Yesterday was my first day of class. I love my job! The first day is always a little weird - you stand there and give a bunch of rules to a room full of people who aren't sure if they're going to love you or hate you. They laughed in all the right places and many of them seem pretty interested in the class. It's a good sign. Tomorrow the real work begins - the first lecture... My office is a tiny cubicle I share with two other teachers (we're in there on different days). It's never been decorated and is, in general, filthy. I got the official sanctioning from my (male) office-mates that I could pretty up the room and I've been working hard to do so. It's starting to look habitable and I'm thrilled! Other people keep walking by and remarking that they'd never noticed how barren that room was until I started putting up stuff. Now if I could just make that kind of progress on my house....

I've been gone a long time, I know. Very little to report on. However, this weekend was awesome! Brad took me to see Rent (which I've been dying to see!) at an outdoor theater downtown. Despite the sound difficulties, it was fabulous. I loved getting to finally see this on stage and I've been singing along to my soundtrack ever since. We spent the rest of the weekend working on the house and planning this big vacation we're putting together for December. We're trying to get either South Africa or Australia. Either way would be awesome. We're waiting to hear what the time-share folks say (a friend gave us a week's stay in theirs). I'll keep you posted.

Tomorrow is my first day of class, so I've spent the whole day making sure I've got everything put together. Ugh. I'm sure I'm forgetting something....

Just thought I'd check in and say hello. Absolutely nothing of interest is going on here. We're just busily trying to get the house set up. It's fully functional at this point - all we have to do is decorate. So, I'm spending a lot of time with paint swatches and mulling ideas and such. I'm also working on putting together my three classes that start soon, which is fun but exhausting. Brad's graduation ceremony is going on as I type this, but we couldn't make it - he's too busy with his orientation for his new job. It's too bad because it's kind of a big deal. He's officially Dr. Brad today. Very cool. That's really it, though. You can rest assured that my life will go back to its usual craziness very soon.

I'm employed! I had a phone interview with a community college while I was in Korea and it went well enough that I was pretty sure I had the job, but it wasn't a lock until Wednesday when I went in in person. I'm all squared away as an adjunct assistant professor (what Brad was at VMI) with three classes. I have the first half of western civilization and both halves of US history. Three different classes will be a lot to prepare for, but it'll be a lot less taxing than teaching full time in a high school. I'm really excited to give this a try. I think I'll like it - the colleagues I've met seem really nice and it's a nice campus. I'll miss working with teenagers and I may go back to that someday, but this seems like a good idea for now. Another bonus: since I have to drive about 45 minutes to get there, they scheduled all my classes for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Awesome!

The unpacking is going really well and it's starting to look like a real house. Brad starts his job Monday, so we're trying to get as much done as we can now since the pace of unpacking will slow with him working for a living. The majority of the boxes are unpacked, but the decorating will take a long, long time to finish... I'll post pictures when I can.

We're here! After a long, long drive, we got in about 1am Monday morning. The movers came around 8am and we got everything in the house within 2 hours! Obviously, the computer is now up and functioning, but we're still working on everything else. Our bedroom furniture arrived this morning and we mostly have our bedroom put together. Everything looks so great! I think we'll have the place put together in another couple of days. The decorating will take weeks or months, but at least we'll get the boxes out of here!

Got a crazy story for ya: Shadow almost didn't make the trip with us. He and Stitch were freaking out as we packed everything up and didn't like the total lack of furniture in the house once we'd loaded the truck. Stitch rode with Brad in the UHaul and made it to the truck just fine. Shadow was going to ride with me, but flipped out and wriggled out of my arms (leaving me with a couple of nasty scratches on my neck) and ran away. The only reason he didn't get totally away from us was that he's not used to being outside and so even though he runs really fast, he kept stopping to figure out where to go. He bolted down the alley-way and across Main St. (yikes!!), winding up behind the courthouse under a dumpster and wouldn't come out. After 20 mintues of trying everything we could think of, we called animal control to help us coax him out. Another 20 minutes and we finally grabbed him and put him in a kitty carrier. He was not a happy camper. Neither were we, now that we were running so far behind schedule! He rode quietly in his crate for the first few hours of the trip and once I let him out, he hid underneath the driver's seat for the remainder of the drive. He's finally calming down and getting used to the new surroundings. I knew it was going to be interesting travelling with cats, but this was crazy!!!