Another parking ticket

Eileen's giving me a hard time about watching crappy made-for-TV movies based on crappy supermarket novels, when instead I could be spending that time updating the blog...... so here I am!

In my defense, I did read the book. But maybe I should have been blogging then, too. It was a terrible waste of time.

Some new and exciting things have happened over the past few days. The best of all being that we got another parking ticket! Still haven't gotten in sync with that incredibly lame rule about no parking on Mondays 7 - Noon so that the Lewisburg police have something to do while the plowers are not out plowing. But it feels good knowing that our hard earned parking violation dollars are going to a good cause. A few more weeks like this, and Lewisburg will be in the market for a shiny new PlowKing 5000 for the parade collection.

I interviewed and gave a little audition for the Bucknell piano faculty today, in hopes of scoring some accompanying gigs, and I think it went pretty well. Although you never can tell with those piano prof types. They always have a good poker face. In any case, it sounds like they might want me to work with some of their opera singers, so here's hoping I don't get stuck with any warbling window-breakers.

Still waiting to start bringing down the house at St. Paul's Episcopal. My official first day will be the second Sunday of February, but I will be accompanying the choir on one piece this coming Sunday... just for fun I guess.

Eileen is still feeling a bit a-flap in the breeze since she's still not settled on a research project, but there were some promising conversations with Dr. Dearborn today, so we're looking forward to a new tack soon. The upside is that she likes to watch a lot of horribly entertaining TV when she's a-flappin, and I'm always happy to partake. I don't know what bad TV shows are going to do without us when things pick up again...

Well that's about all for now, since I have to wake up at 5:30 am open at Zelda's. In fact, it must be that time, since I can hear Eileen's skull resonating with her electric toothbrush in the bathroom.

...aaaaand we're back!

Hi folks,

Sorry about the lack of posting lately. We just got connected to the internet at home, so posting before now has been a little difficult. Since so much has been happening, I'll just give you some tidbits here. Some highlights if you will. If you want to know that details about any of it, just make a little postie, or shoot me an e-mail, and I'll spill it all. (Ha! That will get you all to post a little more!) :)

I've been in school now for a week. I'm taking Biology657, Ornithology, taught by my advisor, Don Dearborn, who's website you can find a link to on the right side of this blog. And also a Statistics class, that focuses on biological applications. On the first day of stats, I found out that it had a pre-requisite, and I have never taken a stats course, so this class will be a bit of a challenge. The professor is aware of my situation though, and I've already been in to see her several times to get help, so I'm going to be working extra hard to do well. And with only one other class to worry about it should be okay. Ornithology on the other hand is totally manageable, and really fun. It's always fun to learn about your favorite thing, with people who also love it too.

My job at school, to earn my stipend, is to manage the small museum collection at school. This means that my job will be to skin my way through the freezer full of birds, and make museum specimens of them. For those who don't know, I learned how to do this at UPS, when I volunteered at the Slater museum. Yesterday I skinned my first bird here, a Northern Flicker, and I made a spread of one of its wings, since the museum didn't have any, and they make great teaching tools. This particular bird was molting some of its primaries, so it make an especially good spread wing. Tomorrow I skin a Junco.

Since we only live about a mile away from campus, I've been walking to school every day, and its been about 15 degrees and slightly breezy most days. Last week it was 5 degrees, and I nearly froze my face off. I really have to bundle up to get there without becoming a Popsicle. And bringing some tea along the way really helps to thaw my face.

Georgie has been keeping busy too. Last week he decided to visit the local coffee shops and see about getting some work. The first one he walked into, Zelda's, turned out to be in need of some help, and pretty much offered him a job on the spot. He started on Monday, and now is learning how to make coffee drinks for the thirsty citizens of Lewisburg. Today I went in to visit him while he was working, and he looked really cute in his apron! I couldn't help but find him adorable.

He's also working very closely with the current organist at St. Paul's Episcopal who is retiring in a week or two, to make the transition go smoothly. George will be playing a piece or two this Sunday at the service. This job will be a challenge for him, but it will help him grow as a musician, and hopefully help him figure out a career path to take.

I'm still really homesick. I don't love it here....not yet. It's cold and all the trees look dead, because it's the dead of winter, and there are no birds out because it's so cold, and I don't have any friends. Being married makes me very different from most students, and being a grad student makes me very different from most students, so it has been pretty hard to connect with anybody so far. They all have friends already, and have things in common with people, and its going to be hard to connect too. I'm trying though. I really want a friend. At least I have Georgie though! I'd be in an even worse state without him! But seriously, I've been a little low, and the adjustment has been hard.

I'm sure there are more things to tell you, like how our neighbor in the unit next door, practices his drums every day starting exactly at 3:00 for about an hour and a half, or how we made a day of going to Ikea to get a dining table and chairs, or that our apartment is really devoid of house plants, or how we discovered that Wal-Mart actually has really low prices, but we feel guilty about having shopped there, but this post is already really long, so that's all you get for now.

But now that we have the interent, we should be more frequent with the posting.

I love you all and miss all of you dearly!!

Sludge alert, and a parking ticket

We knew we were getting a "smoked-in" apartment going into this. Professor Dearborn's scouting mission a few months back resulted in a photo of the bedroom complete with a carton of Marlboros on the floor.

After some haggling with the realtor, we made sure that new carpet and a full paint job would be a part of the deal. And they did a great job, because you can hardly tell ours used to be a smoking unit. Expectations were actually exceeded--the place smells like... fresh paint and new carpet... and only a little musty smokeyness in the coat closet.

For some strange reason, the realtor who sat down with us for the lease signing tried to convince us that there was never a smoker in the unit. Eileen and I just gave each other sideways looks when she said that. Apparently she was unaware that we had photographic evidence. And indeed, there is almost no evidence of a smoker. We might have never known, but for 1. Don's scouting mission... and 2. when Eileen decided to give the windows a thorough scrub down. Check out the before and after comparison of the tar build-up on the bedroom windows.


In Exhibit A, if you get your ear in close enough, you can almost hear the sludge oozing down the glass. And in Exhibit B, you can almost hear the crisp little "Ding!" of cleanliness. Good thing Eileen notices these things, because you can probably get second-hand smoke from this kind of tar cake.

On an unfortunate note, we got a $15 parking violation in front of the house today. Somehow, we didn't notice the "No parking Monday 7 - Noon" sign right outside our front door. Apparently, the parking spaces need to be plowed clear of snow every week at this time. These things simply don't happen in Washington. I guess the police officer didn't sympathize while he jotted down our Washington plate number, pried up the ice-encased windshield wiper, and placed the pink slip neatly under the blanket of snow on the windshield.

That just ain't right!

Where the heck is everyone?

So, as you can probably imagine, George and I have done some shopping in the last few days. There were lots of big and small things that we needed for the new place. There's a mall in Selinsgrove (8mi south of Lewisburg) with some weird department stores that we've never heard of like Bon Ton and Boscov's, and also a shopping complex with a Best Buy, Target, Michael's, among others. We've been to the complex with the Target twice now, and to the mall for the first time today, but both times we've noticed that absolutely nobody is at any of them. You'd think that noon-time on a Saturday might be a fairly busy shopping time, but it was pretty deserted. At both shopping areas there are HUGE parking lots, and it all seems really unnecessary because they'll never need it. Where are all the people? We concluded that they huge lots are for the big piles of snow created by all the plowing. And there are tons of plows. There was one doing the lot by Target, and there was probably less than an inch collected since the last time he went through. The plows mean business around here.

We're also starting to realize how foreign we must look to some people. Today, George was wearing his softshell coat, and his new waterproof Keen shoes, and I had on my fancy rain coat, and my hiking boots...These are things we normally wear, and in Seattle, nobody would have blinked at it.

Well, when we were in the RadioShack today, the clerk asked George "Where did you get those shoes?" George replied "Oh, at REI", and the clerk gave us a blank look and said "REI?" Yeah...he had never heard of it. So we told him what REI was and that we just moved here from Seattle, and he was definitely in awe of us...kind of like he'd never seen anything like us before. He probably hadn't.

That's the post for now, George is working on one too...with some pictures! I start school on Wednesday, and have yet to get to know my way around campus, but I'm hoping to meet up with Don soon, for a little tour... I'll let you know how it all goes. Oh and we don't have the Internet at home until Friday (we're at a cafe right now) So the posting and e-mails might be minimal until then.

I miss all of your faces!!!

Settling right in

So, we made it to Lewisburg in one piece, and most of our stuff arrived in one piece. The only casualties of the move were a $4 candle plate and a chest of drawers... both from Ikea. The chest of drawers was salvaged with some expert duct taping. Unfortunately, the candle plate was too far gone, even for the powers of duct tape.

Our moving truck driver, Rod, tried to be polite about it, but I saved him the trouble by admitting that it's our own fault for buying cheap stuff.

All in all, not bad on the damage front.

Now, the nesting begins. We're making slow but steady progress unpacking. Rooms are being assembled on a priority basis. The bedroom is looking nice and cozy, thanks to those snazzy sheets from our wedding registry.


The "office" is now functional. Here you can see Eileen working hard on a Sudoku puzzle.


As you can see, the living room is low on the priority list.


And before I sign off here at the Cherry Alley Cafe (since the apartment is offline until next Friday), a shot of Eileen on the porch of the new abode, and a view of the street (and a guy with a serious snow blower) from our living room. Here comes the snow!

The new place (as seen by George)

Eileen is really working me over about neglecting the blog (and of course, she's right), so I'm making an appearance to give my take on our first look at Lewisburg.

I was even more hare-brained than usual getting ready to hit the road on Friday, since it felt like there was an infinite and ever growing number of things to do before embarking on the next two years of our lives. So being rather out of sorts, in addition to my natural clutziness, I managed to knock the curtains down in Christy and Grammy's guest room before we finally got out to the car. Sorry Auntie, but we gotta run!

The drive to PA was rather uneventful, with the exception of everyone on the East Coast driving like a complete maniac. We were honked at on ten thousand occasions, tailgated constantly, and nearly driven off the road, all before reaching Maryland. But at least the weather was nice. We need a bumper sticker that says "Out of Towners" or "West Coasters" or something.

We only got lost twice on the way up. Once in Frederick, PA (a silly place), and again in Harrisburg, PA (our accidental detour led us to an impressive view of the State Capitol building from across the Susquehanna River, so it was a happy mistake). Luckily, Aunt Christy had lent us her GPS navigation device, so we just fired that baby up and followed its overly harsh and matronly voice back to the right track. We decided to call her, the GPS, Phyllis. We kept turning Phyllis off because she's just so dang annoying when you think you know where you're going. But darned if Phyllis wasn't our new best friend once we were hopelessly lost in Frederick!

So a few wrong turns and several right ones out of Virginia, and we arrived in Lewisburg. It's so stinking and utterly cute, you feel like you must have taken a wrong turn and blundered onto the movie set for Pleasantville. It will take some adjusting to get used to the cuteness.

Our new apartment is better than expected. Eileen got excited about having a full-sized oven.

And I got excited about having a MASSIVE attic above our apartment that is ALL OURS.

Awesomely huge. It runs the entire length of the house. And super creepy to boot!

The drive back to Virginia was slightly less honky, since I've been picking up some of the maniac driving techniques. Eileen was not impressed. Look for the next update from yours truly in, oh, about a year from now.

The new place!

Hi! George was going to do this post, but he hasn't yet, so I'm just going to do it. Maybe he'll do another one later.

On Friday we went up to Lewisburg to check out the new place and sign the paper, and get the keys. When my professor Don went to look at the place in November, his report back indicated that the apartment was very dark, cavernous, and smelled very strongly of cigarette smoke. He sent pictures as well, and from that report we almost didn't want the place. But it really was our only option. We never found anywhere else to even consider. So when we were talking to the land lord we told him we were interested but very concerned about the smell. So he checked out the place, agreed with us, and replaced all the carpet, and painted the entire apartment.

Upon entering the apartment, the only thing we could smell was new paint and fresh carpet, not a hint of smoke. They painted over all of the dark wood paneling that was on the walls, in a nice white, so everything is very bright and nice. Even the carpet is really nice. And it is much bigger than we thought it would be. The picture is me in the living room. We have so much space! We definitely don't have enough stuff to fill it, but it's okay. If George were writing this, he'd go on and on about the attic, but maybe I'll save that post for him. Moral of the story is that our place is great, so come visit!

The town of Lewisburg is really cute. We haven't seen it all yet, but it is very much unlike any place I have ever lived and it is definitely going to take some adjusting to.

We went back to Falls Church on Saturday because our stuff isn't due to arrive until Wednesday so no unpacking or nesting for me yet. But soon! And then you all can come visit! We have an address, but I don't want to post it on the internets so I'm going to send it out to most people soon, but if you want it now, or if for some reason I don't get the e-mail to you, then please let me know and I"ll e-mail it to you.

Thanks for all the comments everyone! Happy New Year!!