First my curling iron, now my parents?!

Yup, they're going in January.

[sighs deeply]

The clothes make the (wo)man

So one thing that I like about being a grad student again is that I get to return to my preferred manner of dress - jeans and hoodies.

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Granted, I have a much nicer wardrobe now than I did a year ago, when I started the job that required me to wear "business casual" 5 days a week. And I have discovered that I actually like some of those clothes, and I have been realizing that if I want my professors and fellow students to take me seriously as a scholar, I shouldn't dress like a shlump, but still - put me in a hoodie and I'm a happy girl.

And I was thinking about this last Friday, when I spent all day doing homework and didn't move from my seat for 8 hours. See, I don't have class on Fridays, so I feel even freer on those days to dress in my preferred mode. And I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I hobbled to the bathroom around 8:30pm (yeah, I was a little stiff from 8 hrs of sitting still - I'm getting old, what can I say?!), and had to laugh when I realized what I was wearing:

• the flipflops that I bought in the European country that I visited in 1992, 2001, 2006, and 2007, and plan to visit multiple times in the future
  
• a t-shirt from my alma mater
• a hoodie from the large U.S. city I lived near for the last year
• a baseball cap from the concert I had attended the previous night (which I really need to blog about because it was A.W.E.S.O.M.E.)

So, um, would you like to know about my life? Ask me about my clothes - apparently they define me. :)

Note to self:

Check for a posted chart of "scoop size" before ordering your ice cream.

I just ordered a "double" and then had to eat all NINE OUNCES of ice cream.

Don't get me wrong, I like ice cream, and it was GOOD ice cream, but still...9 oz...

ugh

This is not the actual news update that I know you are all waiting for.

But I just wanted to express this, right now while I am feeling it, even though I feel it pretty often these days.

I am kind of intensely happy in my life right now. I'm really grateful that I feel that way, but it's kind of crazy, and really cool. It usually takes me a few months to adjust to a new situation and really like it, whether that be a new apartment or a new ward or a new state or whatever, but I am already feeling adjusted here and really enjoying my life, and that is a really fantastic feeling. I don't have a lot of time to post right now, so I may have to come back to this idea later to better communicate what I mean and to develop this idea, but almost every day I have a moment, like I did just now, of realizing how much I LOVE what I get to do right now.

I am in a PhD program that is really my field, and I am LOVING my coursework. (Weird!) Even the really long day spent all in one place the other day didn't drive me crazy because the work I was doing all day was so interesting to me! For my student job I get to work on the project that initially got me interested in this university, and within that job I get to do several different types of tasks, most ;) of which are really interesting to me, and that, again, are really in my field.

I am living alone for the first time ever, and I am loving it. I am really happy in my apartment, and I am actually cooking pretty much every day (shall I pause while you pick yourselves up off the floor?), and I bring my leftovers to school for lunch like a good little poor grad student. I clean my apartment, and I make my bed every day, and I have two bookshelves and a desk, for which I paid a grand total of $0.99. (And that was for pegs to hold up the shelves of the bookshelf that I found next to the dumpster at my apartment complex.) I bought my flatware at the dollar store, and don't own a frying pan yet, but there's lots that you can do with a saucepan with a flat bottom. ;)

I like my town, and I read on the bus, so my 30-minute commute to and from campus doesn't drive me nuts.

So it's not a glamorous life :) , and maybe I'm just in a "honeymoon period" and this feeling will wear off as I get used to things and get into the rigor of my program, but I really hope it doesn't wear off, and I feel so calm and normal about everything that I really don't think it will. Quite honestly, it thrills me, and startles me a little bit, how happy and content and at home I feel in this crazy new life of mine.

Just thought I'd share. Here's hoping that sharing doesn't jinx the feeling and make it go away! :)

If you are going to spend all day doing homework and having group meetings in one campus lounge, and literally not move from your seat from 1-8pm...

...it might as well be in a room in which one wall is windows and there is a big lake on the other side of the windows.

Wow. That came out WAY not as cool as I meant it to sound, but I'm too brain-dead to try again, and too desperate to have something on my blog besides the one about the maybe-missing-pictures to wait and try again later when I'm not so brain-dead.

And I did not lose the pictures. And, wow, that's really old news. Sorry to leave you hanging on that for an ENTIRE MONTH. You probably thought I lost them and was so sad that I moved halfway across the country and started a PhD program to try to get over it.

Well, I didn't lose them. But the rest is true.