touristy spots and, inspired by our sweeping views from our hotel nestled in the Hollywood Hills, we wanted to explore the exclusive hills a bit more. So we did a google search for something like "hidden places in the HH" or similar and we found a page on Lake Hollywood. Also, if you do an image search on this you will see for yourself the amazing beautiful lake, quietly nestled away only 15 minutes from the Walk of Fame.

You have to drive up on a tiny, one lane winding road that gave me the creeps but you will see gorgeous houses along the way and once you reach the lake you will be mesmerized. We walked over the bridge, took in the expansive views, snapped a cute family picture with the Hollywood sign as a backdrop and admired the gorgeous houses (from a distance). What made this trip extremely good is how deserted (at noon on a sunny weekday) this gorgeous place truly was. Apparently it is not publicized much - our friends who live just 3 miles from the lake did not know about it and have never been! Beyond secluded. We parked at the intersection of Lake Hollywood Drive/Montlake Drive/Weidlake Drive and passed the gates. During the whole hour we spent there we only saw one other person: a young man in sweats, hoodie, cap and dark sunglasses jogging. I guessed that he was Leonardo di Caprio but hubby did not think it was his body frame. We didn't give it much thought because we see plenty of celebrities in NYC and we were taken by the insanely-gorgeous views instead.

Apparently Madonna owned a house there, (where Bugsy Siegel also lived at some point) and she was often seen jogging around the lake with her bodyguards. Her former house, Castillo del Lago, is not the one pictured above but this one with the clock tour; it has an intriguing story and is also reportedly for sale. Now to more modern architecture: Here is a longer peek inside the heavenly piece of real estate pictured above.

I love finding hidden gems like Hollywood Lake, quiet and completely off the beaten path. They feel so special, exclusive and relaxing and can surely recharge those batteries for more typical sightseeing. How about you my darlings? Do you have one such place (in any city around the world)? If so, I would love to hear your comments.

How Do You Relax and Get Ready for Bed?

For a long time, an unpleasant artifact from my college waitressing days when shifts began at 4pm and ended around 2 am was the irritating inability to fall asleep at normal hours. I have over the years reversed this to some extent but my circadian rhythm does not still feel quite the best. Though I can now sleep way before midnight and function well around 8 am, I confess that I am still a little jealous of my friends and hubby who can wake up at 6 am, chock-full of energy and ready to change the world.

In order to even envision waking up so early, I figure that I would have to sleep at 10 pm because without 8 full hours I can barely function. My Christmas gift from my sweetheart certainly helps: I got an amazing heated back massage pad which we draped over my home office chair. It gives me countless hours of pure bliss. A short back massage from it before bed is heavenly. Cuddling with the baby, dog and baby daddy helps too. :)

Then, of course, there is the typical warm shower. I purchased this yumm mint body wash and Mentha shampoo/conditioner too recently to elevate my blah routine daily showers and help me relax. Aaaah, mission accomplished on a thousand levels. These are so great, with amazing aromas and full of peppermint oils that will blow your mind and give your body that tingly-tangy feel, like cold cream but only better. Maybe the hot water combo puts it over the top.

I also try to minimize the time online right before bed. Then, again, sometimes, this girl has got to work. No one said that 10 page-long science journal papers (or anything work-related) are fun to peruse at night but seldomly, no, I'm lying, actually, a lot of times, that happens. So when I came across this useful free app which it makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and sunlight-like during the day, I knew I had to try it. By removing the blue light at night and giving your screen a soft sepia tone it is designed to reinforce your correct circadian rhythm and help you relax in spite of using your gadgets before bed. At the beginning it was hard getting used to the low-lighted screen but hang in there. I am beginning to like the diffused glow that makes my mac screen look very pretty right now (at 7 pm).

Here is another very cute purchase we made lately, quite fitting with the daily thread. :) Love this creative idea and I may be buying it for friends who will become new parents, as a (sort of) gag gift. Speaking of useless but awesome gag gifts for new parents, before Jack was born we received this in triplicate! And it is very, very funny.

I would love to hear how you wind down at the end of the day, my dears. Any sweet ideas, or something so very efficient that we all need to hear about?


Photo by .tara.

A NYC Mom's Baby Registry - Where to Register

Jack is almost 6 months old and I recently took another pile of clothes he outgrew down to storage (that is to our little, tiny storage room in the building's basement). Time flies too fast while his little arms and legs get longer by the minute. While we love seeing him thrive and do well, of course, I am absolutely sure I will very much miss the adorable tiny baby stage.

Overwhelmed by the plenty of choices and by our lack of expertise, I decided to make it more bearable by creating only one central baby registry with options to add stuff from any retailer, this allowing to pay the lowest prices. After researching the options we found the best out there to be BabyList.

It worked out great and our family and friends liked it a lot. Here is Jack's actual BabyList, so you can see a real example.
After sign up, one can install a "Add to BabyList" bookmark to their toolbar. Then, while you browse blogs, Amazons, stores, for baby products and when you love an item, you add it to your list instantly. You can even write a note. Then you give your private link to your friends and family - we added ours to our baby shower invitations.
People don't actually buy the items from BabyList because they are not a retailer but one can press "Reserve" on your BabyList item and then they buy it from anywhere they wish.

There can be some inflated prices out there on individual retailers lists. For example, when I looked at breastpumps, the Medela we wanted was $369.00 at Babies'r'us. But it was $329.00 at Diapers.com and a first time buyer at Diapers got 10% off so my pump bought from them ended up at $298.00 or so.

Turns out that a general registry list was great for us. However, if you are missing items after your baby shower and really want that 10% off from a big box store, you can simply create another registry with them. I'd make a third point that there are plenty of coupons for 20% off baby items from several boxy baby retailers if you really need an item specifically from them.

Again, for us, BabyList has worked wonderfully. Another bonus point is: I keep using it even now and will for a long time. Its beauty is that I can add anything important that was handed-down to me, gifted or bought, to a list with images and notes.  Visually keeping track of the vast amount of stuff you have can prevent you from overbuying things.  Side-note: only a small percent of the baby things you own are actually useful and much goes unused or ignored. Cringeworthy.

It could be useful to  keep a list of the baby items in one place in case something is defective and gets recalled. Also, one can adding notes to the items so that their BabyList can serve as a product guide for new parents out there, i.e., Jack's favorites, his not-so-favorites, the I-wish-I-didn't-buy-this-because-there-is-no-need/way-to-use-it-in-our-tiny-NYC-apartment item and so on.

That's it as to WHERE to register. What do you guys have in mind? Where did you register, thought about registering? We are so happy with the BabyList friendly interface and how well it has worked for us, Jack and all of our lovely, generous, sweet friends and family. Good luck with navigating the available products for your brand new, adorable baby. Do not stress out, do not over do it. Remember: baby's favorite item will ALWAYS be YOU and safe, healthy and happy are most important. HAPPY REGISTERING!

NYC Guide - Free Event - Rockefeller University Tri-Institutional Noon Recital

Caspary Hall, Rockefeller University Campus, NYC.

Rockefeller University Campus, NYC.

Anderson and Roe Duet

When: Friday, February 10, 2012 at 12 noon at Rockefeller University, York Avenue and 66th Street. This recital is part of a Friday concert series officially open to Tri-Institute members and families: Rockefeller University, Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill-Cornell/NY Presbyterian Hospital. However, I went in once or twice and was never prompted to show my ID which almost always hides under my clothes or at the bottom of my bag anyway. The guards at Rockefeller are usually very sweet and if you walk in right before noon and tell them you are heading to the Caspary Auditorium for the concert, they will probably not stop you from attending. I find this very nice of them, besides, the large auditorium is never full for these concerts - I suppose because at noon on Friday everyone scrambles to finish lots of work and experiments for the week - not too many scientists usually attend. A bit sad. I've seen the beautiful Caspary auditorium so chockfull of people several times during science talks but never even half-full for a free concert! When Yamanaka (famous ES cell person) gave a seminar, people were almost standing on top of each other.

So, if you want to attend a free concert in a beautiful hall where countless Nobel laureates have spoken over the years, go. Just be sweet and perhaps mention that your good friend who works for RU or MSKCC or WC has invited you (or mentioned this event to you) in case anyone stops you at the gate.

Cell - A Beautiful Picture Show

It is every scientist's dream to one day have an article, or, if lucky, many, in either Cell or Science, the two most-coveted scientific journals, the third best probably being Nature. Though many other very respectable journals exist, there is a sort of magic associated with being published in one of these above because they have the highest of standards for the works published, almost to the point of pure artistry.

Speaking of artistry, I am continuosly amazed at how well science (or nature) and art mesh together. Very often a microscopy image of a culture or a cell that I just took is so visually pleasing, I imagine I could look at it forever. Not only because it is beautiful but because of the intricacy. I like to imagine how thousands of invisible hands have painted this image working in unison each imparting a unique detail. This is somewhat true, in a cell there are maybe millions of different processes happening simultaneously with a single goal: survival. So much work goes into keeping a little unit intact, functional, able to divide and grow and communicate with the environment, continuously adapting to external cues. It blows your mind, doesn't it? That nature, life, is so incredibly complex. And that we are at the forefront of amazing discoveries, which will exponentially multiply as our microscopes and prediction software become stronger and better. Most of the valuable scientific hypotheses up until maybe 5-10 years ago have been reached after great sweat and toil blindly working in the "dark", with no structures of actual proteins and molecules involved available. As of today, less than 10,000 structures out of many millions (if not billions of life molecules and processes) have their crystal structures available.

Dr. Rout - a Rockefeller University researcher, best exemplified the dark age science currently is in by using an old indian proverb, while discussing the nuclear pore complex (the nucleus is a component of cells) a few days ago. All researchers in the world working to elucidate its fine structure are only like a group of six blind men together in a room with an elephant. The nuclear pore complex being the elephant. One touches the ears and says: it is a palm tree. One touches the tail and thinks it is a rope, while one touches the trunk and claims it's a snake. You get the - blurry - picture!

But there are amazing advances in the field, which will tremendously affect the scientific discovery process in the near future. Imagine you have to advance a theory of how a protein is translocated through the ER and the modifications necessary to accomplish this. You could work blindly at it, for 20 or more years, like Rockefeller University's Gunther Blobel did, for example, in the 60s. No worries, he did received a Nobel Prize for his work. Or, you could start with the structures of the "components" and see if they structurally fit, like lego pieces, before running an experiment that could last 4 months to see if piece A fits with piece B, when there are maybe 6000 different pieces. Because, one can reject from the start the hypotheses that do not make sense stereochemically, one can weed through an experiment, which is in essence a guessing game, much faster. Science is just a complicated lego game we play in the dark. Microscopy and structural biochemistry have just began to shine on us a faint ray of light. It is still 5:30 in the morning. I wish I was still alive at bright 12 noon (maybe a few hundred years?), when we will be quite amazing lego experts.

Thus, when coming across this picture show, I knew I had to share it. Enjoy and follow this link for more.

http://fromme-toyou.tumblr.com/post/4004675036/the-neverending-commute

JVF is Two Months Old

A Laundry List

A Christmas laundry list of things I want. The things themselves are nice but not very important. However, I find that writing thoughts down is calming. Even if only writing the superficial lists of objects that may or (most likely) may not greatly improve my life.
A book.



Another book.

The game Taboo.

This wine rack.

A Krylon Leafing Pen.

This cool LightBox for viewing old slides. Which we plan to transfer to CDs (note to self to actually help P boy do it).

Awesome sport earphones.

More Starbucks City Mugs.
My little collection has NY, obviously, Chicago, Washington and I had Toronto but gave it away. One from Geneva or Switzerland will come my way this week. But I want more, more, more. I only started collecting them this past summer, I'm sure the collection will nicely grow soon.

I will add more to it as it comes to mind.
Cheers.