Monday, April 30, 2012

Monday Numbers


  • Its been nearly 10 years since I've owned a car. This past weekend, I started to rectify the situation. I made my rounds, hitting the KOP mall, Target, Ross, BB&B, and a host of other places. Mostly, I just returned wedding gifts and either got credits or purchased a few new things. It was nice to have transportation for a change (and even nicer to not have to worry about getting it back on time). Our new little car has some pep, some get up and go and I just love her. Even though there was a ton of traffic and I was sitting in it for a while, it was still such a treat to have some freedom for a change. 
  • We also went on a real suburban date, hitting up Ruby Tuesday's for dinner, and then heading to the movies. Although I am pretty sure the movie theatre was built 40 years ago (and never remodeled - not exactly a luxury theatre at all), it was still a fun time. We saw The Pirates! Band of Misfits (aka The Pirates! In an adventure with Scientists). It was great fun and you shall see a complete review of the film shortly!
  • Sunday was a lovely warm spring day. I spent it cleaning, catching up on errands and just puttering around the house. We are trying to figure out how to move all of our things, and it's taken up quite a bit of time just sorting through all the quotes, all the offers, all the expense. We are not getting reimbursed for any of our move, so it's all on us, which makes it quite difficult. I think I would mostly throw out everything and start over again if it weren't for all the wedding gifts we recently received. I'd feel bad throwing any of those things away. Anyways, we might just narrow things down to a few boxes and pack them off to my parents by post. Too bad we don't have a garage. I'd host a huge garage sale!
  • I can't believe tomorrow is the first of May. It means that we only less than two months left here in Philly!
  • Our house has been shown three times this week. I hope somebody decides to rent it. It's a great place to live!
  • We got our license registration for our car. Now, it looks so cute, with it's little PA plates! And we got our first dent/scratch. Some person has no idea how to parallell park, and bumped into our bumper, causing a bit of a crack. Oh well, it had to happen sometime, right? I guess it just sucks that it was within the first week of owning it!

Monday, April 23, 2012

Monday Numbers

  • You guys! We got a new car! It's a super cute Chevy Sonic and we love it! It had to come to us from across the state, so it's already got about 600 miles on it. We put about 30 on her this week. Its great to have the freedom to just go, get out of town, for a few minutes. The downside? We have NO idea where we are going! With such limited travel knowledge, we are a little lost. Good thing we have maps and iPhones!
  • This past weekend was pretty crazy busy! We picked up the car on Friday afternoon. Funny thing? They lost it for a minute! Yeah, it's an orange car and they lost it! Although, it is kinda small, and it's a manual, so maybe someone just took it for a joy ride. I wouldn't blame them :)
  • Our friends M&D came into town for the last time ever. They are moving to Salt Lake City, Utah, and are headed out there next week. They came up for one final hurrah, which was great. We hit up City Tap House, which has this great roof deck with big old firepits all over the place. It was really nice and a lot of fun to catch up with old friends.
  • On Saturday, we had a bunch of errands to run. I got my hair cut, Alex hit up work, then we went to the grocery store and to get a propane tank. The whole time, Alex was texting people, and he said he wanted to have people over for a BBQ. I said, cool, what time? Oh, at 2pm! It was, like 1pm and we were just leaving the grocery store - how can we pull this off? Well, turns out, we have super cool friends. Some friends brought over some ice cream, we made potato & macaroni salads and some burgers and we had a great old time. It was lots of fun to have people over and it was great to have some nice weather to hang out in. 
  • That night, everyone went out to a local bar and hung out. Bummer thing was, I had to work. It's a long story, but I have been struggling to get a paper submitted with my old boss (from my thesis, yeah, 1 year ago!). He's been having some family problems, and we've been in and out of touch for a while now. Finally, he told me to do a few things to get this paper submitted, and I hadn't had time to do that for a while. So, finally, on Saturday night around 10:30pm, I was uploading our response to reviewers and our figures to the server at a journal. It was submitted officially at 2:30am Sunday morning. I guess what I've learned about science is that everything is anti-climatic. So, while I'm glad to have this paper off and submitted, I am worried about what will be said about it and whether it will generate more work for me in the long run. Hopefully not.
  • Yesterday, I was useless. We hung out with M&D for a while, then they got on the road to Baltimore for the last time. It was rainy and cold so I cleaned up a bit, but really, just took a nap, watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding for about the one billionth time and did absolutely nothing worthwhile at all. Alex and I started watching this TV show about the Iditarod in Alaska. Crazy stuff, yo. Other than that, a pretty chill day.
  • Today, I have about a million things to get done. I am unsure how everything will get done, but that's OK. I sold a bunch of stuff on ebay, so I have about 12 packages to mail out today. Good thing I have a car. I also need to hit up Target and TJs, and actually get some work done. Should be fun!