the world is your acorn

Today was one of those days where all kinds of things kept feeling like they’ve happened before. A daja vu day, I guess. It happened this morning when I got to school, then again in class. It happened a couple of times this weekend too. I can’t decide what I think about deja vu moments, except I’d like for them to be indicators of something good. Like the moment was “meant to be”, and things are going as smoothly as they can, and I’m on the right path to something. Yeah, I think I’ll go with that.

We’ve both been unusually busy these past few weeks, and it’s taken a toll. We’ve been tired, haven’ t eaten properly or done our chores, we haven’t spent enough time together, and have felt just generally behind and worn out. Well, The Little Red Haired Girl finally had a day off yesterday, and here are some things she did:
1. Bought bagels in the morning for us
2. Did our laundry
3. Cooked dinner for us
4. Did dishes and cleaned the kitchen, even though it was my turn
5. Kept me company while I did school work

So nice, right? I am feeling very pampered and lucky. On my day off I’m not sure if I’ll be able to be nearly as generous. K, I guess I’d better try.

My mom discovered Skype yesterday, and found us. We use SkypeOut as our home phone number, and have it connected to an actual cordless phone. Yesterday during dinner, it rang, and my mom was on the other end. We’ve given her the phone number before, but she never wrote it down. I think one of her relatives in Taiwan told her about Skype, she got all excited about it, then search for me and my brother on it. Now that she has figured out that she does not need to use cell phone minutes to call us, I fear the worst.

Don’t get me wrong, my mom is a nice lady. She is just a little neurotic, tends to repeat herself, and only has about 3 topics she likes to discuss:
1. Our house-buying efforts: “Don’t buy something you have to renovate, you don’t have the time. I rather you concentrate on your studies.”
2. My retirement plan: “When is the last time you contributed to your Roth IRA? You must plan ahead. Does Little Red Haired Girl have retirement?”
3. The length of time it will take for me to finish my phd: “Work harder! Why you spend so much time to have fun? School is priority! Oh, I worry you will buy house and it will take all your time. Don’t buy house. It’s too much work.”

It’s buckets of fun the first 7 times, but when you are on the phone 25 minutes later and going through the 16th cycle of talking about these three things, you start to regret having answered the phone in the first place.

Somehow I managed to stay out past 2 last night. I had a great time, and got a chance to talk to almost all of the prospective students (including a few who didn’t apply to our particular program), and was able to hang with current grad buddies too. I am excited about this cohort, and am interested to see who will show up in the fall. I hope a lot of them do, and I hope that I helped the process along in some way.

I just went back and looked at my livejournal posts from this time last year, when I was a prospective student. It’s really funny the way everything turned out. I was dreading the weekend, but I knew it was important for me to do. I never thought in a million years that this is where I’d end up. In my posts I mention my current advisor, as well as Everything Guy and The Thespian. It was pretty interesting looking back at my first impressions of things. It seems so long ago, but I can still remember the feeling of getting to my hotel room and not really knowing what to do or to expect and just wanting to be back at home, but knowing that this was something that I had to go through. Well, I just hope that I can make this weekend as meaningful for some of the prospective students this year as it was for me last year.

I had a pretty good time last night at the dinner at a professor’s house, and really made an effort to talk to the recruits instead of just talking to people I already know. I’ve definitely gotten better at small talk, although I did take a few cues from Everything Guy. But in this case it’s more than small talk because I really am interested in these people – I was talking to another classmate of ours last night, and we were saying that a lot of these folks will be our classmates and our friends and eventually our colleages, so even without all the free food and booze, this weekend is really worth our investment. The free food and booze helps too, of course…

Tonight begins recruitment weekend, where my program flies prospective phd students here to eat, drink, and convince them this is a great place to be. I remember my weekend here well, and it really influenced my decision to come. It was also when I met some of my closest friends here. So, now it’s my turn as a current grad student to help host the recruits, and I’m pretty excited. Not that I do so well with strangers, but I’d like to participate anyway and help to show them a good time. So it’s dinner at a prof’s house tonight, wine and cheese and dinner at school tomorrow followed by some beers and general merriment downtown with just grad students and prospectives, then breakfast and tour of campus on Sunday morning. Should be fun!

Even though we got a full night’s sleep last night, The Little Red Haired Girl and I are still exhausted. We will spend the evening cuddled on the couch in front of the tv.

Well, yesterday was a whirlwind day. Today was a blur of exhaustion. Yesterday I got up early to get some work done at school, then found out I was filming for my video analysis class at 11 instead of 1 as originally planned, then spent the rest of the afternoon capturing, compressing, and transcribing the video. At 4 I walked as fast as I could to The Museum, where Distant Cousin was being entertained by The Little Red Haired Girl until I got out of class. I took her home to nap, then went back to the museum to pick up The Little Red Haired Girl, picked up The Kindergarten Teacher, went back to my house to meet Mischief Man, then we all went to Monell’s for dinner. After we shoved as much delicious food into our faces as possible, we went to the Saucer where we met some more folk, and won trivia night. Then we hit DQ for blizzards, after which me and Distant Cousin spent a couple of hours catching up. We finally went to bed a little after midnight, then got up at 5 to go to the airport.

I didn’t get much work done, and am a little behind. Luckily everyone around me has been very kind and understanding, and I worked hard today to catch up, even in my fuzzy state of tired. I think I will be all set by tomorrow afternoon. It was so nice to spend those few hours with Distant Cousin though, that it’s all worth it. I really miss her, and even though we don’t stay in great touch all the time, it’s always so easy to get back into “us” mode. I wish she’d just move here. Fat chance. The good news is that she may visit again soon to see the same client again. Hooray!

More interesting posts later this week, maybe. Well, relatively interesting. Interesting to me, anyway.

For Valentine’s Day, The Little Red Haired Girl gave me the present I wanted most. I know, it’s not even V Day yet, but I accidentally tricked her into telling me that she bought it for me, so I made her produce last night:

Me: All I want for Valentine’s Day is some red hots. Forget about the Whitman’s Sampler, I’m over it.
Her: You ARE?
Me: Oh. Did you already get it?
Her: Yes
Me: You’re so sweet, all planning ahead.
Her: I JUST picked it up. I’ll take it back.
Me: NO! I want it still. Let’s eat it now.
Her: It’s for you, you have to eat it.
Me: We’ll share it after dinner.
Her: Ok.

So yes, if you didn’t get it from the transcript, I got a Whitman’s Sampler. Heart shaped. Now, before you judge, here’s the context of the situation. We don’t normally exchange V Day gifts (in fact, I haven’t gotten her anything. Is that bad?). Last week at the grocery store I told her that I wanted a Whitman’s Sampler, because I’ve never gotten one before. She said “No honey, they’re gross and you don’t even like chocolate,” at which point I threw a temper tantrum.

Now I have a Whitman’s Sampler, all to myself. I can eat whichever chocolates I want, and bite the others and put them back. Sure, I really am not a big chocolate eater, but it’s the principle of the thing. Lady E would understand. Plus it’s heart shaped. I’ve never gotten to be a cliche before (except the whole flannel shirt/doc martin/burkenstock/rugby thing), and now it’s my turn.

The Little Red Haired Girl is always so patient with my numerous stupid demands, humoring me whenever I get bratty or silly. Which practically never happens*. I may not always be appreciative enough of that. Sometimes it can be hard in a relationship to remember to be appreciative, and to recognize that there are things to be appreciative of. I think I will try to keep that in mind better from now on.

*When I say “practically never,” I might actually mean “frequently”

I know that blizzards and snow storms are not “fun” for a lot of reasons: they are often dangerous, snow removal is expensive, traffic and traveling is disrupted. Still, though, I miss it. I miss getting snowed in with friends, and sitting outside in the dense quiet, and falling into heaping piles of fresh drifts. I even miss shoveling. I know there are things that I don’t miss, and I’m romanticizing the blizzard since I’m not there, but I also know that I was used to them as a part of life and this morning, when The Little Red Haired Girl reported the 24 inches that Boston got, I had a little pang, and since then that pang has turned into some serious homesickness. My wallowing is definitely not helping. Here are some pictures from the storm:
A Record Storm [New York Times]