New Digs

I'm all moved in. It didn't take long, considering that nearly everything in here I had packed in my car. And my car is not that big. It's starting to feel a little bit more like home now that I have my pictures back up around the place and on my refrigerator. I like to keep pictures of my friends and family up all over my fridge; it makes me happy to see everyone I love all the time!

But...

Let's talk briefly about my packing skills. Not physically putting things into boxes and bags, but choosing what to bring. I brought with me :

8 bottles of wine
7 pairs of shoes
6 tubes of mascara
5 kinds of tea
4 bags of coffee

I did not bring:

an iron
any knives
tools of any sort
pens, pencils, or writing utensils of any kind

In short, I brought nearly nothing useful. (Though on the tools front, I have to say that I am at least creative: I did manage to assemble my brand new, extraordinarily cheap shelves from Target with a butter knife. I also used the heel of a nice pair of boots to hammer in a nail on which I have hung my calendar!) I have managed to fill most of the holes in my packing thanks to Target, but still. My own thought processes, or lack thereof, amaze me sometimes.

Coming up in my next post: pictures!

The Perfect Dress

Tonight I saw the perfect dress for me to wear for my graduation. Putting aside the fact that I have a Mt. Everest sized amount of work to finish between now and then, it seems an appropriate time to start thinking about the dress and shoes for the ~15 minute graduation ceremony. I like to think I will have earned something fancy like this.

My perfect dress is, of course, from an episode of Sex & the City. Here's a picture of the dress from the HBO website:


I would not look like Sarah Jessica Parker, clearly, but I love the dress. It's chiffon and by Richard Tyler. I'm sure it will be impossible to find the actual dress, but I am hoping I can find something similar. And I am thinking about buying my first really expensive pair of shoes to go with it.

Note: Kansas. It's still flat.

It's been weeks since I last posted and yet this one is still going to be short. In the last week I have packed up my apartment and office, shoved it all into my car, and taken off for the midwest. I stopped to stay with some friends this evening who live in Kansas, thus taking me all the way across the lovely state during my drive today. And indeed, Kansas is still flatter than a pancake. In case you were curious.

More later, after I drive some more, get all my stuff out of the car, and unpack it all.

Delightful!

I had a lovely Saturday! Nicer than I have had in a very long time. Saturday afternoon I hung out with my best friend and we finally went to see The Chronicles of Narnia. It was great! It didn't look at all like the story looked in my head when I read the book, but it was still great. Saturday evening I went to a friend's house to play games with some friends from school. And that was great too! I had not sat down and played games for an evening in literally 3 or 4 years. I forgot how much fun that can be. And to top it all off, I didn't work at all. I didn't think about working or worry about the fact that I wasn't working. I don't know how I managed it for 24+ hours, but I did. That's probably why the whole day was so great.

I submitted an application yesterday for the postdoc position that I want the most. It's outside of the country (yay!) and I have very little shot at actually winning this fellowship (boo!), but I worked very hard on the proposal and I think it it quite good even if no one on the selection committee ends up thinking it is. It will 3 months before I hear any response so now, as usual, it's just a waiting game. I'm trying to be optimistic, but I know I'll be pretty bummed if things don't work out. But I take comfort in the fact that even if I don't find a job at the end of all this, Starbucks is always hiring.

I'll be moving to the midwest in about two and a half weeks I guess. Hopefully by the end of the week I'll have all of the apartment stuff taken care of (the property managers won't let me sign a lease yet!) and that will be the last big thing to finish. Not counting packing, of course. But I've decided to keep my apartment here while I'm gone since it will cost nearly the same thing to break my lease and store my stuff as it would to just keep paying rent for 3 months. So I don't have to pack all that much. And that's a relief. The only think I hate more than unpacking is packing itself.