3rd February 2010

Wednesday 12:21 pm : For reals.
All my internets happen on Facebook and AlissaMoghtaderi.com doesn't get a lot of attention.

But life is a fairy tale. Sam and I both moved back to Manhattan--he from fellowship in Pittsburgh and I from his mom's house in Connecticut--and we are settling into a beautiful apartment we rented on the Upper West Side. Sam hasn't started work yet, so we're spending a lot of time together, cooking, organizing, and having friends over to hang out in an apartment that's big enough and convenient enough for hanging out!

Life is sweet.

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5th November 2009

Thursday 07:37 pm : 13.1
Even though I'm running the Philly Half Marathon later this month, on Sunday I ran the Spirit of Pittsburgh Half Marathon. I expected it would be hard, because a half marathon means you run a lot. Like 13.1 miles. But it turns out, not so hard. No so hard when you've been training at 6000' above sealevel and then run at about 700' above sealevel.

It just could not have gone better--it was a total pleasure with no pain and almost no discomfort. And running around Pittsburgh and over the West End Bridge, the 31st Street Bridge, and the Hot Metal Bridge. Oh, and past our apartment!

You can tell how much I was enjoying it, because I was all smiles at mile 8.

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4th September 2009

Friday 04:24 pm : Alissa's Got Big Plans!
I have been running quite a bit lately. Mostly for lack of better opportunities, but I can run ten miles very slowly but very reguarly now so it's not all bad.

And since I stumbled into being able to run ten miles, why can't I purposefully run thirteen and a tenth? No reason. So I signed up for the Philadelphia Half Marathon on 22 November 2009. If you're going to be around, please feel free to make a "Go AMo!" sign and hang out with Sam along the course.

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30th May 2009

Saturday 05:36 pm : A few favorites.

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24th May 2009

Sunday 09:23 pm : Sam & Alissa's Wedding Photos
The wedding photos are in! Sam and I had some very particular requests about our wedding photos: we wanted candid shots and we none of the usual misty images of upswept hair or the sixty-eight permutations of group photos. And we found the perfect photographer who not only did an amazing job, but who immediately gave us the confidence that we had the perfect photographer. I knew these pics were going to be just what we wanted after just talking to her. Thanks, Joan!

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17th May 2009

Sunday 10:48 pm : The bride had gone to pick flowers...
... but she ultimately said "baleh!"

The wedding turned out great, start to finish.

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16th May 2009

Saturday 10:08 am : Sam and I are getting married today.
Today Sam and I are getting married and we are very excited, though you can't tell from the looks of it, as we are sitting at our respective computers (still in our pajamas) and typing away like it's a regular Saturday. We have a house full of mothers, aunties and cousins, who are preparing the sofreh and cooking rice so there's not too much for us to do this morning.

Last night Sam's aunt and uncle threw us a huge party at their house in Westchester, which was beautiful and amazing and full of non-stop dancing and singing. Tonight there's another big house party at Sam's mom's house in Stamford, which will be equally festive. And between the two we will have three hours of the official wedding, which I still hope will be a little more subdued.

Tomorrow we will pack up the BMW and head off to Pittsburgh for a week. The real honeymoon will have to wait until Sam finishes fellowship next year.

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5th April 2009

Sunday 12:34 pm : "Probably misses his old glasses."
Last weekend I went to the optometrist in Pittsburgh. I went in Pittsburgh instead of New York or Stamford because lately I have more free time when I'm in Pittsburgh than I do when I'm in NY or CT. Additional reasons:

o Sam knows an optometrist in PGH.
o Sam is my trusted glasses selector. He picked my last pair, which I love passionately.
o Why not?

It turns out that my prescription has changed quite a bit since I last had my vision checked in 2005 and I need new glasses and prescription sunglasses, too. And the good news is that my eyes are in stellar shape, which the optometrist knows because she was able to peer right into my optic nerve through my heavily dilated pupils. They were so dilated that three hours later, after we were home and relaxing, they still looked like this:

I'm also a little orange around the eyes from the eyeball anesthetic. (By the way, I just learned last week that the Persian word for eyeball is something akin to seed of the eye.)

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for updated photos with new glasses.

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31st March 2009

Tuesday 09:54 am : Happy Times
I spent the weekend in Pittsburgh, to celebrate 365 cancer-free days. It was Sam's one-year transplantiversary!

And now we're counting down seven weeks until a wedding.

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8th March 2009

Sunday 06:03 pm : Baby Coifs
I just got home from a weekend with Carrie and Evan and baby Jack, who is now two and a half months old and very much a baby. Newborn days are history. As are the days of sloppy, unkempt baby hairstyles.

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28th February 2009

Saturday 06:33 pm : At Home Surgery Lessons
Every night I ask Sam one of two questions: if it's a day of seeing patients in the office, I ask if he had any interesting patients. If it's a day in the OR, I ask if he had any interesting cases. I ask because most of the time it results in anecdotes about things that can go wrong with hands and the ways to fix them. I'm learning a lot, actually, about hands and hand surgery. Yesterday at dinner, while he was telling me a particular anecdote, we got off on a tangent about suturing and the needles involved. Turns out they are all curved, like quilting needles. But they also come with the suture embedded in the needle. NICE! Sam said he probably had some at home that he'd show me. So today, after another brown bag lunch at the Pittsburgh Opera and some shopping, we had an impromptu lesson on suturing. At home. On the couch. On an orange. An otherwise healthy orange.

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Saturday 05:23 pm : From the dairy section.
I'm in Pittsburgh this weekend, which is also the 11-month anniversary of Sam's transplant. Obviously I will be back to celebrate a month from now, which will be a serious festival. I think we'll probably rent out the convention center and have pony rides and piñatas and face painting.*

Sam and I went on a Whole Foods run because we had critically low levels of cream for our coffee and tea. Coffee (for Sam) and tea (for me) in the mornings and often in the afternoon as well is very important to us. And we both drink our hot beverages with half and half. Plenty of half and half. I take two packets of Equal or Splenda and Sam takes 47 tablespoons of sugar, but we both need half and half. Anyway, we realized, somewhat horrifiedly, when we were checking out that we were buying 2% milk and half and half in equal quantities.

*not really.

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21st February 2009

Saturday 11:04 pm : jetBlue Flight 1053 from New York to Pittsburgh
Lately I'm spending a lot of time traveling between Pittsburgh and New York, and that trend is set to continue through the end of 2009. I went out to Pittsburgh for an ultra-long weekend 11-16 February, in celebration of my birthday, Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day. It was a very festive weekend, from start to finish. On Friday night we went out with friends for Ethiopian food--which is not done as well in Pittsburgh as in New York, unsurprisingly. Saturday we had a marathon of activity: we got up in the morning and ate English muffins with approximately one pound of butter per muffin. At noon we went to the Pittsburgh Opera's brown bag opera series, where you get 30 minutes of songs in the Pittsburgh Opera's office-cum-performance-space in a converted Westinghouse Air Brake factory building two blocks from our apartment. For free. And you can eat your lunch during the performance. It's amazing and combines many of my favorite things, including (1) opera (2) lunch (3) industrial spaces and (4) proximity to home (or at least one of my two homes). Sam went again this weekend, and we'll both go next weekend because it's so great.

After the opera, we took the bus to the Pittsburgh Auto Show at the convention center downtown. On a nice day we would have walked, because it's only a mile from our apartment, but it was cold and snowing so we climbed aboard the 86B bus. The auto show was a lot of fun and we looked at a nice M3 that perhaps we'll consider when it's time to retire the 328i. In, you know, twenty years. But if our dream of an M3 doesn't come true, we could always consider a restored Isetta. Who needs four wheels anyway?

We also sat in a new MINI Cooper Clubman, which is definitely roomier than our MINI Cooper, but still not quite a family car. We couldn't drive the Clubman at the MINI display, of course, but there was a MINI Cooper available for test driving elsewhere at the auto show and Sam did drive it. Under competitive racing conditions, no less!

Here he is, all lined up with the other racers. The MINI isn't visible in this shot. (Please note the 25-year age gap between Sam and the next oldest competitor.)

The MINI Cooper, blazing by at such high speeds that the iPhone couldn't capture it!

The MINI in a bit of a pile-up at the bend.

It was a pretty fun adventure at the Pittsburgh Auto Show, but all the more so because we scored two free tickets because I (tried) to donate blood at the blood mobile outside the auto show. Unfortunately my attempt resulted in only about a quarter of a pint of blood because I have "delicate" veins and it's kinda tough to bleed me properly. But the two free tickets come from giving it an honest try, so we had a great time for no cash-money outlay.

After the auto show we took the bus back home and got ready for our Valentine's Dinner out at a fancy Pittsburgh restaurant. (We drove that time.) And then, obviously, we went to Target to buy a toaster oven and then home to eat Twizzlers and watch The Sopranos. Couldn't have been nicer!

I'm back in New York, er Connecticut, this weekend, but I'm going back to Pittsburgh on Thursday for another long weekend. I'm racking up those jetBlue TrueBlue points, let me tell you!

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5th February 2009

Thursday 07:34 pm : Bridging 400 Miles
Sam's in his third week of fellowship in Pittsburgh. After tomorrow, we'll only have 49 more weeks of apartness left!

It's really convenient to be a 21st century type, because we have created a hodge-podge ersatz togetherness through text messaging, IMing (both iMac- and iPhone-based), video chatting, and emailing, along with the old analog technologies of telephoning and postal mailing. It's surprisingly effective!

I've sent Sam a lot of stuff in the mail in these three weeks, much of it very pedestrian and uninteresting. Forgotten socks, for instance, and forwarded mail that requires his attention and not just mine. I also sent him Swedish Fish, Twizzlers and PB Twix, though, because socks and insurance forms aren't really exciting enough on their own. But just for fun I also sent him this:

Which, when properly assembled, turns into this:

It says Sammy and Alissa. Unfortunately Sam's wicked good at puzzles and a nine-piece cardboard jigsaw puzzle wasn't such a big challenge. Even without a picture on the box to guide him.

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31st January 2009

Saturday 04:23 pm : A New, Blue Bag.
As an engagement present, my mom and dad bought me this beautiful blue bag, my first real grown-up bag.

It's big enough to fit a small notebook for Persian class and small enough that it's not a tote bag. And it's blue! Sam also got a blue engagement present from my mom and dad.

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25th January 2009

Sunday 04:54 pm : Engagement Ring Prototype
When Sam proposed to me in November, he did it in the MINI Cooper before dinner at Tailor with our friends Dave and Amy. And he did it, initially, by pulling out a roll of aluminum foil and fashioning a ring out of it.

He then swapped it for the real deal, of course.

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Sunday 04:21 pm : Home Shelving
Sam and I have been working on some home-improvement projects for the last few months. With a significant increase in our sense of organization and, relatedly, our overall well-being! Now Sam is in Pittsburgh, with the job of improving and organizing our home there. I am continuing the projects here in Stamford.

The biggest addition, in terms of financial investment, floor space, and general impact, is three red bookcases from Ikea. We keep everything on them.

Bins of belts, socks, and pajamas:

Boxes with photographs, origami paper, mementos, and miscellany.

Bamboo boxes with out-of-season clothes and supplies.

And our Gorilla just hangs around.

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15th January 2009

Thursday 07:04 pm : It's cold in Pittsburgh in January.
On Saturday Sam and I are going to drive to Pittsburgh. On Monday I'm going to fly back. Alone. This is good news, although I have to keep reminding myself that it's good news.

We got word yesterday that Sam's Pennsylvania medical license renewal will go into effect on Monday, so he can start work at UPMC on Monday. And so his one-year fellowship in hand surgery will begin. This is great news for many reasons. For instance, it means that in only one year from now we'll be full-steam ahead on Project Rest of Our Lives. Also, it's symbolically significant because it's the resumption of life where we left off eighteen months ago when Sam put fellowship on hold to come back to New York for biopsy, chemotherapy, more chemotherapy, remission, relapse, more chemotherapy, radiation, yet more chemotherapy, and bone marrow transplant. In a lot of ways this is where we should have been in August 2007, but we're more than happy to be a year and a half behind schedule because this time there's no cancer.

We have a lot of stuff to get to Pittsburgh: suitcases, an iMac, four dining chairs (from my old apartment, destined for our chair-less dining table in Pittsburgh), and two grown adults. That would be a stretch to fit in the MINI, let me tell you. I don't even know if we could do it. Luckily we happen to have a beautiful, powerful, amazing new BMW 328i to drive to Pittsburgh instead! After driving a MINI for so many years, having four doors and a huge trunk feels indulgent. Of course, I'll still drive the MINI every day and Sam will keep the BMW with him in Pittsburgh, but that's okay because it's crazy cold in Pittsburgh and he'll need the heated steering wheel more than I will!

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7th January 2009

Wednesday 02:24 pm : Remember Pittsburgh?
Sam just got word that he can (re)start his fellowship in Pittsburgh soon. Possibly very soon. The number one priority before he can go is the delivery of the BMW so he'll have something nice to drive to work!

It's going to be hard to be apart for a year, but we are really excited that he's going to be back to fellowship so soon, because it means we will be able to settle down and move forward that much sooner.

Already 2009 is full of good news and excitement! All the more so if the BMW arrives in the next few days.

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27th December 2008

Saturday 08:30 pm : Baby Jack
I like taking photos, but I have a very clear set of skills and I don't really venture too far out of my range of established competence. Mostly that means that I shoot things of modest size and scope and I almost always use a prime lens. I have a zoom lens, but I only use it under the most extreme circumstances. You know, like if I ever saw a monkey in a hat way on the other side of the yard and wanted to get a shot of it. But since that's never happened, I almost never take the prime lens off my camera and most of my photography is objects and portraits. And I take a lot of portraits. But last week I took the best portrait I've ever taken. It's also the youngest person I've ever taken a portrait of, the subject being only 36 hours old.

This is my friend Carrie's son, Jack, having the biggest yawn of his life.

From Jack Thayer: Day Two

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