My Comment Box: As You Can See, It’s Nearly Empty*

For everybody out there dying to comment on our blog but without a Gmail account, I’ve now enabled anonymous comments so it should no longer be a problem. Now, I’m expecting this to dramatically increase the volume I receive, so don’t disappoint me!

Also, if you leave an anonymous comment, it would be great if you let us know who you are somewhere in there.

courtesy of icanhascheezburger.com

*Except for snide comments from brother. Thanks, L–you never let me down!

Superbad is Super-AWESOME!

So our television’s exile to underneath the kitchen table (the only place it fit at the old apartment) is officially over. We still don’t have, you know, actual television service, even network, but we do love watching movies. Especially free movies. And I thought Superbad was so good that I would even encourage you to pony up the $1 or $1.50 (though perhaps not the ridiculous $4.00 charged for a basic rental out here at Blockbuster) and PAY to see it if you have to. It was silly, of course, but that’s the point, right? And hidden amongst the incredibly raunchy language (moms and brothers, consider yourself warned) was a surprisingly realistic portrait of how I remember high school. Maybe the girls didn’t look quite so much like buxom supermodels (or did we?), but in general I thought that the way the boys, especially, related to each other was startlingly real. For that reason and others, there are times that it’s just cringingly uncomfortable to watch (truly, nobody does awkward more painfully or endearingly than Michael Cera of Arrested Development fame), but after laughing uproariously nonstop for the entire 118 minutes, we were glad we did.

Pre-Test

Since my strategy immediately before the test is to relax instead of cram, perhaps because I know my grades don’t end up in the same hyper-competitive pool as everybody else’s in the room, I’m drinking hot chocolate and checking out the wealth of excellent new birth sites I’ve found lately. Such as: Citizens for Midwifery, Pushed Birth, and The Business of Being Born. TBOBB is something I would love to see (watch the trailer, it’s very inspiring!) but which has not seen fit to come to my area when I was aware of it. Pushed is a book, written by the author of Pushed Birth above, which I need to read. Giving Birth: The Journey into the World of Mothers and Midwives is on that list as well, along with countless others.

The return to reading for pleasure like this is something I’m eagerly anticipating after law school is over. And from this point on, it all counts as career research. Awesome.

Black Snake Moan

LOVED IT!

While I was justifiably hesitant to watch another movie starring Samuel L. Jackson with the word “snakes” in the title, this one did not disappoint. And while I usually have a hard time with movies that have any degree of violence toward women, especially any degree of sexualized violence, the treatment in Black Snake Moan is not at all prolonged or gratuitous. The movie, while certainly odd at times, ends up being a very poignant take on, among other things, sexuality, love, and past abuse. Samuel L. and Christina Ricci were both fabulous and, while you may find yourself questioning why they won’t let her put on a pair of pants for the first half of the movie, it all kind of ends up making sense by the end. She actually addresses “The Necessity of Being on the Set Almost Naked” here, and expresses similar thoughts to the conclusions I came to about it. She also talks in general about survivors of sexual abuse and refers to having worked with RAINN, which I found really impressive. I thought her observations were really good, and supported her strong performance in the movie.

That said, I still think she looks like she could use, as my mom (used to?) say, like she could use a bowl of thick soup. But I suppose the prospect of being “on the set almost naked” for two months would scare anybody down a size or two.

We rented this movie courtesy of Redbox, which has an abundance of free movie codes, so that you pretty much never have to pay for movie rental if there’s a box near you. They seem to be more common out East, but maybe it will take off in the Midwest too.

Reston Peace

I just got home from accompanying Matt halfway to work (in 50-degree weather, no less!).

Commuting to work, DC-style:

vs Reston-style:

Needless to say, we love it here, and we feel so fortunate that everything worked out as well as it did!

Walk, Study, Sleep, Clean: An exciting life, but somebody has to live it.

Most of today has actually been comprised of studying–which is really kind of a surprise! I did hit a slump about 10:30 this morning and actually ended up taking about a 30-minute nap. I woke up still feeling so lethargic I almost went down for another one. Matt and I have set the goal of trying to do 30 minutes of some kind of physical activity every day, preferably an hour on the weekends (partly due to the desire on both our parts for more energy!) but it seems to me that any time I start any kind of exercise regimen, no matter how tame, the first week or so just absolutely drains me. Case in point: yesterday we ran for 30 minutes, today we walked for 30 minutes, and by mid-morning, my energy was totally sapped.

BUT, during the brief period I’m spending at home before I start my new job, I’m trying to set the goal that I spend most of my time doing SOMETHING productive. Realistically, it should be studying; realistically, it’s not gonna be. So after indulging in the nap (which, after this week, will no longer be an option most days), instead of rolling over for another one, I decided to see what I could accomplish in the next half hour of being awake, in the hopes that I would be able to energize myself somewhat in the bargain. Here’s what I did:

-Made Mexican casserole for dinner
-Did the dishes from last night
-Put away the dishes
-Did a load of laundry (though I didn’t fold it…folding laundry is low on my list of favorite tasks, though luckily, Matt doesn’t seem to mind it as much as he does other chores that I don’t mind at all!)
-Made a game plan for today’s studying

I did end up with more energy after all that was done, and so far I’m on track for accomplishing what I wanted to in the study department, too. It’s a good feeling! I’m hoping to get a little bit more done before Matt gets home, spend some time with him, and hopefully do another Civ Pro practice test before we go to bed.

As predicted, I didn’t get a ton done this weekend. Saturday I ended up throwing in the study-towel for a dish towel and helped Matt cook Potato and Cauliflower Masala from his new Indian cookbook, and I also made Red Lentil Soup. Personally, I thought it turned out too watery; I ended up blending in a couple of cooked potatoes to thicken it up, and it still seemed thin. It was good, though, and I think Matt especially liked it.

Sunday was the Messiah at the National Cathedral, which was very good but very crowded. We got there early enough to beat the line because we had asked for our tickets to be mailed to us, and we were concerned they’d been lost in the shuffle of the move, and had called and left messages to that effect to no avail. They ended up being at Will Call (would have been nice to have been notified that they were doing that), but when the usher went to seat us, one of the seats didn’t exist. We ended up pulling up a chair from elsewhere, which we didn’t actually have to use because the seat next to our existing one was empty, and somebody from the Cathedral took our name and is planning to refund us the cost of one of our tickets–which will be nice, but I haven’t heard from her yet. Anyway, that pretty much summarizes the experience: the music was beautiful, but the venue somewhat chaotic, which was unfortunate.

After that, we decided that the shine of trying to parallel park in the madness of DC weekend traffic had really kind of worn off since moving to Reston, so we drove back and got a decently affordable dinner at The Silver Diner, a place we’d go again.

Round Here…

…we don’t let a little thing like law school finals get in the way of a fun weekend. Yesterday was my Contracts final–harder than Torts, but I’m afraid not as hard as the Civil Procedure final will be on Tuesday. Has that stopped me from spending the better part of today gallivanting to an Indian spice store with Matt, or otherwise pleasurably frittering away the weekend? Hardly! The other night before bed, Matt asked me if I wanted to get up early and go running, something we’ve been talking about trying to get back in the habit of doing. I said “Oh, I don’t know, I have a test tomorrow, I’m not sure if it would be good to get up so early.” He looked at me kind of skeptically and then said, “Oh, I get it…you won’t STUDY for it or anything, but you will go so far as to sleep in for it.” Right. So what’s wrong with that?

Last night we went to a house performance, hosted by a co-worker of Matt’s by singer/songwriter Krista Detor. Said co-worker had raved about the performance, but being hard to please, we had prepared ourselves to be underwhelmed. We most definitely were NOT. Not only did we enjoy meeting and interacting with Krista and her husband Dave, and reuniting with Dave the sailor, but her music was in fact just breathtaking. She and Dave seemed to share our taste in music along with our affinity for homemade pesto, though they’re a step ahead of us in living off the land, being that they live on five acres in Indiana and we, as you know, are currently soaking up the joys of living in the planned community in Reston. Anyway, we had a wonderful time. Matt whipped up a batch of the brownies you’ve heard about before, with the festive addition of a bag of peppermint chips I’d picked up at Aldi the last time I was there. Delicious!

Tomorrow, we’re going to a performance of Handel’s Messiah at the National Cathedral, which should be pretty amazing. That and the house concert are why today was supposed to be the big Civ Pro Study Expo, but I seem to be having a little bit of trouble getting started on that.

One-Quarter Down and Counting

My Torts final went pretty well yesterday, I think. We won’t know for sure until February (!), but I felt like I had ample time and discussed it afterward with a friend who came up with similar results on hers. Torts is by far my favorite class, and I think for that and other reasons it’s both objectively and subjectively the easiest class I have. We also had a midterm in that class and so we somewhat knew what to expect. Which means: it’s only an uphill climb from here! The main reason I was dreading this test was because getting it over with means there are no more acceptable reasons for putting off studying for my least favorite two classes, Contracts and Civil Procedure. Huge volumes of very dry and particular rules that should probably be committed to memory, which is probably what I should be doing right now. Ugh.

Otherwise, not much has been going on around here. Work is going really well for Matt, and I’m looking forward to starting orientation at the hospital on the 17th. I’m hoping to hear about Georgetown by the end of December. We’re also getting VERY excited about going home (I always feel disloyal when I say that, because really, I do feel like here is home too) to see our families in a couple of weeks. We haven’t started our Christmas shopping yet, but because our families are relatively small and Christmas is a relatively simple affair at both households, we’re not getting too worried. I know I should get finals behind me first. We’ve talked about how we hope that even if we had a bigger place or (gasp) a bigger family, we’d like to keep things such as shopping and decorating about on par with where they’re at now. Easier said than done, I know, but we are blessed with families who try to keep things in perspective with reasonable expectations and a general lack of materialism, and I think that sets a good example. Now let’s just hope the weather cooperates so that we can get back to the Midwest for Christmas.

On the cooking front, we made stir-fry last night, which has become an old standby favorite. I’m thinking about making Gourmet Magazine’s Nacho Macaroni and Cheese (sounds gourmet, huh?) for dinner. Cold weather seems to give us just the excuse we’re always looking for to whip up homey (read: cheesy) comfort foods. Not that we refrain in the summertime.

On a related note, we keep hoping to get in a routine of some kind of regular physical activity, whether that’s running or walking or bike riding, although unfortunately it isn’t the greatest weather for it. Not that ANY weather is a compelling substitute for lounging in bed until 8am, which is what we’ve been doing lately!

The Weather Outside=Frightful?

We’re currently in the midst of the first snow of the season, and our first East-coast “snowstorm.” In other words, a light dusting that doesn’t stick to the streets but nonetheless has people panicking, cars careening into ditches, employees showing up late for work, and school officials conferring over whether to cancel finals. (Alas, no such luck.)

So far the only ill effect I’ve felt has been the increased difficulty of uprooting myself from our cozy apartment, where the cats and I are holed up watching the snow fall, to venture out and drive to the bus station to get on a bus to the train station to get on the subway to go take my test. (Everything in Reston is convenient to pretty much everything else in Reston, but convenient to downtown DC it is not.) My test (Torts, but not the delicious kind) doesn’t start until 2pm, but because of the Weather, and even more because I know that if I don’t get out of here I may be overcome with the irresistible urge to make a pan of brownies or something instead of performing some badly-needed last-minute cramming, I think I’m going to head out shortly.

Who Would Have Thought?

Our tiny Christmas tree in the corner of the living room

Looking from the kitchen into the dining room

The living room (new futon on the right)

The past couple of days I have been enjoying staying home with the cats and doing lots of cooking (AKA studying for my law school finals…which are tomorrow, Friday, Tuesday, and Thursday). For the time being, we’re also enjoying rolling out of bed at a leisurely 8am as opposed to 6; though that will change when I go back to work. But it’s nice while it lasts. We’re pretty much just luxuriating in both the newfound space and time, which we didn’t realize was such a luxury until we lived in the city and both were at such an extremely high premium. Like the things I took for granted about nursing which ultimately ended up being the defining aspects of my career aspirations, the things we took for granted about living in the midwest have become central to what we view as most important now.

On the school front, GWU was characteristically goodwilled and understanding about my decision to withdraw (“we’re sorry to see you go, but you seem to know yourself and what you want”), and has left open the option to apply for a 1-year leave of absence rather than fully withdrawing. Despite the fact that I still have nothing negative to say about my professors or my experience or the chocolate fountain (yes, really) they had in the lobby the other day, I’m wondering whether I should. Because my financial aid (irreversibly) walks out the door when I do, and I can’t imagine wanting to continue law school at full price when I don’t want to now at a discount, I’m debating whether it’s worth it to keep the option open when I don’t anticipate taking it. Then again, we also didn’t anticipate moving to Reston, or leaving law school, or working in accreditation, or anything else we’ve done this past year, either…!

Another major development which falls into that category: having kids. Which has gone from high on our “never” list to firmly rooted on our “someday” list. Despite the fact that if we’d had any kind of prenup, Matt and I would have both insisted that remaining childless be a prominent feature of our agreement, we have done a complete 180 on this issue in the short six months that we’ve been married. It’s hard to say exactly why. Part of it has to do with the fact that I think I never wanted kids before because I didn’t know anybody I’d want to duplicate, whereas let’s face it– the more people out there like Matt, the better 🙂 And oddly enough, he seems to feel the same way about crazy old me. Yet, you’d think we would have seen that coming when we were dating or engaged or something, but we didn’t. Anyway, it’s nothing that’s in the immediate works, but we’ve scaled back from “never” to “ten years” to “eight years” to where it’s now on the “five and under” list.

Who would have thought?!