Hi everyone, had a great weekend and should be going to sleep but my mind is restless with idle thoughts. So I figure I'll share them.
I think that our journals are taking their respective shapes. Sara's journal is becoming a brief history of our adventures, highlighting the significant events of our life or maybe just stories worth telling. Mine, on the other hand, is perhaps more of a sporadic stream of thoughts that seem significant or just relevant at the time. This leaves very little guarantee that you, the Novocin.com reader, will find them interesting. But to an abstract thinking person, like my advisor, the subject matter isn't where the meat of a good thought lies. Sometimes I think like that, where anything can be a source of inspiration, so I won't filter my thoughts on the off-chance they might strike well as is.
We got our first paycheck this week and grocery shopping was a wonderful experience. We talked about maybe taking a bunch of pictures next time to let people see what sorts of food you can find overseas. I think it is often the little aspects of a life that really define it. It (life) seems to be made more from the day in/day out stuff than from the Grandiose things. So seeing French groceries might give the feeling of France just as well as a photo of some architecture.
I think it's safe to say our daily pattern is stabilizing. On a typical day we'll have cereal covered in yogurt (and have since Austria), maybe rice or a sandwich for lunch, and something neat and distinct for dinner (during the poor times we had Cordon Blue, Hamburgers, Red Beans and Rice, in fact we had a lot of neat variations on just plain rice or potatoes ). I walk about 30 minutes to work in the mornings, and even if I time it to catch a bus it's about 20 minutes to work. I don't actually have to be at work (I don't think), no one else is... I mean to say that on any given day the other members of my group are more likely somewhere else other than the office. But, since it's a nice long walk to the office, I work pretty hard and don't get easily distracted (to head home would be almost as much energy as facing the next obstacle). Almost every day at the office has been just as productive as my best coffee-shop days during my dissertation. I'm very happy with how much stuff I'm learning. When I head home Sara and I will usually have a coffee or tea, play a board game, chit-chat, make dinner, you know we'll hang out. Not a lot gets done by me during the week on the website since I would rather spend my time with Sara at night then on the computer and at work I am pretty focused so I've yet to really mess with the site from there. However, I've taught Sara everything I know about how to do HTML and load things on the server. She even helped me figure out how to make our own animated .gifs last night. So soon she'll probably know more than I will and do most of the uploading and site maintaining. I've started rambling.
About once a week we'll take a day together and go to the city to take care of chores and paperwork. Like this week on Tuesday we'll go pick up our bank cards and checkbook. It's a nice excuse to take a vacation day mid-week, but at some point the paperwork will probably be all done... This wednesday I'll head to Paris for a group meeting, I have to give a talk about the stuff I did for my PhD and the stuff I've done so far here. I have a hard time imagining making the slides this week since I have some really exciting stuff going on, but I'll have to make time.
Usually on the weekends we'll get to do something really touristy. This weekend we went on a tour of Montpellier with groups of newcomers to the town. It was free and we got to sample local foods and got free local wine bottles to take home and took probably 60 pictures just walking around. We also met a couple other new couples to town and might have more social life in the coming months! On a weekend-related note, I have been "watching" the Jaguars games on Sundays (the gamecast on NFL.com and the Ask Vic live blog on Jaguars.com give a decent enough picture). So it has also become, as my idea, " infinite rubbins day" for Sara. I figure I should use positive reinforcement to make sure she likes it when I watch Jaguars games.
I suppose I ended up just talking about things that happen and not thoughts about them, oh well. I was having a lot of neat thoughts in bed so I thought I would come write them down to share them, but I think I've just told stories. Oh well, I read the first four chapters of Brave New World this weekend, and it's scary. I had a lot of thoughts about it, but I realize that I prefer to talk about things like that in person. I can read the other person's face or reactions to know when I've struck a nerve and whether I struck it by miscommunicating or actually communicating. So I don't know if this is the right forum for discovering my feelings on an opinion. In general I don't tend to state my opinions with much certainty because (if I label a thought as an opinion) it is subject to changing often. Oh well, I think I'll go back to bed now because I'm becoming unfocused which means I'll be able to sleep.
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