Posting Fail

Damn, I've gone more than ten days without posting. Sorry! I'll try not to let it happen again, but I'm still getting used to doing this regularly.

At the moment I have an excuse: I'm cleaning and purging my apartment pre-packing. It's miserable. I'm fairly satisfied that I've gotten rid of most of my personal belongings that I have no desire to take with me. I just have a box that I've been dumping souvenir-type stuff into since high school that I have to sort through so that it's not over-flowing. There's still a good amount of Kraig's stuff that he has to go through, and lots of jointly-owned junk. Especially excess kitchen equipment. Anyway, all of this is exceptionally boring and I don't particularly feel like remembering it.

In good news, my brother Tom and his fiance Jess are coming over this weekend to help us pack, because they are the awesome-est people EVER! Actually, I find that there are quite a few awesome-est people in my life at the moment, but they are among the awesome-est... We are going to hunker down with pizza and beer (sorry weight watchers) and dust, sort, pack, and label. Hopefully while listening to some sweet-ass tunes.

In other news: I went to a ballet class last night at Studio Ballet of Hudson. It was a great class and it felt really good to be dancing again (and in the studio space that I grew up learning ballet in, no less) but I am WOEFULLY out of shape. I really hope I can find a convenient ballet class in Chicago that's right for me: something laid-back and more technique/placement/organic-focused than the typical classical ballet classes one finds. I'm also thinking about checking out Gyrokenesis. The Pilates is working really well for core strength, but I'm finding it harder and harder not to use my large muscle groups while dancing/living in general.

Serendipity

Up until recently, I've liked to keep all of my various email in separate accounts. Well, now I have five different email addresses and it's just too much for my poor brain to remember what's gone to which inbox, so I'm cleaning house and moving everything to my gmail account. Another impetus for this is that I've finally gotten comfortable using gmail's filter/label/search tools.

I was just starting to go through my old hotmail account and unsubscribe from the various email lists that I no longer read. I used to reserve this account for "junk-like, but requested" email, but I never check it anymore anyway. The first email that I opened to unsubscribe from was my horoscope. I used to read mine daily. I don't know that I took it seriously, but it amused me to see if I could relate its predictions to my life. Here's today's:

"You are juggling lots of things today -- people, projects and more. That can be great, but for now, it's harder than usual for you to deal with things that are complicated. Try to just keep juggling!"

Spot on. Maybe I'll keep getting these?

Quick Post from Today

I have a very upbeat post in the works, but this is a quickie so I'll put it up first. I met my first crackhead today!

Kraig and I were approached on a subway platform by a very persistent crackhead today. At the time it was frightening, annoying, and infuriating, chronologically in that order. At first, I thought we were going to get mugged, then it was just the usual irritating begging for cash, and then he wouldn't go away! I think the thing that upset me most was the invasion of my personal space and the feeling that not only was I in no control of the interaction, but that it could potentially get nasty.

Well, it didn't get nasty. The train arrived, we scuttled onto a different car from where he boarded, and that was the end of it.

The funny thing about the conversation though was that even he, in his drugged out state, was surprised when I said that I did mathematics. Note to the mathematics community: when even crackheads think only antisocial dorks do math, it's time for a PR campaign!

PS- Thank you Dave Chapell for portraying crackheads with such accuracy.

Fingers Crossed

It's been a crazy few days! Kraig and I flew into Chicago on Thursday to apartment hunt and check in with future employers. Note to self: there are advantages of flying ass-early in the morning, to wit, minimal check-in and security lines. Apparently, lots of people like to fly on Thursday evenings around 8pm. Who knew?!

One fairly gross wrap a la airport concession stand later, and Kraig and I were buzzing westward, navigating a new subway system, and flopping unceremoniously into our really cute room at the Hotel Indigo.

On Friday we went out separate ways. Kraig had an interview and I headed north to Evanston for a meeting in the math department. I managed to catch most of an undergrad admissions info session. It's the sort of thing I was totally disinterested in doing while at Tufts, but I'm determined to be better informed this time. I did learn about how the university is organized into different colleges and a little about their degree requirements. Not bad stuff to know.


After that, Kraig and I decided to meet up to have a bite to eat before checking out a place that he'd found listed on craigslist that looked promising. We ended up going to a middle eastern restaurant close to the Loyola stop. The food was great and it seemed like they turned the place into a hooka bar or nightclub in the evenings. We were the only people there at 2pm and lounged around on a group of sofas while eating. We walked around to check out the neighborhood for a few minutes after that, and then checked out the apartment.

It was an underwhelming experience, to say the least. I think I'll go with the description our agent from Chicago Apartment Finders used today, and say that the area was "isolated" and not particularly "walkable." There wasn't any of that city feeling you get around productive shop fronts and lively neighborhoods. The apartment itself had been seriously over-hyped as well. We returned to the hotel room and I did some more poking around on craiglist to see what people were saying about other neighborhoods. What I found wasn't reassuring: the "hip, young adult" areas were either super expensive, or removed from public transportation. I started to get really anxious for the first time about finding a place to live. What if this place was the best we could afford?

Fortunately, we had an appointment with an agent through Chicago Apartment Finders this morning and after freaking us out by saying that our choices would be "limited" based on our criteria, he showed us five different units that all had something going for them. The first place we looked at ended up being our favorite, even though it did not have the one thing we thought was a deal-breaker    a second bathroom. The current tenants were packing up while we were looking around, and it was amazing how much stuff they'd managed to fit into that place! They were moving into a house that they'd just bought, presumably to have more space for their approx. 2 year old son to run around.

It's a perfectly classic Chicago apartment, as far as I can tell. It's the third floor of a three-story building in a cute neighborhood in Edgewater where the landlord lives on the first floor and the second floor is a guest flat. At this point we've applied and are waiting to hear back from the landlord, so I will forgo describing the place in more detail until then. I'm feeling much more optimistic about moving to Chicago now after finding this location and doing lots of successful wandering around tonight.

More about our evening tomorrow (later today at this point), because Kraig just gave me a "look." Gnite!

Drowning in a Sea of Paperwork

Disclaimer: if I were to post this on Twitter, which I wouldn't because a) it's way too long and b) I don't participate in the twitting, I think I would have to append the hash #firstworldproblem. There. You have been warned.

It's been a busy year and I'm exhausted. I feel like I've been dialed up to 11 since New Year's Eve. The very first thing I did in January, after recovering from a fairly significant hangover, was go to the Joint Mathematics Meeting in New Orleans. Seeing all of my various conference friends was fabulous, but the main reason for my going was to try to get a job, which did not make for a relaxing four days.

Fortunately, I got a job offer shortly afterward and, to my considerable relief, by February I was contracted up and knew what post-grad school life had in store for me for the next three years. The relief was immense. Now all I had to do was finish my Ph.D.! Oh... wait...

While a thoroughly unpleasant, emotionally fraught period of my life, finishing my dissertation was really not as bad as I'd expected. Nothing actually went wrong, I steadily progressed towards my goals, and even though I spent a solid 72 hours hunched over my laptop during the days preceding my defense, I successfully defended my dissertation on March 31.

With the worse out of the way and feeling more confident than I had in years, I spent the next few weeks editing my dissertation and submitted it on time in mid-April.

May brought the end of the semester and the usual extended office hours, extra review sessions, and exam grading marathons in the conference room. I also realized that with only two months left before my wedding, I'd better get on that shit!

Anyone who's had a hand in planning a wedding knows how tense and stressful it can become. I think that everyone has a different experience, but I would guess that at some point, everyone reaches a bit of a breaking point. I was determined not to let things get out of control. I'd keep things simple and easy and avoid the "bride mania." Yeah, right. Between teaching during the summer session at Tufts throughout the month of June and keeping track of all of the random crap for the wedding, I didn't have much time to think about how stressed I was getting until the week before the wedding. Everything was done, the last loose ends were being tied up, but I'd been on "GO" for so long that it was impossible to shut off. Sitting around waiting for time to pass so I could just be married already was probably the worst part of it. But time does have this habit of continuing on at a steady, relentless pace (unless you're traveling close to the speed of light, but whatever).

Finally, it was the evening of July 9 and I was married. I did my dance, smiled, and cut the cake. I even had fun, truth be told. Kraig and I spent the next few days opening cards addressed to his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Theriault, saying "good bye, thank you, and we'll see you soon," to lots and lots of family, and packing for our honeymoon. The honeymoon itself was a ton of fun. We spent 10 days in Puerto Rico hiking around San Juan, swimming in the bath-like water of the Caribbean Ocean, and keeping busy with all sorts of touristy activities. We then went up to Montreal for a long weekend to see the International Fireworks Competition.

And then, it was done. We were back to real life.

Now it's August and we're planning our move to Chicago at the end of the month. I've been trying to motivate myself to get some math done, but anxiety about the move keeps on making me get up out of my chair and either clean or eat. Because the wedding and honeymoon were taking up my brain for most of the summer, I've had to hunt through a few month's worth of emails to find the forms I need to fill out and the websites I need to visit to get myself set up to start at Northwestern in September.

Kraig and I are going to Chicago on Thursday to find an apartment. Fortunately for me, Kraig is an internet god and has been taking care of hunting down apartment listings. However, it leaves me with time to kill before I know how much I need to purge my belongings to fit them in our new place. Regardless of how much space we end up having, the old course notes are being returned to nature via the recycling dumpster. The books I have no intention of ever reading again are being donated, as are clothes that I will never wear again. It's a process that's both exhilarating and depressing at the same time.

With all of that going on, I haven't been able to force myself to do work. My plan for today was to head out to Tufts, bury myself in the library, and Get Work Done. That hasn't happened yet, but it's not even noon, so maybe it still will? I find myself strangely nostalgic for those weeks back in April when I was the most productive and focused on a single, well-defined task.

It also strikes me, and forgive me for waxing poetic, that my life has been mimicking the seasons fairly reliably lately: gloomy, cold, and soggy in the Winter months, followed by a burst of new energy and progress in the Spring. Summer was a mad rush of planting, growth, and lethargy    somehow, my lethargy manages to maintain a sense of urgency. How is that possible? I'm hoping that the Fall will follow the same pattern and I'll enjoy a nice, crisp bout of productivity before settling in with a cup of hot cocoa to enjoy a new landscape blanketed in snow and silence.

For the moment, however, I think I'll try a little harder to take advantage of the longer daylight hours.

Let's Try This Again

I never kept a journal when I was a kid. No, I lied. I tried several times to keep a journal, either on my own or as part of a school assignment. I always thought it was cool. It seemed like a good way to get over my semi-adversarial relationship with written words.

Sometimes I would forget to write for a few months and then hide the journal away somewhere so that I would stop feeling guilty about not writing. Other times, I would reread what I'd written, realize how utterly boring it was, and then hide the journal away somewhere so I would stop feeling guilty about how bad of a writer I was. Most of the time, I'd get too busy with other stuff and stop writing, and the journal would get berried under all of the detritus from the rest of my life.

My desire to journal has gradually shifted into a desire to keep a blog. Despite the new medium, I encountered the same problems as before. I used to have one on Livejournal. That ended poorly. Then I started this one and didn't keep up with it. This seems like an ideal time to try again. Since I love organizing stuff, here's a (bulleted!) list of why:

• I just finished my PhD, so maybe I'll have more time to write. Also, I've changed url (it was previously dancingmathgradstudent).

• I also just got married to my beaux, Kraig, of 5+ years. Maybe, 20 years from now, I'll feel like looking back.

• Last but not least, I'm moving to Chicago in about a month. I got a lecturing position at Northwestern, so off I go, chasing the academic dream! I'll be farther away from my friends and family than I've ever been before, and maybe this will be a good way to keep them updated on the day-to-day (or week-to-week...) events of my life.

So here I go, with good intentions and budding optimism. I would, however, like to solicit advise from those of you who are accomplished bloggers and journalers, about how to keep myself writing. Should I set goals? Do I need to pick a theme? Should I worry about being interesting? Is there a way to keep this from morphing into a series of drawn-out Facebook status updates?