Despite the fact that I’ll be home for the holidays, I wanted to bring some Christmas spirit to my apartment. A miniature tree (the first time I’ve had a real fir!), some lights, a Nutcracker, and a couple stockings seemed like just the right amount of festive. It wouldn’t really feel like December without decorations — nor without some holiday baking:

Have you started decorating yet?

Should I be an artist or astronaut? Well, as it turns out, I’m neither. But I guess being a biologist puts me somewhere in the middle? I do science but sometimes it involves a lot of drawing (signaling pathways, schematics of a cell, etc).

How have your plans changed since you were in elementary school? Are you pursuing what you always thought you would or did you land in a completely different field?

I am now officially in the holiday spirit.

It usually takes me until Thanksgiving to start feeling festive but this year I’m feeling it early. It might have something to do with ordering tickets to see The Nutcracker and going to “Light Up Night,” an event my city has every year when they decorate downtown for the holidays. There were Christmas lights and trees everywhere, a public ice skating rink, shop windows filled with gingerbread houses, a multi-cultural Santa Claus exhibit, and Christmas music echoing through the streets. Even the weather was Christmas-y: chilly with that crisp, going-to-snow-later feel. Needless to say, the (albeit early) holiday cheer was impossible to resist.

Today? I’m looping the full Nutcracker suite while I clean my apartment, reminiscing about long days in rehearsal for the production, and eagerly anticipating my trip home for the holidays.

‘Tis the season.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

such as my preference for studying with the assistance of espresso.
(or my tendency to take pictures of my coffee).