We visited two apartments in our top two apartment complexes today. We just walked there since they are a few blocks across the street from A&M. I definitely fell for the first one and liked the second one better than our current apartment. I am filling out the paperwork for the pre-lease this afternoon--if only we could move in tomorrow!

Here is a picture of the kitchen.


We will probably not find out until June whether or not there will be an open unit. Many of Katie's fingernails will be in jeapordy as she and David nervously await a phone call. I'm already thinking about room layouts and the design portfolio.

*KatieW*

I haven't felt like writing lately. I feel very uninteresting.

Last week I discovered that Rice University in Houston (1-1/2 hours away) has a grad program with specializations in Dickens. This, combined with coming off of a nice vacation in San Antonio with David, made me really resent being back at work. I don't exactly hate my job like I did the last one, but I hate (1) the drama in an office of women and (2) being belittled by the head of the department. He seriously talks to me like I'm his eight-year-old daughter sometimes.

That made last week hard.

I am about halfway through Middlemarch and still enjoying it (though still not as much as Dickens). She does get in some delightful pokes at the cultural attitudes toward women, though. Eliot was a pretty independent thinker for her time. I do keep reading in satire where there is none, though, as my Dickens-perception is still a bit too sharp.

My new addiction, as the weather cools down to the high-sixties/low-seventies, is baked oatmeal. It takes five minutes to mix up and then sits in the refrigerator all night, then you stick in the oven the next morning. I made one batch with apples and one with blueberries. We are quite pleased.

*KatieW*

"The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring."
-Oscar Wilde

*KatieW*

The temperatures this weekend were in the 50s and it was cloudy and rainy. David and I felt--minus the beautiful trees and the kinder, Midwestern people--like we were home. Then I saw the weather forecast for this week: cool today, climbing back into the 80s by tomorrow. I dislike southern weather greatly and would move back up north with little encouragement.

I finished Martin Chuzzlewit and moved on to Eliot's Middlemarch. The thought of reading anything other than a late nineteenth-century British writer yesterday was very depressing. I have Dickens withdrawal.

In physical therapy this morning I dominated. The pt assistant I was working with complimented me on the amount of weight I was handling on the machines. He said that he had never seen another patient lifting as much as I was (which was a piddly 50 pounds). For the first time in my life (outside of David's sweet compliments), I was complimented on something athletic I had done. His statement, though, made me realize that perhaps my term with physical therapy should conclude, as I am obviously doing pretty well (at least, better than all of the other patients). Only one more session to go!

Last night I did 36 minutes on the StairMaster. Domination. I could have done more but David needed to get home to grade papers. My heart rate has already dropped 15 points when I'm working the hardest stretch. Although I am still grossly out of shape, these small victories have made me feel more like working our consistently and hard.

*KatieW*

I get paid to play on facebook. The head of the department thinks it is wise to have a facebook page for the whole department. He wants me to be in control of this page. Pretty sweet, I might say.

Philosophy professors are so funny, and they don't even know it. They have so many quirks. My husband is starting to develop some quirks of his own, too, which is sweet. Professors are so much fun to be married to, as their spouses get to experience their weirdness (cuteness) on a daily basis. I suppose I will be more weird when I am a professor, too. What will we do then?

My new favorite meal: flatbread topped with avocados, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, basil pesto, and farmer's cheese and then toasted under the broiler for 5 min. I could eat it every day . . . for at least a week (I get tired of food so fast that I cannot guarantee anything beyond a week).

*KatieW*