Tuesday, July 27, 2010

New tentative defense date

Eeek...

New defense date is August 13th! Friday... the 13th. I'm not superstitious. Not at all.

I've always had good Friday the 13ths. Really. Not like Thursday the 12ths. No, those have been bad.

I really hope my one committee member's baby stays put till the 14th (her due date is the 12th of course).

Other relevant dates:

July 28-August 1- Christoph comes to visit
July 31 - lease in Front Royal starts
August 1- wedding anniversary
August 5- Jim moves to Front Royal
August 6- Jim starts work
August 6- I go to Front Royal
August 9- Interview in Fairfax
August 13- Phd defense
September 10- last day to be in our house

Things are crazy nutso wacky busy.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Updates on moving and Shasta's fish hook

So we made a poster to send to the park where Shasta ate her fish hook, and amazingly enough, received a response right away saying that they'd pass it along to be posted. Hopefully they'll actually do that, and then Shasta's bony little skull will be famous in her PSA!

Here's the poster:

In other news, we did get that apartment (yay!), so we're going to move some stuff down in a couple weeks. Jim starts work August 6th.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Finding a new place to live...



We went down to Northern Virginia to try to find a place to live on Saturday. It's a bit of a complicated situation since Jim will be moving in the beginning of August but I'll be staying in State College primarily until after I defend (still no date).

So, we were ideally looking for something that would be pet-friendly, flexible in the lease (since I don't have a job there yet, and we don't know about the commute), and ideally inexpensive, since we're keeping our (expensive) house in State College (because, really, the stress of finding a cheaper, temporary, pet-friendly place here is just not worth it right now.)

We saw a bunch of places in Front Royal, which is a nice town - about the size of State College, but without the college, so if you can imagine State College without the University and with an expanded, more interesting downtown area you have Front Royal. It also borders Shenandoah National Park and has a ton of water sports like kayaking and canoeing in the river, which I'm really excited about!

We also saw a couple houses in Warrenton, which is about 40 minutes SE of Front Royal, and about 50 minutes SW of Fairfax. They were very cool places to see (one in a converted stable from the 1820's) but the town's a bit far from anywhere, and it's quite small, and very expensive ($6 for a loaf of white bread? I mean, it was from a bakery, but really?).

Anyway, we *think* we've decided on a place in Front Royal. It's in the historic downtown area, which is a first for us, we haven't actually lived *in* a town before. It's not too expensive and it's
really cool- it has beams in the ceiling and a clawfoot tub and a nice kitchen.

The catch: it's a 1 bedroom (it's pretty big though) and it's in a renovated hospital. From Civil War times.

I just know I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night next to some bloody Civil War soldier while a nurse is leaning over me with a knife or something.

(http://www.freewebs.com/free-offers/brown_lady_ghost.jpg)

Anyway.

So we'll need to get a storage unit until we can find a more permanent situation, and we're going to be downsizing considerably. Which isn't a bad thing.

Some pics:

The house - we'll have the unit with the door on the left. It extends to the right a bit:



The kitchen in the 1 bedroom that will hopefully work out for us:

There's an oven and at least as many cabinets on the other side. There is also a large table and 4 chairs (the apartment's furnished). The front door is behind you, and the rest of the apartment is through a door on the right. The living room is really big, and the bathroom and bedroom are beyond it. It's surprisingly spacious for a 1 bedroom apartment.



Downtown Front Royal has a really nice courtyard and gazebo in the middle where they play concerts in the summer. There are a bunch of little restaurants and bars - it seems really nice.

I'll miss State College, and moving is a pain, but northern VA looks pretty awesome too.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Cleveland 2: Shasta 0 (and a beautiful wedding)

Well, she's OK now...

We went to Cleveland this weekend to attend our friend Ross's wedding to his fiancee Kristen. The wedding was beautiful and fun. The bride and groom looked amazingly happy and it was wonderful to see them both again and also to see Ross's family, who we hadn't seen for several years.

However.

Ross suggested that we visit North Park in Cleveland before the wedding, since it didn't begin till 4. He gave us directions and we hopped in the car and headed out there around noon. It's a pretty park with some small lakes and bridges and playgrounds and nice walking paths. After we were on the opposite side of the lake from the car, Jim looked down, and said, "Shasta, what do you have?"

There was a piece of fishing line hanging out of her mouth. She was trying to swallow, and so we grabbed her and tried to gently open her mouth and take it out, worried about fishhooks.

We couldn't get it out.

(The last time we were in Cleveland, Shasta ate rat poison left out in Ross's apartment. That resulted in a visit to the emergency vet in Cleveland. At least this time, we knew kind of where it was, and we were a lot closer to it than we had been....)
We spent the next two hours in the waiting room of the emergency vet clinic (the same one), waiting for Shasta to get x-rays so we could see what had happened to her. She wasn't whining but she was drooling like a fountain, and gagging and coughing. Finally, to our consternation, she swallowed the rest of the fishing line.

The vet finally got the xrays and we met with her - 45 minutes before we had to be at the church for the wedding. It turns out the line *did* have a fish hook attached to it and it had impaled itself in her mouth :-(
The vet then proposed sedating her and trying to see if she could cut the fishhook out. We explained about the wedding, and she replied that she'd give us a call when she had news.

Off we went to the wedding...There was a break between the reception and the ceremony. We anxiously stared at the phones, waiting for them to ring. We finally broke down and gave them a call instead. They got the hook out! We jumped in the car to go get our poor puppy (who's so afraid of vets). After another hour spent in the waiting room waiting for them to bring her out, she finally emerged from one of the rooms, with tears streaking her muzzle, her tail between her legs, and a huge lump on her side from subcutaneous fluids. She was so happy to see us.

$485 later (thank God that after our last visit to Cleveland, we bought pet insurance!), we made it back to the hotel. Shasta LOVES hotels. She's been sleeping (with occasional potty breaks) since then.

So in sum, no ill effects, except renewed conviction that Shasta is crazy (fishhooks = food??). We are never bringing her back to Cleveland again.

And we even made it on time to the reception! Yay!

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Some favorites from this weekend

We had a wonderful, amazing weekend. Fun, relaxing, rejuvenating and heartening. Some favorite pics:


Baby's first ocean experience! He LOVED it.

Boston's 4th of July fireworks!


Listening to the Pops by the Charles River

Jim sharing the news of his *NEW JOB* with his family at the campsite

Evy and I hiked here. It was beautiful and far away and we were the only people on the entire lake.

World cup fans...

Picnicking at Tanglewood

Hiking through 'moose country' along a creek

The NYC Public Library

Jim's 30th birthday party







Just a few pics :-)

Deep Gulf of Mexico

Another article...

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/07/06/oil.ocean.mystery/index.html?hpt=C1