Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Update


Yes, yes, it's a ridiculous hour of the morning; I fell asleep on the couch and woke up and am now weirdly awake, and one of the prerogatives of my life now is that I can stay up if I feel like it. I may feel like hell afterwards, but I know about that, too.

So a lot of stuff has been going on. I have, oddly enough, been knitting on a more regular basis, which means mainly that I see some of my friends once in a while - there is a lovely mitten pattern on needles now, which I spotted on Ruth's blog, and a pair of socks waiting patiently for me to return to them (I left them in the apt. the other day and have not had leisure to retrieve them). Alas, schedule nonsense has meant I almost never get over to actually see Ruth herself, which is a pain in the ass.

Amongst the schedule nonsense: starting to see a nice guy. I may have mentioned that I have no time, right? I still don't, really. Neither does he. We make time for each other to the extent we can, in the middle of fiercely busy lives (sometimes that means whatever one is off to, the other comes along). So it's a little odd, in several ways that I don't think I should go into in public, but ... I like him. I like other people too, of course, and no, this is most definitely not "headed for Something (nudge)" in the sense everyone seems to mean it, which appears to be getting married ("but maybe later!" "NO."). NO ("at least potentially?" "really, no."). I am happy. He seems to be, too. That is rather a lot, and quite lovely, and it's good to relax and be in that.

School has eased off since I decided to drop organic chemistry, which had been chewing up, let's see: Thursday night lecture, Sat. morning lab every other week & associated prep time, Monday review, Wed. section, most of the day Wed. working on problem sets, studying, Sunday tutoring sessions... wow. Now that I'm only taking three classes, it feels downright lazy. I have three final projects all due next week (I think) (better check that). I have LOVED my regular Harvard courses, and am so glad I did the whole Special Student thing - that was a really good decision.

I'm directing a piece in a festival of one-acts at Theatre@First this summer, too. I proposed two things, and they went for the one that's been kicking around in my head the longest: a series of women doing Hamlet's "to be or not to be" speech, with wildly different meanings informed by who they are and where they are in life (or death). So that's a luxurious, indulgent bit of fun for me. Come audition next week, or see the show in July :)

Gadgets! New gadgets galore! I have a new laptop. Also a new desktop machine. Old desktop succumbed to a horrible virus, and it was dh's Alienware machine that had his digital photo archive and old tax returns and things on it, so it's sad that it's pretty much dead. If I have some open-ended time this summer (HA!) I can spend some attempting to recover it, but I'm not optimistic, and the files weren't to my knowledge backed up anywhere particularly, so the point of a whole reboot is sort of lost. My laptop, thank god, I'd backed up completely less than a week before it finally stopped powering up at all, so I'm typing this on my new one. The file transfer worked beautifully from the backup archive, and all is well. Yay! I also got a new cell phone, a recycled green materials (and actually *green*) one, because the old one stopped doing anything to ring and let me know anyone was trying to reach me, which is a problem in a device intended mainly to do that. Oh! We also now have FIOS. I did the math and figured out that what I was paying for DSL plus phone plus Comcast cable = more than FIOS deal on offer. So now we have silly huge number of channels, silly fast internet, a functioning in-house wireless network (which I'd finally fixed a few weeks before making the switch, stupidly enough), and voicemail that I still don't remember to check and the kids don't really know how to. Um, still working on that one, folks.

Brown's official hard copy letter (now with my Brown student ID number on it, I think) has arrived, and I'm going to need to sort out some financial stuff. In a good way, pretty much. They're covering my health insurance, and I have to see about putting the kids on; the car will be paid off next month, too, so between those two things, that's a fairly huge chunk of monthly expense that will be over with. Yay. I could still end up net screwed, but maybe not.

I broke a board with my fist in tae kwon do a couple weeks ago. I feel very badass, now. I am officially dangerous - cool, eh? Running has been trucking along, miles here and there, too; I have a race or two coming up. All those skills for surviving the zombie apocalypse are accumulating. Reassuring, aren't I?

Knitting tonight. Fun things coming up for the weekend, which might include going to a sunrise welcoming in to the Spring on the banks of the Charles Saturday morning. Not sure. There are TONS of things, including most definitely Lynne's gallery show sword demonstration (anybody else? hm?).

It's spring. Time to step forward on the path, with new beginnings, new ways of being with the stuff that's already there, and trying to keep my feet warm. Breathe in, breathe out.