Happy birthday to me!!!

It's been quite a year so far, and we're only two months in...
Yesterday, I had a real birthday, which is always extra-special, but this one was amazing. Thursday evening, Nicholas had stacked up a bunch of beautifully wrapped presents in the living room. Since we knew it was going to snow on Friday morning and he'd be out plowing most of the day and likely well into the night, we went out for a quick dinner and came home to enjoy each other's company on one of the last nights we'd have together until he joins me in DC in 2 months. I kept trying to get him to let me open my presents, but he was adamant that we wait until my true birthday.

I woke up early the next morning and was so excited for Nic to get up so I could open my gifts. What seemed like forever finally passed, and he was awake and ready to start the birthday festivities. He made me get dressed, which was a little surprising to me...I couldn't understand why I couldn't just open my presents in my pajamas. I quickly put on the first non-pajama clothes I could find and was all ready to go while Nic was taking his sweet time getting everything all set.

FINALLY....it was time to open presents. He did a great job picking out perfect gifts that all had special meaning to our relationship. When we got to the last present, he handed it over, and just as I touched the bag, he pulled it back and said he would open the last gift for me. He went into this very sweet speech about how much he loved me and all this stuff which I don't at all remember because I was completely shocked by what he was doing...he pulled a small box out of the bag.


Nicholas asked me to marry him, and of course I said yes!!

The ring is incredibly special to me. It was my great-grandmother's ring which Nic had re-furbished. It is so gorgeous, and I almost believe it's more beautiful now than it was when she owned it many many years ago.



Once we both get settled in DC and with our new jobs, we'll be able to start planning our wedding!! I couldn't be more excited than I am at this very moment.

Our new home

Now that I'm finished with grad school and all the chaos associated with writing and defending my dissertation is through, I have very few excuses for not blogging. I'll try to do better in the future. (Although I do start my new job on Monday and who knows when I'll find the time after that.)

Indie and I will be moving to DC on Saturday. Nic is staying behind in Ann Arbor until the end of April when our current lease is up, and we will anxiously be awaiting him joining us.

I went out there for the day last Saturday to check out the new apartment and sign my lease. I'm excited about how close we'll be to the Metro. I could go on and on about how thrilled I am to be moving somewhere with such great public transportation. Also, we'll be living within walking distance of just about any store you can think of. I'm very excited to not have to drive all the time!

Here's a view of my building.


It's just recently been built, and two more very similar apartment buildings are under construction on our block. From what I can gather, this is becoming one of the new popular areas as DC continues to grow and sprawl out into the suburbs. While the road in front of the building looks very nice in this picture, it's actually quite busy and for some reason cross-walks and walk signals aren't so popular in this area. I'm sure it was quite a sight to see me darting traffic as I was running across the 8 lanes of traffic carrying a bunch of shopping bags.

Just in case all of the attractions of our nation's capital are not enough to entice you to come and visit, here's a view of the pool:
I'm sad to be leaving Michigan, but I'm so excited to call this my new home! By the way, I'll always have a couch and air-bed available for visitors!!!

Why writing a dissertation is not fun...

I'm in the middle of writing my dissertation. (and by "in the middle" i mean that i'm currently writing it, not to be confused with being halfway done or anything, because well, i'm not half way done yet.) For those of you not crazy enough to decide to do something which requires writing of a dissertation, generally, the first chapter is the introduction. I usually think of intros as being short and brief, basically just giving the important facts. Well, in this case, the word introduction is incredibly deceiving. You basically write a review of the literature that relates to your project, sparing no detail. In order to do this, I've plunged myself into a constant state of reading journal articles, adding a couple sentences to my intro here and there as I come upon relevant things in my reading. I'm the kind of person who likes to see results of my work (perhaps i should have been a maid or some other job where you can see results of your labor immediately). This work certainly does not fall into that category. I can spend hours and hours working diligently, yet microsoft word still tells me i'm at the same number of pages as i was 3 days ago. I have a stack of papers to read that is about 3 feet high (and, no, I'm not exaggerating...i'll bring in my camera to document that fact tomorrow). My "done" pile (papers I've read and feel like i've thoroughly written about in my dissertation) is probably about 3 inches high, and the pile of papers i've read that i'm just not sure how to incorporate is getting pretty thick as well.

Here's the major thing that just about gives me a panic attack every time I start thinking about the big picture--It seems like every time I add another paper to the "done" pile, I've found at least 3 more to print out and add to the "i need to read" pile. This doesn't seem very productive to me, and I'm starting to wonder how I'll ever finish if this continues.

I guess right now I should just be happy that I've managed to work for 2 1/2 straight hours on a Saturday evening and have been incredibly productive.

One upside to all of this...I'll probably be blogging much more frequently now that I'm sitting in front of my laptop about 16 hours a day.

Extra Innings

Nic and I went to another Tigers' game last night against the White Sox. Yet again, the game went into extra innings. I'm not a regular at CoPa or anything, but I have been to my fair share of games....and only one of those games ended after 9 innings. Normally, I'm all for getting an extra bang for my buck, but with baseball, I only pay for 9 innings and that's just plenty for me.

Also on the subject of streaks and Tigers baseball...I HATE Todd Jones. I don't care what anybody says or what his statistics show. I have NEVER (and this is no exaggeration) watched a games where he came in and didn't completely mess things up. He has always either lost the lead (or the game) for the Tigers and somebody else has had to come in and clean up his mess. Plus, he's not so nice to look at.


Luckily, even though Jones didn't get a save for the game, a double from Inge followed by a double from Timo Perez gave the Tigers the win.

Way to go, Timo!

That was probably my final game for the season. I honestly enjoy watching baseball better on TV. I can actually see everything that's going on, there's lots of replays, and the beverages are much cheaper. Let's keep our fingers crossed that the Tigers can pull their season together and make it to the play offs.

If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too??

Well, it seems that I have finally succumbed to the pressure to start a blog. It seems that everyone has one nowadays and I surely don't want to be the last one to join the crowd. Do people really care enough to read this sort of thing? Probably not, but I can use every distraction possible from writing my stupid dissertation.