|
Wow. Whirlwind!
Eric was offered a 3-year job last Tuesday at the Max Planck Institute in Astronomy...which happens to be in HEIDELBERG, GERMANY!!!!
To say that life has just gotten crazy would be the understatement of the year. We're wrapping up our respective professional business by the end of July, packing and selling off most of our stuff by the very start of August, visiting the OR relatives, and then possibly driving my car cross-country to sell to one of my East Coast relatives. By around Sept 1, we will fly out of some East Coast airport, and settle into our temporary digs at the Institute's Guest House.
In the meantime, I'm turning cartwheels over the chance to learn Western Art Music in its birthplace. I will hope to learn German fast enough that I can enroll in school in a year.
This is likely to be one of my last blog posts on this site..."CACherylGA" is a sign-in name I picked when I was 17, and as I have not been a resident of Georgia for a good 12 years (and am about to lose my CA status - waaaa!), I will be moving virtual homes. E and I will have a joint blog while we are overseas, but the name is currently under intense discussion. When it is decided, it will be posted here. Needless to say, it will be some play on our names...highly likely to be DasFoMos.blahblah.com, or something equally silly. That is currently the least important detail of all, but it seems to be taking up an inordinate amount of our chit-chat time. :)
Just one question for the blogosphere: does anyone have any friends who recently moved overseas who are NOT part of the US Military? We're looking for recommendations for shipping companies. We won't have any furniture, so we're only moving a studio apartments' worth of household goods.Current Mood:  excited Current Music: Wagner |
|
This crossed my inbox...perhaps others out there might enjoy reading it. Yes, it brings up both 9/11 AND the Nazis, but in a way that's actually useful...
( Welcome address to freshmen at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory )Current Music: Quartet for the End of Time from youtube |
|
( my thoroughly self-centered contemplations )Current Mood:  contemplative Current Music: Gondoliers soundtrack |
|
I swear I'm NOT going to turn this into a TMI weight-loss journal, but I got on the scale this morning and I've apparently dropped 7 pounds since the day I came back from the cruise. Some of that is probably due to my having been exceedingly virtuous since Jan 2 (working out and eating more veggies), but the vast majority is likely a testament to what happens when the human body is pulled off the 5-billion-calories-a-day cruise "diet of debauchery" and is placed on something more reasonable.
Given I'm not sure how much of this is actually due to my own efforts, I'm more proud of the fact I'm back to jogging 30 minutes straight without feeling like I'm going to die.
Just gotta keep this up...it's highly doubtful more weight is going to drop off as easily or as quickly.
Next blog entry - career musings.Current Mood: accomplished |
|
Since coming from a LOVELY cruise (to be blogged about this coming weekend at some point), I had about a day and a half with dear hubby before he departed for the AAS meeting in Long Beach followed by a few days of manly bonding with Dave. 10 days as bachelorette has given me plenty of time to think and reflect on the past year, and plan for the next one. Low hanging fruit first...
My body is not how I'd care for it to be. I had the courage to get on a scale immediately upon coming back from the cruise and found that I was firmly 15 pounds overweight by my doctors' standards, and about 20-23 pounds from my "fighting weight". It's been hard to consistently work out with my back being off and on in spasm over the past year or so, but really - had I focused on the problem, it wouldn't have gotten to this point. I HATE the pictures of me on the cruise. My sister posting them to facebook was a necessary but highly unwelcome kick in the rear.
Looking back, I was my healthiest around 2003. Granted, that's when I lived in San Francisco with a very different lifestyle than I have now. I worked out an hour a day nearly every day of the week. I walked everywhere. I ate very little meat, and my alcohol was limited to Friday or Saturday nights. I had no career direction and no significant relationships, but hell - it was a really fun time!
Now, life is still fun, but in a different way. Married life has been wonderful and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but the good health habits I had as a single woman have gone by the wayside. Exercise has been sporadic since I moved in with Eric. Early in our marriage, and definitely before that during the stress of wedding planning, dinner would be something like pot roast or mac-and-cheese (foods that Eric loves - trying to be the good wittle wifey) accompanied by a beer or glass of wine. I'd go back for seconds - always less than Eric ate, of course, but good grief - he can put away a keg of beer and a small cow and still have room for dessert. Merely "eating less than E" is a poor metric for my own health.
This week, I've reset both my exercise habits and my eyes as they relate to the size of my stomach. I'm back to having a consistent first course of veggies for lunch and dinner. Alcohol is gone, replaced by tea. If I watch it, I can have this weight safely off by Easter, and will strive to keep it off after that.Current Mood:  determined Current Music: Palestrina |
| » Quick update |
|---|
December has been...well...December. As a musician at a church, there's a sense of "this is the busy joyful time of the year!" just as the secular world is going all-out with "buy stuff - it will make you happy!!!" I'm increasingly "anti-stuff" and am continuing to delight in getting rid of things that I have no need for, but that will hopefully be useful to someone else. I heart Craigslist - just got rid of some old jewelry this morning to someone who works with kids in Hunters/Bayview - those kids will hopefully wear heart-shaped things more than I tend to these days.
So really - with my wonderful bit of luck - what has to happen just as I'm gearing up for loads of stuff at work? If you guessed "something to derail my ability to get work done", give yourself 10 points.
The biggest event over the last few days (sorry for the ick factor) is that I apparently had an ovarian cyst rupture on Tuesday. Didn't know I had been nurturing a cyst, certainly knew something was wrong when I went from feeling fine to rocking in a fetal position / throwing up / pain-induced space cadet in the space of 3 hours. Eric packed me up and took me to the doctor, where they thankfully ruled out the big scary things like ectopic pregnancy and appendicitis quickly. Without any associated bleeding that could have earned me a trip to the OR, as can sometimes happen when these sorts of cysts rupture, I'm basically stuck waiting for the cyst contents to reabsorb and my lady-bits to decide to come off of Defcon 1.
This is the first day since that time that I came off of the Vicodin. I had two doses of heavy-duty motrin, decided to make a break for it to TJs after days on the couch with the walls closing in on me, and had to immediately go back on Vicodin after that brief trip nearly felled me. Ugh. It's so annoying that something so innocuous (at this point) can hurt so frickin' much. I should be praising God that I didn't wind up in surgery, and didn't lose an ovary to this episode...but really, all I'm doing right now is sulking and going through every bit of chocolate and every chick flick in the house while really really wanting a stiff drink that I can't have due to the narcotics. Hopefully, the praise will come.
Dec. 19th, 2008 @ 05:02 pm
|
| » Overcoming the Tyranny of Stuff - 1 pile at a time |
|---|
It's been an incredibly busy time...Pinafore went up, followed by E and I getting sick at the same time ("you give me fever...") and then the craziness of Thanksgiving. In short, Pinafore was career- and calling-affirming, the getting sick sucked, and Thanksgiving was the usual happy mess of too many carbs and lots of family time.
E's mother is moving up to Bend to be near his sister - her husband is a cop, and they are putting down roots in that town. As Irene's other child also lives in Oregon with his family and she's basically at retirement age anyways, she's bought a house up there and is starting the long process of moving. To that end, her house in Novato goes up on the market this month. To that end, E had to take home a good chunk of his childhood this past weekend.
Have I mentioned we live in a studio apartment that has about 300 square feet of space that was already packed to the rafters prior to this weekend? If not for Ikea being the next town over, we'd have no prayer. As it is, though, everything has a place - generally far above my head. :)
As my pastor enjoys the writings of Shane Claiborne ("Ordinary Radicals" and "Jesus for President") and a group he's associated with, Alternatives for Simple Living, we've gotten a good dose of those pro-Jesus / anti-blind-consumerism / responsible use of "stuff" ideas over the last 3 years. We've come to the conclusion that we are going to live our lives together as simply as possible - not really the ascetic existence of monks, perhaps, but certainly without extra bits, bobs, doodads, and square feet of living space. If we can do without it, we really want to try to do without it. If we can live in a small studio that is organized well, that is far preferable to moving someplace bigger, only to feel burdened with the task of filling it with "stuff."
With that in mind (and given the extra push of boxes of Eric's old things cluttering the walkways :) ), we've been going through everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - that we own, and saying "do we actually need _______?" It's been wonderfully freeing. Several armloads of books have made their way to new homes. (One in particular found its way to a woman who said "oh my GOODNESS - my ex-husband ran off with my copy of this years ago - and now I've got a new one!") Barely-worn clothing is headed for Goodwill. Clothing that was sitting there unused due to a missing button or a stain is off to one side, and will be dealt with so as to either restore function, or confirm non-usability. My heart-based jewelery from when I was a girl is going to wind up with some young lady at church. The 8 mismatched silver hoop earrings that were sitting there, hoping to miraculously be restored to their mates, have been tossed. DVDs and CDs we don't need are going to Rasputin, to hopefully be traded in for something we'll actually use.
This is only the first step, but dangnabit, it feels really good to do it.
Dec. 2nd, 2008 @ 07:03 am
|
| » Imposition of "the gay lifestyle" |
|---|
This is not an original train of thought, but one that's been bouncing in my head for a bit of time thanks to a phone conversation last week. As my church is "Open and Affirming" (ie - we don't discriminate against LBGT folks) we tend to attract two groups of people directly because of that. The first are people who are either part of the LBGT community themselves, or who have close family who are.
The second group we attract are people who are definitely NOT of the same mindset as we are. Some walk in or call looking for an argument. Others, though, contact us and seem genuinely interested in what we believe - their own beliefs being obviously opposite ours - and how we reconcile being gay-friendly when most churches tend to not be so. ( One guy called last week... )
Oct. 31st, 2008 @ 10:14 am
|
| » ticked off at the Mormons - donate to No on 8! |
|---|
Donate to "No on 8"
Mormons renew calls for California gay marriage ban
Normally in my daily life, the Mormons just exist...much like Buddhists, and Muslims, and the laundromat on the corner. However, now...they are the driving force behind the "Yes on 8" campaign, which if passed in CA on election day, will take away the rights of LBGT couples to marry. "They" includes not just Mormons in state, but Mormons outside of the state as well. I'll hand it to them - "they" are prodigious fund-raisers.
And by close association, "they" are all liars as well - the current "yes on 8" ad out promotes, among other BS ideas, that churches will be sued to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry. Um, no. Nice try, but try again...that's no more logical than, say, Catholic churches being sued by non-Catholics for the "right" to marry in a Catholic ceremony. If a gay couple wants to marry in a church, there are any number of churches that are Open and Affirming that will allow it - mine among them.
This is a matter of civil rights - plain and simple. This is about the right of partners to visit each other in a hospital. This is about rights of inheritance. This is about the 1000+ legal rights that Eric and I gained when we got married in one fell swoop being available to all couples in the state of California.
Fine, you don't "agree" with gay marriage? I personally don't "agree" with a vast majority of Hollywood marriages and a small number of ones that have occurred closer to home - does that I mean I should have the right to declare those marriages null and void, simply because I don't like the idea of those people marrying, or even more, because I imagine myself the mouthpiece of God? NO NO NO - specific churches have every right to decide who they will or won't marry within their walls, but that is NOT how America as a country works.
Aside from this, I'm beyond furious that out-of-staters are weighing in so heavily on an in-state proposition. The coalition that the Mormons are heading up of other like-minded conservative groups are cheerfully promoting that they are "defending" marriage when in fact they are doing the absolute reverse. And among undecided voters, polls now show them slightly WINNING, thanks to having $10 million more in cash than the "No on 8" folks, and the ability to incessantly run that ad full of lies.
Shame on them! Shame on them all!
E and I donated today to the cause, and tomorrow, I'm going to call up and get time on a phone bank.
Oct. 10th, 2008 @ 12:36 am
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
cacherylga's journal