I don't know, what do you want to do?

It's been a whopping two weeks since I defended, and it's been glorious! It feels like forever, already, which is amazing and wonderful. I've been sleeping a lot and eating a lot and I started running again, too. Though I think my calories in are still greater than my calories out. Oops.

Anyway, I started my freedom by having to finish up the tweaks on the dissertation. There really weren't that many, so it didn't take me long.

I got myself some new yarn. Pretty, huh? Don't know what I'll do with it, yet...

I finished a shawl that's been several months in the making. It's green and leafy. The pictures make it look bluer than it is, though it is a fairly bluey green. This would seem to have Micki's name on it, though I don't know if she'd want it. I'll find out. 

 

 

I started another shawl, and it's looking nice so far.

I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, on kindle. It was nowhere near as graphic as people seemed to indicate. Yes, there is violence and sex, but it's not really graphic at all. But whatever. I wanted to read it before seeing the movie. I've read that the original Swedish version is far superior to the newer, English version and, since I don't mind subtitles, I'll probably watch that one first and then the newer one second. From having seen previews of the newer one, I definitely feel a disconnect between how Lisbeth Salander looked in my head while reading and who they got to play her. But that's okay. I also read the kindle version of ROOM. It's a story of a woman who was abducted and kept locked up for years by her abductor. She ended up pregnant and the story is told from the POV of her son, aged five in the story, and whose world is literally the size of the room, hence the title. Kind of interesting. Shorter than I thought it would be. Both of the kindle books are thanks to Beth, who kindly gave me amazon money as a graduation gift. I still have some left, too. She defends in two weeks and I have to come up with something suitable for her...

I also finally went to the library and got a library card. Since I was there, I went ahead and grabbed two fiction books (I pretty much only do fiction, but I'm fairly indiscriminate within that genre). I read one in two days (The Whisperer) and haven't started the other, yet. I need to let the other one settle out of my head before starting.

I have really missed reading while in grad school. I'd always been a voracious reader, but I only read a handful of books while a grad student: the last Harry Potter, a random book called Dead Mann Walking that a coworker of Jer's sent home with him (I came home one day to no power, so I read the book, instead), a fantasy book Beth bought me on kindle when Jer and I went on vacation with his parents, and the Hunger Games trilogy which Beth lent me on the kindle. I wanted to read it before we saw the movie and Jer really wanted to see the movie, so it was kind of imperative (haha) that I read it immediately.

We were fortunate to only lose power for about 6 hours (11-5am) because of the storm. Beth and Ricky, however, still didn't have power on Saturday, so came over to be cool at our house. They headed out to get more stuff to bring from their house to ours and their dogs waited for them by the door the whole time they were gone.

The power company website initially said they didn't have a team assigned to fix them, but on Sunday morning (they spent the night) it said the worst-case scenario would have them being fixed by 7/6 (Friday). But their power came back on Sunday afternoon/evening, so they happily headed on home. They came back over for dinner and fireworks Wednesday night, though.

So, overall, it's been delightful being home. I've been getting around to some things around the house that I hadn't had time for, like unpacking the china I brought back from my mother's and putting it away in the hutch. The one with the blue ribbon around was my mother's favourite. She liked blue.

I also saw a frog on the deck one evening. He was pretty good sized and not too worried by me. I sloshed him with water; I don't know how amphibians stay moist in weather like we've been having!

And that's about it. Still jobless. Still applying like crazy. We'll see what happens.