On The Road Again

Just a short post for now, with more later. Lauren and I are in Columbia, MO on the way back from Jefferson City, MO, where she met with one of the interns she is supervising.

Pet Me! Pet Me! Why Aren't You Petting Me?

Why aren't you petting me? Why?
Signed, Kitty.

Almost Done

It's almost done. After two weeks of intensive packing, loading, unloading, and placement, the move is almost done. All I have left to do is bring in the suits from the car and hang those, and go dry clean some bedding post-move, and it's done. The move, that is. And I've got Internet access back, so I can begin job hunting again.





















In and around that, it's been a series of home improvement and gardening projects. Thank God Lauren is better at that than I am. I'm merely content to hand tools or hold up items on the wall while she works, or rake, hoe, and water outside.

Thankfully, we've been able to fit almost everything in the house (Lauren swears that the house is doing a TARDIS imitation because the house seems to have more interior space now and seems even more roomier than before I moved in, and that's with everything I moved down) ; we've gotten the living room and office to the point that we can see the floor again, just in time for one of the kitties (who have been guest posting during the move) to do a protest dump or yak near the litter box.




















The indoor and outdoor projects are done or very close; the aforementioned gardening is almost caught up, quite a few home improvements are either complete (bathroom renovations, with the exception of new tile and the possibility of heating plate beneath it), or planned waiting only for a weekend's effort (painting the exterior), or, like the furnace replacement and central air addition, four season room/outside deck, and exterior garage (so Lauren can start winemaking again), waiting only for long-term money.

Busy ... yeah, it has been. But we've been improving things as they go .

Purrrrrrrrr

Purrr ... I'm Opalina, or Opie the tortoise Tabby ... life is good, even if that evil Stinky isn't speeding around the living room, trying to sniff my butt or get in my face. Hah. Like I'd let her if I could move fast enough .... it's bad enough that I have to ask her for typing lessons so I can write this. At least she isn't chasing me around the house tonight ... I get all of the exercise I can stand from her running after me.

Tonight, it's finally quiet here; no more pounding on the walls, no more moving things around ... and Stinky is nowhere to be found, while I'm lying on the couch (ah, pillows!) feeling the breeze from the ceiling fan ruffle my fur. I think I'll go shed ... my owner (aka, she who provides the food), says that I "projectile shed" ... can I help it if I have a thick coat?

I've perfected this "look" which the humans call "pathetic". I call it using what I have ... right now, I'm using it on the new guy so he'll pay attention to me. That's not working, so then I reach over and combine it with a little gentle pawing ... one paw, right on the wrist while he's typing, and stretch out the paw just so, all while giving him the most yearning look possible ... now he's petting me ... purrrr.

End of the school year...

Well, I have survived another crazy busy school year! Finals week was especially interesting in that Richard and his stuff started moving in at about the same time I started prepping for finals. This was surprisingly not traumatic -- even with painting the living room the night after giving the first final! He dealt amazingly well with my finals mode -- "Pardon me, sweetie, but I'm locking myself in this room for a while to grade more papers, okay?" He'll adapt pretty well to marriage with a faculty member.

The highlights of this school year: mentoring three new faculty members and enjoying that feeling of being an associate professor; getting a few more students interested in research; finally writing that research grant I have been threatening to write for three years; realizing that winning awards is not as important as living a balanced life. The low points: watching my Korean colleague Jang-Ae get harassed by students.

Now it's the summer season, which is somewhat more relaxed but still busy. I will teach an online summer class, meet periodically with two students doing research projects, and supervise about 12 interns in Child and Family Studies. I will also finish planting the veggie and herb garden, design a kitty garden and a small rock garden, weed ALL the gardens periodically, put edging in the front border and perhaps around the side and back, and finish fixing up the pond with new water course that was added this spring. Yes, that's LESS BUSY for me.

Meow!

Meow! I'm Stinky, aka Stinkerbelle, or what my humans call the "evil cat". They are busy moving things around the house, and playing with some very smelly white liquid-y white stuff. I sniff the air. It's not milk. I wish it was milk. I'd love to play in it, but I can't, because they have me in the bedroom, with the DOOR SHUT. So I thought I'd type on the laptop (my owner calls it "sitting on the keyboard", but I know better). I can't type very fast yet (you wouldn't be able to either, if you were using your butt and tail), but between that and my nose, I should get faster.

All of this noise ... furniture being moved, items being put here and there (more things to crawl over and under, too!)

Ah ... there goes the big guy ... the new one with the hair the same color as my fur. I'm going to see if I can run between his legs and get out into the living room ... DARN. Not fast enough. The door shuts again.

Meanwhile, my other two pals, Kitty and Opie, lounge, like moving was just another day for them. I bat Kitty, hoping to get a rise out of her; predictably, she rolls over and lies there. Opie, meanwhile, just ignores me.

Oops! Here comes my owner. She loves me, even though I bite her toes.

Packing

Funny thing, packing. You find things you had thought lost, revisit the past ... a playbill and parking stub from the first time I watched Phantom (the musical, not the movie); books from your undergrad days. You also find things that make you wonder why you kept them for so long (of course, those go to the dumpster).

Bowing to the Inevitable

After a couple of weeks of job hunting in Des Moines (without much luck), Lauren and I have decided that it's time for me to move. Toward that, I'll be moving to Maryville, MO, and moving in with Lauren.

http://www.maryvillemo.org/index.html

I've given my apartment office my 30 day written notice, and I've started packing (and taking the opportunity to sort and pitch). My last day in Des Moines (for now) is going to be somewhere around May 12th.

In a way, it was inevitable. Sooner or later, at least one of us was going to have to move so we could be together. With Lauren having the better job situation at her college, and me being out of work, I've got the flexibility to move. It's a little sooner than I'd planned (I'd hoped to move in September or as soon as a better job developed in KC), but apart from that, it's probably the best circumstances for me to move, with no current financial or job ties (i.e., no house to sell).

Despite that, it's a little bit daunting because of the trade-offs. I don't have a job lined up there yet, and there's the challenge of trying to fit two household's worth of furniture and belongings together (and for me, the additional challenge of moving my belongings down there as efficiently as possible). And there will be some adjustments: I'm going to be giving up a lot that's familiar to me: friends, activities, places, entertainment venues.

In its place, I'll have a smaller town, and I'll have to look for new opportunities. But I'll be with Lauren.

Progress

Spent this morning filling out resumes online and submitting for three more positions, one in KC, one here, and one in St. Joe, Missouri. I don't doubt my skills or abilities. However, after talking to a few of my peers in my profession and sounding out the state of the profession, it's become clear that I need to diversify, or consider openings in academia, because the number of technical writing openings in the financial services/IT industry has dropped considerably in the last few months; jobs that were there aren't there any longer, or are on very short-term contracts.

Now the question becomes: "what else am I good at?" I've already got two Masters degrees and I'm carrying student loan debt. What can I do to extend/expand my skillsets? Where should I go next?

The Busy Season

Poor Richard is having to deal with one stressed kitty here -- it's the Busy Season in academia (the other Ivory Tower). The busy season starts in late February with midterms, followed by grading midterms, followed by what could best be described as "Banquet and Honor Season" -- just this week, I have been at an evening reception to honor Who's Who among American College Student recipients, a dinner and commemorative lecture given by an alum of the department who now leads the Family and Consumer Science and Nutrition section at the USDA, and tonight is the department honor banquet.

Next week, thank goodness, is Spring Break here, followed by more receptions and banquets: the honor society I help advise is receiving an Outstanding Student Organization commendation Monday, and I am invited to the Tower Service/Committment to Quality banquet Tuesday because I nominated one of the winners (I think). One of these days, I'd like to go to a banquet where I am actually being honored!

Ivory Towers

Hi everyone,

Just a brief update: today was the second day of working for an unnamed financial services company as a consultant. It's rather funny: back in graduate school, we talked about working in the ivory towers of business or academia, and now I find myself actually working in a tower ... even though I'm on the third floor of the building, it's still a bit daunting ... the cubicles are bigger, the goals are higher, the processes are even more complex than any I drafted at my old company.

It's nice to know that despite the new job and the new faces, that some things don't change except in degree.

Of Gardening and Moving On

This weekend held a last-minute change of plans. Lauren was going to come up here, but after a dental appointment, her doc put her on antibiotics and Darvocet, a high-grade painkiller in the "don't drive or operate heavy machinery" class, so I went down to Maryville instead, which actually worked out ... it was a lot warmer down there, and we got to do some garden prep work (mostly weed whacking and burning of leaf/twig/roughage from last year's garden), some cooking, and a lot of cuddling.

And now it's this week, which will (due to some good news), bring my career at my current workplace to a close a week earlier than planned. In the good news, I was picked up by another company in town on a six month contract to hire position, so it will give me time to pay down debt and prepare for moving down to Maryville.

In a strange sense, it feels odd leaving a place I've worked at for six years, suffered at, perfected my tech writing skills at, given nearly insurmountable obstacles. It's been incredibly stressful, but also rewarding. And now it's time to move on.

It must be the cold weather or something...

I was driving home from Des Moines last night, and my thoughts were running in the same direction as Richard's, even to the "I can still smell him on my skin". I always thought that being able to smell someone after parting from them was one of those cheesy conceits of romance novels -- or else the guy was a gorilla with truly bad hygeine (which I assure you Richard is NOT).

Pheromones are real, because I can identify Richard's scent without being able to describe what he smells LIKE, other than "Richardness". For those who can't identify with this, find a little bit of that precious substance known as ambergris (or the somewhat-close substitute, "ambergris fragrance oil", carried by Frontier Cooperative Herbs). Uncap this and smell. The substance does not so much have a distinct smell as a elusive velvety sensation that evokes memory. The bare hint of indole which provides the musky note to the scent of fresh lilacs and jasmine gives a similar sensation.

Thawing Out

Lauren was up this weekend, as you probably guessed from the previous post. It was chilly enough that we mainly stayed in, apart from an emergency trip to the repair shop for a new car battery (the old one died under the -16 degree weather yesterday), and a trip down to the Home and Garden Show on Saturday down at the local events center, where we got to check out the latest in home trends, smell wonderful flowers, and try out one vendor's sauna.

Goodness knows, I can't remember when I considered temps in the low 20s reasonably warm, but there it is.

Sigh ... she's only been gone for over an hour, and I already miss Lauren. A lot. Yeah, it sounds cheesy, but I was taking off my sweater, and realized that it held her scent from cuddling earlier. Maybe I'm getting sentimental ... romantic ... whatever.

It's funny ... she just called to let me know she'd arrived safely back in Maryville, and she told me she was feeling some of the same things, too.

I already knew it was love, but it's nice to be reminded of it ;-)

It's fraggin' COLD out!

In Maryville, it's probably about 15 degrees, but here in Des Moines, it's 1.4 degrees out. That is 1.4, as in almost zero. And it's getting colder. I think it's time for hibernation...

Advice

Hi everyone,

I spent this weekend through Valentine's Day with Lauren in Maryville and really enjoyed myself ... I spent Monday checking into the local job situation and turning in applications for one or two jobs on campus. I also spent a bit of Tuesday doing housework ... dishes, raking the lawn, etc. And having a wonderful, romantic dinner Tuesday night after I surprised her at work earlier in the day to bring her lunch and a rose.

We're doing contingency planning right now, because of a recent development: on Monday, a placement agency called me and said that a local financial services company wanted to interview me for an opening.

I did the interview this afternoon, and they seemed impressed enough with me to bring me back in for a followup next week. It's a six-month contract to hire position, which means I could be moving six months from now if they don't take me on, or sooner (i.e., later in March, as we're now planning), if they don't hire me.

Being a Quaker, Lauren sometimes has cases where, in order to determine the right course of action, she submits a situation to a "clearness" committee, composed of fellow Quakers, who help determine what the best action (or no action) should be done. I envy her right now ... it seems all I've got right now are "possibilities", and none of them, unfortunately, seem to be collapsing from probability waves into useful options.

Getting better all the time

Well, the weekend with Richard went much better than I thought -- I needn't have worried:

1) He appeared to love my cats, who loved him THIIIISSS MUCH!
2) We think we can, with minor compromises, get his household and my household put together. But we're definitely going Winter palette in the living room to go with his Chinese wall hangings, while the bedroom is going to be home to the botanical prints and the Summer palette. (Time to find an appropriate wallpaper border for the living room)
3) He's really good at pitching in to organize and help clean -- we moved furniture, put some things (wine crates) in storage, and graphed the living room layout.
4) He prefers my mattresses to his (I know how to pick quality mattresses -- I AM a consumer economist after all) so the antique bed stays. (Yay! I dreaded putting that into storage!)
5) His allergies didn't act up.

Waiting for Gingercat

Today is the day Richard comes down to see where I live for the first time. Circumstances have dictated that I drive up there rather than vice versa -- I have the more flexible schedule, being an academic, and I have fewer evening and Sunday committments to work around. (I also think I like distance driving more than Richard does, but that's just a speculation). I have to admit that I am a little nervous because he's never met my cats nor seen my house.

We have somewhat differing styles of home decoration, which will have to be reconciled when we end up living in the same space. Luckily, I think there's enough overlap that we can reconcile these -- but he's going to be looking at a lot of rose-festooned wallpaper borders and cool pastels (summer palette) in the short run. My observation of his apartment: he favors a winter palette (bolder colors like black and red) and Chinese motifs. I think we're going to have to change the wallpaper border, at least in the living room.

The last male to comment on my house decor was someone I used to date (he doesn't really qualify as an ex-boyfriend, it was so casual) who said it "wasn't bad for having flowers all over the place." But his notion of style was Southwestern patterns and a preoccupation with bull terriers...

Introducing myself

I'm the Lauren, AKA Cheshirekitty, that Richard has been talking about ... If that doesn't answer enough questions, let me try for a few more answers:

1) I'm 42 years old, but I think I'm young for my age.
2) I am an associate professor at a small regional Midwestern college, but can be exceedingly silly at times.
3) I would have to live to be 224 to learn and experience all the things I want to in life.
4) I am owned by three cats: Opalina (the geriatric passive-aggressive tortie-tabby), Kitty Kitty Kitty-Kitty (the aggressively friendly odd-eyed white), and Stinkerbelle (the little monster).
5) I would like to have coffee and chocolate officially accepted by the American Dietetics Association as food groups.
6) My love of good food wars with my desire to be thinner than I am, so I struggle with maintaining my weight. I work on feeling beautiful no matter what my weight is, which sometimes is harder than other times.
7) My favorite relationship philosophy: "20 Dos and Don'ts of a Functional Relationship" by Eve Bernshaw: http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/bernshaw4.html
Hi everyone!

Changes ...

Hi all ... with my impending nuptuals a year away, Lauren and I have decided to consolidate our blogs into one spot. The link to her LiveJournal blog will remain, but we'll post here moving forward.