Things That are New(s)

Since I last posted there have been several new developments around these parts. For one thing, we are seriously considering adopting a second dog. A woman who goes to the same climbing gym as a woman who works at our doggy daycare is having to give up her dog as she is moving out of state. We're still trying to work out a time to meet the dog, who is currently being fostered, introduce her to Bailey, and make sure that we are all compatible, but I'm hopeful that by the end of the month we may have a canine addition to our family.

Another new thing is that I got a long overdue haircut. Scissors had not touched the hairs on my head since May and part of me was trying to keep long hair for a while longer, so I was initially just planning on getting a trim. However, I was bothered many times by my hair on our trip to Louisiana. It kept getting pulled by my backpack, and it was attracting static electricity like you would not believe. I decided to check out an Aveda Concepts Salon here, and I loved the atmosphere and my new stylist. I had her give me an asymmetrical graduated bob, and I immediately felt more like myself.

Late last week I started to feel a little bit anxious about the start of a new term. It's now just one week away, so I spent much of this weekend working on my syllabi and doing some preliminary course prep. Bailey was not much help. She absolutely refused to read about early modern blood transfusion experiments on animals, quickly tired of reading about radicals in the English Civil War, and took a nap to protest that I did not assign any readings about learned pigs.

Finally, I have picked out and registered for a spring half marathon. I will be running the San Diego Half Marathon on March 10th! I'm hoping for a strong performance that will give me confidence going into the second half of my training for the Vancouver Marathon, and I'm definitely looking forward to a few days in southern California as a break from winter in Anchorage.

What's new with you? Do you have any spring races planned?

Nothing Good to Say

I've been suffering from a touch of blogger's block this week and just haven't felt moved to post about anything in particular. Fortunately, it didn't develop into a full on case of writer's block, and I've managed to make a bit of progress on an article manuscript. However, the vast majority of my energy this week has been funneled into working on course proposals, grading papers from my 100-level Western Civ class, and worrying about a few things.

The issue of not having a very good work space means that I've been doing a lot of my work on the couch. We filed a claim with the moving company, but that means that we can't take any steps to repair our desk until the claim is processed. I have my writing desk and a table in my campus office, but neither of those are ideal for certain kinds of work that need lots of space for the spreading out of research materials and having books close at hand. My department put in a request for facilities to move a set of bookshelves into my office early last week, but it still hasn't done. That means that my books remain in boxes even though they arrived exactly a month ago. This was all exponentially complicated by the fact that earlier this week, I was told that they were going to pull my furniture out and that facilities would install it next week, only to be told yesterday that they weren't going to do it after all. It's no one's fault, but it is frustrating.

My backyard is a scene of tree carnage. After five of our trees blew down in less than two weeks, we took the advice of our handyman and authorized him to cut a number down. Our backyard looks like a mess, and we've had to ask our neighbors if we could temporarily take down part of their fences in order to get the job done. I feel like I owe them all chocolate and wine.

My dog has also started having seizures. She had one a few weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon. We suspected what was happening, but we had never seen it before, so we grabbed her and drove to a nearby animal hospital. By the time we got there, she was returning to normal. Since they told us that there would be a lengthy wait for her to be seen, we returned home and decided to just schedule a vet appointment as soon as we could. We took her to the vet earlier this week, and the vet told us that unless we saw more than one a month that it wasn't a condition that we should worry too much about. That evening Bailey had another seizure.

Both my mom and my sister are having some health problems, and it's just hard to be so far away. It would have been just about as hard the past few years, but now it takes multiple flights that cost so much money to go to see them.

M. has been working a temporary gig that he landed almost as soon as we arrived. It has been extended a couple of times, but it looks like it's coming to an end sometime in October. They thought they would have a project for him that would extend through most of the month, but the budget for it still hasn't been approved so he may be unemployed again by the end of next week. I hope that he finds something soon that he really enjoys or that he at least tolerates with aplomb. There's a certain amount of guilt that occasionally crops up when you are the spouse that gets followed.

I haven't had much positive to say this week, and I guess that's part of why I've been silent. I realize that all of these problems very much fall into the category of #firstworldproblems. Nonetheless, I hope your week has been better than mine.

Scenes from the Road

We have arrived at our new home in Alaska and we have internets! When I last posted, I was writing in the midst of chaotic packing and preparing to hit the road to drive almost 3500 miles. The night before the movers were to arrive, M. and I went to bed a little bit worried that we hadn’t packed enough or cleaned enough, but we were too exhausted to do any more. The next morning we woke up even more anxious as a thunderstorm crashed over our house. We were concerned that the movers might postpone or cancel due to liability issues. When we hadn’t heard anything to indicate they weren’t coming by 7:45, I went ahead and took Bailey to daycare so that she would be out from underfoot and picked up a coffee at Starbucks. By the time I got back, the movers were there and presumably expertly packing our fragile items into boxes.* They were efficient and capable. At around 11:00 am, I looked around our half-empty townhouse and told M. that if we could finish cleaning and be on the road by 3pm that we should make for Fargo. By 12:30 pm all of our things were loaded on the truck. M. made a massive recycling run, and I finished vacuuming and cleaning the fridge. At 2:30 we picked up Bailey from her daycare (although they did try to tell us they couldn’t find her since they were sad to see her go), and we began our epic 6.5 day journey. 

We drove through prairies and forests; we drove over twisty (and somewhat scary) mountain passes and by sparkling lakes; we narrowly missed colliding with a bear and running over a beaver. We saw and applauded a number of bad-ass cyclists hauling it up mountains. The scenery was spectacular, especially once we got into British Columbia and further west. Here are some views we had from the road (there are some more on my 365 blog as well):

Before we set out we had printed out maps and itineraries from Google, which suggested that most of our days on the road would be in the 11-14 hour range without stops. Fortunately, we made somewhat better time than that, and our longest day on the road was only about eleven hours. However, 8-10 hours in the car for five consecutive days was long enough, and I ended most of the days feeling cramped and stiff and sore. Even so, I definitely felt like we got lucky. I was able to find decent coffee on all but one of the mornings. Bailey got sick relatively few times – and only once in the car. We made it in one piece without getting lost or without breaking down in a barren stretch of the Yukon Territory where we had no cell phone service. I got in one short, easy run and two short little yoga practices. By the end of the trip, M. and I were still getting along quite well. It was no vacation, but we don’t regret the decision that we made to drive – though I freely admit that we never would have chosen to do it this way if we weren’t afraid that the airline would deny our dog passage due to her debilitating separation anxiety.

What's the longest stretch of consecutive days you have spent driving?

*Until our stuff gets put into a container and arrives here intact, I cannot certify the actual level of expertise involved. It seemed legit, but the jury is still out. 

Valentine

To celebrate Valentine's Day -- or alternatively El Día del Amor y la Amistad -- I'm drinking coffee out of a pink elephant mug with hearts on it, letting Bailey have an extra Milkbone, wearing red and pink, lecturing to one of my classes about Bad Romance in the Middle Ages (it's like a Lady Gaga video that's set in the twelfth century featuring feudalism, secret marriage, scholasticism, and castration), and eating sugary confections. Candy Hearts shall be broken and consumed today.

Shirt - ???, Skirt - J. Crew (thrifted), Blazer - H&M, Tights - We Love Colors, Scarf - from another shirt,  Boots - Ugg 

I hope your day is full of love and friendship - or at least coffee and chocolate. Thanks for reading, friends. I really do ♥ you.

On the Other Side

After an epic adventure of loading an ABF truck with the help of two awesome co-blogging friends, some frantic and haphazard cleaning, and two days of driving in an extremely cramped car with a slightly overwrought beagle, we arrived at our new home.  We won't have any furniture (aside from two chairs, an air mattress, and a bed frame but no mattress) until early next week when the rest of our new furniture and our moving truck arrive.  Right now there's not much to unpack or to do except make repeated trips to Target for things that we keep realizing we don't have.  You know, things like trash cans and soap and contact paper....

For as cramped as our car was, it doesn't seem like much was in it.  I guess Bailey's crate and bed, our two suitcases, a few random boxes and canvas bags, and our computers and cameras really filled up our Mazda.  I had to ride with my knees against the dash and a bag of dog treats and my purse under my feet.  I wanted to take some pictures, but I couldn't get to either of my cameras because of their location wedged under numerous other things. 

Even though it added to the space problem in the car, I'm glad that we also brought champagne flutes and a bottle of cava left over from our wedding back in January with us.  (You may be able to see that I wrote car on the bottle of cava just so I wouldn't accidentally give it away or pack it in a box going on the truck.)

We unpacked the flutes and cracked the cava open and had it with take out from Panera.  Then we unpacked what we could and hit the air mattress early.  An exhausting week and the Central Time Zone had us feeling like we had just ran a marathon. 

I got up early and ran 1.5 miles around the neighborhood.  After a shower, breakfast, and some vacuuming, I went to Target (again) to get some items for the bathrooms and a couple of chairs for our deck.  I also went to a furniture store to pick out a new entertainment center and a desk.  Both were on clearance, and I'm really excited about the desk.  I'm hoping to get some good writing done on it once it arrives next week. 

How has your week been?  Is Target getting all your money?

Bailey on the Run

Have I mentioned how much I love my doggie?  She is a complete dork, but, then again, so am I.  She makes me laugh with her outrageous antics; she cheers me up when I am low, she accidentally tickles me with her chilly little nose. 

M. and I adopted her from a local shelter last August.  She had just been spayed, had kennel cough, and wasn't housebroken.  The ~ year of her life before she was left at the shelter is a mystery to us.  Allegedly, she was dumped by her owner on a friend who could not keep her, and she ended up at the shelter.  Coincidentally, we went to look at dogs a day or so after she had been brought in.  M. and I chose three dogs to spend some time with at the shelter, and she was one of them.  A beagle wasn't the kind of dog I had in mind, but she suckered me in with her sweet, brown eyes.   The shelter didn't know what her name had been before, so the dedicated staff there called her Daisy -- a name that I like well enough, but my sister already has a dog named Daisy.  I wanted to take her home right then and there, but M. and I agreed to go home, think about it some more, sleep on it, and then decide.  At the end of the next day we were back at the shelter and filling out forms.  M. picked her name.

 In some ways, she's been a challenging little booger.  Housebreaking was a bit of chore, but nothing too horrible.  Occasionally, she still has an accident in the house, but, if she does, that's almost always our fault.  The bigger issue with her has been some pretty severe separation anxiety.  We have been working with a behavioral specialist and our vet for months, and it's still tricky.   We've tried and still do try kongs, music, gradual departures, in and outs, etc.

I love her, though, and so does M.  She is the first doggie - the first pet, really - that he's ever had.  She is a goofball and the fuzziest member of our family.  And she's the first subject of M's first photo shoot with my new camera.