Emuzines

Today is a relaxing day for me, and a productive one. I had class in the morning, but get to spend the afternoon working from home, writing. I love to be in the office–the M.I.N.D. Institute is still magical to me–and I love to be out in the field doing intervention with our babies and kiddos, but I always feel so relaxed when I get a whole afternoon to write. I punctuate my writing with errands or cleaning tasks, so I get double the amount done.

Tonight one of our professors is throwing a dinner party for us to celebrate passing prelims. I just swung by the market to pick up sparkling lemonade and French berry lemonade to bring, as well as a frozen pizza for Nik since he is being abandoned tonight.

Tomorrow will be another class-errand-writing type of day, and then Saturday is the first monthly First Saturday Dinner and a Movie. I’m so excited about it. I have a whole meal planned and the movie…should be…arriving in the mail today.

Now time for lunch!

We’ve sort of been haphazardly packing the last few days.  We are moving the furniture (via movers) on Tuesday, and we’ve been bringing things over, and are going to bring more things over tomorrow.  It’s been kind of tough to pack what we won’t need before Tuesday, plus what I won’t need for Denver, which is Wednesday.  Denver is difficult timing–should I pack for it before I pack for moving, before we move, after??  With classes starting up on Monday, too, kind of busy and disorganized around here.  Jo has been quite amused about it all, chewing on box corners whenever possible, and ninja sneakily sneaking onto the bed when packing activities leave the bedroom door open.  She made sure that we wouldn’t forget her squirrel toy:

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.

Today is my first official day of winter break!  Ok…maybe yesterday was my first OFFICIAL day, but I worked all day…so today is really it!

We sure celebrated on Thursday after our last day of classes.  Here we are at Bistro 33.

We had a pretty good, but uneventful, last two classes (April and I gave a great puberty-related presentation, and David was a champion wrapping up Piaget in an exact hour)…and then headed out to Bistro 33.  We had some mojito pitchers and sweet potato fries, and had an exciting White Elephant gift exchange.  It went so fast and we were all so polite about (not) stealing gifts that we invented a new, Forced-Trade Gift Game after we were done, to up the competition and laughter.  It was a great time, and we moved inside (thank you, my Southern California, flip-flopped in 39 degrees toes said) for shots…yes, shots…  It was tough to get up for work yesterday, but it was completely worth it.

I made it through yesterday without a zombie-day, which I’ve had 2 or 3 times since starting school, and even just 1 caffeine.  Sally and I worked for a solid few hours on our chapter, which was great.  After work, I lounged around, watched a movie and lots of TV–totally lazy. 

I slept in very, very late today.  So did Nik and JoJo.  None of us had any idea it had already hit the PM.  Nik and I did some Christmas shopping, went out to lunch, and grocery shopping.  It’s so nice not to have to read all weekend, not having enough time to lift my head for a drink of water.  I do have some work on my chapter to do this weekend, or Monday, but I enjoy it and am super-excited about it, so it doesn’t count.

Anyway, yay to winter break!  I’m relaxed already.