Ok, so I know it must have been a while since I've written in this thing since this file is the only one which starts 'entry200809'
But, this isn't without justification, it's been a very busy time for us. We finally finished all of the initial paperworky stuff for moving to France. All that is left is to go to the prefectures office in two or three weeks to get a temporary residency card, then to the docotrs in two months for immigrations sake. So the electricity, phone, interenet, gas, and so on is all sorted out.
Yesterday my throat started to give out and today its worse, so talking is not very easy. Sara's taking very good care of me, even made me some warm milk and local honey (something we had in Germany). So I have a nice excuse for writing in the journal. Our French has been getting better by leaps and bounds, particularly our ability to talk (still struggling with audio comprehension). We studied verbs, and adverbs, some nouns, and some connecting words. My new boss lent us Sex in the City in French to work on our listening skills. We'll see.
I am really happy at the new job. I feel like I'm starting to blossom as a researcher. Everyday is something new to think about and I don't feel nearly as dumb as I was afraid I would. Today I programmed up an improvement to a new colleague's algorithm and ran tests on it all day, all sparked by a conversation two days ago! I never really worked this fast as a student, except at crunch time. Here I guess I'm being spurred on by a desire to prove my worth as a mathematician, since there are so many people who know my field around me everyday. If I were a hack they would know quickly, so I work harder. We'll see if I can keep it up as the year goes on.
In the same vein, a math publisher wrote me an email about possibly turning my PhD thesis into an actual book! This is another very exciting idea, and I'm planning on making the time to do it. We'll see how well that goes, if at all. Nonetheless, I'm full of math ideas and projects and it's only my second week.
Enough about work. Our house is really great, it is much more spacious than I thought it would be. We have two porches, an office, big living room, nice hallway, a little laundry room, and the usual: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. The bed is very comfy, and so is our futon couch/bed for 2. This means we have lots of room for visitors, and they can bring friends. (If someone does want to come visit, it's nice to travel in pairs.)
We do have to light the water heater in the mornings for showers, and it's good for about two showers. This is a new experience, but it's kinda nice since we have complete control of the gas bill.
This weekend we took one of our new (but alas temporary) friends, Jun, to the Mediterrean. He's a chinese guest researcher here for the month, but we figured it would be a good excuse for all of us to figure out how to get to the beach. It's not too far, we just hop a tram to the end of the line and take a bus from there down to the coast, in total (from our house) is about 45 minutes. The beach bus runs every couple hours, so time it well and its not so far. This weekend we went to the Grand Motte. We met some fisherpeople and drank a Kronenburg on the beach. Had some fresh crepes, and homemade sandwiches. Walked around and enjoyed the day. Afterward we played Carcassonne with Jun (whose last name is the chinese characters for fourth and dimension!) and had a really cool Sunday.
That night I watched the Jaguars on the internet from NFL.com. Maybe not watched so much as observed the little chart they display during games which shows the current drive and details on the last play. I also had Jaguars.com open for Vic Ketchman's In-Game Blog. All in all it was pretty close to watching it, heck they even give you free Jaguars radio network coverage from inside the redzone! (That way I could listen to the turnover...) Looks like our offensive line is pretty much banged up, and its only week 1. That means that we're in for a long season of low rush totals and lots of sacks, heck our defense will probably be on the field alot too and rack up injuries. Everything starts and stop with the O-Line. If I were a head coach I would always draft an O-lineman first, every year. It would be great. sigh...
I think I'm starting to ramble, and my throat hurts. So I'll go get some water and Sara and I will keep watching Cowboy Beebop on the laptop (we're almost done). It's alot like Firefly, which I love.
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