Emuzines

Oh yeah!  Happy birthday to JoJo, who turned 2 yesterday.  She enjoyed new toys, a gigantic new bone, an entire cake, and party hats and favors, thanks to her mommy’s mommy.  Here are excerpts from our celebration (are we weird?):

The dishwasher and dryer are humming, and I’m trying to decide between watching some TV or starting a new book…I’m sure I’ll go for the book.  This quarter has been such a nice change, with time in the evenings and nights to myself, time for Nik and I to hang out, and free weekends to house shop.  We had a Day of Fun scheduled for last Saturday, but I couldn’t come up with something good to do, that would be rain-acceptable.  It was supposed to rain through today.  Of course, it’s been nice and sunny, including Saturday.  But we rescheduled and I’ve come up (finally) with a potential Day of Fun activity: Sausalito! 

Feeling kind of “speechless.”  Just don’t have many topics set to blog about.  But all is well, and I miss everybody.

Today Nik and I went house shopping!  We were both so excited and also a little nervous, I think.  We have a great Realtor who showed us 5 or 6 houses around Davis.  We fell in love with the first house we saw, which is a 5 bedroom home pretty close to where we live now.  We didn’t like any of the rest (except one that I thought was the cutest thing ever, but the “master bedroom” wouldn’t even fit our bed).  One house was SO bad, SO WEIRD…just the strangest thing that’s ever been built…it made the Realtor use antibacterial gel when we left.

We got our hopes set all high for this first house…just a gorgeous place.  Nik called George who said, “5 bedroom?” and we realized…we don’t need a 5 bedroom home for 2 people.  We were disappointed in our crash back down to reality, but it’s true.  It would be pretty foolish (although…imagine the possibilities–a scrapbook room, a bedroom, a room for JoJo, an office, and a guest bedroom…1, 2, 3, 4, 5!  That’s 5!). 

We’re going to start looking in other areas, including Sacramento.  Hopefully we can see some of those next week.  Also, hopefully something else opens up in Davis, because we didn’t like what we were left with!  It was a fun day, ended with pigging out on pizza and bruscetta downtown.  Now we’re relaxing in our robes, getting set to find some more houses to tour…

It’s Tuesday, and I’ve made breakfast, and am now leisurely sipping my coffee and relaxing.  “Surely tomorrow must be a day from hell,” I thought…but no!  Tomorrow all I have to do is go to class from 2-4!  I am LOVING this new schedule, yet I can’t really figure out what’s so different.  I’m in class the same number of hours, and I’m working the same number of hours.  It’s just the scheduling of the days, seems immeaureably better.  And not only do I not have to walk to my car at 9pm across the unlit campus…there’s more free time, somehow.  Strange,but nice…

I was a tad depressed and nervous today for school and work to start up again–I told my officemate Carolyn that I felt like a 2nd grader on her first day of school.  I had a meeting scheduled with Sally today to discuss the work I did for our chapter over break, and to talk about how we’re going to use part of it in our next grant proposal.  She was THRILLED with the work I got done, saying over and over how much it was and how good it was!  I found out, also that she wrote me into the Autism Speaks grant she is applying for.  I, along with one of her postdocs, are going to be the main people on this…and I am so excited!  I hope we get the grant.  It’s a really exciting new project!

I headed over to class after my wonderful meeting with wonderful Sally.  Of course, I was two hours early, and got a parking spot right away.  It was great to see Kyle, David, Abby, and Natalie again.  The class seemed great and the professor is a young, smart- and laid-back-seeming type of guy.  It’s behavioral genetics.  I’m actually pretty excited to start some of this reading.

After class I chatted with my friends, and then we went home, not sure what to do because we’re used to getting out of class late at night!  It is now the most perfect type of drizzly, cup of tea day, and I’m sitting at my brand new laptop, sipping on Coffee Bean Winter Dream tea, watching Jo watch the dryer steam fog outside the window.