Exhausted

Some things I did over the past few days:

Picked up Jeff from the airport late Friday night
Dealt with "relationship re-entry shock" that comes with being apart all the time (including brief break for requisite stupid argument)
Went bowling
Sang karaoke
Stayed out past midnight (!)
Took a bike ride around Coronado Island
Went to work
Drove to Anaheim
(Jeff turns 30 here)
Went to Disneyland (subplot: indiana jones, thunder mountain, pirates of the caribbean, splash mountain, haunted mansion, astro blasters, space mountain, carousel, splash mountain, astro blasters, mr. toad's wild ride, peter pan, am I forgetting anything???)
Drove home
Ate cake
Took Jeff to the airport
Went to work
And, grand finale:

Came home exhausted. I haven't been totally out of touch with normal life, but I did have about 50 unread e-mail messages when I finally went to try to clear them out this evening. Having fun is a lot of work!

More details on Jeff's blog (link at right).

Food, Friends, and Bryan Adams

Since people have asked: things are looking up slightly for my roommate's health, and my supervisor has been in a holding pattern for a few weeks which has allowed her to prepare for surgery and all that follows. So the crises of a month ago are feeling less and less like crises, which is good. It's been a busy few weeks, and things are starting to ease up a bit.

This weekend I was vicariously living the joys of others. Two of my favorite people here had great things happen in the past few days: one defended her dissertation, and the other asked his girlfriend to marry him! So there is a lot of positive energy going around. I'm really enjoying their highs, remembering how good each of those things felt when I was living it.

I also had my own joys to celebrate last weekend, when I visited Seattle. Julia, Meredith, and Alison drove up from Eugene, and Jeff's old lab-mate Alicia lives in Seattle, and we all convened for Canadian Thanksgiving. Lots of pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and yams, stuffing, and for those who cared there was also turkey :)

Our version of Thanksgiving involves friends, food, and karaoke:

That's us singing some Bryan Adams, to honor Canada. Without the Canadian karaoke, there is really nothing to separate Canadian Thanksgiving from the American one. So, somehow or another, it has become tradition that everyone must sing when we celebrate Canadian holidays, and amazingly, everyone just does. There is no protesting, none of the "oh, I really can't sing" nonsense, because for reasons I cannot fully understand, when Jeff asks people to sing, they do.

He also has a magical ability to get people to roller skate, play guitar hero and hula hoop on the wii, eat/drink gross things, and play silly kids' party games (can anyone say squeak piggy squeak?). Somehow, Jeff gets people to drop all their self-consciousness and pretension, and that is one of the things I love so much about him.

Which is one of the reasons why we are going here for Jeff's 30th birthday (just over a week from now). I can hardly wait!

25% Complete

First: No major updates on the health statuses of my colleagues. The good thing about that is that it sort of means there's breathing room, if only temporarily. I'm hoping for the best on all fronts, and in the mean time, at least no news isn't bad news :)

Today marks an internship milestone: I'm a quarter of the way done! It's kind of amazing, because in some ways it doesn't feel like I've been here that long, but in other ways it feels like I've been here forever. The not-that-long parts are that I still don't feel quite like I live here; I still sort of think I'm at summer camp. And since we're still having summer weather, I can almost believe that. And also, I feel like I'm still learning what the heck I'm doing in some respects (although that is starting to change).

The feeling like forever parts are sort of varied, positive and negative. First, it feels like it's been way too long since Jeff and I lived together. I'm starting to adjust to this routine, but I really miss the day-to-day interactions, like making dinner together, or just being able to go for a walk. But in a way, it also feels like it hasn't been that long, and like it will be easy to step right back into those things we used to do every day, so that one is mixed in itself.

It also feels like it's been forever since I saw all my dear Eugene friends and colleagues. I'm really looking forward to seeing a few people during my next Seattle trip (it takes good friends to drive 5 hours for such a short visit!), and a few more when I'm back in town for Thanksgiving.

The flip side of that is that there are a couple of people here who I feel like I've known much longer than 3 months. There really are good people here; people who will probably become very good friends. But don't worry, they will never replace my old friends :)

I'm curious how I'll feel about all this another 3 months from now when it's half done!