Road Trip: Boston to Dallas

After an eventful graduation week full of festivities, with the help of two great friends, Eric and Dave, we moved our stuff from our 490 square ft apt into a trailer that shipped our stuff from Boston to Dallas.  We left on Tuesday, June 9 and stopped in 5 cities visiting friends, attended a good friend's wedding, and went site-seeing before ending up in Dallas 6 days later.  We ended up driving ~2,800 miles going through 16 different states (MA, CT, NY, NJ, PA, MD, VA, WV, NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TX)!  Here's a run-down of our 6 day road trip...

Mon, 6/8:  Loaded up our stuff into the trailer where we had 5 linear ft of space and only 1 hour to fill it.  Thank goodness for Craigslist and Salvation Army or else we'd have a ton more heavy furniture pcs to move.  A huge THANK YOU to our friends Eric and Dave for helping us move our stuff out of SFP and into the trailer.  There would be no way for us to do it ourselves with such a short time frame.  And another HUGE thank you to Lisa's brother, Robert, for helping us move the stuff from the trailer into Lisa's parents' house (where we'll be living for the next few months while our house is being built).  

Tues, 6/9:  Left SFP Apt and stopped at Princeton, NJ to do a quick tour of Princeton University.  Jimmy has high aspirations for our children to go to college there.  

Wed, 6/10:  Stopped to visit our friends Tanmay and Reena Desai in Charlotte, NC where Reena cooked a fabulous meal for us!  

Thurs, 6/11:  Visited our friends A.T. and Leslie Gimbel in Atlanta, GA where we met Brutus for the first time.  

Friday, 6/12-Sun, 6/14:  Arrived in Orlando, FL for our friends', Renu and Deepak, wedding at the Gaylord Palms Resort.  Lisa wore an Indian sari for the first time!  We had an amazing time celebrating with our wonderful SMU/Dallas friends.  Some we haven't seen since graduation!  Congrats to the newly married, Renu and Deepak Dadlani.  

Sun, 6/14-Mon, 6/15:  Short stop in New Orleans, LA.  Lisa's sister, Linda, graduated from Loyola University in May 2005.  We hadn't been there since pre-Katrina and decided to check it out and eat some yummy beignets!  

Mon, 6/15:  Finally, after 42 hrs of driving and 2,800 miles later, we arrived in Dallas.  First stop...Babe's Chicken in downtown Cedar Hill where we ate fried chicken and spent time with the Panchasarp siblings and the Smith Family.  Lauren (3 years old) and Allison (1 year old) had grown so much since the last time we saw them in March!  

Tues, 6/16 - what will seem like an eternity:  Building our new house!  Jimmy has been meeting with potential builders and architects every day.  Our dilemma now is whether to do an extensive remodel or a complete new build that may take much longer.  The house will be demo-ed inside on Saturday, so we'll assess the structure and make a decision soon.  Stay tuned...  

MBA Oath

Recently, a group of HBS students have designed an oath for the management profession.  Currently, the effort is entirely student-led and asks MBAs to promise to create value in a responsible and ethical manner.

Currently, we have over 400 signatures!  Most are from HBS, but we also have representatives from Kellogg, Wharton, Thunderbird, etc.

Check out the oath and if you have an MBA or will be receiving an MBA in 2009, please consider signing the oath online!  The link to the oath can be found here.

Also check out the Wikipedia article on the MBA Oath at this link.

New Zealand and Australia

We decided that instead of buying each other gifts for our anniversary, we'd travel somewhere new each year instead!  So, we decided to celebrate our 2 year anniversary in the land Down Under.  During undergrad, Jimmy studied abroad in Perth, Western Australia and spent some time in Sydney as well, but it was Lisa's first time to Australia.  

We split our time between the surrounding areas of Auckland, Sydney & Melbourne.  We stayed in hotels in Auckland and Melbourne (gotta love Starwood points!), but stayed with Jimmy's section mate Scott and his girlfriend Margot at their fabulous apartment right at the Wharf.  We even met up with another section mate, Matt, and our friend Chio from Bain and few other Bainees in Sydney!  

We diligently posted all of our pictures from our adventures in the city and excursions to the surrounding countryside.  You can link to all of our pictures here.

A BBQ, Texas Chili Cook-off and Rock Band

The past week has been unusually warm and sunny (not that we're complaining!), so we spent literally all weekend outside.  Here's a run down of our eventful weekend...

Friday afternoon - Tennis

Friday evening - Dinner at Giacomo's at the North End followed by cannolis at Mike's Pastry.

Saturday morning - Biked from Boston to Lexington and Concord

Saturday afternoon - BBQ at 10 Akron with Hoffman folks followed by the Annual HBS Texas Chili Cook-off

Sunday morning - Ran a 10K in Dedham - it was so hot and HILLY!  

Sunday afternoon - Lunch at Deep Ellum (yes, Dallas folks, it was named after Deep Ellum in Dallas)

The weekend was so great we even created an album dedicated to it.  Check out Spring Day in Cambridge!

A Spring Sunday in Cambridge/Medford

When we first moved to Boston, one of our goals was to visit as many colleges and universities as well as Catholic churches in the area.  After visiting numerous schools and churches, we realize that there are still so many more to see!  

Last Sunday, we decided to go to mass at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Cambridge.  After mass, we decided to go 3 miles down the road to visit Tufts University in Medford, MA.  After walking, or should I say hiking (it was so hilly!) through Tufts, we went to a fantastic "hole-in-the-wall" breakfast place called The Broken Yolk.  It's a little out of the way, but down the road from Tufts.  It's definitely worth a visit!  

St. Peter's Catholic Church

Tufts University

Is it Finally Spring in Boston?

We had quite an eventful weekend!  On Saturday afternoon, we decided to stop by Brandeis University on our way to our friend Melissa's place in Waltham for dinner.  It turned out that Brandeis was only 1.5 miles from her house!  Thanks again Melissa for a yummy dinner and dessert!  

On Sunday, despite the fact that Lisa wasn't supposed to run because she had a pretty bad fall on Thursday, we ran the Cambridge City 5 Mile Run at Fresh Pond with other HBS/HKS folks.  It was a gorgeous spring day, so after our run, we went to Tryst in Arlington for brunch with our friend Esther.  We highly recommend it if you've never been.  They have a delicious egg sandwich (biscuit, egg, home fries and bacon for only $8!) and a live jazz band for entertainment!  Thanks for the recommendation, Lauren!  

People Search on Pipl

Don't know if this is old news to everyone or not, but there is a site out there called "Pipl" where you can conduct a pretty detailed search of people, and within seconds, aggregate a bunch of info from disparate places on the Internet. Unlike traditional people searches, this site searches "the deep web," thus uncovering data that other sites would not...data from the SEC, Hoovers, your MySpace account, and even your purchase activity on Amazon.com!

Here is an excerpt from the site itself:

"Pipl's query-engine helps you find deep web pages that cannot be found on regular search engines.

Unlike a typical search-engine, Pipl is designed to retrieve information from the deep web, our robots are set to interact with searchable databases and extract facts, contact details and other relevant information from personal profiles, member directories, scientific publications, court records and numerous other deep-web sources.

Pipl is not just about finding more results; we are using advanced language-analysis and ranking algorithms to bring you the most relevant bits of information about a person in a single, easy-to-read results page."

And by the way, you can search on any of your choosing: name, email, user name and phone.

We can now all officially say goodbye to privacy, forever. You can check out the site here.

It never ends!

Well, the date is officially March 4th but the temperature is cold as ever! In fact, we had a blizzard just 2 days ago, proving that you can experience a snow storm and then "Spring Forward" all in the same week! Check out all the snow...

What do you pledge?!

Antarctica, A New Home and the Obamas

In just under 3 months, so much has happened!

First, we took a major trip to the South Pole and officially set foot on to Antarctica, possibly the most remote place on earth. The scenery on the Antarctic Peninsula was absolutely breathtaking and we got to see penguins, whales & a leopard seal. In addition to Antarctica itself, we also got a chance to visit Argentina and Chile -- we actually rung in 2009 in Santiago!

Second, we unexpectedly found a home that we fell in love with while visiting family in Dallas in early January. Although the timing was not ideal, the house was exactly what we were looking for at a great price. It was a whirlwind, but we're now new homeowners!! Some specs: Tudor style home built in 1929 with approx. 1700 square feet located in Oaklawn Heights. Sits on a little over a quarter of an acre. We love the lot, but the house is uninhabitable and in major need of a complete renovation. This will be our summer project ;-).

















Last, but certainly not least, we made a trip down to Washington, D.C. for the 44th President's inauguration! The atmosphere, environment and surroundings were just completely overwhelming...definitely an experience we will share with our kids and grandkids. We somehow made it to the front of the parade route and witnessed President Obama's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Capitol to the White House. Awesome...